If you happen to be lucky enough to live near Vézelay in France, the Cité de la Voix would like to welcome you back into concert life during the weekend of 18-19 September.
In a free concert on the Saturday evening Ensemble Agamemnon brings a Mediterranean touch to a variety of music including Italian cantatas, while (following another free early recital, this time by Trio Musica Humana) Jean Tubéry directs guest soprano Camille Joutard and his ensemble La Fenice in “Musique pour la Monica”, tracing the varied use of a popular tune in the baroque period.
For the past decade an important component of the prestigious Innsbruck Early Music Festival has been the singing competition named after Pietro Antonio Cesti, several of whose operas were premiered in Innsbruck during the period he spent there as a court composer to the Archduke Ferdinand Karl. 2019 also sees the 350th anniversary of the death of Cesti, an event that will be commemorated later in the festival season with a production of his opera La Dori, first given in Innsbruck in 1657.
The singing competition was inaugurated ten years ago as the brainchild of the Innsbruck Festival’s artistic director Alessandro De Marchi, with past prize winners including a number of singers who have gone on to make an international career, most notably Hungarian soprano Emőke Baráth, who will take the title role in La Dori. Such is the eminence of the competition today that this year’s edition attracted over 200 entrants, their number reduced initially to 99, then to the ten finalists who contested two rounds before the final, broadcast live and held before the jury and an audience on 8 August in the Grosser Saal of Innsbruck’s imposing modern Haus der Musik.
The format for the evening involved each finalist singing two arias, one taken from Alessandro Melani’s L’empio punito (Rome, 1669), which will be staged at the 2020 Festival with a role for the winner. The other was free choice, it being perhaps a little disappointing that the majority of singers rather unambitiously selected Handel arias. On offer were three major prizes awarded by an international panel of jurists, in addition to which there was an audience prize, a young artist’s prize and an engagement with Resonanzen, the early music festival held in Vienna each January. The roster of finalists was dominated by higher voices, including six sopranos (one a male falsettist) and two mezzos, with only a bass and a baritone to represent lower registers.
When he came to introduce the prize awards, jury chairman Michael Fichtenholz (Zurich Opera and Karlsruhe Handel Festival) made the perhaps revealing observation that the jury wished them well on whatever path their career might take them, perhaps tacit recognition that on the evidence of what we had heard not all the finalists seemed likely ultimately to pursue a career in early music. Perhaps more predictable were the inevitable platitudes to the effect that all the contestants deserved a prize. In some senses Fichtenholz was right. The overall professionalism and ability to communicate and articulate text was impressive, as was the general technical level of achievement in such as generally well-articulated passaggi. However it could equally be argued that in other respects none of the contestants deserved a prize in an early music singing contest. Throughout twenty arias, only one singer (the eventual winner) came anywhere near attempting a trill, a basic requirement of Baroque singing technique, and we did not hear a single example of that most beautifully expressive and greatly prized Baroque ornament, the messa di voce. It continues to perplex me that singers looking to perform early music are sent out into the world so ill-equipped to do it justice in such respects. Poorly controlled vocal production was another of the problems for several of the singers with larger voices, while another matter to which some of them might also attend are disagreeable facial expressions that would not have passed Tosi’s dictum to avoid making an ugly face while singing.
The three lesser prizes awarded went to the same singer, the Austrian soprano Miriam Kutrowatz, the youngest singer in the competition and obviously a popular choice. Belying her age (22), she sang both her arias with a range of colour and nuance beyond most of her seniors, while also displaying a charming personality. She came very close to being my overall choice, though in the end my vote went to the Hungarian soprano Orsolya Nyakas, who sang her Melani aria with an engaging sweetness and character, while displaying absolute security and a touching emotional response to Melissa’s ‘Ah, spietato!’ from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula. Her da capo ornamentation and cadenzas were also more stylish than those of most of her rivals. The second and third placed sopranos, Dioklea Hoxha from Kosovo and the Cypriot soprano Theodora Raftis both sang with great commitment if not always perfect control, but they are singers I would expect to find moving quite happily on to later repertoire. While feeling pride that the competition produced a British winner, mezzo Grace Durham will I suspect also be unlikely to follow an early music career, an impression underlined by her CV. The voice itself has a lovely warm and rounded quality, but though her singing of ‘Son qual misera’ from Hasse’s Cleofide had its impressive moments, I found myself disagreeing with the jury, finding some of her singing poorly controlled.
