Cecilia Bartoli - St. Petersburg (2014) [HDtracks]

Francesco Domenico Araia (1709-c.1770): Vado a morir (from La forza dell’amore e dell’odio); Pastore che a notte ombrosa (from Seleuco)
Hermann Raupach (1728-1778): Razverzi pyos gortani, laya; Idu na smert (from Altsesta); O placido il mare (from Siroe, re di Persia); March (from Altsesta)
Domenico Dall'Oglio Luigi Madonis (1690-1767): De’ miei figli (Prologue to La clemenza di Tito)
Luigi Madonis (1690-1767): De’ miei figli (Prologue to La clemenza di Tito)
Vincenzo Manfredini (1737-1799): Fra lacci tu mi credi (from Carlo Magno); Non turbar que’ vaghi rai (from Carlo Magno); A noi vivi, donna eccelsa (from Carlo Magno)
Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801): Agitata in tante pene (from La vergine del sole)

Join us on a thrilling trip from Italy to Russia! We know that a good many illustrious Italian opera composers worked for the Russian tsars — Galuppi, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Sarti, even Giuseppe Verdi, whose La forza del destino premiered at the Imperial Opera, Saint Petersburg, in 1862. But the heyday of Italian opera in Russia fell during the reign of Catherine the Great, who ruled from 1762 to 1796. Finally the premiere of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar in 1836 laid the cornerstone for Russia’s own operatic tradition.

Music and theatre boomed in Russia during Catherine’s reign. Public opera houses emerged in several cities, but the best were private enterprises belonging to rich noblemen and staffed with highly talented serfs. Italian, French and Russian troupes appeared in Saint Petersburg. Russian composers — Berezovsky, Bortnyansky, Fomin — became popular and sometimes invented genres of their own. The tsaritsa herself wrote Russian librettos to be set to music by “her” Italians, such as Sarti.