CD REVIEW: Otto Nicolai—MESSE in D & Sacred Choral Music (S. Schnier, A. Thomas, W. Klose, L. Singer; Carus CV 83.341)

OTTO NICOLAI (1810 – 1849): Messe in D; Die deutsche Liturgie No. 2 in E-flat; ‘Herr, wie lange willst’ (Psalm 13); Pater Noster; ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (Psalm 84); ‘Ecce enim Deus’ (Psalm 54 – fragment)—S. Schnier (soprano), A. Thomas (contralto), W. Klose (tenor), L. Singer (bass); Kammerchor CONSONO; Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen; Harald Jers [Recorded at the Philharmonie Essen, Germany, 28 – 29 April 2012; Carus CV 83.341]

To many music lovers, even those who are exceptionally well informed, the name Otto Nicolai brings to mind only an assemblage of rollicking ladies with certain Shakespearean associations and the organization of concerts dedicated to Beethoven’s Symphonies that were the de facto first performances of the fledgling Wiener Philharmoniker.  Thankfully, the enterprising people who manage the cpo label recorded an Oper Chemnitz production of Il templario, a delightfully Italianate adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe that offers enjoyable proof that Nicolai’s talents extended beyond Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor.  Like Mozart and Mendelssohn, Nicolai was a child prodigy who was destined to have a short life, and though he is far less celebrated in the 21st Century than either of his fellow Wunderkinder his gifts for composition were widely acknowledged during his lifetime.  It may be surprising to those who know Nicolai only as the composer of a popular comic opera to consider that he was offered the position of Kapellmeister to the Berliner Dom in 1844, the post having been vacated by Mendelssohn’s return to Leipzig.  Unfortunately, few accounts of Nicolai’s personality and spirituality survive, so it cannot be ascertained with any degree of legitimacy whether opportunity, religious fervor, or fortuitous combinations of those factors prompted the young composer to supplement his operatic endeavors with expertly-crafted liturgical music.  Nicolai’s large-scale Messe in D was recorded three decades ago by Norddeutscher Rundfunk: a fine effort, the Koch Schwann CD release of the performance is now out of print.  The time was therefore right for a new recording of the Messe, and it is rewarding to make the acquaintance of the fascinating smaller-scaled choral pieces that fill out Nicolai’s body of liturgical work.  On the whole, this recording by Carus-Verlag is perhaps the most compelling account of Nicolai’s extra-operatic achievements yet recorded.

The Psalm settings recorded here reflect the influence of Mendelssohn, Nicolai allying melodic inspiration with an elegant shaping of the Psalmist’s texts that harkens back to Baroque models, many of which were being rediscovered during Nicolai’s lifetime.  Following the example of Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 55, containing the famously exultant ‘O for the wings of a dove,’ Nicolai’s settings of Psalms 13, 84, and—in fragmentary form—54 are lovely, mostly strophic pieces that enable clear delivery of the texts.  Psalm 13—‘Herr, wie lange willst’ or ‘How long wilt thou forget me, o Lord?’—is a simple but intensely beautiful piece for soloists, choir, and piano, and it receives on this recording a performance that conveys its emotional directness.  In addition to kinship with similar music by Mendelssohn, there are echoes in Nicolai’s setting of Psalm 13 of the Beethoven of the Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II (WoO 87), Mass in C (Opus 86), and Christus am Ölberge (Opus 85) and even the Händel of the Chandos and Coronation Anthems.  The recorded fragment of Nicolai’s setting of Psalm 54, ‘Ecce enim Deus adiuvat me’ (‘Behold, God is mine helper’), reveals an exquisite homage to Renaissance polyphony, the part writing recalling the music of Allegri (similar lines, beginning with ‘Ecce enim',’ occur in Psalm 51, set in Allegri’s famed ‘Miserere mei’) and Gabrieli.  The highly chromatic harmonic patterns frequently employ the dominant seventh on the cadence and subsequent resolution to the tonic familiar from many masterworks of Renaissance choral music, and—in the spirit of the [likely inauthentic] ascents to top C in Allegri’s ‘Miserere mei’—the descant takes the sopranos to the very tops of their ranges.  Psalm 84—‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ or ‘How amiable are Thy tabernacles, o Lord of Hosts!’—is scored for soloists, choir, trumpet, trombone, and organ.  Musically, this piece is a fascinating hybrid: the ensemble passages for the soloists might come from Mendelssohn’s Elias or Paulus, but the music for choir and instruments evokes the unique worlds of Bach’s Passions and the music of Praetorius.  The five brief movements of the second Deutsche Liturgie, their combined duration only extending to slightly more than five minutes, both draw on Renaissance models and subtly nod in their understated sincerity towards Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem.  Nicolai’s setting of the ‘Pater noster’ is also rooted in the polyphonic music of the Italian Renaissance, the harmonies reminiscent of the motets of Palestrina.  It is a testament to the excellent preparation and consummate musicality of the Kammerchor CONSONO singers that they so successfully sing in all of the styles adapted by Nicolai in these pieces, the blend of voices always carefully but unobtrusively managed.  The sorely-tested sopranos are particularly impressive, taking their exposed top lines with the bright sound of boy sopranos but the breath control and certain intonation of adult singers.

