Il pomo d’oro’s first project of the 2017-18 Season will be Alessandro Stradella’s opera LA DORICLEA, a world premiere recording directed by Andrea De Carlo. The opera will be also performed live in Rome on September 2, as the opening concert of  the Festival Barocco Alessandro Stradella in collaboration with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Composed by Stradella in 1681 to cheer the summer evenings of the Genoese nobility, La Doriclea is probably the last masterpiece of the great composer of Nepi, who died in Genoa in February 1682, stabbed to death in the street by a professional hitman.

Love, betrayal, ambiguities, mistaken identity, disguise, duels: La Doriclea appears to prefigure numerous conventions of the later heydays of opera. It is subtle and entertaining at the same time, combines refined reflections with moving laments and is in parts irresistibly comic. The buffo arias with their speedy text declamation anticipate Rossini’s style, and the entry of Giraldo propels us towards Don Giovanni’s Leporello.

The recording has been produced by Outhere Music, and it will be released in 2018 by Arcana.

The adventurous history of the manuscript – absent from every catalog, discovered in 1938, then lost again until the only recent re-discovery – seems to reflect the passionate, turbulent and dramatic life of its author, the musical Caravaggio of 17th century Italy.

ANDREA DE CARLO

The recording of LA DORICLEA will be directed by Andrea De Carlo, who leads The STRADELLA PROJECT, an innovative and ambitious initiative dedicated to the works of Alessandro Stradella. The first three volumes of the collection have been received with enthusiasm from international critic. In 2013 De Carlo created the International Festival Alessandro Stradella in Nepi (Italy), of which he is artistic director.

CAST

The cast of the album and the concert in Rome will be: Emoke Barath (Doriclea), Xavier Sabata (Fidalbo), Giuseppina Bridelli (Lucinda), Luca Cervoni (Celindo), Gabriella Martellacci (Delfina) and Riccardo Novaro (Giraldo).