Nicola (Antonio) Porpora (or Niccolò Porpora) (17 August 1686 – 3 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. Other students included composers Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.
Napels was in de achttiende eeuw hét centrum van de operawereld. De Napolitaanse opera veroverde Europa mede dankzij de samenwerking van drie mannen: de dichter Metastasio, de componist Nicola Porpora en de castraat Farinelli. Porpora had in Napels een zangschool en Farinelli was een leerling van hem. De aria’s die hij speciaal voor Farinelli componeerde, zeggen veel over de kwaliteiten van deze legendarische castraat: een flexibele stem waarmee hij eindeloze coloratuurpassages kon zingen én een uitzonderlijke controle over zijn adem (zoals blijkt uit de mooiste aria op deze cd: Alto Giove uit Polifemo). Porpora stond lang in de schaduw van Händel. Pas aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw werd hij herontdekt, toen zangers en zangeressen als Angelo Manzotti, Karina Gauvin, Simone Kermes, Cecilia Bartoli en Philippe Jaroussky zijn werk op cd opnamen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Porpora
Polyphem (altgriechisch Πολύφημος Polýphēmos, „der Vielgerühmte“) ist in der griechischen Mythologie ein Kyklop (oder Zyklop), ein einäugiger Riese. Er war ein Sohn des Poseidon und der MeeresnympheThoosa, Tochter des Phorkys.
Polyphemus Greek: Πολύφημος Polyphēmos) is the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology, one of the Cyclopes described in Homer‘s Odyssey. His name means “abounding in songs and legends”.Polyphemus first appears as a savage man-eating giant in the ninth book of the Odyssey. Some later Classical writers link his name with the nymph Galatea and present him in a different light.
Acis and Galatea are characters from Classical mythology later associated together in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses. The episode tells of the love between the mortal Acis and the Nereid (sea-nymph) Galatea; when the jealous CyclopsPolyphemus kills Acis, Galatea transforms her lover into an immortal river spirit. The episode was made the subject of poems, operas, paintings, and statues in the Renaissance and after. Galatea (Γαλάτεια; “she who is milk-white”), daughter of Nereus and Doris, was a sea-nymph anciently attested in the work of both Homer and Hesiod, where she is described as the fairest and most beloved of the 50 Nereids. In Ovid‘s Metamorphoses she appears as the beloved of Acis, the son of Faunus and the river-nymph Symaethis, daughter of the River Symaethus. When a jealous rival, the Sicilian CyclopsPolyphemus, killed him with a boulder, Galatea then turned his blood into the Sicilian River Acis, of which he became the spirit. This version of the tale now occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid’s work and might perhaps have been a fiction invented by the poet, “suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock”. But according to the Greek scholar Athenaeus, the story was first concocted by Philoxenus of Cythera as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with the nymph. Others claim that the story was invented to explain the presence of a shrine dedicated to Galatea on Mount Etna.
How to reinvent Alto Giove, Porpora’s hit for Farinelli ? We chose fragility and bareness, with all the intimacy of a whispering piano-voice… Enjoy !
Album ADN BAROQUE : http://smarturl.it/ADNBAROQUE?
Youtube Channel : https://www.youtube.com/c/ThéophileALEXANDRE