What better way for Masonic brothers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Shikaneder to disseminate Masonic virtues, than through the most popular musical entertainment of their age, a happy ending folktale that features a dragon, enchanting flutes and bells, mixed-up parentage, and a beautiful young princess in distress?
Since its first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo during Venice’s 1643 Carnevale, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea has been one of the most important milestones in the genesis of modern opera despite its 250 years of unmerited obscurity.
Though 2013 is the bicentennial of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the releases of Cecilia Bartoli’s recording of Bellini’s Norma on DECCA, a new studio recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro from Opera Rara, and this première recording of Saverio Mercadante’s forgotten I due Figaro, suggest that this is the start of a summer of bel canto.
Recording Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is for a record label equivalent to a climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest: it is the zenith from which a label surveys its position among its rivals and appreciates an achievement that can define its reputation for a generation.
Few people who love opera in general and bel canto in particular have never heard the comment made by Lilli Lehmann, veteran of the inaugural Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, that singing all three of Wagner’s Brünnhildes—in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, respectively, all of which she sang to great acclaim—pales in comparison with singing the title rôle in Bellini’s Norma.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work.
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.
Recorded on 5 and 6 May 2008 and 17 and 18 January 2009 at the Lisztzentrum (Raiding, Austria), this recent Bridge release makes available the piano-vocal versions of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder performed by mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck, accompanied by Russell Ryan.
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
Eternal Echoes is an album of khazones [Jewish cantorial music] for cantorial soloist, solo violin and a blended instrumental ensemble comprising a small orchestra and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography.
Oliver Knussen burst into British music with an unprecedented flourish. In 1967, the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Knussen’s First Symphony, with István Kertész scheduled to conduct.
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865).
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs.
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD.
If one should believe British critics, especially English ones, Jonathan Lemalu is a major new bass; one of the greatest talents around whose qualities are widely proven by the fact this is already his third solo CD in a short time.
If one should believe British opera lovers, especially English ones, Jonathan Lemalu is a weak and uninteresting singer who has either paid himself for his CD’s or is otherwise the lucky recipient of EMI’s political-correctness as he is only recorded because he is a New Zealand-born Samoan.
In all probability both camps are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. English critics can be horribly biased and in the past they succeeded in having us believe for a short time that Peter Glossop, Geraint Evans, Joan Carlyle, Elisabeth Harwood and Rosalind Plowright would become stars of the first magnitude; and then we heard the results and we felt cheated. John Steane, the grand old man, of English singer’s critics is a little bit careful when discussing Lemalu’s operatic recital but of course heartily recommends it. A song recital as this one is even more difficult to judge as there are almost no opportunities for the singer to show his strength in either his low or high range. Most songs are smack in the middle of the voice and I cannot say I was stunned by it. Uninteresting, even bleak as his detractors wrote on some opera forum I won’t name. The voice doesn’t sound big (I never heard him in the flesh) but has a good focused core. He knows how to lighten it and has an agreeable piano like in “Come away” (track 18). But indeed, there are no myriad colours and it is not a very exciting timbre. In short, I’d say he is that kind of bass every opera house needs so that one can cast Jake Wallace or Ferrando from its own ranks. It’s possible his ethnicity helped him in getting engagements, but to me he greatly resembles, by the facelessness of his sound, some of his British predecessors such as Michael Langdon, Geraint Evans, Alistair Miles: singers who were not neglected by the major companies, singers one was happy to hear and see in the house though one quickly forgot them afterwards.
I’ll admit, too, that these songs do not stir me to ecstasy. Most of them are somewhat monotonous, without too much melodic inspiration, going along in a kind of Sprechgesang. I listened without looking at the sleeve notes and noticed that the Shakespearean songs sounded a little bit livelier, more interesting than the other ones. This may be because there one hears old-fashioned rhymes, which always make it easier for a composer to stir up some rhythm. But it can also mean that their composers were born before the days of dissonance. Some of the later songs are composed on excellent poems but I fail to hear any added value in the music of Barber, Britten and especially Bolcom (track 23 in particular). As a non-native speaker it struck me that Lemalu’s pronunciation when reciting or singing these songs is not always perfect and sometimes a little bit difficult to understand — a feeling I never have with another non-English bass, Bryn Terfel, who moreover has a more charming and rounded sound. In short, maybe those English opera lovers are a little nearer to the truth than the critics.
Jan Neckers