Tag: Opera

Hana Blažiková, Markéta Cukrová, Tomaš Šelc SAB, Ensemble Tourbillon, Petr Wagner
69:11
Accent ACC 24306

[dropcap]Z[/dropcap]elenka may have written these eight arias as part of a strategy to be appointed Hasse’s assistant in the Dresden opera house. He was surely a victim of fashion because fans of his music will recognise all the trademarks of his style – an easy facility with melody and harmonic sleight of hand; but times were changing and simplicity had replaced erudition as the measure of good taste. No-one had the appetite for listening to arias of such great length and while musically beautiful there is no denying a certain lack of drama or excitement.

The three singers are – without exception – outstanding: Hana Blažiková has the lion’s share with five arias and she uses the broad palette of her radiant voice to excellent effect throughout; alto Markéta Cukrová has two, in which she demonstrates not only amazing technique but also an impressive range of colour; it is the upper reaches of Tomaš Šelc’s bass-baritone voice that most impresses in his single offering (the last on the disc), with ringing clarity and impeccable tuning.

When it comes to the instrumental contribution, I have to say there are one reservation; Zelenka would never have conceived of this music being played by single strings – surviving performing sets from Dresden often have three copies of violins and basses, sometimes even more. That is not a criticism of the players – indeed, their contribution is very fine, but for all their impassioned playing, they cannot make up for a lack of depth to the instrumental sound, especially when the cover illustration of the booklet is of a full-bodied opera production! I also found some of the continuo playing a little distracting, with running quaver runs competing with the singing for my ears’ attention, which can never be a good thing.

But these are minor quibbles about such a fine recording which I heartily recommend to Zelenka fans!

Brian Clark

Hasnaa Bennani, Les Muffatti, Peter Van Heyghen
69:27
Ramée RAM1501

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rancesca Cuzzoni was one of Handel’s greatest singers during the period of the Royal Academy of Music in the mid-to-late 1720’s and was (amongst other roles) his formidable first Cleopatra and Rodelinda. Hasnaa Bennani and Peter van Heyghen have assembled a fine collection of her ‘finest airs’, including lesser-known jewels from Ottone, Admeto, Siroe  and Tolomeo  along with more usual favourites from Giulio Cesare  and Rodelinda.

Bennani proves a most persuasive Cuzzoni. She has the agility to throw off all the tricky coloratura with much aplomb (try the dazzling ‘Scoglio d’immota fronde’ (track 5) for example) but also the beauty of tone and dramatic expression to bring the slower arias to vivid life, ‘Se pieta’ (track 4) and ‘Se’l mio dolor’ (track 17), being particularly well done.

In some ways, however, it is the band who have unearthed the real treasure here. There is a wealth of characteristically characterful orchestral music hidden away in Handel’s operas, both in the overtures, but more particularly in the myriad sinfonias and dance movements which accompany or amplify the stage action. Van Heyghen has taken the imaginative step of combining movements to create satisfying larger orchestral units – I especially enjoyed the sequence of Tolomeo overture followed by sinfonias from Admeto and Scipione, with ringing horns fore and aft. Les Muffatti revel in Handel’s rich scorings, with fine bassoon and recorder obbligati as well as the aforementioned brass.

Well done, all concerned!

Alastair Harper

Aaron Sheehan Acis, Teresa Wakim Galatea, Douglas Williams Polyphemus, Jason McStoots Damon, Zachary Wilder Coridon, Boston Early Music Festival Vocal & Chamber Ensembles, Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs
107:18 (2 CDs)
cpo 777 877-2

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]cis and Galatea established an early reputation as one of Handel’s most endearing and enduring dramatic works. The straightforward and touching simplicity of the plot (drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses), the modest performing forces required and – for native listeners at least – the very Englishness of the piece, with its clear debt to Purcell (an important feature only lightly touched on in Ellen T. Harris’ note) have all gone to ensure it has rarely been long out of the repertoire. The present performance emanates from a production given at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2009, although the recording was made by Radio Bremen four years later.