The Cesti Singing Competition, in which the singers were faithfully supported by members of the Cesti Orcestra under the direction of harpsichordist Mariangiola Martello, proved to be a rewarding, compelling and thought-provoking experience.
The oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth is the last of Handel’s works in the genre, and perhaps the most neglected. Unlike the customary setting of a Biblical narrative, it adopts an allegorical theme, in this instance a text concerning the struggle of virtue over the pursuit of pleasure. The work was assembled in 1757, and assembled is the right word, for all of its music had already been composed, and much of it a long while back.
When Handel was living in Italy (1706-1709), Cardinal Pamphili commissioned an oratorio entitled Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, performed early in 1707. It was a two-act work, for strings, woodwinds and five solo voices, these being the personages of Time (bass), Counsel (alto), Beauty (soprano), Deceit (soprano) and Pleasure (tenor). In essence a chamber work, Il Trionfo unfolds in a sequence of alluring arias in which the competing claims of Pleasure and Time fight for the soul of Beauty. She is inclined to follow the voices of Pleasure and Deceit, until she heeds, virtuously, the advice of Counsel and Time. The work shows Handel in his early brilliance, fluent and brimming with ideas. Italy at this time was the backdrop to his first operas, his large-scale Latin church music and his many Italian cantatas. There is no doubting the young composer’s imagination and zest: the arias of Il Trionfo are wonderfully characterised and varied. The somewhat static allegory takes wing in Handel’s music.
The moralizing theme was apt for a Cardinal, and for post-Tridentine Rome. And the scale of the work was apt for a private audience. In 1737, now firmly ensconced in London, Handel returned to the score, producing an English version, still in two acts, and for the same forces. However, the notion of making of it something bigger and more accessible to the general public came to him only towards the very end of his life, in 1757. At this stage, his physical powers had declined markedly; he was infirm and could not see. But his amanuenses were at hand to assist, and Thomas Morell, who had written libretti for previous oratorios (including Judas Maccabaeus and Jephtha) obliged by translating and adapting the text. The composer’s motivation may have been mixed. On the one hand, here was an excellent score little known to the English public, a score that with the addition of choruses might make its way as Handel’s next oratorio. On the other hand, Handel was himself thinking about his mortality, writing his will, and maybe also reflecting on a life lived. Indeed, it was a life lived all too well, given in part to the pleasures of the table, as unkindly observed by the satirical caricaturist Goupy. The allegory of the work, now called The Triumph of Time and Truth, played into Handel’s own circumstances. And its moral message was perhaps weighing on his mind.
There is some truth in the observation that the revised score was somewhat ‘cobbled together’. Clearly, no one starting out on an oratorio would write only one movement (the first) for trumpets and drums, putting them aside for the whole of the rest of the work. The curious appearance of one of the movements from Handel’s Anthem for the Foundling Hospital (1749), has also been criticised for its irrelevance. In response, it could be said that it stands as a reference to Handel’s philanthropy (he was a donor to and governor of Thomas Coram’s newly created Foundling Hospital). It speaks autobiographically, as testament to the composer’s state of mind: he was indeed heeding the advice of Counsel, and following the words of Time, turning his back on the pursuit of pleasure for the pursuance of good works.
Broadly speaking, the chorus additions, the sine qua non of an English oratorio format, sit with surprising ease and relevance inside the original structure, speaking not only of Beauty’s journey through life, but also Handel’s. The dates at which Handel turned to his allegorical subject, 1707, 1737, 1757, ring out as the beginning, middle and end of a prodigiously prolific career. This oratorio, more than any other, speaks of the breadth and compass of Handel’s work as a composer of large-scale vocal compositions. It deserves more attention than it ordinarily gets. And this October it gets its merited attention from the eponymous Instruments of Time and Truth and Oxford Consort of Voices.+
Christophe Rousset, director of Les Talens Lyriques
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lthough the beautifully restored theatre in the palace of Versailles dates from a century after Lully’s day, it obviously makes for an appropriate venue for his operas. Indeed in the case of Alceste it did have a contemporary performance at Versailles, some six months after its premiere at the Paris Opéra in January 1674. That occasion marked part of the celebrations following the victory over Franche-Comté, when in July Alceste was given an open-air performance in the Cour de Marbre.