Conducted by Harald Jers, an esteemed choral scholar and prominent participant in the musical life of Essen, the players of the Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen accompany the soloists and choir with complete dedication.  Nicolai’s orchestrations in the Messe are mostly typical of the composer’s work, founded upon an expansive understanding of the principles of Viennese Classicism.  Strings, woodwinds, and brass instruments dominate, with many small points of orchestration and harmonic development that bring the Masses of Mozart to mind.  String figurations that alternate with brass passages, especially in the minor-key development, shape the ‘Kyrie’ with accents of Mozart’s Requiem.  Deployment of horns and timpani give the ‘Gloria’ a martial air, and the hushed choral statements of ‘In terra pax’ combine with the soloists’ lines to suggest uneasiness that is ultimately quieted by a return of the primary theme.  The ‘Credo’ is supported by enthusiastic music for the strings in the vein of similar passages in the Masses of Schubert.  The ‘Sanctus,’ also somewhat martial in tone, quickly gives way to a brief but effective fugue on ‘Osanna in excelsis.’  The particularly lovely ‘Benedictus’ begins with effective writing for horns, to which the plaintive sounds of a solo violin—reminiscent of the corresponding section in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis—are added before strings, brass, and timpani launch a restatement of the ‘Osanna in excelsis’ fugue.  The ‘Agnus Dei’ begins with the most original music in the Messe, an attractive melody for the clarinet over a dark-hued string accompaniment that conjures the atmosphere of the first bars of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion.  Unlike many settings, Nicolai’s music for the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ is muted rather than celebratory, sounding as a result like a genuine and very heartfelt prayer for peace.

The quartet of soloists includes soprano Sarah Schnier, contralto Alexandra Thomas, tenor Wolfgang Klose, and bass Lucas Singer.  Ms. Schnier possesses a light but obviously well-schooled voice, her security in the high tessitura of her music little troubled by a slight edginess to the sound.  Ms. Thomas also possesses a voice of quality, which shimmers with lovely colorations in her lower register.  Mr. Klose’s singing discloses a slender tenor voice with a pretty timbre, the kind of sound that seems tailor-made for singing the Evangelists in Bach’s Passions.  Mr. Singer, seemingly more baritone than bass, displays expert musicality, his singing in the ‘Agnus dei’ especially refined and lovingly-phrased.  All four singers are winningly attentive in ensemble passages, their voices combining very naturally.

In many ways, this is a surprising and enlightening disc.  Though his Messe in D is not revealed to be a masterpiece of startling individuality, it is a tuneful, expressive piece that adds considerably to an understanding of its composer.  All of the pieces on this recording suggest that Nicolai was a sensitive and sophisticated composer whose knowledge of liturgical music was comprehensive.  Obviously influenced by his contemporaries and his most gifted musical ancestors from both north and south of the Alps, Nicolai absorbed the finest qualities of many styles, ultimately synthesizing an approach to choral writing that produced music of distinguished eloquence.  All of the Psalm settings, the ‘Pater noster,’ and the Deutsche Liturgie are pensive, musically evocative miniatures, and the Messe in D is a work that, like Franz von Suppé’s Requiem, is overshadowed by its composer’s operatic success but emphatically deserves to be heard.  Above all, this disc inspires a quixotic wish that all recordings of little-known music could be so convincing.

