RECORDING REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi — NOBLE RENEGADES (Charles Castronovo, tenor; Delos DE3605)

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Noble Renegades – Scenes and Arias from Don Carlos, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Luisa Miller, Jérusalem, and Il corsaro — Charles Castronovo, tenor; Kristin Sampson, soprano; Tomas Pavilionis, tenor; Tadas Girininkas, bass; Kauno Valstybinis Choras (Kaunas State Choir), Kauno simfoninis orkestras (Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra); Constantine Orbelian, conductor [Recorded in Kaunas State Philharmonic Hall, Kaunas, Lithuania, 27 – 29 June 2022; Delos DE3605; 1 CD, 55:58; Available from Outhere Music/Delos, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Music (UK), and major music retailers and streaming services]

Lamentation is one of the cornerstones of opera, on and off the stage. Purcell’s Dido, Händel’s Bertarido, Bellini’s Elvino, Wagner’s Brünnhilde, and Strauss’s Ariadne lament their lovers’ betrayals, real or perceived, and aficionados lament the dearth of voices capable of reaching past generations’ highest standards of singing those characters’ music. Disenfranchised opera lovers sometimes suggest that certain repertoire should be shelved lest it be sung inadequately—an understandable proposition but one that is inherently inimical to the nurturing of new generations of singers. It is true that there are no Flagstad, no Varnay, no Mödl and Nilsson in today’s performances of Götterdämmerung and Tristan und Isolde, but there are dedicated, gifted singers giving of their best who deserve to be heard. In the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, more of which are now included in the international repertory than at any previous time since the composer’s death in 1901, paragons of refinement and vocal refulgence are similarly rare, but this is no recent phenomenon. There is no Carlo Bergonzi singing Verdi’s tenor rôles in this third decade of the Twenty-First Century, operaphiles justly complain. Indeed, Bergonzi can no longer be heard except on recordings, but in the singing of Charles Castronovo today’s Verdi lovers have cause to curtail their lamenting.

Born in Queens and raised in California, Castronovo can be said to have benefited from the artistic traditions of both American coasts, his early engagements with Los Angeles Opera fostering formative contact with accomplished Verdians and opening avenues to venerable East-Coast and European institutions. Despite having garnered acclaim as Alfredo in La traviata, the Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto, and Fenton in Falstaff in s​ome of the world’s most prestigious venues, as well as recording an exhilarating portrayal of Alfredo opposite the Violetta of Marina Rebeka for Prima Classic, he was not heard in a Verdi rôle at the Metropolitan Opera, with which company he débuted in 2001 as Beppe in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, until October 2023, when he portrayed Gustavo in a revival of David Alden’s provocative staging of Un ballo in maschera.

What might appear to be a regrettable series of missed opportunities yielded an atypical occurrence in today’s opera world: a singer taking the right rôle at the right time, particularly in a house of the MET’s size and significance. [In the performance attended by this author on 27 October 2023, Castronovo’s Gustavo—heard from the second row of the Grand Tier—easily filled the capacious auditorium with firm, well-supported sound and ample evidence of the charisma that so enamored Angela Meade’s Amelia, fueled the jealousy of Quinn Kelsey’s Anckarström, and earned the loyalty of Liv Redpath’s Oscar.] That Castronovo’s expansion of his Verdi résumé is in reaction to his cognizance of vocal readiness is validated by his singing on Noble Renegades, this Delos recording of scenes from works ranging from the early I due Foscari and I Lombardi alla prima crociata to the original 1867 Paris version of Don Carlos.

Like a number of praiseworthy Delos projects in recent years, Noble Renegades enjoys sterling support from the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Constantine Orbelian. Playing with reliable professionalism, sophistication, and well-rehearsed ensemble, the Lithuanian ensemble’s musicians bring equal adroitness to both the bel canto writing of the earlier scores and the more symphonic later works, the development of Verdi’s instrumental writing surveyed with comprehension of its origins and ultimate destinations. The voices of the Kaunas State Choir are added to their company in the excerpts from Luisa Miller and Il corsaro, and the choristers’ efforts equal those of their orchestral colleagues in preparedness and excellence of execution.

