Carissimi, Monteverdi, Cavalli, Legrenzi, Handel, Vivaldi etc

Sara Mingardo is a genuine contralto – a rare voice these days when even mezzos aspire to soprano status. It’s expressive, of wide range and dynamic variety, and her engagement with notes and texts pays definite dividends across this inventive selection from the Italian Baroque repertoire (including Handel from his Italian period). She starts impressively with Tarquinio Merula’s weirdly obsessive lullaby of Mary written over the tiniest and most troubling of ground basses, bringing to it an imaginative pathos. And she succeeds brilliantly in two items from Monteverdi’s Seventh Book of Madrigals – the first an erotic duet (in which Monica Bacelli joins her), the second a passionate love letter. She enters with keen dramatic definition into the spirit of Giovanni Salvatore’s cantata of mourning ‘Allor che Tirsi udia’, aided by the vivid spontaneity of the accompaniments, resourcefully recreated by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Given the relative obscurity of several of the items, a booklet note solely devoted to the development and aesthetic significance of the contralto voice is less useful than one based on the works would have been. But the programme is worthwhile, the sound quality rich and spacious, and the performances impeccable. George Hall