Tomaso Albinoni
Sovra letto d'erbette
Soprano voice and basso continuo
ed. Michael Talbot
This cantata, from an important manuscript in Berlin containing 18 Albinoni cantatas for soprano and continuo, describes how Clori, seeing her beloved Clizio asleep in a grassy meadow, begs him to awake – since only then will her love-pangs be stilled. The verse may be banal, but the lightness and grace of Albinoni’s setting turns it into something delightful – a precursor, almost, of the versions by Brahms and Wolf of In dem Schatten meiner Locken.
