Cavalli: Ercole Amante

Even if Pichon’s ideas occasionally gild the fleur-de-lys, Pygmalion’s animated music-making serves to resuscitate this extraordinary opera admirably. — Gramophone Magazine, May 2021 More…

Release Date: 12th Feb 2021
Catalogue No: NBD0118V
Label: Naxos

International Classical Music Awards

2022

Nominated - Video Performance

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Cavalli: Ercole Amante

Nahuel di Pierro, Anna Bonitatibus (mezzo-soprano), Giuseppina Bridelli, Francesca Aspromonte, Krystian Adam, Ensemble Pygmalion (early music ensemble)
Raphaël Pichon

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Francesco Cavalli, a natural successor to Monteverdi, was the most famous and influential Italian opera composer during the mid-17th century. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the king, commissioned Cavalli to create a Parisian spectacle to celebrate the wedding of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. Ercole amante (‘Hercules in Love’) was the flattering subject chosen for this regal extravaganza combining larger-than-life characters with mythology, and genuine human emotions with natural and cosmic phenomena. The result is a sumptuous Baroque spectacle, conceived on a vast scale in this lavish production by directors Valerie Lesort and Christian Hecq.

Reviews

May 2021

Even if Pichon’s ideas occasionally gild the fleur-de-lys, Pygmalion’s animated music-making serves to resuscitate this extraordinary opera admirably.

August 2021

Pichon has some of today’s finest Italian Baroque singers in his cast and Francesca Aspromonte’s touching Iole, Giuseppina Bridelli’s tender, vulnerable Deianira and the tenor Krystian Adam’s Hyllo all provide considerable pleasure, as does the sheer style of the incomparable veteran countertenor Dominique Visse in the comic role of Licco.

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