Handel – Per te lasciai la luce – Natalie Dessay

George Frideric Handel Per te lasciai la luce Extract (Aria #5) from the cantata Delirio amoroso, HWV 99 Text: Benedetto Pamphilj In this recording: Natalie Dessay (soprano) Atsushi Sakaï (Viola da gamba) Le Concert D`Astrée/Emmanuelle Haïm Label: EMI Classics Italian cantata from Handel’s « Cantate con strumenti » which he mainly composed in Italy between 1706 and 1710. Cantata « Il Delirio amoroso » was composed in 1707 for Handel’s patron Benedetto Pamphilj, who also wrote the libretto texts. The extensive cantata Delirio amoroso is an evocation of hallucinatory madness in which Clori imagines she enters the realm of the dead to conduct her disdaining lover to the Elysian fields. Pamphilj’s text for Delirio amoroso (Love’s delirium) is more imaginative than most cantata texts, and inspired Handel to create some expansive and delightful music. The cantata may have been presented with a simple form of staging, as is suggested by the unusual feature of dance movements for the instruments alone. The first and last recitatives are narrations, setting and closing the scene. In between the singer impersonates the lover Chloris mourning the death of her beloved Thyrsis. Apparently he never responded to her love, so in her ‘delirium’ she imagines that he is being punished in hell for his cruelty. She resolves to enter the underworld herself and bring him back to life – but even in death he continues to reject her. At first she is angry, but then she decides in an act of compassion …