The Italian solo cantata developed parallel with opera in the Baroque era, but it followed a separate track: more intimate, less grandly virtuosic, with a distinctive language, neither serious nor really comic, and it was related to the pastoral themes that populated the genres. All the cantatas recorded here, and plenty of others, deal with the nymph Clori (Chloris, "of the blooming groves," the myths say) and her long-suffering lovers, Tirsi and Fileno. Several examples by Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Vivaldi, including the Vivaldi title track Amor, hai vinto (Love has won), are performed from time to time, but generally the genre remains untouched. Austrian historical-performance group
Concertino Amarilli has performed a useful service by opening it up a bit. Sample the voice of soprano Marelize Gerber a bit; it has a fluttery quality of a kind that listeners either love or hate. But it's the right size for the repertory, and the instrumental textures and balances, with just one oboe or bassoon adding a sighing note or two, are nicely done. The program is intelligently constructed, with instrumental sonatas highlighting the solo instruments interspersed among the cantatas, and it's easy to imagine the whole thing presented as a concert in a noble house in Venice or Naples, the two cities with which these composers are associated. Some of the composers, such as Agostino Steffani or the young Haydn's teacher Nicola Porpora, are known for a few works, but the Neapolitan Francesco Mancini, represented by the charming Quanto dolce è quell'ardore (So much sweetness and such ardor), is all but unknown. Booklet notes are in English, Italian, French, and German, but the texts of the cantatas are given only in the original Italian. The sound, recorded in a Carinthian church, is too live, but in general fans and students of Baroque vocal music will find this a valuable release.