• Tracks

Painstaking work has identified not just the principal operatic arias composed with castrato Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829) in mind, but also his special and astonishing brand of ornamentation and worked-out cadenza, developed in the course of a five-decade career. The Swedish mezzo Ann Hallenberg, Stile Galante and Stefano Aresi venture wholeheartedly into the musical mind of this extraordinary star of late opera serial in a vivid recreation backed not only by meticulous attention to historical detail but by access to some two hundred contemporary accounts of the singer's music-making.