Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García Alarcón, Cappella Mediterranea – La Finta Pazza (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:28:18 minutes | 2,76 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles

The story of the incredible success of La Finta Pazza in Venice in 1641 is often attributed to the presence of the diva Anna Renzi and to Torelli’s incredible stage machinery. However, a show with an excellent singer and an impressive machinery is nothing without remarkable music. As soon as I discovered this score, which has almost never been performed recently, I immediately understood the surprising quality of this music and why it had such an impact on young King Louis XIV. It offers something new in the history of music, just as the opera was becoming accessible to the public, with an extremely sophisticated relation between music and text. The quality of the music is the reason why La Finta Pazza was the first opera performed at the French court in 1645, at a time when the genre was completely unknown.
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Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon – Strozzi: Virtuosissima Compositrice (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:58 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ambronay Éditions

The virtuoso Venetian diva of the 17th century, Barbara Strozzi, Monteverdi’s heiress, journeys the passions of the soul through a daring mosaic of styles and rhythms. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, who is one of the rising generation of baroque conductors, is leading a major research project on the specific parameters which make up musical performance, paying particular attention to improvisation techniques and the relationship between text and music. His work at the Ambronay Festival has focused on the performance of 17th-century Italian music including rich and little-known repertoire of motets and madrigals by Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda and Antonia Bembo.

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Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García Alarcón – Monteverdi-Piazzólla: Una utopia Argentina (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:40 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ambronay Éditions

This innovative program pairing the seemingly antithetical compositions of Claudio Monteverdi and Astor Piazzolla was first featured at the Ambronay Festival in 2009 and was greeted with nearly universal acclaim. The brainchild of Argentine conductor Leonardo Garcia Alarcon and his ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, this unusual collection highlights the surprising connections and musical synergies present in works that are separated by centuries of time and thousands of miles. Under the baton of Alarcon, the madrigal and the tango are revealed as be musical sisters, both conjuring up powerful emotions – from nostalgia to sorrow to ecstasy – and rich in improvisational freedom.

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Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon – Monteverdi: I 7 peccati capitali (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:12:22 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Today regarded as one of the most innovative and active Baroque ensembles on the international scene, Cappella Mediterranea has already made several distinguished recordings for the Ricercar label. Leonardo García Alarcón will of course continue his richly diverse collaboration with Ricercar (notably with the Choeur de Chambre de Namur and the Millennium Orchestra), but he will also release several projects on Alpha Classics, starting with an original programme of music by one of his favourite composers, Monteverdi. On the occasion of a music theatre piece centred on Poppea, whom her nurse Arnalta warns against the vices – a production directed by Olivier Lexa and performed at the Doge’s Palace in Venice – Cappella Mediterranea recorded this anthology of arias and madrigals alternating between sins and virtues, performed by the singers who have made the ensemble’s reputation, including Francesca Aspromonte as Poppea, Mariana Flores in Si dolce é’l tormento among others, and the tenor Emiliano Gonzalez-Toro. Here is an opportunity to rediscover the great masterpieces of Monteverdi in a new context: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Il ritorno d’Ulisse, Orfeo, the madrigals, and even an excerpt from the Selva morale.

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Cappella Mediterranea and Leonardo García Alarcón – De vez en cuando la vida: Joan Manuel Serrat y el siglo de oro (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:01:50 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Leonardo García Alarcón writes: “The memories of my childhood in Argentina always bring me back to the singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat, synonymous with shared family moments… Serrat’s poetry and music around a barbecue in Argentina; “De vez en cuando la vida” made me cry as it has made millions of people cry in Latin America, Spain and elsewhere… Joan Manuel Serrat is part of our life, he is our Jacques Brel!… Or, if we project ourselves back to the sixteenth century, he is in a sense our little Camerata Fiorentina, that movement of Italian poets and musicians in Florence. Serrat has allowed the whole of Latin America and Spain to reappropriate the works of its poets… He has also been synonymous with freedom and the struggle against dictatorial regimes. His song “Mediterraneo” is one of the emblematic pieces of his career. It is almost a hymn that has special resonance nowadays… I asked my good friend Quito Gato to arrange these songs for our ensemble, Cappella Mediterranea. The orchestration retains typical seventeenth-century instruments: recorders, cornett, violins, viola da gamba, cellos, lutes, harp, harpsichord, organ, with some percussion and a double bass. These period instruments allow us to travel back in time and compare Serrat’s romances with the Ensaladas of Mateo Flecha (1481-1553), the polyphony of Guillaume Dufay, and a composition by Juan Cabanilles that recalls a Bach Passion. The Xacaras, a satirical genre from the Spanish Golden Age dialogues with Serrat’s works, as does the Música callada of the Catalan composer Frederic Mompou, transcribed here for the harp.”

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