Stradella: San Giovanni Battista

Composed for the Jubilee of 1675, San Giovanni Battista is the masterpiece that contributed more than any other to Stradella's fame during his lifetime and to the shaping of his legend after his death: a score rooted in the great contrapuntal tradition of the past, yet one that seems, at the same time, to cast it's gaze towards a musical future left tragically unfulfilled. The oratorio leads the listener into the dark heart of Herod's court: a gold-lit and cruel mosaic of desire, power, seduction and guilt, where Herodias the Daughter, in the implacable shadow of her mother, demands the death of the Baptist. In this sacred tragedy, Stradella transfigures the violence of the story into an inner theatre: every passion becomes a gesture, every hesitation a wound, every voice a living fibre of the drama. From this emerges music of dazzling intensity, able to pass beyond it's own century and still speak with undiminished urgency to our sense of innocence, responsibility and destiny.