As in his discs of Verdi arias and scenes with Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the late baritone’s complete recordings of Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, Orbelian exhibits laudable affinity for all variations of the composer’s style. His tempi are at once propulsive without rushing and respectful of his soloist’s breathing without languishing, and each of the scenes included in the programme offers a suggestion of the unique atmosphere of the opera from which it is drawn. Only occasionally, as in the solo scenes from Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera, are the performances more redolent of the studio than of the opera house, but the avoidance of overwrought mannerisms is most welcome.

Though Richard Tucker, Jon Vickers, and Franco Corelli sang the rôle in its Italian incarnation thrillingly, spinto and dramatic voices cannot claim exclusive rights to the music for the titular prince in Don Carlos. Remembered for singing parts like Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (a rôle in which Castronovo also garnered acclaim), Catalan tenor Juan Oncina proved to be an unexpectedly effective Don Carlo, his bel canto credentials yielding particularly sensitive handling of Verdi’s vocal lines. The success of Castronovo’s excursion into the forest of Fontainebleau in Carlos’s Act One scene is more predictable. Often reminiscent of that of the young José Carreras, Castronovo’s varnished-mahogany timbre shimmers in ‘Fontainebleau! Forêt immense et solitaire,’ the vowels shaped with an equilibrium between proper Francophone nasality and Latin openness that ideally suits the music. The finesse that can elude larger voices blossoms in this voice’s reading of the aria ‘Je l’ai vue, et dans son sourire.’ Carlos is sometimes the least-interesting character in performances of Don Carlos, but Castronovo weds the Infante’s words with melody hypnotically, the tenderness within the man’s troubled soul communicated to the listener with diaphanous tones.

Jacopo Foscari in I due Foscari was one of the first rôles that Bergonzi sang—and in which his work was documented on records, owing to a 1951 broadcast performance in conjunction with Italian radio’s observance of the fiftieth anniversary of Verdi’s death—after transitioning from baritone to tenor. Bergonzi’s legacy of Verdi singing is rightly ubiquitous, but Castronovo extends his own legacy with his singing of Jacopo Foscari’s scene from the opera’s first act, in which he is ably partnered by tenor Tomas Pavilionis’s Fante dei Consiglio dei Dieci. Declaiming ‘Qui ti rimani’ incisively, the tenor intimates that the fuse of the Doge’s son’s temper burns brightly and rapidly. The aria ‘Dal più remoto esilio’ is sung with passion befitting the character and the suavity demanded by the music, Verdi’s arching vocal line sustained with instinctual phrasing and control. The drama of the cabaletta ‘Odio solo, ed odio atroce’ is heightened by the restraint of Castronovo’s performance, the music truly sung rather than shouted.

Considering the relatively brief duration of the rôle of Macduff in Macbeth, the variety of famed tenors who have portrayed the character, whether on stage or in recording studios, is incredible—and attributable to the part having in the opera’s fourth act one of Verdi’s most beautiful arias for tenor. As sung by Castronovo on this disc, Macduff’s grief for his murdered children bursts viscerally from ‘O figli, o figli miei,’ the voice suffused with paternal affection and regret. ‘Ah, la paterna mano’ is voiced with simmering pain and burgeoning determination to enact justice, the aria’s top B𝄫 a grieving father’s despondent cry, not a display of a tenor’s vanity. A hard edge intermittently emerges in the upper register, but this is put to apt use as an aural manifestation of characters’ inner conflicts.