CD REVIEW: Gaetano Donizetti—CATERINA CORNARO (C. Giannattasio, C. Lee, T. Cook, V. Mlinde, L. Félix; Opera Rara ORC48)

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Caterina Cornaro—C. Giannattasio (Caterina Cornaro), C. Lee (Gerardo), T. Cook (Lusignano), G. Broadbent (Andrea Cornaro), V. Mlinde (Mocenigo), L. Félix (Strozzi, a Knight of the King), S. Bevan (Matilde); BBC Singers; BBC Symphony Orchestra; David Parry [Recorded in BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, November – December 2011; Opera Rara ORC48]

First performed under the supervision of Saverio Mercadante in Naples in January 1844, Caterina Cornaro was composed in 1842 and the summer of 1843, as the illness that would ultimately end Gaetano Donizetti’s life entered its final phase.  Whereas his Dom Sébastien had opened to near-universal acclaim in Paris two months earlier, Caterina Cornaro was hissed by the first-night audience, its melodramatic account of sensationalized events in the life of an historical queen of Cyprus having failed to engage the Neapolitan sensibilities that previously had embraced Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux.  Donizetti himself, absent from rehearsals for the first production due to illness and other commitments, famously predicted the misfortune of Caterina Cornaro’s lack-luster reception, his misgivings about the cast and musical preparation inspiring a complete absence of confidence in the assembled participants’ ability to realize his intentions.  Like any score by the mature Donizetti, Caterina Cornaro contains much fine music, and it should not be overlooked that the score was composed, at least in part, between Linda di Chamounix and Don Pasquale, two of the composer’s most successful and melodically rich operas.  Since its founding in the early 1970s, no institution has been more instrumental in the bel canto revival than Opera Rara, upon whose founders and artists opera lovers have relied for the past forty years for impeccably-researched and fastidiously-prepared performances and recordings of forgotten or underappreciated operas by the best composers of bel canto.  This recording of Caterina Cornaro—the first studio recording of the opera—enters a sparse discography containing only unauthorized releases of recordings of live performances featuring Montserrat Caballé and Leyla Gencer and a commercial recording of a 1974 RAI broadcast with the under-recorded Margherita Rinaldi.  It is especially gratifying to hear the opera performed with the zeal for which Opera Rara recordings are celebrated, and both the recorded sound—engineered by Simon Hancock and Chris Rouse and edited by Michael Haas and Simon Hancock—and Jeremy Commons’s extensive introductory notes adhere to the standards of excellence consumers have come to expect from Opera Rara.

Composed over an uncharacteristically long period that contained bouts of work in 1842, when Donizetti hoped that the opera would follow the success of Linda di Chamounix at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, and in 1843, Caterina Cornaro’s complicated gestation was essentially a voyage without a destination.  Donizetti ultimately fulfilled his Viennese commission with Maria di Rohan, the subject of Caterina Cornaro having already received an outing in Vienna in a setting by another composer, and placed Caterina in the presumably capable custody of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.  The extent to which Donizetti himself orchestrated the opera is uncertain, some of this work perhaps left to Mercadante, and it is known that particularly harsh actions by the Neapolitan censors necessitated revisions before the first night that almost certainly weakened Donizetti’s dramatic concept.  The final results are nonetheless unquestionably Donizettian and of excellent quality.  The BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra respond to the score with singing and playing of wondrous vitality.  The talented choristers are little bothered by the demands of Donizetti’s music, which takes them to the extremes of their ranges, and they sing with gusto whether portraying noblemen, ladies in waiting, commoners, or ‘cut-throat ruffians.’  The instrumentalists of the BBC Symphony offer playing both en masse and in solo passages that shames the efforts of many opera house pit bands, rising to the occasions of Donizetti’s musical climaxes with legitimately Italianate slancio.  Under the baton of David Parry, the performance plays out with unforced theatricality.  As in so many of Opera Rara’s productions, Maestro Parry conducts with ideal command of the Donizetti idiom, his instinctive understanding of the way in which the composer employs rhythmic patterns as the skeleton of his corpus musicæ shaping his approach to conducting Caterina Cornaro.  Tempi are carefully selected to ensure both maximum rhythmic precision and greatest possible comfort for the singers, and the fact that the tinta of the recording enables the listener to believe that the performance was given in an Italian opera house rather than a recording studio in Paddington is testimony to the idiomatic familiarity Maestro Parry has achieved in bel canto repertory and to his success in imparting this enthusiasm to the musicians and singers at hand.

