Susanne Ryden, Stockholm Baroque Ensemble - Christina's Journey: Music from the Court of Queen Christina of Sweden (2004)

That's right, King! in Swedish, "Kong" rather than "Drottning"! Christina (1626-1689) was the only surviving child of Sweden's greatest monarch Gustavus Adolphus Vasa, who raised her to rule as a king and whose ministers executed his will by crowning the six-year-old girl King! Christina ruled under a regency until age 18, and then personally and earnestly over some eight years until her abdication in 1654. Her involvement in Swedish affair didn't terminate with her abdication, however. She returned to Sweden several times, on the last of which she might well have resumed her throne but for her whimsical conversion to Catholicism. She also drew her wealth, in her initial years in Italy, from vast estates in Sweden. Christina was probably the best known woman in Europe in her lifetime, surely one of the most interesting, personally the woman I'd most like to encounter among the Elysian Fields or in Valhalla. She was also one of the greatest patrons of music in the whole history of the baroque, and it's in that role that her biography figures in the program of music recorded on this CD. All the compositions were dedicated to her at some point in her career. The most familiar composer on the CD, Alessandro Stradella, was her particular favorite and protege. The others - Marco Marazzoli, Luigi Rossi, Vincenzo Albrici, Alessandro Cecconi, and Marc Antonio Cesti - were beneficiaries of her largesse and worthy thereof. Fine composers abounded in the 17th Century.
A tinge of nationalistic pride gleams through the notes and the selections of music on "Christinas Resa". Soprano Susanne Rydén is Swedish, as are most members of the Stockholm Baroque Ensemble which accompanies her vivaciously on these arias from baroque operas and cantatas. It's the superb singing of Susanne Rydén that makes this CD extremely attractive. Rydén has both the rich timbres of an operatic diva and the supple control of an Historically Informed performer specializing in the baroque.