This recording, made in the late '80s, was among those that opened up the monodic style -- the virtuoso recitative-like vocal, accompanied by a small continuo group, that helped pave the way for opera -- to an understanding beyond the world of specialists. Although other singers have come along and, to borrow an expression from the bluegrass world, put a little more mustard on the music in the interim, these performances by soprano
Catherine Bott have held up well in many respects. The chief difficulty lies in the ornamentation, which in many cases (although not in that of Giulio Caccini, the nominal creator of opera) is left to the performer to improvise -- the quick little flips and the characteristic repetitions of a single note aren't easy for conventionally trained singers, and
Bott's execution is graceful, natural, and pleasant to listen to. The disc's best feature is the variety of the program -- an hour of monody can certainly drag, but not here. Monody is sometimes thought of as having simultaneously come into being with opera, but actually it was one of several related impulses that contributed to its creation. As can be seen in
Bott's examples by Cipriano de Rore and Luzzasco Luzzaschi, it was a type of hyperexpressive way of presenting text, no less than the highly chromatic madrigals the same composers were writing at the same time.
Bott also breaks up the recitative-like monody with pieces based on dance rhythms, like Frescobaldi's Aria di romanesca (track 14) -- not the first thing you think of in relation to Frescobaldi, but that's one of the strengths of this disc -- and with sacred works. The program covers perhaps a century of music, with the arrangement loosely chronological, and the listener can see the monodic language expand into the varied textures of Carissimi's remarkable dramatic cantata Il lamento in morte di Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart's Lament in Death). There is room for more intensity than that which
Bott brings to this work, but in many of the lighter pieces she is quite effective. The
New London Consort under
Philip Pickett, with the young
Pavlo Beznosiuk on various fiddles and violins, struck a perfect background note with its small but varied instrumentation: fiddle (or related instrument), Gothic harp (or double harp), harpsichord or organ, and lute (or theorbo or guitar). The sound is adequate, but no more. Still, this was a landmark recording and remains a worthwhile cornerstone for any early music library.