Founded in 1987 by Antonio Florio, the ensemble I Turchini is made up of instrumentalists and singers living and working in Naples who specialize in the performance of Neapolitan music from the 17th and 18th centuries and in the rediscovery of music by highly-gifted composers who are now largely unknown. The unique programmes and rigorous approach to Baroque performing practices make I Turchini one of the most interesting ensembles in current European musical life.
The ensemble has been invited to take part in a large number of musical events all across Europe, such as at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia of Rome, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Teatro Lope de Vega in Sevilla and the Théâtre de La Monnaie in Brussels. Likewise, I Turchini has been very active in participating in festivals and additionally has also been the ensemble-in-residence at the Centre Lyrique Clermont-Auvergne in France.
Recent productions have included Il disperato innocente by Francesco Boerio, Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell, Festa napoletana, La Statira by Francesco Cavalli, Motezuma by Francesco De Majo, La Partenope by Leonardo Vinci, La finta giardiniera of Pasquale Anfossi, L’Ottavia restituita al trono by Domenico Scarlatti, La Salustia by GB Pergolesi and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo by Handel.
The members of I Turchini were keenly involved in a weeklong series of concerts devoted to Neapolitan music organized by the Spanish Ministerio de Cultura. Tours in recent years have included giving concerts in China, Japan, and Portugal and in the United States (in the course of which the orchestra performed in New York and Washington). The ensemble was chosen to inaugurate the concert season 2007-08 for Radio3 of the RAI in Italy with a performance of the programme “Angeli e Demoni” from the Cappella Paolina of the Palazzo del Quirinale in Roma.
The ensemble has made recordings for Radio France, the BBC, and Belgian, Spanish, German and Austrian radios. In 1998 I Turchini was featured in a documentary realized by Belgian television and in a film entirely devoted to opera buffa for the French-German company ARTE (a production which went on to win an award from UNESCO).
Prior to embarking on a new level of recording activity with Glossa the ensemble had made a significant number of discs devoted to the Neapolitan Baroque (many of them receiving awards from the international critics) for labels such as Opus 111 and Eloquentia in France. In addition to the new recordings now being made, earlier releases (which came out on the Symphonia label) will also be issued by Glossa.
In 2008 the ensemble, along with Antonio Florio, was awarded the Premio Napoli in the section “eccellenze nascoste”.
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Antonio Florio was born in Bari, where he studied classical music, gaining his diploma in cello, piano and composition there under the direction of Nino Rota, before going on to study early instruments and Baroque performing practice. In 1987 he founded the ensemble (which is now called) I Turchini, and from that point on has been devoting himself to the giving of concerts and pursuing his musicological research.
Above all his explorations have been covering the repertory of 17th and 18th century Neapolitan music, reviving masterpieces which had never appeared in print, prior to directing them in major theatres and opera houses across Europe. Some examples of such rediscoveries include La colomba ferita (1670),Il schiavo di sua moglie (1671) and Stellidaura vendicante (1674), all by Francesco Provenzale, Il disperato innocente by Francesco Boerio (1673), La finta cameriera by Gaetano Latilla (1673), Li zite ’ngalera by Leonardo Vinci (1722), Pulcinella vendicato by Giovanni Paisiello (1767), La Statira by Francesco Cavalli (in the Neapolitan 1666 edition) and Motezuma by Francesco De Majo (1765).
Antonio Florio is equally active as a teacher: he has given seminars and master classes on Baroque vocal and chamber music for the Centre de Musique Baroque, Versailles, the Fondation Royaumont and for the Toulouse Conservatoire. He also holds the chair in Musica da camera at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples where he gives a university course in baroque style and repertoire.
In recent years his performing activities have included directing a production of La Partenope by Leonardo Vinci, which visited the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples as well as opera houses and auditoria in Spain (Ponferrada, León, Sevilla, La Coruña, Santander and Murcia) and which was awarded with the Premio Oviedo for the Best Theatrical Production.
