Ryland Angel is a British low countertenor with a creamy voice that has an appealing way of slipping down to an elegant quietness at the end of a fancy phrase. Here he teams with the crack young French historical-instrument ensemble Les Folies Françoises for a program that might have been heard in the home of a Roman nobleman at the end of the seventeenth century, or perhaps in one of the city's churches -- although the chief appeal of the Alessandro Scarlatti works heard here is their introduction of an utterly secular ...
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Ryland Angel is a British low countertenor with a creamy voice that has an appealing way of slipping down to an elegant quietness at the end of a fancy phrase. Here he teams with the crack young French historical-instrument ensemble Les Folies Françoises for a program that might have been heard in the home of a Roman nobleman at the end of the seventeenth century, or perhaps in one of the city's churches -- although the chief appeal of the Alessandro Scarlatti works heard here is their introduction of an utterly secular vocabulary, both verbal and musical, into sacred music. "Wholly languishing in love and inflamed with ardor for the sacrament at the altar, the soul that was faithful burned and spoke in rapt ecstasy," intones the countertenor at the beginning of Scarlatti's Totus amore languens. And, in Infirmata vulnerata, the soul addresses Christ, the Bridegroom, in this way: "O dear, O sweet love, how can you be so cruel to me, who have never been unfaithful?" Scarlatti matches this language with...
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