Recorded a year in advance of his MET appearances as Gustavo, Castronovo’s performance on this disc of the doomed Swedish king’s scene from Act Three of Un ballo in maschera might be said to be a delayed preview of his approach to the rôle. His phrasing of ‘Forse la soglia attinse’ conveys aristocratic integrity, but despair and desperation are also discernible in the fervor with which the words are enunciated. As was true of his performance of the aria in New York, the contrasting complexity and simplicity of Gustavo’s predicament resound in ‘Ma se m’è forza perderti.’ As a man in love with a woman who is already committed to a strong-willed, dangerous husband, Gustavo is a typical operatic protagonist, but his sacrifice of first his own happiness and then his life for the preservation of his beloved’s honor qualifies him as one of the noble renegades of the disc’s title. Even without this psychological context, the vocalism is compelling, the line caressed with beautifully-judged dynamic gradations.

An added pleasure of Castronovo’s pulse-quickening traversal of Oronte’s oft-excerpted scene from Act Two of I Lombardi alla prima crociata is the singing of the music for Oronte’s mother Sofia by soprano Kristin Sampson, who makes each word and note matter. With such an able partner, Castronovo devotes perceptibly sharpened concentration to the drama of ‘O madre mia, che fa colei,’ conjuring a persuasive sense of the scene’s consequence in I Lombardi’s cumulative narrative flow. Far more tenors include the aria ‘La mia letizia infondere’ in their concert and recital repertoires than ever perform the complete opera, but few recorded interpreters handle the aria and its cabaletta, ‘Come poteva un angelo,’ as idiomatically as Castronovo. The upper register always integrated with both the music’s melodic progression and the voice’s lower reaches, the tenor’s vocalism shimmers with reverent zeal, Oronte’s demeanor febrile but still that of the son of a governor of Antioch.

Castronovo is joined by Pavilionis’s Contadino and bass Tadas Girininkas’s Wurm in a superb performance of music from Act Two of Luisa Miller, a masterful score that continues to be neglected by too many opera companies—even as Verdi-loving a company as the MET, the ninety-three performances that Luisa has received there dwarfed by the showings amassed to date by Rigoletto (926), La traviata (1,056), and Aida (1,191). Rodolfo’s lines in ‘Il foglio dunque?’ are delivered with ringing conviction, Castronovo’s vocal colorations corruscating with the emotional shifts in the text. ‘Quando le sere al placido’ is one of the last true bel canto arias for tenor, and the performance that it receives here honors its kinship with Donizetti’s music for characters like Fernand in La favorite. The arching melody, recalling that of Fernand’s ‘Ange si pur,’ unfurls like a silk banner, borne aloft by the tenor’s beautiful tone and well-honed technique. His trademark expressive intensity cascades through ‘Di me chiedeste’ and the cabaletta ‘L’ara, o l’avello apprestami,’ notes above the stave projected with arresting bravado.

Having been urged since 1845 by the company’s intendant Léon Pillet to write an opera for the Académie Royale de la Musique in Paris, Verdi relented in the summer of 1847 by accepting Pillet’s commission to adapt I Lombardi to a French libretto written by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, familiar in Italian opera circles for having supplied the text for Donizetti’s La favorite. Despite containing new music that demo​nstrates the advances in his style since the completion of I Lombardi at the end of 1842, the resulting work, Jérusalem, is one of Verdi’s least-performed operas. Castronovo chose as one of his noble renegades Jérusalem’s Gaston, vicomte de Béarn, a rôle sung in the opera’s November 1847 première in Salle Le Peletier by Gilbert Duprez. Singing Gaston’s scene for Act Three, Castronovo is an expert successor to Duprez, the words of ‘L’infamie! Prenez ma vie!’ providing the momentum for stirring voc​alism. His performance of ‘Ô mes amis, mes frères d’armes’ throbs with feeling but maintains stylistic fidelity and elegance, cogently advocating for a reevaluation of Jérusalem‘s merits.