Judging from the photographs in the booklet, the production lived up to Boston’s reputation for stylish staging, with lavish early Georgian costumes and little in the way of sets (the original was given in the gardens of Cannons, the home of Handel’s patron, the Duke of Chandos). Performing forces, too, are – with one important exception I’ll come to in a moment – in keeping with the original, with just a couple of violins, cello and bass for the string parts. The choruses are quite properly sung one-to-a-part by the soloists, who display good ensemble and balance. The opening sinfonia bodes well, with nicely pointed playing and the contrapuntal textures clearly delineated, but already here one of the abiding flaws of so many Boston Festival recordings is revealed. That the festival has two directors of the stature of lutenists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs has without doubt been greatly to its benefit; that both have felt it necessary to make an overly intrusive contribution to the continuo of every production has most certainly not. With such small performing forces the constant and largely superfluous plucking of the pair rapidly becomes intensely irritating, not least, I would guess, to the poor harpsichordist, who might just as well have been left at home for all the impression his contribution is allowed to make.

With the exception of bass Douglas Williams’ strongly characterised and well-focussed Polyphemus, the solo vocal roles are taken capably rather than exceptionally. Teresa Wakim has a pleasingly clean, bright soprano, but for this listener at least her singing brings little character to the role in the way Norma Burrows did so alluringly and touchingly to the 1978 John Eliot Gardiner Archiv recording. And like all her colleagues Wakim has no trill or other essential assets of a Baroque singer. Ornaments are largely unimaginative or unstylish (sometimes both), while the sustained opening note of ‘Heart, the seat of soft Delight’, for example, surely positively screams for messa di voce. Such caveats largely apply equally to the remaining singers. Aaron Sheehan is the possessor of a pleasingly mellifluous, well-produced light tenor that he uses well, but like Wakim he shows little real identification with the role of the lovelorn Acis, his arias agreeable enough but essentially featureless. The same can be said for the pallid singing of tenors of Jason McStoots (Damon) and Zachary Wilder (Coridon), the former inclined to bleat ornaments (pun not intended). The overall direction is capable enough, though there might been rather more rhythmic ‘lift’ at times, while I found ‘Mourn all ye muses’ overly sentimental in a very 21st century way, a musical equivalent to the piles of dead flowers that mark the locations of tragic death.

The set is completed by a performance of the brief chamber cantata ‘Sarei troppo felice’, HWV 157 (1707) by Amanda Forsythe (who sings 2nd soprano in the chorus of Acis). Her singing is certainly more characterful than anything in the pastoral, but at times marred by excessive vibrato. Notwithstanding its age, the Gardiner has far more to offer, in addition to Burrows fielding the splendid Acis of Anthony Rolfe Johnson. There is also a more recent and highly regarded set by John Butt and his Dunedin forces that I’ve not heard.

Brian Robins

Filippo Mineccia countertenor, Ensemble Odyssee, Andrea Friggi
74:49
Glossa GCD 923506

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]ntil very recently, Attilio Ariosti (1666-1729) was musically almost unknown. It was not always so – Hawkins, in his 1776 A General History of the Science and Practice of Music  thought that the great prison scene from Coriolano  recorded here (tracks 8-9) was “wrought up to the highest degree of perfection that music is capable of”. Now (amazingly, for the second time in the past year) we are able to judge for ourselves.

Andrea Friggi has assembled a fine selection of Ariosti’s opera arias and sinfonias, not only from his mature Royal Academy of Music seasons in London, but also from earlier in his career, when he was an Imperial agent to the Viennese court and found time in between his ambassadorial duties to compose an opera or two.

Ariosti comes across as a composer of much imagination and dramatic strength; try the splendid Ouverture to Coriolano  (tracks 5-6), with its extended and lively fugato and quirkily obsessive Presto, or the eerie ‘Premera soglio di morte’ from Vespasiano, (track 4) with unisoni  bassoons wandering through the band’s chordal accompaniment. The great Coriolano  accompagnato (again with bassoon obbligato) and extended aria, with concitato  B-section, is fully as moving as Hawkins says. There is a similar dramatic contrast in tempi in the final ‘Io spero che in quei guardi’, also from Coriolano.

Filippo Mineccia sings with much richness of tone and enviable accuracy in his runs; perhaps a little more light and shade could have been brought to the interpretations, but the music comes across strongly enough.

Ensemble Odyssee give stylish and extremely lively orchestral support – they have made a particular effort to reproduce the Haymarket Theatre orchestra’s strong treble and bass sound described by contemporary operagoers such as the French diplomat Fougeroux.

Andrea Friggi is a persuasive director, as well as providing the fine sleeve notes.

