Suzanne Jerosme

Throughout all the caprices of time, women had to be content far too long with supporting roles, not only in public and political affairs, but also in private life and in the artistic sphere. Nevertheless, despite the many prohibitions and obstacles and the extremely low expectations of success, highly talented women have always managed to assert themselves in a man’s world as interpreters, music pedagogues, composers and more. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women were even forbidden in some Italian cities to attend opera and concert performances, let alone be active themselves as artists. It was no wonder therefore that talented Italian musicians such as Maria Margherita Grimani (1680–1720) or Camilla de Rossi (1670–1710) moved from Italy to Vienna, since – if it was a question of talent –prohibitions were not applied as strictly in the Habsburg capital. Around 350 oratorios were premiered in the abbeys of Vienna between 1660 and 1740. Several women also crop up in the long list of composers. The ensemble Il Gusto Barocco browsed through the Austrian National Library for preserved manuscripts and discovered superlative works that have never resounded since their first performance in the early 1700s. Together with the French soprano Suzanne Jerosme, who debuted  2020 as Guiditta in Carlo il Calvo at the Bayreuth Baroque Festival, they have kissed these fantastic, hitherto unknown works awake, supplemented with arias by the contemporary Alessandro Scarlatti, who established the form of the oratorio in both Rome and Vienna.

With works by Maria Margherita Grimani, Camilla de Rossi, Alessandro Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel and Gabriele Geminiani