It is doubtful that anyone has ever condemned a Lucia di Lammermoor because of a poor Alisa or Normanno, but it is remarkable to note how greatly fine singing of comprimario rôles can influence the overall impression made by a performance.  Bel canto scores abound with confidantes, courtiers, and the like, and Opera Rara recordings have consistently featured promising young singers in secondary rôles.  This Caterina Cornaro continues that trend, with the part of Caterina’s confidante Matilde sung with lovely tone and obvious concern for her mistress by British soprano Sophie Bevan.  Gratefully heard as both Strozzi, the leader of a band of mercenaries, and the Knight of the King, tenor Loïc Félix sings delightfully, his light voice flowing like sunshine through his music.  South African bass-baritone Vuyani Mlinde exudes menace as Mocenigo, the erstwhile villain in an opera with characters whose loyalties are moving targets.  Mr. Mlinde’s dark, slightly coarse tone rings out impressively, especially in declamatory passages: he is an artist to watch.  Bass Graeme Broadbent, a veteran of several Opera Rara productions, bracingly applies his resonant voice to Donizetti’s limited opportunities for Andrea, Caterina’s father.

Lusignano, the embattled King of Cyprus, is sung by American baritone Troy Cook.  Lusignano is one of those lovably quintessential operatic characters who is cruel enough to have married Caterina against her will but has the good manners to conveniently and nobly die when she is reunited with the man she truly loves.  Mr. Cook possesses a strong, manly voice that he unleashes with wonderful relish in this performance, but he also displays an ability to maintain a tremendously effective bel canto line in Lusignano’s beautiful death scene in the second version of the Act Two finale, ‘Piangi, sì, piangi, o misera.’  [As in previous recordings, Opera Rara’s performance provides both versions of the opera’s final scene.]  This is perhaps Lusignano’s only moment of genuine tenderness, and Mr. Cook takes full advantage of it, giving the hardened warrior an unexpectedly soft heart.  His somewhat abrupt phrasing suggests that Mr. Cook is happiest in later repertory, but it is good to hear a baritone with such a fine, well-constructed voice who does not tip-toe through bel canto music.

The rôle of Gerardo is surprisingly small for that of a lover and, more significantly, a tenor in a bel canto opera.  Nevertheless, he contributes vitally to three important duets, and Act Two is launched by an aria and cabaletta that are the Donizettian equivalents of Manrico’s ‘Ah sì, ben mio coll’essere’ and ‘Di quella pira’ in Verdi’s Il trovatore.  South African tenor Colin Lee, a frequent but still under-appreciated presence in the ranks of the world’s finest bel canto singers, provides a masterclass in the art of bel canto singing with every note that he sings in this recording.  Mr. Lee’s voice is not of grandiose proportions, and his singing of a rôle originated by the tenor who first sang the title rôle in Verdi’s Stiffelio and Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera might be viewed as a cause for concern.  Like Carlo Bergonzi, however, Mr. Lee proves that, among the most talented and well-trained singers, the amplitude of a voice is not as important as the skill with which it is produced and projected.  The complete lack of strain with which Mr. Lee ascends into his upper register is exceptional, and he achieves a clutch of top notes in this performance that would be the envy of the best tenors in the world, past and present.  Indeed, his excursion above top C in the coda of the aforementioned cabaletta in Act Two, ‘Morte, morte! Fur troppi gl’insulti,’ has to be heard to be believed.  More impressive still is the way in which Mr. Lee manages to be very moving in a rôle that, despite certain felicities, is neither in music nor in drama a particular credit to its composer.  The depth of feeling that Mr. Lee evokes in Gerardo’s interactions with Caterina is touching, and the melting lyricism of his singing of the extended melodic lines Gerardo is given in duets utterly overwhelms any qualms about their musical distinction.  This performance inspires a longing to hear Mr. Lee in rôles that give him opportunities to fully explore the obviously rich trove of nuances in his artistry and engage his compact, exquisitely-supported voice on the highest possible level.  It is remarkable that, as Gerardo, Mr. Lee does so much with so little.  This is, in short, the finest bel canto tenor singing committed to disc in many years.

