Miriam Allan
Miriam Allan brings a clear, bright soprano and warm delivery to Handel’s Italian cantatas, with the agility and purity of tone this early baroque repertoire asks for.
On disc with Arcadia she shapes the playfulness and fire of works such as Tu fedel? tu costante?, her tone easy on the ear and her technique fluid in recitative and aria alike. The same voice also serves contemporary sacred writing, including Christian Heim’s Prayer Dances, where meditative and ecstatic lines sit with choir and percussion. Her wider repertoire centres on Bach, Purcell’s semi-opera songs, Handel and Mozart, often in one-to-a-part baroque forces.
Performing as Accademia Arcadia
Accademia Arcadia plays baroque cantatas and chamber sonatas with one-to-a-part heat: Buxtehude's sacred motets, Handel's Italian dramas full of fire, Corelli through Purcell and Leclair, and improvisatory violin writing that still feels spontaneous.
Handel: Italian Cantatas
Melbourne ensemble Arcadia specialises in baroque cantata repertoire. Here they bring fire and passion to five of Handel's Italian cantatas: virtuosic music, beautifully performed.