Press Archive
2015-01-23, The Times
Say what you like about this arcane baroque opera, there’s certainly no time to get bored. Recitatives and arias fly by. Theban rulers, lovers and enemies wrestle with power, vainglory, and their heart’s desires. A beast is slain; a monster metamorphoses into an army of warriors. This is an opera first performed during Munich’s winter carnival of 1688, and it wasn’t a time for restraint.
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2013-10-05, The Times, by Richard Morrison
Farinelli was the greatest 18th-century castrato. Nicola Porpora was his singing teacher and, in 50 operas, the composer who gave him the fizzingly virtuosic or meltingly lyrical arias with which he dazzled Europe. I’d be surprised if Farinelli’s voice was any more astonishing than the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, who sings 11 of Porpora’s arias here, most previously unrecorded. The Venice Baroque Orchestra supplies zesty backing; Cecilia Bartoli, no less, is on two duets.
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