First performed in Trieste in 1848, Il corsaro shares with I due Foscari the seeming distinction of being derived from a work by Lord Byron, yet its libretto is subjected to near-universal derision. Whatever limitations Francesco Maria Piave’s adaptation of its Byronic source material imposes upon the opera’s palatability for Twenty-First-Century audiences, a strong performance of Il corsaro substantiates that Verdi’s score can overcome the scorned plot. Castronovo reserves some of his most polished vocalism for the corsair Corrado’s Act One aria ‘Tutto parea sorridere all’amor mio primiero,’ the security of his singing throughout the compass augmenting the histrionic impact of his clear diction. Each thought limned in ‘Pronti siate a seguitarmi’ is here as vital as the notes and words with which it is imparted. The cabaletta ‘Sì, de’corsari il fulmine’ serves as an electrifying finale for Noble Renegades. Singing with rabble-rousing machismo of the sort seldom heard in today’s indifferent, too-cautious performances of Verdi repertoire, Castronovo restores to this scene the swashbuckling grandeur that it needs.

The nobility of each character portrayed on this recording and of the singer bringing them to life is obvious, but Castronovo is the most radical of these renegades. There is no lack of poetry and poise when they are required, but this is not polite, gratuitously pretty singing. This is Verdi as his music was meant to be sung.

BOOK REVIEW: Ricky Ian Gordon — SEEING THROUGH: A CHRONCLE OF SEX, DRUGS, AND OPERA (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ISBN 9781250390424, 23 July 2024)

RICKY IAN GORDON (born 1956): Seeing Through: a Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera [Released on 23 July 2024, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Picador/Macmillan); ISBN 9781250390424, 480 pages; Available from Macmillan Publishers (hardcover, paperback, and e-book), Amazon (hardcover, digital, and audio), Barnes and Noble (hardcover, paperback, and e-book), and major media retailers]

Readers of autobiographical works by eminent artists sometimes meet therein either the artistry or the humans whose experiences molded it but must look elsewhere to find comprehensive evaluations of all aspects of the lives of creators and their creative processes. Perhaps this is truer in music than in other disciplines, owing in no small part to music being an ephemeral assimilation of instincts and inspirations that continually evolves. Perhaps, too, there is a predisposition amongst musical innovators to celebrate and perpetuate their own ingenuity by fashioning personal mythologies as Hector Berlioz did in his Mémoires. What musical artists’ self-penned reminiscences sometimes lack is neither fact nor fascination: rather, the resulting fusions of sincerity and sensationalism are deficient in objectivity, showing not who artists are but who they believe themselves to be. The pointed self-awareness that fills each of the 480 pages of renowned composer Ricky Ian Gordon’s memoir Seeing Through: a Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera is therefore made all the more exceptional and courageous by its piercing introspection and clear-sighted candor, the author’s self-analysis proving to be most endearing when it is least flattering.

Ricky Ian Gordon the artist hardly needs any introduction to music-loving readers who are familiar with American song, opera, and musical theater of the past quarter-century. A native Long Islander whose educational trajectory took him to Pittsburgh for studies at Carnegie Mellon University, Gordon has established himself with works like the song cycles Green Sneakers for Baritone, String Quartet, Empty Chair and Piano and Rappahannock County and the operas The Grapes of Wrath and Intimate Apparel as a peer of Douglas Moore, Ned Rorem, Carlisle Floyd, and William Bolcom. Despite his ravenous consumption and absorption of Classical traditions and the accents of uniquely American musical voices, none more consequential than that of Stephen Sondheim, Gordon’s growth as a man and an artist was most enduringly affected by his relationship with his beloved partner Jeffrey Michael Grossi (1964 – 1996), whose passing after a harrowing five-year battle against AIDS shaped the composer as profoundly as it shattered the man. Grossi’s voice is heard in all of the music written by Gordon since 1 August 1996, and his spirit smiles on every page of Seeing Through, sometimes angrily, sometimes wistfully, sometimes playfully, but always with boundless love.

