How far a sixteenth-century zabaione resembled the dessert we know and enjoy today, I’m not sure. But it’s an appetizing title for a light, jolly, pastoral entertainment which must have accommodated some sort of staging. This kind of event seems to have been a speciality of Banchieri’s (whose Barca di Venetia per Padova exists today in several fine recordings). The accompanying Festino is a longer work in a similar vein, and includes both a solo for Jews’ harp and a chorus of cat, dog, owl and cuckoo improvising over a cantus firmus. This is the sort of jollification that took place at the ducal court of Munich in 1568, at which Lassus dressed up as one of the characters from the commedia dell’arte. Incidentally, those familiar with Lassus’s villanelle will recognize the same musical idiom in much of Banchieri’s score: it is undemanding but varied, well made and very amusing. The same might be said of these performances, which successfully convey the impression of a staged element (though I’m not sure whether the titles of successive sections are intended to be declaimed alongside the linking texts between them, which clearly are).
The ensemble consists of a dozen singers at most, with a small group of strings and continuo. More than that I cannot report, since Naxos’s fairly detailed notes give the musicians no individual credit. At barely more than the cost of the edible variety in the average restaurant, this zabaione is well worth sampling.'