Cavalli’s Vespro della Beata Vergine

Pier Francesco Cavalli, Monteverdi’s operatic successor in Venice, quickly rose to become the most important opera composer of the mid-seventeenth century. Cavalli also followed Monteverdi in the realm of sacred music; in 1668 he accepted the position of maestro di cappella at the Basilica of San Marco, the same position that Monteverdi held earlier in the century. Tesserae explores the connection between the two composers by presenting Cavalli’s music for a Marian Vespers—the same service for which Monteverdi wrote his famous 1610 setting. Featuring a full cohort of singers and instrumentalists, these large-scale settings present the Venetian polychoral style in its full Cavallian splendor.

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