20 Mar 2006
MONTEVERDI: L'Orfeo
In the 1990’s Pierre Audi staged productions of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas (L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, and L’incoronazione di Poppea) with De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam.
Recently in Recordings
Henry Purcell, Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Vol. III: The Sixteen/Harry Christophers
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
Anima Rara: Ermonela Jaho
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Requiem pour les temps futurs: An AI requiem for a post-modern society
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
Ádám Fischer’s 1991 MahlerFest Kassel ‘Resurrection’ issued for the first time
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
Max Lorenz: Tristan und Isolde, Hamburg 1949
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
Women's Voices: a sung celebration of six eloquent and confident voices
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
Rosa mystica: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
The Prison: Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
Songs by Sir Hamilton Harty: Kathryn Rudge and Christopher Glynn
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
After Silence: VOCES8
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
Beethoven's Songs and Folksongs: Bostridge and Pappano
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
Flax and Fire: a terrific debut recital-disc from tenor Stuart Jackson
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
Carlisle Floyd's Prince of Players: a world premiere recording
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
John F. Larchet's Complete Songs and Airs: in conversation with Niall Kinsella
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
Haddon Hall: 'Sullivan sans Gilbert' does not disappoint thanks to the BBC Concert Orchestra and John Andrews
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Choral Fantasy from Harmonia Mundi
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
Taking Risks with Barbara Hannigan
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Those Blue Remembered Hills: Roderick Williams sings Gurney and Howells
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Bruno Ganz and Kirill Gerstein almost rescue Strauss’s Enoch Arden
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Recordings
All three have been recently released as DVD’s, and with the 1997 L’Orfeo, Audi and company offer a provocative performance of Monteverdi’s earliest and also perhaps his most familiar stage work. L’Orfeo comes laden with historical significance. Not the first opera—several works by Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri have prior claim—L’Orfeo is nevertheless the earliest opera to have captured modern ears; it is where opera seems to begin for the modern audience. It is also something of an icon of the modern historical performance movement, as well. In the late 1960s, few early music groups could claim the visibility and influence of the Concentus Musicus Wien, an ensemble whose 1969 recording of L’Orfeo (Telefunken) was an eye-opening overture to many things that would follow in the decades ahead.
Musically this present Amsterdam L’Orfeo is stunning. John Mark Ainsley’s Orpheus is dynamic and, at times, dramatically urgent in a way that leaves little doubt of either Orpheus’s exalted status as a singer or his impassioned state. Ainsley negotiates the famous Act III vocal challenges with great skill and conviction—ornamentation, articulation, and rapid passage work are all unquestionably and impressively secure. But what raises the level of his Orpheus is his vocal command of the passions themselves. This, too, is the dynamic that must also inform the messenger scene in Act II--in fact, to an even greater degree, because here the messenger has little but the intensity of the passions with which to animate the scene. Brigitte Balleys’s Messenger is impressive, bringing the tragic news of Eurydice’s death with a dramatic range that is rich in inflection. Some may find the occasional prominence of her chest voice problematic, but in context she uses it to intensify and charge the moment, and that decision is one well made.
There are some vocal surprises in the production, to be sure. Countertenors take on the roles of La Musica and La Speranza, to strong effect, both for the masterful singing of David Cordier and Michael Chance and for the defamiliarization that the casting affords. Monteverdi’s performance in 1607 employed the castrato Giovanni Gualberto Magli in these roles, and the countertenor casting here may be something of an echo of the historical record. But, in fact, all the principal female roles were likely sung by males—Eurydice probably by a priest, Girolamo Bacchini and Persephone by Magli—causing one to wonder why the historical echo stopped where it did. But musically there is little about which to complain throughout the opera. Musical director, Stephen Stubbs, is an insightful and ever sure hand in this style, and the combined forces of Tragicomedia and Concerto Palatino are gloriously rich in the fluency they bring to Monteverdi’s score. It is a stunning rendition by all the musicians.
The stage concept is stunning, too, though in nature and approach it seems oddly suited to Monteverdi and L’Orfeo. Audi’s set is minimalistic and symbolic; placed on a vastly spacious stage, the minimalism seems even more hauntingly spare. While the musical score is complex in its variety of aesthetic claims—much of it is sparely recitative, while other parts revel in tuneful and decorative grace—that Orpheus and Apollo take as their signature musical device a language of virtuosic ornamentation places the music and visual presentation on strikingly different planes at important moments. The vastness of the stage itself is a significant interpretative element, and one decidedly different from the intimate venue in which Monteverdi first presented the opera. The huge space endows this present L’Orfeo with an epic, universal quality, but in the end, one wonders if a smaller, more intimate scale would not generally bring greater resonance to the expression of such personally intense affections.
The acting style is unflaggingly interesting, though like the set, curious in context. Orpheus, whose famed vocal abilities would surely enshrine the ultimate in beauty and grace, spends rather a lot of time stretched out on the stage floor, reminding us more of the serpent who killed Eurydice than the offspring of Apollo. On the other hand, in that the musical style is often premised on the notion that musical rules are breakable for the purposes of serving the text, there is a sense here that the postures and gestures, in breaking the bounds of Apollonian dignity, also may do so in the service of the dramatic moment. Thus, both styles—seemingly far removed from the other—seem variations on common artistic priorities.
It is not unusual in modern productions to find historical practice only selectively applied. The music may be richly informed by period style, whereas much else may tend to offer the contrast of intentional anachronism. The anachronisms are often engagingly creative and moving, as is the case here—and that is no bad thing—but in the end, one may wish for productions with a more fully integrated performance practice . . . and that Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo will be the frequent subject of such endeavors!
Steven Plank
Oberlin College