 Des années italiennes du jeune Gluck, de ces années 1736 à 1745 pendant lesquelles il se formait à l'opera seria, pour se conformer au goût alors dominant à la cour de Vienne, du Gluck d'avant ses succès internationaux et sa fameuse "réforme" de l'opéra (qui verra ses partisans s'opposer à ceux de Piccinini), il ne nous reste malheureusement que des fragments, trop rarement édités. Son génie créateur était pourtant déjà manifeste, et il fut associé à tous les grands évènements musicaux de l'Italie du nord. Ce sont ces fragments des opera seria "L'Ippolito", "La Sofonisba", "Il Tigrane", "Poro", que fait magnifiquement revivre la grande mezzo-soprano Elena de Simone, également musicologue et maître d'oeuvre de cet album, entourée de son Ensemble Il Mosaico. Son timbre rond, soyeux, chaleureux, son sens dramatique, sa virtuosité font merveille, et rendent justice à ces morceaux injustement négligés. Un album qui ravira tant les amateurs de redécouvertes musicales que ceux de beau chant. (Marc Galand) This collection of arias from the operas Il Tigrane, Poro, La Sofonisba, L’Ippolito is a testimony of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera activity from the year 1743 to 1745. The young 30-year-old, now an established composer, wrote his operas for the most important events in the cities of Crema, Turin and Milan, almost without a break. He seems to be at the peak of his career, yet he has not created those great compositions such as Orpheus and Euridice, Paride ed Elena, Alceste, which would have linked his name to the reform of opera theorised together with Ranieri de’ Calzabigi and which made him one of the immortal names in the music history. The autographs of these arias no longer exist, nor the scores of the entire operas. Some pieces, sometimes with only basso continuo accompaniment, are all that remain of the enormous fortune that those performances had at the time. To be as faithful as possible to the original performance, arias with existing orchestral part have been chosen, except for the aria Se viver non poss’io from the opera Poro which was orchestrated from the basso continuo and some indication of the first violin motif, as complete scores of the opera Poro no longer exist. The curator of the work is Elena De Simone herself, a mezzo-soprano that – accompanied by the Il Mosaico ensemble – already distinguished herself with the rediscovery of the works by Hasse and Maria Teresa Agnesi (Tactus tc 690801, tc 720101 and tc 720102).
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