Stefano Landi: Passacaglia della vita (Bisogna morire)

#baroquemusic #opera #Stefanolandi Stefano Landi is one of the most important figures in the early history of opera and a leading Roman composer of his day. This aria focuses on another, less public side of Landi's art, the more personal books of arias (Libri di Arie). It looks into Landi's double life, the reverse side of life at court and its struggle for recognition. These arias and villanellas, composed by a singer and continuo player, a rhetorician and philosopher, who accompanied his own songs on the harp or the Spanish guitar, constitute a miniature art form of concentrated perfection. The liner notes establish a useful human context for Landi's music: Landi was an alto in the papal choir, job-sharing with Grigorio Allegri, and one of the many musical employees of the wealthy and influential Barberini family. This meant he was surrounded by some of the finest artistic talent in Italy all gathered in the Barberini's unheated servants' quarters, all competing for the recognition, attention and exposure that would guarantee them a future. This musical world behind the notes is the hidden universe of the shadows that gives the title: Homo fugit velut umbra - man flees like a shadow. Painting: The Death of Seneca, 1871, by Manuel Domínguez Sánchez