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Tom Moore
TELEMANN Orpheus · René Jacobs, cond; Dorothea Röschmann ( Orasia ), Roman Trekel ( Orpheus ), Ruth Ziesak ( Eurydice ), Maria Cristina Kiehr ( Ismene ), Werner Güra ( Eurimedes ), Isabelle Poulenard ( Cephisa , Priestess ), Hanno Müller-Brachmann ( Pluto ), Axel Köhler ( Ascalax ); RIAS-Kammerchor; Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (period instruments) · HARMONIA MUNDI FRANCE HMC 901618.19 (2 CDs: 159:24
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Telemann's Orpheus is virtually unknown to the musicologist, let alone to the listening public. Like Der geduldige Socrates, it is based on a libretto from an opera decades old when Telemann borrowed from it. Der geduldige Socrates drew on an Italian comedy by Nicolo Minato; Orpheus is based on a tragédie lyrique from 1690, the libretto by Michèle Du Boullay, the music originally by Louis Lully, one of three composing sons of Jean-Baptiste Lully. The music for Telemann's opera was thought to be lost (it is not included in the list of operas with music extant in the New Grove of 1980), but surviving manuscripts for most of the work were discovered in the library of Count von Schönborn in Franconia. The piece was first heard in a concert performance...