The concert performance given on 12 December was a continuation of Christophe Rousset’s peerless cycle of Lully’s operas, having been first given at the Beaune Festival in the summer. It also appeared on CD contemporaneously with the Versailles performance. Alceste was the second of Lully’s thirteen tragédies en musique. Like nearly all of them it has a libretto by Philippe Quinault based on the work of a classical author, in this case, Euripides’ Alcestis. To the considerable annoyance of the classicists of his day, Quinault took considerable liberties with the story of Alceste’s self-sacrifice to save her husband King Admetus (Admète) from death, in particular introducing a love triangle by making the hero Hercules (Alcide) a rival for the attentions of the queen. Worse still from the point of view of the purists, Quinault introduced a secondary and largely comic trio in the shape of the confidant(e)s Céphise, Lychas and Stratton. Today we are more likely to welcome the variation such mixed genres provide, but it is interesting that Lully and Quinault would quickly lead the way in dropping comic scenes, thus presaging a similar move by Italian opera by some two decades. Quinault’s libretto is indeed notable for its diversity, containing as it does a Prologue set on the banks of the Seine, a seaport and a sinking ship (act 1), dramatic battle scenes that inspired Lully to colourful pomp and brilliant orchestral effects (act 2), the darkness of the funeral obsequies for first Admetus, and later Alceste (act 3), Hercules’ journey to Hades to redeem Alceste, complete with a comic Charon, who worries that the massive hero will sink his boat (act 4), and a final act in which Admetus is initially overcome with joy by the return to life of Alceste, then distraught that he has lost her to Hercules, to whom he promised Alceste should the hero bring her back from Hades. Ultimately all is of course resolved by Hercules nobly returning her to her husband.
Lully sets all this in the flexible alternation between the récitative he had evolved from the declamation he had studied in the theatre with the airs derived from the airs de cour of the earlier part of the century. Completing the picture is of course dance, the divertissements that concluded each act. If later tragédies en musique are marked by greater maturity and development of the genre, the score of Alceste is remarkable for its assurance and a use of the orchestra unrivalled by any other composer of the day. The playful character of the love games of the young Céphise with her suitors, contrasts strongly with the moving gravity of the mourning for both king and queen; it is a mark of the flexibility Quinault brought to his book that the flirtatious Céphise plays a deeply touching role in the lamentations for Alceste.
Rousset’s performance maintained the extraordinarily high quality of his previous Lully opera readings. Indeed, given that he here had a cast as near flawless as one has a right to expect the impact created will remain long in the mind. The revelation of the evening for me was mezzo Ambroisine Bré’s Céphise, pertly coquettish, yet also capable of deeper emotional responses. This is a lovely voice, fresh and evenly produced across its range, while also highly accomplished in the execution of ornamentation. Bass Edwin Crossley-Mercer, a Roussset stalwart was a rich-toned and authoritative Alcide, a figure of considerably greater sensitivity than the usual portrayals of Hercules as a rather dense strongman. As his rival, the haute contre Emiliano Gonzalez Toro was a dignified Admeto, infinitely touching in his farewell scene with Alceste, deeply impressive in the king’s conflicting emotions at the start of act 5. Judith Van Wanroij’s Alceste was marked by a touching, empathetic warmth that extended to real understanding not only for her husband, but also Alcide, the other man who would give her his love. The many remaining parts were divided between five singers, each admirable, of whom Spanish soprano Lucia Martín Cartón and bass Douglas Williams particularly impressed, the latter as Lycomède, the warlike villain of the piece, and Charon. The Namur Chamber Choir have become the ‘go-to’ chorus for large chunks of the Baroque repertoire, their alert response and excellent characterisation here typical of their stellar work. Les Talens Lyriques responded with the finesse and fervour they invariably bring to their playing under their founder, who is now unshakably established as the outstanding Lully interpreter of our (and probably any) day.
