It is now clear that, from the 1570s onward, Naples saw the rise of a strong and well-established school of wind players. Based within the city’s teaching institutions — the famous Four Conservatories — these musicians were, in practice, multi-instrumentalists equally skilled across the whole range of wind instruments. The first Neapolitan conservatory in which the use of the flute is documented (the recorder, which in Italy is simply called flauto , the term traversa or traversiere being reserved for the transverse flute) is the Conservatory of the Poveri di Gesù Cristo. Within thirty years, however, all the other Neapolitan institutions had begun buying flutes of their own and building instruction on the instrument into their teachers’ duties. By the end of the seventeenth century, the flute (specifically the recorder) had established itself in Italy as the instrument of choice for a refined entertainment associated with the literary circles of Arcadia. This tendency — shaped, as ever, by shifts in aesthetic and cultural taste bound up with the social and political uses of culture and the arts — crystallised into a set of attitudes and fashions for which the Accademia dell’Arcadia, a movement touching every art from music to literature to painting, was one of the liveliest centres. It was precisely those pastoral ideals, recalling the harmonious, natural world of Virgil’s Bucolics , that most likely formed the aesthetic and cultural backdrop against which a genuine fashion for the flute took hold in Italian aristocratic circles — first for the recorder, and then, by the 1730s, for the transverse flute as well.
This fashion reached Naples too, where, as we have seen, a performing tradition on the flute already existed, and where, from the 1710s, we also witness a “reform” of the city’s orchestral forces (chiefly the Cappella Reale and the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro) with the introduction of the oboe, an instrument that from the early eighteenth century replaced the cornett in sacred music. Several musicians played a decisive part in this epoch-making shift: Ignazio Rion, a virtuoso of French or Venetian origin who settled in Naples in 1714 after coming from Rome, where he had even eclipsed the great violinist Arcangelo Corelli; and, alongside him, a company of less celebrated local masters — genuine multi-instrumentalists — such as Paolo Pierro, Francesco Antonio Izzarelli, Cherubino Corena, and Salvatore and Ferdinando Lizio, all of them teachers at the Neapolitan conservatories, institutions that responded promptly to the change brought about by the oboe’s arrival by adapting, quite literally, what they had to offer.
Seen in this light, we can better grasp the specific character of a number of important musical works — some already known, others still unpublished — that represent the mature fruit of Neapolitan composers’ new interest in wind instruments, and in the flute above all. These include cantatas with obbligato flute by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), written in 1699; Scarlatti’s twelve concerti grossi (1715); the XII Solos (1724) for flute and continuo by Francesco Mancini (1672–1737), published in London; cantatas with obbligato flute by important composers such as Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686–1768), Domenico Sarro (1679–1744), and Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783); works by other, still-anonymous composers; and the crucial collection of 24 concertos by various authors preserved as Ms. 31–36 in the library of the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella (Scarlatti, Barbella, Valentine, Sarro, Mele). To this repertoire may be added the flute concertos of Nicola Fiorenza, along with the countless appearances of the flute (and the oboe) in secular vocal repertoire — serenatas, operas — where the instrument carves out substantial solo passages of its own.
All of this is closely bound up, too, with the appearances on the Neapolitan stage of important singers such as Faustina Bordoni and Antonia Merighi, to whom arias and cantatas with obbligato flute were dedicated, and with the presence in Naples, in 1725, of the German flautist Johann Joachim Quantz, and perhaps also of the English virtuoso Robert Valentine, already resident in Rome from 1701. Naples was a crossroads of vital cultural and musical exchange, aided by its international standing and its rich ties with London — ties for which the castrato Nicolò Grimaldi (“Nicolino”) was certainly a key figure, starring in Scarlatti’s Pirro e Demetrio (1708) and Francesco Mancini’s Idaspe Fedele (1710) at the Haymarket Theatre. John Fleetwood, the English consul in Naples, was himself an amateur flautist who — also active in promoting musical life in the city — was the dedicatee of Mancini’s XII Solos and frequently hosted concerts of instrumental music at his residence (see, on this point, Musica e spettacolo nel Regno di Napoli attraverso lo spoglio della “Gazzetta” (1675–1768) , ed. Ausilia Magaudda and Danilo Costantini, Rome, ISMEZ, 2011). Research for this project has proceeded along two parallel lines: one involving the study of documents in the archives of Naples’s four historic conservatories, from which it is possible to reconstruct the appointment of teachers, their areas of specialisation, and the purchase of instruments during the period in question — evidence that unambiguously confirms both the epoch-making shift under discussion and the rise and consolidation of the flute’s standing. The other has involved surveying (a task still incomplete, though already telling) and analysing the scores in which this instrument features during the period concerned, across instrumental, chamber-vocal, operatic, and ceremonial genres.
Tonight’s programme offers a modest sample of the repertoire for flute and continuo, representative of the recorder’s role in early eighteenth-century Naples and of the musical quality of the works dedicated to it, drawn from the collections of the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, the University of North Carolina Music Library, and the Harrach Collection at the New York Public Library.