Though there are many dolorous passages, as there are likely to be in any account of the life and losses endured by a sensitive man, Seeing Through is not a melancholy book; nor is it a queer book or an artistic treatise. Like the best novels of Ernest Hemingway, Seeing Through succeeds on multiple levels. For the casual reader in pursuit of entertainment, it offers an immersive narrative with sufficient doses of the sex and drugs promised by the title to quicken the pulse of thrill seekers. ‘With the help of speed,’ he recounts on page 89, ‘I was a very different actor in the [Carnegie Mellon] drama department,’ yet even these episodes of decadent adventure are tempered by abundant moments of grace like that of describing Broadway star Audra McDonald as ‘an explosion of everything good’ (p. 226). Moreover, a central theme of the book is the ambiguity of the link between uncertainty and self-cognizance and the rôles that both have played in Gordon’s life since adolescence. Recalling the prevalence of behind-closed-doors sexual encounters in the bathhouses and nightclubs frequented by his gay friends in the 1970s, Gordon cites his ambivalence concerning his inclinations as a subconscious blessing of self-preservation, writing that ‘some of this confusion may be why I am still alive’ (p. 181).

As he chronicles them, even the most painful events in Gordon’s life are viewed from a perspective of gratitude. A pervasive tone of his sagaciously-paced, beautifully-formed writing is appreciation for the people and places of significance in his journey, tinged with regret and self-recrimination. Honoring the all-encompassing love that he shares with his late partner, as powerful today as in that sorrowful August twenty-eight years ago, is an expected focus of the book, but beauty, art, and irrepressible wit are always visible through the tears that his observations of simple occu​rrences like visiting New York’s Central Park impel.

After Jeffrey died, I walked to Central Park one day to weep at the Bethesda Fountain, because Tony [Kushner] had given it to me [in the Perestroika segment of Angels in America] as my own monument, our monument. I have never been able to walk past it again without thinking about that. (pp. 370 – 371)

The doubt and fear that make Gordon’s writing about the time at which Grossi determined to forgo pharmaceuticals and combat AIDS holistically one of the book’s most wrenching parts disclose a subtle but gnawing survivor’s guilt that also arises in the context of his mother’s decline and death.

Why wasn’t I the kind of son who moved in with my mother when her death was imminent, or moved her in with me? Why, in the last few years of her life, did we put her in the place she never ever wanted to be—a nursing home? (p. 427)

In addition to the personal but universal difficulty of these situations, all of the emotional tribulations and triumphs of Seeing Through are imparted with language that is at once accomplished and accessible. This is a book that never seems to grasp for literary virtuosity: it achieves that distinction with the same effortless directness that characterizes Gordon’s music.

Too many memoirs ultimately are not what their subjects strive to be: memorable. Marooned in vast oceans of words, the basic elements that give lives their commonality and thereby their interest to others are obscured. The most effective, unforgettable memoirs are distinguished not by tales of glamor, excess, and familiar names, no matter how eloquently they are told, but by accounts of decency, empathy, and familiar emotions. On page 181 of Seeing Through, Ricky Ian Gordon shares, ‘I have never known where I fit in.’ The reader sees through the pages of this book that this remarkable artist fits in wherever hearts are open to healing.

RECORDING REVIEW: Alessandro Stradella — ESTER, LIBERATRICE DEL POPOLO EBREO (J. Gould, S. Tedla, J. Lemos, G. Lombardi, S. Vitale, A. Piroli, M. D. Albertini; Navona Records NV6629)

ALESSANDRO STRADELLA (circa 1643 – 1682): Ester, liberatrice del popolo ebreo — Jessica Gould (Ester), Sonia Tedla (Speranza celeste), José Lemos (Mardocheo), Gabriele Lombardi (Aman), Salvo Vitale (Assuero), Anna Piroli (Una ebrea), Maria Dalia Albertini (Un’ ebrea, Testo – prima parte), Guglielmo Buonsanti (Testo – seconda parte); Camerata Grimani; Jory Vinikour, harpsichord, organ, and conductor [Recorded in Sala della Carità, Padova, Italy, in February 2023; Navona Records NV6629; 2 CDs, 78:22; Available from Salon Sanctuary Concerts (physical CD), Amazon (USA), Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and major music retailers and streaming services]

