Atalante, Erin Headley Reliquie Di Roma: Lamentarium (CD)

Reliquie di Roma I: Lamentarium is a 2011 album by the ensemble Atalante under direction of Erin Headley on lirone, with sopranos Nadine Balbeisi and mezzo Theodora Baka as soloists, and a continuo band featuring triple harp, chitarrones, keyboards, viol consort and lirone. It celebrates the Roman composers of the generation after Monteverdi, led by Luigi Rossi as the preeminent figure of seventeenth-century bel canto, a style defined by elegant lyrical melodies and ultra-expressive recitative that reacted against the earlier text-dominated stilo rappresentativo. This early Baroque music embodies a sensual, passionate and ecstatic aesthetic, intensified through rhetorically powerful poetry, with Marco Marazzoli and the Mazzocchi brothers among distinguished contemporaries whose output includes hundreds of solo and ensemble cantatas alongside sacred and secular operas.The album centers on the lament genre, which peaked in Rome during the 1630s and was ideally suited to the lirone, a haunting bowed instrument with nine to fourteen strings invented by Atalante Migliorotti, Leonardo da Vinci's friend and pupil—after whom Headley's ensemble is named. Headley, a leading lirone performer for over thirty years, showcases its ethereal, soul-transporting sound in repertoire unheard for centuries, enhanced by the luxurious continuo to evoke extravagant repentance, religious ecstasy and the full spectrum of human emotions from torment to poignant despair. Critics acclaim these breathtaking performances for their dark sensuality and emotional depth, rooted in the Barberini court's culture of heightened lamentation.