Countertenor Carlo Vistoli invites you on a musical journey through 17th-century Italy, a period when the nascent opera genre was producing its first masterpieces with composers such as Monteverdi, Cesti, Cavalli, and Stradella. These genius composers laid the foundations for opera and helped establish it as a major art form.
In the continuation of the presentation of Francesco Cavalli’s opera _Pompeo Magno_ the previous evening, Carlo Vistoli and Leonardo García-Alarcón offer at the Théâtre des Margraves an instrumental and vocal program almost exclusively dedicated to composers of the Venetian Baroque.
Carlo Vistoli and Leonardo García-Alarcón are accustomed to performing together both in concert and in staged productions. The complicity they share and their mutual love for Baroque music permeate the entire program of the evening, with the Cappella Mediterranea appearing on stage in a small ensemble. Naturally, Francesco Cavalli’s music forms the major part of the thoughtfully curated program, with strictly instrumental sections seamlessly integrated into the opera arias. Thus, Leonardo García-Alarcón fully showcases his ensemble and soloists in two excerpts from _Eliogabalo_ and _Erismena, _two operatic works he has conducted on stage, or in the Sinfonia for five violas from Act 2 of _Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo_, the composer’s first operatic work dating from 1639. In the second part, the program explores Monteverdi and _L’incoronazione di Poppea_, Alessandro Stradella, and a chaconne by Antonio Caldara.