Though longer than a century passed between his death in 1682 and the births of Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Verdi, the alleged events of the final weeks of Alessandro Stradella’s life are tragically similar to the fatal clash of honor and debauchery in the play Le roi s’amuse and the opera that it inspired, Rigoletto. Believed to have seduced a lady of the house of Lomellini, a family influential enough to have produced Doges of Genova and commissioned a portrait by the Flemish master Antoon van Dyck, Stradella was rumored to have been murdered in retribution on orders from the kinsmen of the wronged woman. By the Nineteenth Century, Stradella’s work as a composer was largely overshadowed by salacious tales of his death, and his musical legacy was further obscured by the fleeting popularity of Friedrich von Flotow’s 1844 opera based upon a sanitized account of his amorous escapades. Stradella may never have expected his music to be remembered beyond his lifetime, but he would surely be disappointed by being known in the Twenty-First Century as much as a character in another composer’s work as the creator of his own.

Recorded in February 2023 in celebration of the 350^th anniversary of the piece’s 1673 première, soprano Jessica Gould’s thoughtgully-prepared performance of Stradella’s oratorio Ester, liberatrice del popolo ebreo on Navona Records is the culmination of a serpentine journey from a random encounter with a neglected score to the gathering of a team of period-practice specialists in a suitable venue in Stradella’s native Italy. Just as Stradella may never have anticipated that Ester would spring back to life after three-and-a-half centuries, it could not have been foreseen during the sessions that produced this recording that avalanches of misogyny and anti-Semitism in subsequent months would lend heightened relevance to the biblical account of a Jewish woman called Hadassah becoming queen of the Persian empire and battling for the rights of the Hebrew people. Even in its Seventeenth-Century context, divorced from today’s calamities, Lelio Orsini’s libretto recounts Esther’s saga with tremendous emotional power. Despite the absence of music that is missing from the surviving manuscript, Stradella’s setting of the text achieves a high level of dramatic continuity, its heroine characterized with strikingly modern psychological depth.

Active during the final decades of the careers of Francesco Cavalli and Antonio Cesti, whose works he espoused, Stradella contributed significantly to the advancement of Italian music from the late-Renaissance style of Claudio Monteverdi to the High Baroque idioms of Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldara. The latter’s 1699 oratorio Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo—a bridge between Stradella’s work and Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans and Hãndel’s Esther, first performed in 1718—owes much to the form typified by Ester. Building upon the text-driven structure employed by composers of Monteverdi’s era, Stradella synthesized emotionally-charged recitative with both lyrical and bravura ariosi to give Ester a taut, fast-moving musical flow.

Extensive experience at the harpsichord and on the podium for performances of works like Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda is discernible in Jory Vinikour’s work in this traversal of Ester, both in his intuitive playing of harpsichord and organ continuo and in his spirited, inspiriting conducting of the performance. Owing to his innate affinity for pacing Stradella’s music with complementary interpretive freedom and rhythmic firmness, the recording constitutes a true performance of the oratorio rather than a disarticulated, studio-bound recital of the score’s musical numbers. Passages of gravitas are treated as the climaxes that they were undoubtedly meant to be, but every choice of tempo and dynamics is guided by historical authenticity. The greatest marvel of Vinikour’s leadership is the manner in which adherence to Seventeenth-Century practice is regarded as a catalyst, not a constraint. Under his stewardship, principals, chorus, and orchestra perform their parts with perceptible unity of purpose, Vinikour’s supportive direction encouraging his fellow artists not just to study but to feel Esther’s courage and Ester’s music.

