Nowadays Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783) is best remembered as an important figure in the history of opera, a composer whose 60-odd opere serie to librettos by his friend Pietro Metastasio became immensely popular across Europe in the middle decades of the 18th century. Hasse travelled widely, and in the 1730s he divided his time between Germany and Italy, where he was regularly commissioned by the opera houses in Naples and Venice. But he produced liturgical music too, and he was appointed maestro di cappella (chorus master) to the orphanage of the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice.
It was for the girls of the orphanage that Hasse composed his biblical oratorio Serpentes Ignei in Deserto (1734), to a text in Latin based on the Old Testament story of the serpents in the desert sent by God to punish the Israelites, until Moses’ prayers are answered and his people are saved. Serpentes Ignei is less a devotional piece than a taut, dramatic “church opera”. The tone is set in the vivid Sinfonia with which the oratorio opens, followed by eight arias and one duet for the six soloists; there is no chorus, and most of the connecting recitative is accompanied by the orchestral strings.
The oratorio was intended for female voices, but in this recording, conducted from the violin by Thibault Noally, four of the roles are taken by counter-tenors, with Philippe Jaroussky as Moses and Jakub Józef Orliński as Nathanael; the soprano Julia Lezhneva is the Angel. The performances are dazzling; the strings of Les Accents catch the tone of extrovert brilliance and lyrical exuberance right from the start, and the soloists never miss any opportunities that Hasse’s score offers them.
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