GEORG FRIEDRICH HAENDEL (1685-1759)

Clori, Tirsi e Fileno
Le Cantate Italiane di Handel V
Rome, 1707

1-29 Clori, Tirsi e Fileno (Cor fedele, in vano speri)
[HWV 83]

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About this CD

In May 1707 George Frideric Handel entered into the service of the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli, and under his protection, embarked upon a tremendous career. As well as making a name for himself as a spectacular virtuoso on the harpsichord and organ, through his plentiful concerts in the Roman academies, Handel lost no time in also becoming a highly sought-after composer through his felicitous and apparently inexhaustible inspiration. In addition to a significant number of cantatas for solo voice and basso continuo, Handel also involved himself in composing cantatas for larger numbers of voices, combining these with a large supporting orchestral group.

The score of Clori, Tirsi e Fileno is certainly a complex one, as much for its dramatic plotline as for its individually-chosen musical options: the result is a genuine opera in miniature, equipped with real refinement and lightness. Consequently, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno turns - even more so than with other Italian cantata works by the caro Sassone - into an authentic laboratory in which Handel experiments with the most diverse musical and dramatic forms, obtaining by this method a capacity to elaborate that special language which was to locate it firmly within the glories of the theatre, from the past and the present.