Passioni, Vizi & Virtù. Strozzi : Cantate e ariette. Consort Baroque Laurentia.

   in Early Music Today (Sep, 2015)
One of the 17th century’s outstanding composers, Barbara Strozzi published eight volumes of vocal music in Venice between 1644 and 1664. Of the seven that survive, one was devoted to madrigals (op. 1), one to sacred music (op. 5), and five to secular cantatas and arias, ranging from droll put-downs of Cupid to the passionate and heartbreaking lamenti that secured her fame. This disc draws exclusively from her op. 2 (1651) and features mostly shorter pieces, though it does include both ‘Gite o giorni dolenti’, which pointedly celebrates the end of the Thirty Years War (and might pass today as an anti-war protest song), and the lovely ‘L’amante segreto’, a fine …