Unwaveringly attentive to the nuances of Vinikour’s guidance, the playing of Camerata Grimani contributes markedly to the stylistic legitimacy of this traversal of Ester. Violinists Lorenzo Gugole and Diego Castelli and gambist Francesco Tomei (alternating between viola da gamba and violone in response to transitions in the music’s moods and sonic textures) execute their parts with dexterity of both technique and emotional engagement, their phrasing often elucidating the vividness of Stradella’s use of text. Lutenist Andrea Damiani is a skilled and intelligent partner for Vinikour in the continuo, employing the lute as a participant in the oratorio’s fateful exchanges. Harpist Marina Bonetti’s instrument and talents are similarly adapted to the subtleties of Stradella’s storytelling with inviolable musicality. Faithful to historical models and the composer’s scoring, the ensemble’s smallness facilitates intimacy, but Vinikour and the musicians ensure that neither power nor excitement is missing in passages of dramatic intensity.

Choral writing has lesser prominence and contrapuntal complexity in Ester than in Händel’s Esther, but Stradella’s music for chorus is sung in this performance with assurance and communicative clarity by soprano Anna Piroli, mezzo-sopranos Maria Dalia Albertini and Elena Biscuola, tenor Riccardo Pisani, and bass Gugluelmo Buonsanti. Many choral interjections in Ester are similar in structure to the motets that are prevalent in Monteverdi's operas and sacred works and are articulated here with near-perfect ensemble and verbal immediacy. In choruses and their respective scenes as Hebrew women, Piroli and Albertini sing alluringly, the latter joined by Buonsanti as scriptural narrators who animate text with deftly-managed vocal colorations. Despite its relative sparsity, Stradella’s music for chorus heightens his portrayal of Esther as a liberator of a populace whose deliverance is glorified with confident, compelling singing.

The care taken in assembling the cast for this recording is evident in the presence of countertenor José Lemos in the rôle of Mardocheo, Esther’s cousin and guardian Mordecai, an influential scion of the tribe of Benjamin who is reputed to have served in the Sanhedrin. Though the character appears only in the first of the oratorio’s two parts, Lemos crafts a portrayal rich with detail and substance, his sultry but rousingly masculine timbre imbuing Mardocheo’s utterances with urgency. Each word of recitative is sung with attention to its meaning, a trait that also permeates the singing of Lemos’s Ester colleagues. In this performance, the aria ‘Vanne ai piè del tuo Re’ rises from the preceding recitative with conversational naturalness despite being majestically voiced. The strength and beauty of Lemos’s lower register astonish in ‘Fia tuo vanto che si pieghi,’ the singer’s artistry wholly surrendered to the character’s sentiments.

Stradella’s incarnation of the Persian king Assuero—the historical Ahasuerus, whose union with Esther engendered the resolution of the conflict between Mordecai and Haman that imperiled the Jewish people—is enlivened by the galvanizing vocalism of bass Salvo Vitale. Like Mardocheo, Assuero is heard in only one of the oratorio’s parts, and, like Lemos, Vitale devotes palpable musical and dramatic focus to each line of his rôle. From the opening phrase of ‘Chiedi pur ciò che tu sai,’ Assuero’s constitution emerges from the singer’s keen pointing of words. Noble sensitivity is discernible in Vitale’s voicing of ‘Sgombra il duol dal tuo pensiero’, and his technical fluency projects an aura of regal authority in ‘Hor palesa a me, Regina.’ Musical portraiture reveals circumspection and inherent virtue in ‘Non dimorate più fulmini d’alto ciel,’ the inner contrasts of which are explored with grace and grit that impart the gravity of the king’s turmoil.

