Opera
OPERA CHOICE
Handel’s genius shines in this unforgettable show
Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company bring about a sparkling Amadigi, says Berta Joncus
Handel
Amadigi di Gaula
Tim Mead, Mary Bevan, Anna Dennis, Hilary Summers, Patrick Terry; Early Opera Company/ Christian Curnyn
Chandos CHSA 0406(2) (CD/SACD) 157:16 mins (2 discs)
Handel took a less-is-more approach to his Amadigi di Gaula. Christian Curnyn’s answering restraint reveals the stark solos, shimmering textures, ringing silences and stunning one-to-a-part counterpoint of music that fairly bursts with its composer’s early genius. Written in 1715 to indulge King George I’s French taste, Amadigi is Handel’s three-act Italian opera version of a five-act 1699 tragédie lyrique. Its action revolves around jealous sorceress Melissa’s failure to wrest Amadigi from his beloved Oriana, a story which moved Handel to write starkly contrasting numbers, including nine slow laments and some of the most sensual wind solos of his career. Curnyn casts the work’s voice, obbligato and continuo parts into perfect constellations, as in ‘Penna tiranno’, whose mournful bassoon part overflows and overcomes everyone else, echoing the aria’s words.
Mary Bevan sings the central role of Melissa with transfixing intensity
At the centre of the drama is Melissa, sung by Mary Bevan with transfixing intensity as her character’s emotional state tips from anger into joy, and from triumph into despair. Tim Mead gives depth to Amadigi, who flits between tender drawn-out siciliano melodies and despairing coloratura-stuffed arias. Through serene vocal strength, Anna Dennis conveys Oriana’s artless power. The instrumentalists’ playing is revelatory, the grace they bring to vocal-woodwind exchanges, and not least the brashness of the horn in Melissa’s show-stopping ‘Desterò dall’empia Dite’ make this a memorable performance.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Janáček
Jenůfa (DVD)
Asmik Grigorian, Karita Mattila, Saimir Pirgu, Nicky Spence, Elena Zilio, David Stout, Jacquelyn Stucker; Royal Opera House Orchestra/ Henrik Nánási; dir. Claus Guth (London, 2021)
Opus Arte DVD: OA1351D; Blu-ray: OABD7302D 139 mins
It’s love that liberates in Claus Guth’s production of Janáček’s breakthrough opera, Jenůfa, for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. In the blazing final musical moments, Jenůfa and Laca stand outside the shuttered curtain that seems to have imprisoned the whole opera for the last three acts.
There are shutters behind the action, too, that scarcely let in the daylight; and Kostelnička’s house, where she hides her pregnant stepdaughter, Jenůfa, is an iron cage around which 19th-century blackbonneted villagers hover like birds of prey. As the tragedy unravels it seems more Ibsen or Strindberg than Janáček as Jenůfa finally accepts the man who despoiled her beauty with a slash of his knife.
Guth has a fine cast to work with. Karita Mattila as Kostelnička seethes with fury as she kills Jenůfa’s illegitimate baby son, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons before sliding into mortal terror and it has to be said head-clasping melodrama. Asmik Grigorian’s Jenůfa, always a little in her stepmother’s shadow, is haunted throughout with only a whisp of a smile. But her waking dream when Kostelnička has taken the baby to the mill race is eerily beautiful.
Toby Spence is a properly lyrical Laca, and Saimir Pirgu’s strutting Števa, the cause of all the grief, is both selfish and frightened. In the pit Henrik Nánási makes every detail count – including that persistent monotone rattle of the xylophone representing the turning mill wheel. Nánási understands the architecture of Janáček’s score, too, building each climax with proper care as the Royal Opera House Orchestra plays its heart out. In all, it’s a very fine performance. Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Tippett
The Midsummer Marriage
Robert Murray, Rachel Nicholls, Ashley Riches, Jennifer France, Toby Spence, Claire Barnett-Jones, Susan Bickley, Joshua Bloom, John Findon, Paul Sheehan, Robert Winslade-Anderson; ENO Chorus; London Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra/ Edward Gardner
LPO LPO 0124 158:23 mins (3 discs)
The Midsummer Marriage challenges both performers and audiences. Michael Tippett’s chatty libretto, the masque-like style which blends dance and song and spectacle, and the opaque meanings all bypass tidy definitions of opera. It belongs to a very particular period of English culture when, isolated from Europe after 1941, British artists turned inwards in search of an English Modernism tinged with Surrealism.
Musically, however, Tippett composed one of his most sumptuous scores for this, his first opera. And Edward Gardner making his debut as the principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, relishes every note and nuance. The orchestral opening to Act II with bird-like flutes and shining chords rising through the orchestra with the sun on a midsummer day is luminous, and the Act III apotheosis when the giant flower bud opens thrilling.
Perfectly drilled, the LPO Choir and the ENO Chorus are a reminder that we see the unfolding mysteries through their eyes. Unexpectedly, it’s the second pair of lovers, Bella and Jack, admirably sung by Jennifer France and Toby Spence, who capture your ear. But then the principal lovers Mark and Jenifer are sometimes shadows in Tippett’s great Jungian scheme. Robert Murray offers a handsomely sung Mark, though Rachel Nicholls is not perhaps a natural Jenifer, lacking a rounder, fuller tone.
