Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) succeeded Monteverdi as maestro di cappella at St. Mark's and as the preeminent opera composer in Venice. His operas, which sparkle with wit, drama, and expressiveness, were modeled on Monteverdi's while further developing the form, and they remain vital and effective music theater. In the sacred music recorded here, however, Cavalli was staunchly conservative, even regressive, writing in a style more representative of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century than the mid to late seventeenth century. If these were the works of a minor composer, it would be easier to hear them as perfectly respectable examples of early Baroque liturgical music, but coming from a composer as masterful as Cavalli, they are disappointingly conventional. Whether Cavalli was intentionally evoking an earlier era, or aiming to accommodate the tastes of his ecclesiastical superiors, the music performed here is rarely recognizable as the work of the composer of Giasone and La Calisto.
The performance, by
Coro Claudio Monteverdi di Crema, Quoniam Ensemble, and Ensemble de Saqueboutiers, led by
Bruno Gini, fails to make a strong case for the music. The choir of mixed voices, accompanied solely by winds, is disciplined and precise but workmanlike and lacks the fire to make the music sparkle. The soloists are of variable quality, from tonally lovely to cringe-inducing. In a truly exciting performance, it might be easier to discern more virtues in the music, which here may be submerged by the mediocre presentation.