Stammen does Steffani from Castelfranco near Venice. Since he was born in 1654 and thus belongs to the first generation of Baroque (Bach and Handel are the second), the great composers such as the almost the same Arcangelo Corelli and Purcell has spawned. Even as a child he sings in the choir, where he really stand out for a nice boy soprano and a good ear. During the Venetian carnival of 1666 the Bavarian Elector Ferdinand Maria hears the twelve year olds and takes him to Munich. Since Steffani learns the court conductor Johann Caspar von Kerll three years of harmony and counterpoint. Two years of study at the music director of St. Peter in Rome follow. Then Steffani has finished learning, and returns back to Munich in 1674, where he soon earned as well as court organist and chamber that he can bring his whole family. 1680, however, the lives of the young musician changed fundamentally. This year, he is not only ordained a priest, but starts on behalf of the new elector Max II. Emmanuel a career as a travel and secret diplomat, which will take him 40 years across Europe. The Thirty Years' War is not yet a man ages past, the peace fragile, the kingdom torn by religious antagonisms. Behind the scenes, dynastic marriages must be initiated and defuse conflicts that brought despatches and oriented messages. This is an intelligent, discreet priest who speaks four languages, still children must take care neither to woman and can improvise in judicial recess at the harpsichord, the right person. For three electors Steffani works: the Bavaria, the Hanoverians and the Palatinate, lives in Munich, Hannover and Brussels, will Bischoff and Messenger, papal throne assistant and Vicar Apostolic, is the powerful confidant, confessor and counselor. Rushed, stressed and increasingly in debt, he wears a lifetime with the idea of returning to Italy to compose as in rural tranquility, but nothing will come. As the 73 year old in winter 1728 will finally return home, he succumbs in Frankfurt a. M. stroke.
One wonders how a so busy man 17 operas, some could compose chamber music and lots of chamber duets for two voices with continuo, but in carriages and inns, in chapels, vestries and the ice-cold antechambers, one of which has been reported or Mozart - somehow it must have gone. Most of his operas wrote Steffani only in his time in Munich (1681-1688), then in Hanover (1689-1709) for the newly built Opera House.
And this man now Cecilia Bartoli has rediscovered for us. Almost single-handedly. And by the way, it has also been discovered that Steffani a spy, secret agent, and perhaps even a murderer was, so to speak, a composing a James Bond of the Baroque. Here apparently lodged an overtime creative marketing department, because it was not quite so. Neither Steffani has murdered someone, nor was he ever really forgotten. His chamber duets were for vocal music as well as stylistically Corelli's trio sonatas for instrumental music, and that was his contemporaries well aware. On the video to CD (yes, even in the classical period there now music videos) noted Ms. Bartoli that Steffani opera form the link between Monteverdi and Handel, and that is absolutely correct. Handel has cribbed from Steffani virtuoso arias pathetic lot.
Cecilia Bartoli has recorded a total of 25 arias and duets from operas ten. But with all brilliance, all singing talents, the whole verve with which the Bartoli sings as always, but the plate leaves a mixed impression. Of course, there's always this immensely virtuoso, flexible voice to soprano masters all registers of Old. Your tremendous vocal range, its design capacity and the sheer joy of life, with which the Italian for decades delighted all that's available here in abundance. But the coloratura sound now increasingly forced and clumsy. The voice sounds at large intervallic leaps rough and sometimes insecure in the intonation. Because the singer treble can no longer so easily respond as in the past, it is now steadily louder, so that they reached the top notes. It is the fate of all coloratura singers that with age lose the voice of suppleness, but not every singer is an increase of the same. The negative example is Maria Callas, who reduced their century voice in ten years while their Dauerrivalin Renata Tebaldi is preserved their more than 30 years. Cecilia Bartoli, the Jürgen Kesting once applicable termed the special case of giftedness, is the moment to wear their vocal material and the dub through mannerisms. This brought her to be the acclamations of the Amazon reviewers, a win for the art it is not.
Here would have a wise conductor who knows how to lead singer, can do good, but Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti so music like many modern Baroque Orchestra: fast, loud, blaring with natural trumpets and rattling percussion. And so it really sounds as it allegedly was common in Baroque nor a thunder sheet and a tambourine, which does not guarantee drinstehen in the original score, their way found on the CD, which was then mixed even audible in the computer out loud , That's all a bit of a shame because Steffani is actually a discovery, and his music, though not spectacular, but so very worth listening to.
