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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘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.
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.
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.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
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.
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 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.
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.
‘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.’
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.
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.
The Bavarian-born Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) trained and made his career in Italy and thus ended up calling himself Giovanni Simone Mayr, or simply G. S. Mayr. He is best known for having been composition teacher to Giuseppe Donizetti.
Medea in Corinto (Medea in Corinth, 1813 and much revised over the course of the next ten years) was Mayr’s best-known opera and remained a repertory staple for a time even after his death. It has been revived frequently in our own day, especially in Italy, where audiences can of course follow the plot and shifting emotions without recourse to supertitles.
Mayr’s opera tells basically the same story that opera lovers know from Cherubini’s Médée (a work often performed in a much-altered later version and in Italian, under the title Medea). But the treatment of the Medea legend by Mayr and his librettist, the immensely gifted Felice Romani, is different enough from Cherubini’s that the work has its own identity and appeal.
American Record Guide has reviewed three previous CD releases of Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, the best of which, the reviewers agreed, was the studio recording from Opera Rara, with Jane Eaglen, Yvonne Kenny, Bruce Ford, and Raul Gimenez. (See reviews by, respectively, Desmond Arthur, September/October 1994; Charles H. Parsons, March/April 2000; and Ralph V. Lucano, Nov/Dec 2010.) That recording also included an appendix of additional numbers that were composed by Mayr for the work and that were either omitted before opening night or got used in certain later stagings of the work.
The two other CD recordings that have been reviewed in ARG were made at live performances in Italy. Both of them are apparently disfigured by one or more singers who wobble or sing off-pitch. The Myto set features the vibrant Leyla Gencer in the title role; the Oehms set has Elzbieta Szmytka (overstretched by the part) and can be heard by anybody with online Naxos access (e.g., through one’s public library), as indeed can the recording under review. The pioneering Vanguard recording (1970) stars the magnetic Marisa Galvany. Its CD re-release seems to be out of print at the moment, but excerpts are on YouTube.
In this opera, the princess of Corinth (here called Creusa) was promised to King Aegeus (Egeo) of Athens, before she shifted her affections to the heroic Giasone. Egeo has a big and dramatically varied role. Medea is given a powerful scene with the spirits of hell (reminiscent of a scene in Cavalli’s Giasone, composed a century and a half earlier).
Romani and Mayr give the chorus multiple occasions to rejoice, reassure, worry, and be solemn or horrified. (In this new recording they sound fine, mostly, except for some reason in the scene with Creusa at the beginning of Act 2.) The orchestra frequently offers colorful interjections: we get several arias in which a solo instrument (e.g., violin, English horn, even harp) performs in duet texture with the voice or in alternation with it.
As in many of Rossini’s serious operas, recitatives are accompanied by orchestra rather than keyboard. The Medea/Giasone duet in Act 1 is a large four-movement structure of a type that scholars and critics normally call “Rossinian” and would become normative for Rossini’s successors: Donizetti, Bellini, and the young Verdi. Vocal lines are quite florid (not least for Egeo) but often also tuneful or even dance-like, sometimes reminding me of Donizetti (to come) or of phrases from Mozart’s Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute (some twenty years earlier).
The recording derives from one or more staged performances at the Valle d’Itria festival in July-August 2015. Inevitably, the performances on the Opera Rara studio recording are freer of imperfections. In this festival recording we encounter moments of orchestral unease and some slow wobbling from the Medea and (worse) the Creusa. The sound quality, generally fine, can get congested when Davinia Rodriguez (Medea) and Michael Spyres (Giasone), both intense-voiced, are singing simultaneously. Rodriguez’s lower register is consistently hooded, sometimes sounding very Callas-like, which may displease some listeners but, to my ear, aptly indicates Medea’s grim determination to avenge herself on the lover who abandoned her. Indeed, Rodriguez seems to me a more convincing Medea than Eaglen was on the Opera Rara recording, and the chorus of the spirits of hell register more vividly here in the splendid conjuration scene (“Antica notte”) than on the Opera Rara recording.
Spyres has now performed or recorded numerous French heroic-tenor roles, including Rossini’s Arnold and Berlioz’s Cellini. (He sings splendidly on the new recording of Hérold’s Le pré aux clercs, which I will be reviewing here soon.) As Giasone he is often utterly admirable, showing great stamina and presence. But he sometimes strains, at full voice, for high notes that, in Mayr’s day, would have been sung in falsetto or half-voice. And, quite unnecessarily, he adds several notes that are higher than anything written by the composer, and has to lunge for them, making him sound, at that moment, less than heroic. His coloratura is sometimes firm, other times ungainly. Still, he sings consistently in tune.
Indeed, all the singers sing in tune. Furthermore, they put the words across well, which helps us care about the characters’ shifting emotional states. The renowned Fabio Luisi conducts expertly, blending dramatic impetus with delicacy and precision. By comparison, David Parry’s conducting on the Opera Rara recording sometimes feels sluggish and unvaried.
The booklet essay is enormously detailed about the compositional and performance history of the work but gives no indication what version is being heard here and whether any of the numbers differ from the equivalent ones on previous recordings.
I had no trouble downloading the libretto, but then struggled through some unidiomatic or even outright erroneous translations. For example, talamo—literally: “chamber”—is the standard libretto-word for “marriage bed.” It is here translated as “thalamus,” as if the characters were discussing the function of somebody’s brain. The booklet essay is similarly disfigured. I suggest that Dynamic hire better translators, perhaps ones who are native English-speakers.
A DVD of this same performance is also commercially available and has been uploaded to YouTube. One can also purchase a DVD of a 2010 staged performance from Munich, with what—to judge by excerpts on YouTube—is a splendid cast (Medea: Nadja Michael; Giasone: Ramon Vargas; Egeo: Alek Shrader). Watching either of the videos. or listening to the CD set under review, would be the best way to get to know Mayr’s famous opera. The Opera Rara recording, despite much first-rate singing (e.g., from Bruce Ford as Giasone), now slides down to second-best. Still, it remains indispensable for people who wish to compare Mayr’s various revisions, cuts, and insertions. It is currently available only as a digital MP3 download (in any of three formats), not as a CD set. It has also been uploaded entire (and also as separate tracks) to YouTube.
Ralph P. Locke
The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide and appears here by kind permission.
Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). The first is now available in paperback, and the second soon will be (and is also available as an e-book).