Che puro ciel
The Rise of Classical Opera
With the famous preface to Alceste (1767), Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi laid the foundations for a new direction in opera.
Their primary aim was to overcome the constraints of Baroque form in order to rediscover the deeper meaning of the word nature - or, in Calzabigi’s beautiful phrasing, to liberate the “language of the heart.”
The arias brought together on this CD also stem from this exciting period of operatic reform. We encounter combative composers who, in their search for new forms, introduced that “noble simplicity” which was to become the foundation of musical Classicism.
(harmonia mundi)
Artists
Bejun Mehta, Countertenor
RIAS Kammerchor Berlin
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
René Jacobs, Conductor
Released on
harmonia mundi, 2013