Falvetti : Nabucco. Alarcón.

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2014)
Michelangelo Falvetti spent his working life in Sicily. ‘Il dialogo del Nabucco’ was performed in Messina in 1683; the score survives in a library in Naples, where it seems to have lain undisturbed till now. In the prologue, Pride and Idolatry are conveyed to the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The three boys are cast into the burning fiery furnace for refusing to worship the statue of the king, but survive unharmed. This is a lively performance of a piece which has evidently been orchestrated by the conductor; Fernando Guimaraes does well in conveying Nebuchadnezzar’s fear and his cruelty. But the music is only intermittently gripping: a disc for those keen to …