Roberta Invernizzi has become one of the outstanding voices of Baroque music in modern times, contributing with her crystalline soprano and an unfailing dramatic sense to the rediscovery of much neglected music, from Italy in particular. Hailing from Milan, Roberta Invernizzi’s music studies initially encompassed the piano and the double bass before she took up singing under the guidance of Margaret Heyward, later specializing in both Baroque and Classical era music.
Invernizzi’s talent for characterization has been superbly demonstrated across the Gramophone Award-winning series of recordings on Glossa of Handel’s chamber cantatas in Italian with Fabio Bonizzoni, through her visceral and vivid portrayals of Arcadian characters from goddesses and nymphs to shepherdesses. Her prowess there led Fabio Bonizzoni to write recitatives with her in mind for his creation of a pasticcio opera in Gli strali d’Amore, with arias by André Campra. The flamboyant revival in recent years of music from the Neapolitan Baroque led by Antonio Florio and I Turchini owes much to Roberta Invernizzi’s contributions, whilst on the opera stage diverse roles in recent years have seen her perform in Handel’s Rinaldo and Agrippina, Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea (as well as in Mozart, Grétry and Berton). Reactions from the international press have praised her singing for its “intensity and delicacy, her control of pitch and phrase production”, her “great radiance of tone” as well as frequent notes of approval for her sensitivity, refinement and subtlety.
In addition to her presence in the Handel Cantatas series (there is also a “Portrait” release, Handel in Italy) and the Campra Gli strali d’Amore, Invernizzi’s long-standing musical partnership with Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza has led to a disc of both well- and lesser-known opera arias by Antonio Vivaldi with Invernizzi cast very much in the solo spotlight. Invernizzi regularly works also with other leading conductors of the music of Vivaldi such as Rinaldo Alessandrini, Alan Curtis and Fabio Biondi, among others.
A disc of Handel opera arias from Roberta Invernizzi is remarkable in its own right because it breaks new ground for the Milanese soprano. True, she has taken part in complete operas on disc as on stage, and has recorded plenty of arias by other composers of the time such as Vivaldi, Leo, Porpora, Feo or Mancini. This new release from Glossa, however, sees Invernizzi reflecting Handel’s special brand of emotional investigation and making her selection from the many regal characters which pepper Handel’s operas – Cleopatra, Berenice, Arianna and Alcina, among them – and their ardent, affecting, distraught and stately feelings. [read more...]
The collective artistic endeavours of Glossa have recently been recognized with an award of Label of the Year for 2014 by a Europe-wide panel of classical music media organizations – print and online magazines, as well as radio broadcasters – who form the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) jury. This is to be presented at the Award Ceremony and Gala Concert in the Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw in April 2014. The Glossa adventure began back in 1992, led by two pioneering Spanish instrumentalists – brothers José Miguel Moreno and Emilio Moreno – who set about creating a treasure trove of recorded excellence, notably in the ever-developing field of “early music”. To this day, the label remains focused on its artists, supporting their musical journeys and inclinations, with the artistic direction entrusted to Carlos Céster. With a small team around him Céster operates from San Lorenzo de El Escorial, surrounded by the abundant natural riches of the mountains around Madrid and with an austere Monasterio in sight to ever encourage him in the rigour of his work. [read more...]
Having entranced audiences across Europe with their performances of the music which Georg Frideric Handel wrote during his time in Italy – mainly in Rome – between 1706-9, and having also delighted record buyers with the seven-volume series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel”, released on Glossa, Fabio Bonizzoni and his singers and musicians of La Risonanza have now gone on to impress the jury of the 2011 Gramophone Classical Music Awards. On October 6, at a ceremony held in The Dorchester hotel in London, the British magazine bestowed upon the Italian musicians a prestigious Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category, for the final volume in the Handel series, Apollo e Dafne (a recording which contains two further cantatas, Agrippina condotta a morire and Cuopre talvolta il cielo as well as the title work). The singers on this disc were soprano Roberta Invernizzi and the two basses Thomas E. Bauer and Furio Zanasi. [read more...]
Fabio Bonizzoni’s attention on record to the music of Handel - which has, thus far, yielded seven discs devoted to the early Italian-texted cantatas - has just now had the good fortune to receive this year’s Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize for Apollo e Dafne, the final release in the present series for Glossa. This is the third time that Bonizzoni and his period-instrument ensemble La Risonanza have won this prestigious prize for their series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel” (previous winners were the first release, Le Cantate per il Cardinal Pamphili and the fifth, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno); three other recordings have also featured as runners-up. [read more...]