Bampton Classical Opera Salieri The School of Jealousy Act 2 Quintet, l to r Rhiannon Llewellyn (Countess), Alessandro Fisher (Count), Thomas Herford (Lieutenant), Nathalie Chalkley (Ernestina), Matthew Sprange (Blasio)
Bampton Classical Opera, Westonbirt School (Gloucs), 28 August
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ver the past quarter of a century Bampton Classical Opera (BCO) has established an unrivalled record for the revival of later 18th century operas, including a number of UK first performances. Among these is Salieri’s Falstaff, today recognised as one the composer’s finest operas. For its 2017 production, given at Bampton, Westonbirt School and St John’s Smith Square, BCO turned to an earlier Salieri opera, La scuola de’ gelosi, first performed at the Teatro San Moise in Venice in 1778 and revived with some new music five years later at the Burgtheater in Vienna to inaugurate the new Italian opera company. Thereafter it became one of Salieri’s most popular operas, with performances not only throughout Italy, but also in Germany, London and St Petersburg.
A dramma giocoso in two acts, La scuola has a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà (later to achieve lasting fame as the adaptor of Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito for Mozart’s final opera) owing much to the comedies of Goldoni. Like many of them, it introduces three distinct social classes: a Count and Countess – the latter a mezzo carattere role that includes a superb seria accompaganato and aria ‘Or ei con Ernestina’ … ‘Ah sia già de miei sospiri’ – a merchant and his wife, and a male and female servant. The cast is completed by the Lieutenant, the Don Alfonso-like manipulator of the goings-on that form a storyline revolving around the efforts of the Count, a small-time predator like Figaro’s Almaviva rather than a Don Giovanni, to seduce the merchant Blasio’s wife, Ernestina, thus invoking the jealousy of the Countess and Blasio. The Lieutenant advises them to turn the tables and make their spouses jealous. After a series of farcical events the ploy works, the lessons learned in the ‘school of jealousy’ bring reunion and happiness to all. The richly varied score is remarkable perhaps above all for its ensembles, in particular the act 1 trio for the Countess, Count and Lieutenant, and the act 2 quintet that broke new ground in 1778 by being the largest ensemble piece to be introduced into the middle of an act.
As is customary with BCO, the opera was given in an English translation that amused the Westonbirt audience with its introduction of such topical terms as ‘fake news’. The set design, costumes and production (by Jeremy Gray) itself were unexceptionably traditional, with folding panels that could with ease change the rooms from the rich blue of the Count’s salon to the more bourgeois surroundings of Blasio’s house. The costumes were slightly post-dated to Biedermeier (Blasio resembled an older Schubert).
The performance in the Orangery Terrace at Westonbirt School on 28 August was my first experience of BCO. For a company that specialises in later 18th opera there were several surprising elements. The first was the use of modern instruments rather than period instruments, which I understand are used because BCO’s main performances at their home in Bampton are open air, always a problem for period strings. It did not work at Westonbirt, being not only too loud for the space but played with a lack of finesse only enhanced by the rigid four-square rhythms of Anthony Kraus’ direction. Matthew Sprange’s Blasio dominated the cast, his richly rounded and well-focussed baritone a source of pleasure throughout the evening. None of the rest of the cast came up to this level, although Nathalie Chalkley brought a lively personality if at times shrill voice to the role of Ernestina. I derived little pleasure from Rhiannon Llewellyn’s singing of the Countess, finding her tone too insecure in the upper range, though I suspect the acoustic was not very kind to her voice. The tenor parts of the Count (Alessandro Fisher) and Lieutenant (Thomas Herford) were decently sung, though the weak lower range of the latter resulted in him being frequently overpowered by the orchestra. The other major surprise, again bearing in mind this is a company specialising in this repertoire, was the lack of appoggiaturas and absence of cadential flourishes and ornamentation. It all served to give the performance a curiously old-fashioned feel. But I don’t want to end on a negative note. Although greater attention to style would make its achievements even more significant, Bampton Classical Opera is doing a sterling job in a still undervalued repertoire
