17 Feb 2005
VIVALDI: Orlando Furioso
The box-sets contaning the complete recordings of the music of J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart occupy substantial shelf space in the collections of those fortunate enough to possess them.
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Le Monde Reviews Lamento
Cela arrive rarement, le souffle coupé dès les premières notes. Une minute entière à retenir sa respiration dans une apnée d’émotion totale pour recevoir la première phrase du Lamento pour contralto, de Johann Christoph Bach, d’après les Lamentations de Jérémie, son ascension douloureuse, ornée de sanglots, puis les deux accords d’une longue plainte instrumentale, avant l’entrée, magique, de la voix de Magdalena Kozena. “Ach, dass ich Wassers g’nug hätte.” “Ah, si ma tête était remplie d’eau, si mes yeux étaient une source de larmes.” L’insouciance a été jusqu’alors votre lot ? Vous, toi, nous tous, pécheurs, allons connaître ce que pèse le lourd fardeau de nos iniquités – et la récompense de cette connaissance : 7 minutes 22 d’une pure splendeur musicale.
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Elsewhere on Opera Today readers can find a recent review of a live recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from the Ponto label, a company that has joined the ranks of Opera D’oro and Gala in offering, at budget price, live recordings of various provenance. At their best, as with that Nozze, these recordings offer in acceptable sound (sometimes better) performances of such quality they rival their more expensive competitors. At less than the best, however, even the budget price becomes exorbitant. This Tristan und Isolde, recorded on January 25, 1967, unfortunately belongs to the latter category. Unless one has a strong personal reason for wanting a keepsake of this company or the artists involved, the recording is unlikely to please most listeners. The primary reason is the sound. While not unlistenable, the recording is clearly an “in-house” affair, and probably from an audience member, as some of the coughing is more up-front than the singing. Worse, during the climax, some audience members are whispering as Isolde enters the Leibestod. One would love for a Jon Vickers to have been present to yell out, “Stop your damn whispering!”
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Collectors will, however, have to acquire more bookcases to accommodate the Vivaldi Edition, a collaboration of Naïve (opus 111) and various Piedmontese institutions. This venture aims to record all the works in the massive Vivaldian collection at the Turin University Library; more than a dozen CDs have been released in the last couple of years, and many more are to come with the goal of making the works in all 450 Vivaldian manuscripts (of concerti, sacred vocal music, and many other genres) available to the public over the next decade.
About two dozen operatic works (a little under half of Vivaldi's documented operatic output) form part of the Turin collection, and this recording of Orlando Furioso is billed as one of the first of planned yearly Vivaldian operatic recordings in the venture. The recording follows a concert production at multiple French venues (including the Théatre du Champs Elysées) in 2003. Both early music aficionados and traditional opera-lovers will find much to love - and perhaps something to hate - in these three CDs.
Ensemble Mateus has been working for over a decade on a variety of repertories, from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century string music to contemporary experimental works. Starting as a quartet, they have expanded and contracted to fit the occasion; here they appear as a 30-member orchestra, but their precision and dexterity make them sound as tightly planned as a much smaller group. Their ability to nuance every instrumental ritornello makes for a remarkable (and different) fit with every singer; this alone is worth the price of the recording. Most ensembles save this kind of expressive effort for concerti and other all-instrumental works; Ensemble Mateus plays "background" in such a way that the dialogue between soloist and orchestra is as exciting as in the best concerto recordings on the market.
In choosing to feature mostly "non-early-music" singers in the starring roles, the producers of this performance made a difficult decision. This decision pays off in the intensity of the work as a whole, with recitatives that are unusually gripping and arias that are not just displays of fireworks but self-contained dramatic moments: the protagonists are clearly actors as well as singers, and even in this concert performance the dramatic thread is powerful. Clarity of text does not suffer: though there are a variety of accents in this production, every word is clear and purposeful, something that this Italian-native reviewer encounters too seldom (and this even in ostensibly crystal-clear "early music" singing). One exception, perhaps, is bass-baritone Lorenzo Regazzo, whose lushness in the role of Astolfo (well-suited to his more customary Mozart/Rossini work) comes across as somewhat soupy from time to time.
Counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky, who plays Ruggiero, is the crown jewel of this recording: his voice is clear as a bell, flexible as a gold chain, and his arias are truly the most outstanding moments of the production. What makes his sound most effective, though, is its combination with the very different - but similarly superb - sound-qualities of the other protagonists. Alto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, in the title role, has the most dramatically challenging part: Orlando goes mad at the end of the second act and has some remarkable "mad scene" monologues in the third. Her voice is rich and powerful, and she is perfectly cast as the lovesick knight. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore, as Alcina, brings a scary edge to the powerful but doomed sorceress; and soprano Veronica Cangemi's ethereal sweetness is ideally suited to the aptly-named role of Angelica.
With the exception of Jaroussky, who has specialized in baroque repertories, all the stars have experience in a wide range of dramatic roles (from the seventeenth century to the present). While not dogmatic in avoiding all forms of vibrato, they are careful to prioritize clarity of pitch, and almost without exception their runs and trills sound both effortless and sparkling. Indeed, the program booklet provides fairly extensive commentary on the performers' approach to ornamentation (a "vocal ornamentation consultant" is listed along with the stars on the first page of the booklet) and it's clear that the singers thought a great deal about how to add to the repeat of the da capo that characterizes every aria in this opera, in such a way as to take advantage of each individual singer's talent as well as the emotion of the aria. While I do not treasure every single voice on the recording, I find each "take" on ornamentation tremendously effective, and creative in a way that is often lacking in more traditionally "early music sound" recordings.
There are recordings of baroque operas in which it is hard to distinguish the different characters, given the similar ranges of the protagonist roles in this repertory, and a tendency for performers to sacrifice individual color in seeking out a "clean" sound, thought most appropriate for pre-classical vocal quality. But every account of the great virtuosi and virtuose of Handel's and Vivaldi's day testifies to the uniqueness of each singer's "grain". Diversity of this sort is certainly evident in this recording of Orlando Furioso, which gives us an opportunity to hear this repertory's dramatic power without sacrificing the clarity and fireworks that provide baroque opera's appeal.
Andrew Dell'Antonio
The University of Texas at Austin