Margherita Rinaldi - Bach: Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen (Cantata #51), 1967

THE SONGBIRD: Margherita Rinaldi (1935 - 2023) was born in Turin, Italy. She won a voice competition in Spoleto and made her debut there in 1958 as Lucia. This led to her debut at La Scala as Sinaide in Rossini's "Mosè in Egitto." Rinaldi sang many roles at La Scala and in major Italian opera houses including Amina, Adina, Norina, Gilda, Linda, Lucia, Nannetta, and Bellini's Giulietta opposite Luciano Pavarotti in 1966. Other career highlights included Amenaide in "Tancredi" with Marilyn Horne in Rome in 1977 and a rare lyric-soprano Adalgisa opposite Renata Scotto's Norma in Florence in 1978. Key engagements outside Italy included Violetta in Dublin, Ines in London, Carolina in "Matrimonia Segreto" at Glyndebourne, Alice Ford in Bregenz, Gilda in Dallas, Lucia in San Francisco, and Adina in Chicago. THE MUSIC: Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen" BWV 51 is his only church cantata scored for a soprano soloist and trumpet. The first known performance was on September 17, 1730 in Leipzig. The work may have been composed earlier, possibly for an occasion at the court of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, for whom Bach had created the Hunting Cantata and the Shepherd Cantata. Bach structured #51 in five movements, with the solo voice accompanied by an instrumental ensemble of a solo trumpet, strings and continuo. The jubilant opening and closing movements call for elaborate virtuosity and interplay between the trumpet and soprano voice topping out at a few High Cs, while the introspective central movements evoke spiritual depth and inner peace.