Delphine Galou, Accademia Bizantina & Ottavio Dantone - Vivaldi: Musica sacra per alto (2019) [CD-Rip]

Naïve's "Vivaldi Edition" is an ongoing project devoted to recording the Vivaldi works discovered in the 1990s in the Italian National Library in Turin. The series has been underway for two decades and has revealed numerous fascinating items, mostly from the middle of Vivaldi's career. This release is one of a pair, the 59th, and 60th in the series. Contralto Delphine Galou is heard on this album and its companion, Arie et cantate per contralto, and both are worth your time. Galou is backed by the Accademia Bizantina and its director, Ottavio Dantone, who have both appeared on several albums in the series, but the emergence of a new star is often enough to prompt new albums from Naïve, and so it is here. Galou is clearly a major talent, and the sacred music medium perhaps elicits her skills a trifle better than the secular material on the other volume. Sample the perfectly serene, almost glassy opening aria of the Salve regina, RV 618: Galou does not have a big voice like that of Sara Mingardo but is a perfect foil for her in Naïve's catalog. Once again, there are marvelous little flashes of the Vivaldian imagination, such as the antiphon Regina caeli, RV 615, with a second alto, here sung by countertenor Alessandro Giangrande. Several of Dantone's Baroque winds hang out in the same register, creating a series of shifting, buzzing close harmonies. This is a strong entry in Naïve's series, and Galou is definitely a singer to watch. ~ James Manheim