Scherzi Musicali
Scarlatti's Arcadia: Shepherds with heartache
Never did nymphs and shepherds mourn so beautifully as in Alessandro Scarlatti's Arcadian cantatas: gems of musical and theatrical ingenuity. Scherzi Musicali sublimates the rural heartbreak with two voices and an instrumental combination that makes the arias and recitatives burst with colour. Poetry, rhetoric, delicate ornamentation, and an overwhelming richness of sound reign in intimate cantatas, proving once and for all that Scarlatti senior could also do without an opera stage.