Maybe The First Opera, Albeit A Sacred One

It's been a while since anything came off the shelf by Christina Pluhar's wonderful ensemble L'Arpeggiata. This one is a double cd release of Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo by Emilio De'Cavalieri, often cited as the first printed opera despite its' clerical origins. Cavalieri's father was an architect and lifelong friend of Michelangelo and to call Cavalieri himself a renaiissance man in the modern meaning of the term is no exaggeration, since his talents took in politician, city councillor, diplomat, senator, impresario, choreographer, art collector and organ builder as well as composer. Rappresentatione is a curious piece, commissioned by the papacy as a blast in the counter reformation. It is a dialogue between the soul and the body and the conflict inherent between those two contrasting driving forces in every human. With the soul needing to win out over gross bodily appetites of course. The libretto by Agostino Manni transcends these narrow guidelines and produces a masterly synthesis between tradition and new rhetorical fashions. Very much a sacred opera, the work is much more lively and full of dramatic baroque flourishes than the origin of it might lead one to expect. As ever, L'Arpeggiata are in excellent instumental form giving a timeless rather than strictly historically informed feel to the sound. The vocal forces are much enlarged from on other recordings, with a "chorus of angels" playing a prominent part and the various abstract characters such as time, body, death, intellect played by Marco Beasley, Johannette Zomer, Jan van Elsacker, Stephan MacLeod, Dominique Visse, Nuria Rial and Beatrice Mayo Felip.