Vocal Artistry Vivica Genaux sings Handel and Hasse - enjoyed by MARIA NOCKIN '... a wonderful trip back in time ...'

Vivica Genaux's new Virgin Classics CD 5457372 is a compilation of arias by Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), Saxon-born composers who wrote Italian operas. The CD features the vocal artistry of mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux and the virtuosity of Bernard Labadie who leads the group he founded in 1984, Les Violons du Roy. The ensemble takes its name from the strings of the French Court. Labadie has added woodwinds and brass, thus making it a full fledged chamber orchestra. Its musicians play modern instruments using period bows for seventeenth and eighteenth century repertoire.

Genaux is justly famous for the ease with which she sings the intricate ornamentation proper to Baroque music, and on this particular disc her lower notes seem to have even more luscious color than in her earlier work. The selections were recorded at La Chapelle du Grand Séminaire in Montréal, Québec in March 2005 and producer/digital engineer, Steve Barnett, presents them to the listener in seventy-two minutes of clear sound.

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