Gelosia!

Strong Emotions and New Ideas

Baroque music thrives on strong emotions, and what emotion could kindle the musical furore more than jealousy? The Italian name serves Philippe Jaroussky as the title for his new album Gelosia! - just as the great Baroque poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio did three centuries before him for a solo cantata that was set to music frequently in the course of the 18th century: La Gelosia sounds exuberantly ornate in the version by the Neapolitan Nicola Porpora, while his later Venetian colleague Baldassare Galuppi clothes it in classical elegance. Jaroussky presents these two long-forgotten masterworks as world premiere recordings with his own boundless virtuosity. On Gelosia! they find themselves in musical company with other solo cantatas from the early 18th century, which the top counter and his ensemble Artaserse have had on their successful repertoire for years. Works such as Vivaldi's Cessate, omai cessate, Händel's Mi palpita il cor and Alessandro Scarlatti's Ombre tacite e sole also deal with the torments of love and offered their creators the chance to experiment with unknown forms of musical expression outside all opera conventions; it is no wonder that Philippe Jaroussky describes the secular cantata or cantata da camera written for solo singers as a "laboratory for new ideas". "It is a true pleasure to perform these cantatas on stage, because they are complete works," says the French singer, who sees his performing qualities challenged here even more than in pure aria recitals. Especially with such a passionate theme as jealousy.