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Music / operaarier

Handel's queens : Cuzzoni & Faustina

Lucy Crowe (f. 1978)

Reviews (2)

BBC music magazine

2019 October

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Berta Joncus

2019 October

"Recording of the month: In this recording, conductor Bridget Cunningham explores the legend of Baroque star sopranos Cuzzoni and Faustina ... Lucy Crowe and Mary Bevan here recreate the two 'prime donne' through their own blazing talents ... Duets illuminate the vocal qualities that period critics say made Cuzzoni and Faustina the perfect dyad. In the cut and thrust of this music, Crowe and Bevan bring out differences between their voices ... While Handel has never sounded better, a distinction of this recording is the quantity and quality of its non-Handelian music, some previously lost and premiered here. Together, Crowe, Bevan and Cunningham have reclaimed these masterworks".

The gramophone

2019 September

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By

Lindsay Kemp

2019 September

"Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, the star sopranos Handel engaged for his London operas in the 1720s, have ridden again ... Bridget Cunningham plays down the rivalry bit, and the Handel connection too, drawing on arias by some of the other composers who wrote for these singers over a period of nearly 20 years ... This soundly made programme is both pleasing and intriguing ... Lucy Crowe plays Cuzzoni as a bright soprano whose technical precision and agile upward-leaping ornaments combine with musicality to impress and move, while Mary Bevan offers a Bordoni with a lower centre of gravity, generally darker and more directly theatrical".