Carlo Agostino Badia (1671-1738)

Carlo Agostino Badia was one of the many Italian musicians making his fortune at the court of Vienna where he was hired as a composer in 1694. We have no news about his education, but the musical historiography is mentioning about his great compositional period lasting forty-four years at the service of the emperors Leopold i and Joseph i, in which he produced in large quantities cantatas, melodramas and oratorios greatly appreciated at the Austrian court. From his musical writing it is clear how he was a “ferryer” of that late Baroque (followed by Antonio Caldara who succeeded him at the Viennese court) anticipating the forms of the imminent galant style. In this recording the attention is directed to the profane cantatas, from the collection Tributi Armonici – published in Nuremberg in 1699 – which represent precisely the transition from the traditional style (in particular the Venetian one) to the new eighteenth-century style. The great variety of writing that distinguishes the cantatas is well rendered by the ductile voice of the soprano Raffaella Milanesi accompanied by RomaBarocca Ensemble, under the direction of Lorenzo Tozzi.