Tommaso Rossi graduated in transverse flute from the Conservatory of Naples, going on to further study with Mario Ancillotti at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, where he took his final diploma with top marks. He also holds a diploma in recorder, awarded with top marks, distinction, and honourable mention, studying under Paolo Capirci at the Conservatory of Latina before continuing his studies with Pedro Memelsdorff. He is a regular member of Antonio Florio’s ensemble I Turchini, both in concert and on disc, recording for Opus 111, Naïve, Eloquentia, Dynamic, and Glossa, and has appeared as soloist at numerous international festivals. In 2010 he founded the Ensemble Barocco di Napoli, with which he has recorded a disc of sonatas and cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti for soprano and flute for the Stradivarius label, and given concerts for the Associazione Scarlatti of Naples, the Cusiano Early Music Festival, the Opera Giocosa of Savona, and the Leonardo Leo Baroque Festival. With the Ensemble Dolce e Tempesta he has recorded Nicola Fiorenza’s concertos for recorder, and has recently released, again for Stradivarius, Georg Philipp Telemann’s Twelve Fantasias for solo flute. He has also devoted many years, as both performer and organiser, to contemporary repertoire, and is a founding member and president of the Associazione Dissonanzen of Naples, with whose ensemble he has performed at leading Italian and international musical institutions. He teaches recorder at the Conservatory of Music of Cosenza, graduated with distinction in music history from the Università Federico II of Naples, and has written for the journals SuonoSud , Meridione , and l’Acropoli . Since June 2016 he has been artistic director of the Associazione Alessandro Scarlatti.
Ugo Di Giovanni completed his musical training with distinction at the Conservatories of Parma and Naples, and since 1994 has devoted himself almost exclusively to the interpretation of Renaissance and Baroque music, as both a solo and continuo lutenist. His artistry has won the admiration of Rinaldo Alessandrini, Antonio Pappano, Antonio Florio, Gabriel Garrido, Alan Curtis, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, and John Nelson, all of whom have invited him to collaborate on major recording and concert productions, taking him to some of the world’s most prestigious theatres and concert halls.
He currently performs regularly with the Baroque ensembles Concerto Italiano, I Turchini, the Ensemble Barocco di Napoli, and the German group Accademia Giocosa.
He has recently toured Australia and New Zealand, and will next appear in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at La Scala in Milan, where he has already performed in recent stagings of the Monteverdi trilogy.
Alongside his concert career he teaches at the “G. Martucci” Conservatory of Music in Salerno
Has taken part in more than forty recordings for the labels Opus 111, Naïve, K617, Symphonia, Glossa, and EMI-Virgin Classics.
Manuela Albano, born in Naples, took her cello diploma at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory under Maestro E. Salvatore, having also studied as a diploma candidate with Maestro Willy La Volpe, and, as a trainee, attended classes given by Maestro Luca Signorini. She furthered her studies with Maestro Luigi Piovano between 1997 and 2001, attending his classes also at the Accademia Pescarese (1998). As a full participant she took part in courses given by F. M. Ormezovsky (Terminillo, 2000), A. Meunier (Associazione Scarlatti di Napoli, 2000 and 2003, and at the Accademia Filarmonica in Rome), and R. Aldulescu (on scholarship, at Torroella de Montgrí, 2002). Having shown an inclination toward chamber music from a very young age, she pursued further study at Fiesole (1995–1997) and, from there, at the Accademia Chigiana (August 1995), on the invitation and scholarship of Maestro P. Farulli. She has also devoted herself to the Baroque cello, studying in Urbino in 1999 and, in 2000, at Naples’s Centro di Musica Antica under Maestro G. Nasillo — her contributions there include taking part in the first modern performance of Leonardo Vinci’s La contesa de’ numi with Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano. She has collaborated with the Baroque ensemble Concerto de’ Cavalieri, and served as principal cello with I Talenti Vulcanici. Since 2007 she has been a founding member of the chamber group Il Circolo Artistico, with which she has given numerous concerts in Italy and abroad; she records for Stradivarius and Mode Records, and, in quintet with Aldo Ciccolini, for Naxos. She is also actively involved in socially oriented initiatives: she is artistic director of the ScalzaBanda di Montesanto and teaches cello for the project “Musica e Società,” the Neapolitan branch of El Sistema, the Venezuelan movement founded by Maestro Abreu, and she mentors the cello section of the Orchestra Scarlatti Junior. She is completing her degree in Modern Literature at the Università di Napoli Federico II.
The Ensemble Barocco di Napoli was founded on the initiative of Tommaso Rossi, Raffaele Di Donna, and Marco Vitali, and made its debut on 2 May 2010, marking the 350th anniversary of Alessandro Scarlatti’s birth. Since then, under the auspices of the Associazione Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli, it has presented numerous programmes centred on the composer’s music, as part of a genuine research project that led, in 2012, to the ensemble’s first recording — the complete cantatas with obbligato flute by Scarlatti. A second disc followed in 2014, devoted to the flute sonatas of Leonardo Leo, in their first-ever recording. The ensemble has performed for RadioTre and, in recent seasons, has been invited to the La Valletta Early Music Festival (Malta), the Ravello Festival, the Leonardo Leo Festival in Brindisi, and the concert seasons of the Opera Giocosa in Savona, Magie Barocche in Catania, A.M.A. Calabria Concerti, the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti in Rome, the Accademia degli Sfaccendati, and the Concerti della Normale in Pisa. In 2019, the project Il Soffio di Partenope — devoted to wind music by composers of the Neapolitan school, developed in collaboration with the Abchordis Ensemble of Basel — was released on the Sony–Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label. In 2021 came a disc of Robert Valentine’s flute sonatas, titled Un inglese a Roma . The project Black Telemann , dedicated to the great German composer and featuring a world premiere by Pasquale Corrado, was presented in 2024 at leading Italian concert societies including the Amici della Musica in Palermo, the Accademia Filarmonica in Messina, A.M.A. Calabria, and the IUC. In 2026 the ensemble, together with soprano Roberta Invernizzi, is presenting a programme on the early-eighteenth-century Neapolitan cantata, which has already toured a number of Italian cities.
