Robert Crowe & Joachim Enders – The Romantic Castrato (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Robert Crowe & Joachim Enders – The Romantic Castrato (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:36 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Next

Giovanni Battista Velluti (1780–1861) was one of the last of the larger-than-life castrati who had dominated operatic life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Velluti, though, spent his career almost entirely in the Romantic era, singing the music of his day. His style of ornamentation attracted widespread admiration and set the standard for the prime donne who were emerging as the stars of their age in operas by such composers as Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. Here the American male soprano Robert Crowe recreates Velluti’s extraordinary sound-world, in a recording that helps explain why such diverse luminaries as Stendhal, Mary Shelley and the Duke of Wellington admired Velluti as one of the most accomplished and inventive singers of his time.

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Robert Crowe & Sandra Röddiger – Isabella Leonarda: Motets & Sonatas (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Robert Crowe & Sandra Röddiger – Isabella Leonarda: Motets & Sonatas (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:07 minutes | 652 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Toccata Classics

Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704) was a remarkable woman. At a time when female composers were a rarity, she was both prominent and prolific. Although she was cloistered (literally: she was a nun) in Novara in northern Italy, the dedications of her published compositions show her to have been extremely well connected. And her music demonstrates that she was well aware of the music of contemporaries like Carissimi and Corelli. These facts would be of merely historical importance, were her music not so engaging: although most of the works recorded here are devotional, they are full of buoyant rhythms, colourful textures and a surprisingly dramatic approach to the texts she was setting – many probably written by Leonarda herself.

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