- So unerhört viele Kirchen stehen in Rom, jede ein eigener Charakter, die Königin, die Diva, das Mäuschen, die Kokette, die Protzige, die Ätherische, die Schwindsüchtige, die schlichte und die barocke Schönheit, daß sich die Gläubigen werktags verteilen müssen, damit alle zu ihrem Recht kommen. […] Als Rom nur ein Zehntel seiner heutigen Bewohner, aber genausoviele Kirchen hatte, müssen sich noch alle Reihen gefüllt haben, stehend damals, nicht sitzend, an jeder Ecke des Zentrums fast eine Tausendschaft, die ihres Gottes nicht nur sonntags gedachte.
About the Production
He was a style icon not only for the Salzburg cathedral organist Georg Muffat following the latter’s visit to Rome in 1681: at the beginning of the 18th century, the violin virtuoso and composer Arcangelo Corelli, who had been active in Rome from around 1675, created a wholly new genre of instrumental music with his Concerti grossi and their dialogue between the group of soloists and large ensemble. His Opus 6 collection published in 1712 had a style-defining and seminal influence far beyond the borders of Italy. Shortly before his death Corelli met a young Saxon composer who had come to Rome looking for new sources of artistic inspiration: George Frideric Handel. With sketches for his first Italian composition (probably begun in Venice) of the psalm Dixit Dominus in his luggage, Handel arrived in the Holy City around the beginning of 1707. His cantata Donna, che in ciel was probably written as a commission from the Roman Senate ‘to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Rome from the earthquake on Candlemas Day’ in February 1708. This large, almost operatically conceived work attests to Handel’s masterly powers of musical evocation. More than 70 years previously Domenico Mazzocchi had enriched oratorio performances in Rome with his Sacrae concertationes — as also with Concilio de’ Farisei, the last of these 19 settings of biblical texts.
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