Laments of lost and betrayed love from 17th-century Italy: musical portraits to be set beside contemporary paintings by Gentilesschi in their contained power and violence.

While the featured composers in this recital were born and worked in contrasting provinces of Italy, most of them shared common goals and aesthetic principles. The text came first, and the music was always servant to it. The sweet torment of a broken heart drew from them long-breathed melodies, supported by spare but painfully chromatic harmony. The melody itself was always articulated according to the shape of the text, fitting one to the other like a hand in a silk glove.

Eleni Lydia Stamellou and Konstantin Shenikov have made their own selection from a rich treasury of available repertoire in this vein. The album takes its title from the final track, ‘Oblivion soave’, drawn from Monteverdi’s final opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea. The aria exemplifies Enlightenment values of humanism which inspire self-examination as well as ‘sweet oblivion’.They include perhaps the most famous lost-love song of all, at least until the age of Lieder, Caccini’s Amarilli, mia bella, and comparably familiar masterpieces in the genre such as Monteverdi’s Si dolce ’l tormento and Peri’s Torna, deh torna.

There is also space for the no less subtle art of Andrea Falconieri, as well as several songs by Barbara Strozzi, one of the most successful women composers of the time; indeed, she was the most prolific composer – of either gender – of printed secular vocal music in Venice around the middle of the 17th century.

Eleni Lydia Stamellou is a Greek soprano, specialising in this Renaissance-era repertoire as well as new music and Lieder. As a member of Music Aeterna, she has sung operatic roles conducted by Teodor Currentzis including Despina (Così fan tutte) and Pierrot in Schoenberg’s cabaret-monodrama. The lutenist Konstantin Shenikov has been a regular member of early-opera productions led in Russia by Andrew Lawrence-King.