The bright, resonant voice of soprano Sonia Tedla appropriately illuminates Stradella’s music for Speranza Celeste with the warming glow of faithful optimism, fleet divisions allied with tonal radiance in all registers. Speranza Celeste is thus a genuine agent of providential favor rather than an allegorical figure akin to those who populate many contemporaneous operas and oratorios. In Ester’s first part, Tedla sings ‘Non disperate, no, bandite pur dal petto’ arrestingly, the voice’s top supported effortlessly and unerringly. ‘Un cor giusto non paventa’ is sculpted with unforced eloquence, but the soprano achieves still greater heights of musical splendor in Speranza’s superb duet with Aman, singing ‘Armati pur d’orgoglio’ thrillingly. Tedla’s performance of ‘Con speranza di riposo’ in the oratorio’s second part movingly conveys the profundity of feeling evoked by the composer’s word setting, the serenity of hope promulgated by the pellucid purity of the voice.

It is upon the shoulders of Aman, the Persian king’s vizier Haman, that Stradella placed many of Ester’s most daunting challenges, fashioning a depiction that transcends stock villainy. Bringing incredible insight to his survey of Aman’s motivations, baritone Gabriele Lombardi declaims Stradella’s vocal lines with operatic grandeur that never overwhelms the music or his fellow singers. The glinting steel in the voice glistens in ‘Dall’Indico all’Etiopico chi brama vivere’ and throughout Part One, yet ‘Piangete pur, piangete, o miser alme afflitte’ is voiced with elegance befitting a man of dangerous cunning. ‘Impossibile non fia a valore onnipotente’ receives from Lombardi a reading of unstinting force, the voice secure throughout the range. Aman’s words combating Speranza’s in their duet, the baritone catapults ‘Con suo fiero cordoglio’ with expert musical marksmanship.

In the oratorio’s second part, the insouciance of Lombardi’s singing of ‘Serba ad altro i tuoi favori’ discloses the magnetism of Aman’s treachery, and charismatic duplicity emanates from his impeccably-vocalized traversals of ‘Apprendete da me, o mortali superbi’ and ‘Mia Regina, a voi mi volgo.’ Stradella’s compositional genius for uniting words with music that amplifies their layers of meaning is especially apparent in ‘Questi piè che lagrimoso, infelice, miserabile’ and in Lombardi’s singing of it. Antagonists are often among music’s most fascinating characters but rarely sound as menacingly bewitching as Lombardi’s Aman.

The eponymous heroine of Ester might have been a Mutter Courage-esque caricature who recites platitudes rather than persuasively advocating for her people, but both Stradella and Jessica Gould portray her as a woman of moral and ethical rectitude, a determined, indomitable seeker of truth. There is in virtually every moment of Gould’s performance an engrossing air of visionary zeal: so unyielding is her commitment to lifting Ester out of the pages of Stradella’s score that vocal finesse becomes secondary to vibrant character development. In Part One, Gould’s Ester is a study in righteousness and self-reliance, ‘Su, dunque, a ferire’ limning a disquieting uncertainty that undulates in the vulnerability of her singing. From ‘E perché il mio Re’ courses exasperation with patriarchal social mores. Here, too, Gould pursues expressive directness rather than safer vocal poise.

As Ester metamorphoses into the consort who secures Assuero’s pardon for her Jewish brethren in the oratorio’s latter part, ‘Supplicante, è prostrata al tuo regale aspetto’ is voiced with pathos and dignity, the queen’s humility manifested in the simplicity of Gould’s approach. Integrity and gratefulness are the cornerstones of her singing of ‘S’agli occhi tuoi già mai,’ the words invested with significance that is both unmistakably personal and universal. Just as Ester conquers through graciousness, Gould triumphs through unapologetic openheartedness.

Modern scholars can only hypothesize about the extent to which Stradella may have hoped for his music to be known and performed after his death, but it is unlikely that any serious artist would hope to be remembered more for the manner of his death than for the work to which he devoted his life. Strides in the direction of renewed interest notwithstanding, Stradella’s music still hides in the shadows. Though not the work’s first recording, this performance proclaims that Ester slumbers in darkness no longer.