Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Leo: Amor Vuol Sofferenza

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The origins of the Italian opera buffa can be traced to Naples in the 1730's, where three young progressive composers, Leonardo Vinci, Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, were creating a new style of Neapolitan comic opera. Leonardo Leo's Amor Vuol Sofferenza ("Love Requires Suffering," 1739) was enormously popular and was revived again and again in the mid eighteenth century. Furthermore, it served as a model for later Neapolitan opera composers like Paisiello and Cimarosa.

Amor Vuol Sofferenza received its world premiere recording during a live performance given in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the composer. Leo's commedia per musica was produced for the twentieth annual Festival della Valle d'Itria in 1994. Daniele Moles conducts the Nuova Orchestra Scarlatti di Napoli with a cast of seven singers. It's been almost exactly fourteen years since that Sunday in August when I aired Amor Vuol Sofferenza. Almost exactly four years ago I broadcast another comic opera by Leonardo Leo, L'Alidoro (1740), which was recorded for the Italian label Dynamic at another festival--the one at Reggio Emilia. I hope you will enjoy hearing "Love Requires Suffering" again this Sunday as brought to you on two Nuova Era compact discs.