From Gramophone:
Put simply, oratorio denotes a (usually) sacred work for soloists, chorus and orchestra intended for concert performance. A genre which reached its zenith in Handel’s London began, modestly, in Catholic Rome. From the 1560s hymns of praise (laude) were sung during the ‘spiritual exercises’ of the Congregazione dell’Oratorio, founded by St Philip Neri to keep dissolute youth off the streets. These meetings, held in a prayer hall or ‘oratory’, rapidly spread to other churches and cities.By the early 17th century their music, based on biblical stories, had become more elaborately operatic, and the term oratorio took root. The earliest famous example, Cavalieri’s all-singing, all-dancing spectacular Rappresentatione di Anima, e di Corpo, turned Rome’s Chiesa Nova into a theatre. More typical are smaller-scale works like Giovanni Francesco Anerio’s La conversione di S Paolo, unfolding as a series of operatic-style dialogues punctuated by instrumental sinfonias.
By the mid-17th century oratorio performances were a major cultural attraction in Rome. The star composers were Luigi Rossi and, especially, Giacomo Carissimi, whose Latin oratorios combine expressive recitative and arioso with pithy dramatic choruses. His masterpiece Jephte, culminating in a poignant lament for Jephtha’s daughter, left its mark on Handel. In an age that increasingly cultivated solo virtuosity, the oratorios of Stradella and Alessandro Scarlatti are effectively sacred operas, founded on the alternation of recitative and often flamboyant arias. (Read more.)
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