Dearest: Jonas

Oratorios by Giacomo Carissimi (1605–1674) are considered the first highlights of a genre then still in its infancy, in which piety, theater, and song were united into a new, dramatic form. Among the mostly Old Testament histories to which Carissimi’s oratorios refer, the colorful story of Jonah stands out in particular. The biblical hero encounters a storm at sea on his divine mission and is swallowed by a whale. Carissimi shaped the material into a fast-paced plot with affect-laden solo singing in the lively recitation style of opera and with a multitude of choruses, including a dramatic double chorus of the storm. The renowned period instrument ensemble Il Giardino Armonico appears with an instrumental scoring specifically tailored to the Bavarian Radio Choir and the sonic peculiarities of the oratorio. For many years, its Artistic Director Giovanni Antonini has worked with the Bavarian Radio Choir to present critically acclaimed concerts featuring works from the early Baroque to the Viennese Classical period, and he finds the perfect sound for Carissimi's music as well. With choral music by Claudio Monteverdi and Orlando di Lasso, the program then traces the development of dramatic singing at the transition from the motet art of the late Renaissance to the affect-laden text interpretation of the early Baroque. The famous “Lamento d’Arianna” is the only surviving piece from the lost Ariadne opera by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), who reworked this expressive lament in 1610 into a no less expressive madrigal. Excerpts from the two legendary, mysterious cycles of the “Prophetiae Sibyllarum” and the “Lagrime di San Pietro” by the Wittelsbach court conductor Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594) conclude the album.