It’s the villain who almost steals the show. Ashley Riches is chilling as King Fisher, a bully and a slave to his own dark ego. For all that, this is Edward Gardner’s show, and he rises to Tippett’s challenge superbly. Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
BACKGROUND TO…
Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage
Tippett’s early forays into opera did not run entirely smoothly. His unofficial first, 1934’s Robin Hood, went unpublished and unperformed on a professional stage, while The Midsummer Marriage divided opinion following its premiere in January 1955 at Covent Garden. That production was notable, though, featuring sets and costumes by Barbara Hepworth and starring Joan Sutherland and Richard Lewis. There was no question that, musically, this Marriage would last, but it was the text (also by Tippett and inspired largely by The Magic Flute) which puzzled many thanks to its various symbolist leanings.
Arias
Bizet, Cilea, Flotow, Giordano, Mascagni, Massenet, Ponchielli, Puccini, Verdi & Zandonai
Jonathan Tetelman (tenor); Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria/Karel Mark Chichon
DG 486 2927 53:59 mins
After music college, Jonathan Tetelman abandoned singing and became a DJ. Feeling adrift without opera, he resumed and is now performing Verdi, Puccini and the verismo composers at major houses around the world. Puccini’s music, we are told, lies closest to his heart, though only one Puccini number features here – an opulent, laid-back ‘Addio fiorito asil’. Shrewdly, Tetelman has not stuffed his debut recital with well-sucked lollipops, but has displayed his versatility across a wider range of roles.
Some of the tracks are short and very effective appetite-whetters. His original training as a baritone is evident in gleaming mahoganyhued performances of numbers from La forza del destino, I due Foscari and Werther. Elsewhere, he is a strikingly sweet-voiced Don José and an up-tempo Manrico. But he shines brightest in the numbers from Adriana Lecouvreur, Andrea Chénier, Fedora and La Gioconda – arias that demand passion on a plate. His is the sort of ardent, soul-baring voice you would want to be serenaded by when reclining on a chaise longue somewhere hot and beautiful. This disc is quite simply a sensation, and clubbing’s loss is most definitely opera’s gain. Alexandra Wilson
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Bijoux perdus
Arias etc by Meyerbeer, Ambroise Thomas, Donizetti, Massé, Halévy, Adam, Auber
Jodie Devos (soprano), Brussels Philharmonic/Pierre Bleuse
Alpha Classics ALPHA 877 64:33 mins
The Belgian-born light soprano pays tribute to one of her predecessors – Marie Cabel (1827-85), star of the Théâtre-Lyrique and the Opéra-Comique in Paris and creator of numerous roles, notably Dinorah in Meyerbeer’s Le pardon de Ploërmel (1859) and Philine in Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon (1866). Established solos from the latter operas – ‘Ombre légère’ (aka The Shadow Song) and the polonaise ‘Je suis Titania’ – feature alongside mostly forgotten pieces from works by those composers and their peers.
With her small, neat, exact voice and clear diction, Jodie Devos is well suited to such material, which she articulates clearly, getting around the notes with considerable fluency – if with a certain selfconsciousness. There’s an appealing tang to the tone and an ability to fine the tone down where necessary. Occasionally there’s a shade of effort: one is not meant to know how difficult such pieces as Philine’s solo actually are, while this is not a voice capable of a great colouristic range.
Worthwhile discoveries include a sequence of numbers from Halévy’s mildly anti-Imperialist Jaguarita L’indienne (1855); two arias in which Elizabeth I determines to save the drunken Shakespeare from himself in Thomas’s Le songe d’une nuit d’été (1850); a fine number from Auber’s Manon Lescaut (1856), and two from Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord (1854) in which Devos shows off a good trill. The Brussels Philharmonic plays well, conducted with flexibility by Pierre Bleuse. George Hall
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Roma Travestita
Arias by Arena, Capua, Cocchi, Conforto, Fajer, Galuppi, Piccinini, A Scarlatti, Vinci and Vivaldi
Bruno de Sá (sopranist); Il Pomo d’Oro/Francesco Corti
Erato 9029661980 71:04 mins
In 1588 Pope Sixtus V banned women from appearing on stage in the papal states. So castrati stepped into the breach, with Farinelli taking female roles in his youth, though never so celebrated as the cross-dressing star Giacinto Fontana, known as ‘Farfallino’.
Bruno de Sá, a young Brazilian who describes himself as a sopranist, possesses a remarkable voice that is maybe as near to that of the castrato as we can hope to hear: de Sá’s tone is firmer than many countertenors, with a greater vocal range and a perfectly respectable toffee-coloured chest register. His repertoire is unexpected, with many of these arias previously unrecorded. And while you can readily understand why Giuseppe Arena has been forgotten, Rinaldo di Capua, whose real name we don’t even know, composed a bravura aria for his heroine Berenice that combines thrilling vocal demands with genuine characterisation.
Bruno de Sá sings with immaculate legato, and has a gift for scintillating decoration, dramatic octave drops and stratospheric ascents above the stave. Two arias from the principal female characters in Vivaldi’s Il Giustino reveal his range, the first swooping and diving like a seabird over the composer’s familiar driving strings and then by contrast a deeply moving lament from a woman at the end of her tether. The dependable Il Pomo d’Oro conducted by Franceso Corti offer elegant support throughout. Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
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