Regula Muhlemann – Cleopatra – Baroque Arias (2017) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

For the present album, star-soprano Regula Mühlemann has chosen works that date from the 17th and 18th centuries and include highly stylised accounts of Cleopatra’s life as well as exotically charged fantasies and entertaining interpretations of a remarkable and epoch-making woman and her fate. Above all, they tell us about the way in which Baroque poets and their composers thought and felt, while also allowing us to sense something of the queen’s true character through the powerful emotions of these works, through their juxtaposition of sensuous sonorities and energy-laden drama and through their simultaneous elements of severity and beauty. Hasse shows us her pride, Sartorio her seductiveness and beguiling nature, Scarlatti opposes her humanity laying behind her superb regality as stressed by Graun. Matheson rather speaks of her death and the soon-to-be ascent of her soul towards the Gods, with the myth of the snakebite – after which she will be reborn through Isis, all the more as the queen considered herself to be the earthly incarnation of the goddess Aphrodite, whose Egyptian counterpart is none other than Isis. The virtuosity of Mühlemann does wonders with these remarkable scores.

Tracklist

Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759)
1 Cleopatra e Cesare, WV B:I:7: Tra le procelle assorto (Aria) 07:24

Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759)
2 Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17: Che sento? Oh Dio! (Recitativo) 01:15
3 Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17: Se pietà di me non senti (Aria) 11:00

Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783)
4 Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra: Morte col fiero aspetto (Aria) 04:12
5 Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra: Lascia, Antonio, deh lascia (Recitativo) 01:34
6 Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra: Quel candido armellino (Aria) 11:01

Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690)
7 Antioco il Grande: Se tu sarai felice (Aria) 01:56

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)
8 Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra, H. 121: Antonio, e qual destino (Recitativo) 00:24
9 Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra, H. 121: Vò goder senza contrasto (Aria) 04:52

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
10 La virtù trionfante dell’amore e dell’odio, ovvero il Tigrane, RV 740: Squarciami pure il seno (Aria) 04:08

Johann Mattheson (1681-1746)
11 Die unglücksselige Cleopatra: Mein Leben ist hin (Aria) 03:20
12 Die unglücksselige Cleopatra: Ruhe sanft, geliebter Geist (Aria) 02:55

Antonio Sartorio (1630-1681)
13 Giulio Cesare in Egitto: Quando voglio (Aria) 03:56

Personnel
Regula Mühlemann, soprano
La Folia Barokorchester
Robin Peter Müller, conductor

Download:

mqs.link_RegulaMhlemannClepatraBarqueArias20172496Qbuz.part1.rar
mqs.link_RegulaMhlemannClepatraBarqueArias20172496Qbuz.part2.rar