Serenata: Venere e Amore '
Patricia Clark (soprano)
Johanna Peters (contralto)
London Harpsichord Ensemble :
John Francis (flute)
Trevor Williams (violin)
Raymond Keenlyside (violin)
Derek Simpson (cello)
Millicent Silver (harpsichord)
This is the second of two programmes of chamber cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti broadcast to mark the tercentenary of his birth.
Scarlatti wrote some 500 solo cantatas, the form reaching a climax in his work which it never again attained. The serenata Venere e Amore was probably written in Naples in the last decade of the seventeenth century, when the composer was in his late thirties.