News Daniele da Castrovillari

Serpent and Fire: Arias for Dido and Cleopatra CD review – a stunner 

Anna Prohaska (soprano), Il Giardino Armonico/Antonini (Alpha Classics)Another stunner from soprano Anna Prohaska. Following her wonderful disc of war-related music, she now turns her attention to two tragic heroines, Dido and Cleopatra. Both have inspired great music across the centuries, but Prohaska resists the attention to go as far as Berlioz, and frames this baroque collection with the start and finish of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. There are well-known Cleopatra arias – a devastating, piercing Se pietà di me non senti from Handel’s Giulio Cesare – and very little-known ones by Castrovillari, Sartorio, Cavalli and Graupner (a bizarre bilingual scene). It’s all beautifully planned and paced, with riveting instrumental interludes from Il Giardino Armonico, including Matthew Locke’s astonishingly modern Curtain Tune. Continue reading...

Castrovillari's La Cleopatra in San Francisco 

I first heard about Ars Minerva just a few months ago, at the end of November, when intriguing email whispered to me that a new opera company would be staging an unknown work, La Cleopatra, which had been written in the 17th century for the Venetian carnival season. Well, the combination of 17th century, Venice, and unknown is completely irresistible, so this past Sunday, March 15, I took myself to Marine's Memorial Theater for the second of two shows. If you weren't there, or at the Saturday show, darlings, you missed a huge treat. La Cleopatra, with music by Daniele da Castrovillari, to a libretto by Giacomo dall'Angelo, hasn't been heard since it was performed back in 1662 at Venice's Teatro San Angelo. Celine Ricci, the moving force behind Ars Minerva, found a microfilm of the score at the UC Berkeley Library, if I have this correctly, and was able […]

Coming Up: La Cleopatra, March 14 & 15, 2015 

There's a new group in town, Ars Minerva, which will be presenting Ventian music of the 17th and 18th centuries; they're calling this the Carnival Series. Their first performances are in about a month. They'll be performing La Cleopatra, which they're calling a modern world premiere. It probably is! It's by Daniele da Castrovillari, with the libretto by Giacomo dall'Angelo, and was first performed in1662 at Venice's Teatro San Angelo. Here are the performance details: March 14th at 7.30 PM March 15th at 2:00 PM Marines' Memorial Theater609 Sutter St., San Francisco For tickets, phone 415-392-4400 or get them directly from City Box Office. Note that they are $55, $96, and $250. The latter price includes a $120 tax-deductible contribution to Ars Minerva and a toast backstage with the cast after the performance. (That weekend is tough for me - annual jujitsu convention, fortunately in San Ramon […]