Sovra letto d'erbette

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.