This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| I Barocchisti | |
|---|---|
| Name | I Barocchisti |
| Origin | Italy |
| Genre | Baroque |
| Years active | 2005–present |
| Current members | Gabrieli Consort; Vincenzo Capezzuto |
I Barocchisti is an Italian baroque orchestra and ensemble founded by conductor and harpsichordist Vincenzo Capezzuto. The group specializes in historically informed performances of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire, with an emphasis on Italian opera, sacred music, and instrumental concertos. They have appeared at major festivals and opera houses, collaborated with early-music specialists, and made recordings that have contributed to the revival of works by obscurer composers and canonical figures alike.
Founded in Naples in the early 2000s, the ensemble emerged amid renewed interest in period performance associated with figures such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, Jordi Savall, and René Jacobs. Their formation intersected with festivals and institutions like the Festival dei Due Mondi, Teatro di San Carlo, Venice Biennale, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and the BBC Proms. Early projects included staged revivals influenced by scholarship from Giorgio Pestelli, Gioseffo Zarlino, Robert Levin, Claudio Monteverdi, and editorial work associated with Musica Antica. The ensemble's growth paralleled broader trends seen in ensembles such as Il Giardino Armonico, Accademia Bizantina, Florilegium, La Venexiana, and Ensemble 415.
I Barocchisti's style emphasizes period instruments and historically informed techniques rooted in research by scholars including Philippe Herreweghe, Emma Kirkby, Thomas Hengelbrock, Marta Fumagalli, and Alessandro De Marchi. Their repertoire spans the baroque canon with works by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Caldara, Georg Friedrich Händel, and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as rarities by Leonardo Vinci, Nicola Porpora, Francesco Cavalli, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Monteverdi, and Giovanni Legrenzi. They perform operatic scenes, oratorios, masses, cantatas, concerto grossi, and sonatas, drawing on sources preserved in archives such as the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Biblioteca Marciana, British Library, and Bibliothèque nationale de France. Their interpretations reflect continuo practice informed by treatises by Girolamo Diruta, Francesco Gasparini, and Pierluigi da Palestrina-era counterpoint studies.
The ensemble is led by founder and artistic director Vincenzo Capezzuto, who has collaborated with soloists and directors including Cecilia Bartoli, Max Emanuel Cencic, Dawn Upshaw, Andreas Scholl, and Marilyn Horne. Regular members have included specialists in baroque violin, baroque cello, theorbo, baroque oboe, recorder, and harpsichord drawn from circles around Concentus Musicus Wien, Academy of Ancient Music, Les Arts Florissants, Il Pomo d'Oro, and Concerto Italiano. Guest conductors and directors associated with the ensemble's projects have included Riccardo Muti, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Federico Maria Sardelli, Alan Curtis, and William Christie. Collaborating singers have encompassed Lucia Valentini Terrani, Bartoli, Philippe Jaroussky, Carlo Vistoli, Emöke Baráth, and Joyce DiDonato.
I Barocchisti has recorded for labels and institutions linked to historically informed production similar to Decca Records, Harmonia Mundi, Naïve Records, Archiv Produktion, and Brilliant Classics. Their discography features both live opera recordings and studio albums of cantatas, concertos, and masses by composers such as Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Porpora, and Cavalli. Performance venues have included Teatro La Fenice, Suntory Hall, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Opéra Garnier, Teatro Real, and cathedrals associated with sacred liturgy like St Mark's Basilica. Festival appearances include Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Salzburg Festival, Rossini Opera Festival, and regional early-music festivals in Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, and Rome.
The ensemble has collaborated with stage directors, musicologists, and choreographers such as Robert Carsen, Damiano Michieletto, Sasha Waltz, Franco Fagioli, and scholars from King's College London, Università di Napoli Federico II, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and Cambridge University. Commissions and new editions have been supported by institutions like the Fondazione Teatro alla Scala, European Commission, Italian Ministry of Culture, and various regional cultural foundations that fund critical editions and reconstructions of lost or fragmentary works, following practices seen in projects by Guglielmo Cavallo and editorial initiatives at RISM.
I Barocchisti and Vincenzo Capezzuto have received critical acclaim and awards in contexts comparable to the Gramophone Awards, Diapason d'Or, Echo Klassik, International Classical Music Awards, and prizes awarded by national arts councils and festival juries. Reviews in publications and media outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Die Zeit, and Gramophone have highlighted their contributions to revival repertory and historically informed staging. They have been invited for residencies and honorific engagements by conservatories and academies including Conservatoire de Paris, Royal Academy of Music, and Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella.
Category:Early music groups Category:Italian orchestras