Florio has also been involved in a revival of La finta giardiniera by Pasquale Anfossi in both concert and staged performances (along with an international workshop about the work). In 2006 he conducted I Turchini in Festa Napoletana, first at the prestigious festival Anima Mundi in Pisa and then on a tour to China for performances in four different venues. In the same year he was awarded the First Prize in the Mousiké Festival of Early Music in the Mediterranean in Bari. Florio directed performances of the opera Alidoro by Leonardo Leo at the Teatro Mercadante in Naples and at the Teatro Valli, Reggio Emilia (and from the latter a DVD was recorded which went on to receive a Diapason d’Or and the Orphée d’or from the Académie du disque lyrique in Paris). He has recently received two other prestigious awards: at the 2008 Premios Líricos Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo in Spain he was fêted for Best Musical Direction for the first modern performance of the opera L’Ottavia restituita al trono by Domenico Scarlatti (which had been performed in San Sebastián in August 2007). In October of that year, along with I Turchini, he was awarded the Premio Napoli in the section “eccellenze nascoste” of the city. He has participated in the Festival MITO with a concert version of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo by Handel at the Teatro dell’Arte di Milano. This was followed in June 2009 with a staged version, directed by Davide Livermore, at the Teatro Regio di Torino. A substantial tour of Italy has seen Florio directing Pergolesi’s Stabat mater and more recently he has conducted Orfeo e Euridice by JJ Fux at the Konzerthaus in Vienna.
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...]
When setting out on their new collection of recordings dedicated to the musical travels of famous singers from the past, entitled ‘Sirene’, Antonio Florio of I Turchini and Dinko Fabris could have considered no other, no better voice from today than that of Roberta Invernizzi to assume the starring role. Invernizzi has, after all, played a crucial role over the years in many of I Turchini’s concert programmes and recordings devoted to Neapolitan music of the Baroque and beyond. With these Viaggi musicali di celebri cantanti the leading Italian musical scholar Fabris and his colleagues are recreating for the modern listener the musical soundworlds of singers who helped forge opera as we know it today: these were the musicians who trekked across Europe at the specific requests of composers, impresarios or audiences to add glitz and star quality to new productions. One such was Faustina Bordoni, whose performing career lasted from 1716 to 1751, starting off in her native Venice before criss-crossing Europe. She appeared in court and public opera houses alike whilst becoming one of the greatest singers of her time (and getting involved in a very modern series of spats with fellow soprano Francesca Cuzzoni). On this new recording from Glossa made in Naples (the setting for important triumphs for Bordoni), Roberta Invernizzi, Antonio Florio and I Turchini recapture the lustre of 18th century opera – in music rarely, if ever, heard today, from composers such as Leonardo Vinci, Domenico Sarro, Nicola Porpora and Francesco Mancini – with a video from the sessions being available on YouTube. To set the scene for this new collection Dinko Fabris talks about the dramatic times of Faustina Bordoni, 18th century Naples and Roberta Invernizzi. [read more...]
A distinctive musical voice in Giovanni Sollima makes his debut on Glossa both as a cellist and as a composer, in a partnership with Antonio Florio resulting in a disc of cello concertos which is no mere digression from I Turchini’s habitual exploration of the secular and sacred vocal music of the Neapolitan Baroque. Sollima, a native Sicilian, is a living embodiment of that strong serious/popular vein running through Southern Italian music-making and, primarily a cellist, he has elsewhere performed with strong musical minds as varied as DJ Scanner and Claudio Abbado, Yo-Yo Ma and Patti Smith or Philip Glass and Giuseppe Sinopoli. His intuitive awareness of the spirit of the Neapolitan Baroque makes him admirably placed to participate in this exploration of the importance of the cello in Naples in the 18th century.[read more...]
Roberta Invernizzi is very clearly one of the finest sopranos to be heard today in the Baroque - and especially the Italian Baroque - repertory, as evidenced by the beauty that she brings not only to operatic roles and vocal roles which have been essayed by many other famous singers both on record and in performance, but also by her sense of clarity in and characterization of unknown music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The rediscovery of so much Italian music is a reflection of the labour and artistry of numerous musical minds but as a kind of prima donna inter pares the Milanese soprano stands out from many others for the intensity of her approach, to the point that she is emerging as a new muse for other distinguished modern-day practitioners of the Italian Baroque such as Fabio Bonizzoni and Antonio Florio who contribute here their own thoughts on the artistry of Roberta Invernizzi, adding to the soprano’s own considerations about her musical life.[read more...]
A well-established Baroque music ensemble is joining Glossa, with Antonio Florio and the Cappella della Pietà de’ Turchini making an agreement to record one or two discs per annum here. Founded in 1987, the baroque orchestra and its vocal soloists connected with the Centro di Musica Antica Pietà de’ Turchini in Naples have become internationally-celebrated for their exploration of Neapolitan music from the 17th and 18th centuries. Florio – aided by eminent scholars such as Dinko Fabris – has successfully breathed new life into a forgotten repertory, with a string of recordings and concerts as testament to the vitality of the musical scene in Naples in these times, especially through its operatic and sacred music. [read more...]