Campra: Gli strali d’Amore Divertimento immaginario - Fabio Bonizzoni, La Risonanza

Fabio Bonizzoni has come up with another imaginative and enticing programme for his latest Glossa release, creating an Italian pastiche with music by André Campra and starring soprano Roberta Invernizzi. This is the latest hit from La Risonanza and follows discs devoted to Handel, Lully and Alessandro Scarlatti.

André Campra, a major figure in the world of French opera between Lully and Rameau, was clearly not very impressed by the formers’ lack of enthusiasm for Italian musical practices in France, when he was elevated to the post of surintendant de la musique du roi.

In many of Campra’s French opéras-ballets and comédieslyriques one finds dashing arias interpolated with texts in Italian (Campra’s father was Italian-born like Lully padre e figlio). From these Fabio Bonizzoni and Angela Romagnoli have chosen and concocted Gli strali d’Amore (Love’s Arrows), thereby following in the footsteps of Campra: a dab hand at this activity himself, as demonstrated by his Les Fragments de Mr. De Lully. Joining Bonizzoni and Invernizzi, whose “Portrait” album was recently issued by Glossa, in this delightful sequence of recitatives and da capo arias recorded in Tuscany, are the impressive Cyril Auvity and Salvo Vitale, and a sprightly La Risonanza. The informative booklet essay is by Barbara Nestola.

December 2011

***

“The instrumental contribution is superb. Roberta Invernizzi is dramatically effective and often delightful in the more extended lyrical moments, if not always comfortable in terms of pitch. The tenor, Cyril Auvity, is a delight: heroic and fragile, and always with an unfailing sense of style.”