One wonders what a complete Ariosti opera (Coriolano  perhaps?) would be like…

Alastair Harper

Francesca Cassinara soprano, Marta Fumagalli mezzo, Roberto Balconi alto, Mauro Borgioni bass, Gabriele Cassone & Matteo Frigé natural trumpets, Antonio Fringé organ, Alberto Stevanin violin, Marco Testori cello, Rei Ishizawa oboe, Ugo Galasso chalumeau, Ensemble Pian & Forte, Francesco Fanna conductor
59:59
Dynamic CDS7710
RV537, 554A, 779 + arias from various operas

As the booklet notes explain, the trumpet is mostly associated with war and/or royalty in baroque opera. The seven arias from Vivaldi operas confirm the stereotype but also remind the listener of the technical demands the composer put on his singers. Most successful of the four soloists in Francesca Cassinara, whose bright soprano voice is well suited to combination with trumpets and oboes. Marta Fumagalli’s fruitier sound distorts some pitches but the bravura in her aria (which is Track 13, not 11 as printed in the booklet and on the record company’s website!) is exceptional, though I could have lived without the staccato arpeggios added to the Da Capo! The men are adequate. The instrumental playing is actually very good – the strings phrase nicely and layer dynamics convincingly. There is an elephant in the room, though – why does the disc conclude with a chamber concerto without trumpet? No matter how nicely it is played, does it actually serve a purpose? Sure one of the bravura soprano arias could have been held in reserve?

Brian Clark

Ulrike Schneider Agrippina, João Fernandes Claudio, Christopher Ainslie Ottone, Jake Arditti Nerone, Ida Falk Winland Poppea, Owen Willetts Narciso, Ross Ramgobin Pallante, Ronaldo Steiner Lesbo, FestspielOrchester Göttingen, Laurence Cummings
216:00 (3 CDs)
Accent ACC 26404

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]n excellent first recording of the new Hallische Händel-Ausgabe critical edition, edited by John E Sawyer. Agrippina is in many ways the crowning work of Handel’s Italian “finishing school” years, both musically with its refinement and reworking of earlier ideas, and dramatically with its deft handling of Grimani’s sparkling libretto. This latter especially comes across with full force under Laurence Cummings’ expert baton; the extended and extremely witty recitatives fairly crackle with energy and run directly and naturally into the many arias and ensembles. Try the opening of Act 2, and marvel at the dramatic tension that the seemingly rigid opera seria conventions can create. It begins with the whole cast on stage, for the chorus acclaiming the Emperor (shades here of a well-known Coronation anthem yet to come), then each major character in turn denounces Ottone in short, pithy arias, often without opening ritornelli, before going off one by one and leaving him finally alone, to pour out his sorrow in his searing accompagnato and extended contrapuntal ‘Voi che udite’. (Handel was to return to this structure many years later to conclude Act 2 of Tamerlano.)

By and large, the singers respond well to Cummings’ lively and dramatic direction. Ulrike Scneider is a suitably scheming Agrippina; she rises splendidly to her great scena at the end of Act 2, beginning with the tortured ‘Pensieri’ (note the condensed da capo, once she has sorted out her plans) and concluding action and Act with the foot-tapping ‘Ogni Vento’ (having arranged for the murder of a couple of her enemies!). Ida Falk Winland is fully her match as her rival Poppaea – she too has a fine moment in Act 2, where she first feigns sleep to find out Ottone’s real thoughts, then after further plotting with Lesbo and Nerone, has her extended and fully accompanied ‘Col peso del tuo amor’, with its uncanny presaging of Cleopatra’s ‘Tu la mia stella sei’.

Beside these two dramatic dames, the male parts can seem a little colourless. João Fernandes as the pompous Emperor Claudio produces fine rich bass tone, but slightly misses the delicacy of his lovesick and exquisite ‘Vieni o Cara’ in Act 2. Christopher Ainslie, as the primo uomo Ottone again sings beautifully, but doesn’t quite plumb the despairing depths of his great ‘Voi che udite’, also in Act 2. Jake Arditti does better as the young and mother-dominated Nerone (rising well to the semiquaver sequences of ‘Come nube’ in Act 3). Ross Ramgobin and Owen Willetts, as Pallante and Narciso, respectively, are appropriately sycophantic suitors for Agrippina, and Ronaldo Steiner provides buffo relief as the servant Lesbo.

The FestspielOrchester Gottingen play like angels – alert and incisive in the intensely dramatic overture, with its sudden pauses, and providing superb soloists for the many instrumental obbligati of this lovely score.

This is a live recording, and benefits immensely from Laurence Cummings’ long experience with Handel in the theatre – applause is reserved mainly for the end of scenes, rather than after every aria, allowing the splendid libretto its full effect.

Alastair Harper

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