Apulian Musicians in Spanish Archives

If the Italian language is considered still today to be the best verbal vehicle for music, this is due to the immense dissemination of opera–and essentially Neapolitan opera—during the eighteenth century.
This CD (containing music heard here for the first time) demonstrates the outer western limits of this cultural empire, which reached as far as Mexico and Guatemala.
In recent times, many performers have become interested in the music of the colonial Americas, and their approach to this repertoire has underlined its more picturesque aspects and those qualities most apt to seduce a European audience enamored with the exotic.
In this case, however, the attempt has been made to present works written by unknown Italian composers which are still preserved in the archives of the cathedral of Guatemala, where we had the opportunity of studying them in 1979.