By Allan Kozinn [NY Times, 26 January 2010]

Emilio de’ Cavalieri, though hardly known today, was a friendly competitor of the Florentine Camerata, the group of musicians and theorists whose ideas about text setting and drama led to the creation of opera around 1600. The Camerata’s style came to represent early Baroque vocal music as we know it. But Cavalieri’s music offers a fascinating glimpse of an alternative approach, and the performance of his “Lamentations of Jeremiah” by the French early-music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin near Times Square on Saturday evening captured his distinct, sometimes exotic accent.