Giulio Caccini is a pivotal composer in Western music history; his advocacy of monodic song directly led to the rise of opera and, concurrently, the birth of the Baroque. Nevertheless, his music seems particularly difficult to record; the vocal ornamentation Caccini specifies is extraordinarily hard to realize effectively and the accompaniments provided in his Le Nuove Musiche (1602) -- in lute tablature only -- require quite a bit of work, providing numerous options for early music ensembles that sometimes fly and sometimes fail. The Divox Antiqua disc
Dolcissimo Sospiro, featuring soprano
Roberta Invernizzi supported by
Alberto Rasi and the
Accademia Strumentale, is one of the better Caccini-centered discs out there. Like most recitals devoted to Caccini, this one incorporates a number of instrumental works by other composers in order to flesh out the program and provide relief from what would normally be an unrelenting stream of heavily ornamented monodic songs; apart from his extant operatic music, that's all Caccini has. In among the instrumental selections, esteemed lutenist
Rolf Lislevand joins
Accademia Strumentale in a performance of Giovanni Antonio Terzi's Vestiva I colli, although a standout performance here is
Luca Guglielmi's solo take at the organ on Claudio Merulo Susanne un jour, which leads directly and artfully into Caccini's "Dolcissimo sospiro."
However, ultimately it is soprano
Invernizzi's lot that her role will determine whether the whole program sinks or swims, and though at times she seems to be paddling rather frantically,
Invernizzi keeps the disc afloat. Her ability to render Caccini's complex ornaments ranges from passable to quite good, and whatever might seem lacking in technical execution she is able to compensate for through her dedicated and dramatic delivery, particularly in "Torna deh torna" and "Vaga su spin'ascosa." It is still recommended that the listener take this disc in small chunks, and indeed,
Dolcissimo Sospiro appears organized that way, laid out in groups of two and three songs. With the right pace and concentration, once you've made it through Caccini's notorious earworm, "Amor ch'attendi" will be running through your head afterward, notably in this fine version by
Invernizzi,
Rasi, and
Accademia Strumentale.