Marcello: Cassandra

Series: Baroque Era  Publisher: A-R Editions
Click for samples
Benedetto Marcello
Cassandra

Edited by Talya Berger

B192 Marcello: Cassandra
978-0-89579-838-1 Full Score (2016) 9x12, xxi + 45 pp.
$110.00
In stock
SKU
B192
Benedetto Marcello’s Cassandra was composed in 1727 to a poem by Antonio Conti written at Marcello’s request. Cassandra is a large-scale dramatic cantata for solo alto voice with unfigured basso continuo for the harpsichord. The cantata was not published in Marcello’s lifetime and describes the events of the last years of Trojan War, as told by the prophetess Cassandra. Unique in its formal design, the cantata blends arioso sections with recitatives and arias. The expressive vocal line conveys grief, rage, terror, and happiness, and demands vocal agility and technical command from the singer. Cassandra was among the most popular of Marcello’s cantatas during the eighteenth century and continued to be performed regularly up to forty years after it was composed.