Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - A. Scarlatti: La Gloria di Primavera

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Ah... the true glory of Spring is upon us now as we pass along into the flowery month of May. Now is the perfect moment to listen to a baroque operatic serenata in praise of the season. Alessandro Scarlatti's La Gloria di Primavera ("The Glory of Spring') was first performed on May 19, 1716 in celebration of the birth of a male heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire (essentially the German empire of Central Europe). Sadly, the infant died a few months later.

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was the preeminent composer of Italian opera of his generation. He is the reputed founder of the Neapolitan school of opera composers. On Sunday, January 18, 2004 I broadcast Scarlatti's masterpiece La Griselda (1721) in its 2003 CD release for the French Harmonia Mundi label. The opera seria was revived onstage by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden of Berlin in 2000. Leading the singing cast and the period instrument Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin is Rene Jacobs, a former countertenor singer, now recognized as one of the world's best conductors and interpreters of baroque music.

In the United States there's a world-class conductor specializing in this field: the British national Nicolas McGegan. He founded the West Coast period instrument orchestra Philharmonia Baroque. McGegan leads the Philharmonia instrumentalists and the Philharmonia Chorale in what is presumably the world premiere recording of "The Glory of Spring." There are five vocal soloists, four of whom represent the four seasons of the year, plus Jove, the king of the gods, who decides that Spring is certainly the best of all seasons for the birth of the emperor-to-be. The serenata was recorded live in performance in Berkeley, California in 2015 and released the following year through the Philharmonia's own proprietary label on two compact discs.