# Francesco Cavalli



## josquindesprez (Aug 20, 2017)

I recently stumbled across the religious music of Francesco Cavalli, and I'm smitten. By the look of things, he's not very well-known, or at least not much talked about (a search on this site brings up about 5 hits, mostly with quick mentions of his work as librettist or opera composer). So I'm curious whether any of the baroque fans around here have recommendations for his choral works? I'm not so interested in the operas, but I would like to delve a bit further into his masses, magnificats, and vespers.


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## josquindesprez (Aug 20, 2017)

It looks like Cavalli's an unknown, then? So here's what I've found out, and I'm definitely happy to hear other's thoughts, whether they knew of him before or not. (And if he can get his own guestbook, that would be terrific.)

Most of this is from the Oxford Dictionary of Music and Dictionary of Opera:
Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) was an Italian composer and organist mostly known for his operas, though he also wrote some religious music. He was most likely (almost certainly) a student of Monteverdi, and there are some parts of his Vespers that seem to refer to Monteverdi's Vespers. Oxford says his importance as an opera composer lies in his "enlargement of dramatic potentialities and command of comic possibilities." In terms of importance, he was able to adjust to the public opera houses, by giving stronger roles to servants, who often sang fairly simple, popular songs to contrast the heaver roles of the leads. His most popular operatic work in his lifetime was Giasone, with a libretto by Cicognini, though many of his operas had libretti by Faustini. His Ercole Amante was presented at the marriage festivities of Louis XIV, but it wasn't very successful and by the end of his life his style of opera had become eclipsed by younger composers. Several of his works have been revived at Glyndebourne in recent years.

His Vespero della Beata Vergine Maria has some clear stylistic similarities to Monteverdi's more famous work. There aren't a lot of videos online, but here's an extract of one of the later sections, which shows his orchestration and the work of the soloists.






It's fairly easy to find his operas on disc, though the liturgical works seem a bit more tricky to track down. Along with the Vespers in the video above, there is another Vespero delle Cinque Laudite, a Requiem, several magnificats, and assorted other religious pieces.


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## Taplow (Aug 13, 2017)

Cavalli's opera _La Calisto_ is getting a run here in Munich next summer, at the lovely 18th century Cuvilliés Theatre. I have the René Jacobs recording on Harmonia Mundi, but I'm afraid it's the only work of his that I own. It seems he wrote 41 operas. His _Giasone_ was apprently "the single most popular opera of the 17th century". It's on my wishlist for that reason alone, but I'll wait until I've seen La Calisto before delving further into his œvre.


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