Donizetti unsparingly expressed his dismay about Fanny Goldberg, the singer to whom the title rôle was entrusted in the première of Caterina Cornaro, writing to his brother-in-law that he composed the part for a soprano but was given a mezzo-soprano by the Teatro San Carlo.  It would be enlightening to have Donizetti’s thoughts on Carmen Giannattasio, the Italian soprano who sings Caterina in this performance.  What is evident from her first note is that Ms. Giannattasio’s voice is infused with genuine Italian morbidezza, a quality that can be described but not taught: it is the sort of trait that is either in a voice or is not.  Ms. Giannattasio is certainly a soprano rather than a mezzo-soprano, but the voice is slightly ungainly throughout her range: the highest notes are not graceful but generally have considerable impact.  It is likely that the close recording of studio microphones accentuates a slight beat in the voice that would be less or not at all evident in the more expansive sonic space of an opera house.  As recorded, Ms. Giannattasio’s voice is powerful and handsome but not beautiful.  She is an artful singer, however, and in an instance in which a singer with native Italian diction is cast as a bel canto heroine the battle for respectable phrasing is half-won before it is begun.  Ms. Giannattasio’s Caterina is a tough lady, as history suggests the real Caterina was as well, the character’s determination meaningfully depicted in an almost ferocious delivery of the words in recitatives.  There is an audible shift in Ms. Giannattasio’s approach from detachment with Lusignano to passion with Gerardo, and Caterina’s horror at Mocenigo’s unfettered villainy is palpable.  Ms. Giannattasio is at her best in the duets with Mr. Lee’s Gerardo, in which the cooperation and vocal shading between the two singers is incendiary.  Her singing of Caterina’s cavatina in the Prologue is shapely but slightly lacking in ardor.  Surprisingly, this is Caterina’s only concerted solo number in the opera, and this is perhaps to Ms. Giannattasio’s benefit: she is at her best when interactions with her colleagues in ensembles inspire her to dramatically taut singing.  When the emotional temperature of her singing rises, so does the level of her musicality.  Caterina is a more static character than many of Donizetti’s heroines, but Ms. Giannattasio gives the part a distinct dramatic profile.  Hers is not a flawless performance, but it is an effective, satisfying account of a very challenging rôle.

Caterina Cornaro is the sort of opera that is not the equal of its composer’s best work but is nonetheless a far better score than its obscurity might suggest.  The music of Caterina Cornaro does not represent Donizetti at his most inspired, and even the nature of the plot and the composer’s setting of it reflect the uncertainty that troubled its creation.  Opera Rara recordings have an uncanny tendency to make lesser works sound like smashing artistic triumphs, however, and this recording is no exception.  This performance is a gallant reintroduction to Caterina Cornaro and—perhaps most rewardingly—an opportunity to hear stupendous singing from one of opera’s greatest tenor voices.

For the first three months of its international release, this recording of Caterina Cornaro will be available exclusively for order directly from Opera Rara.  Please support the dedicated people of Opera Rara and the fantastic work that they do by clicking here to visit the Opera Rara website to purchase Caterina Cornaro on CD or in digital download format.

DVD REVIEW: Claudio Monteverdi—L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA (S. Yoncheva, M. E. Cencic, A. Hallenberg, T. Mead, P. Whelan; Virgin Classics 9289919)

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567 – 1643): L’Incoronazione di Poppea—S. Yoncheva (Poppea), M. E. Cencic (Nerone), A. Hallenberg (Ottavia), T. Mead (Ottone), P. Whelan (Seneca), A. Brahim-Djelloul (Drusilla), R. Ben Abdeslam (Nutrice, un famigliare di Seneca), E. Gonzalez Toro (Arnalta), A. Wall (Fortuna, Venere, Pallade), K. Gadelia (Virtù, Valletto), Camille Poul (Amore, Damigella), A. Lefèvre (Mercurio, Console), P. Schramm (un famigliare di Seneca, Littore), M. Vidal (Soldato, un famigliare di Seneca, Lucano), N. Mulroy (Soldato, Liberto capitano, Tribuno); Le Concert d’Astrée; Emmanuelle Haïm [Recorded in March 2012 during performances at the Opéra de Lille; Virgin Classics 9289919; NSTC, Region Code 0]

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.  Upon its rediscovery near the end of the 19th Century, Monteverdi’s score fell victim to ‘improvements’ by many hands, the efforts of which were mostly inspired by recognition of the quality of the score to endeavor to span the chasm separating modern musical values from the performance practices of the mid-17th Century.  Esteemed composers Vincent d’Indy, Ernst Krenek, Carl Orff, and Gian Francesco Malipiero prepared editions of the opera, and Sir Michael Tippett presided over a scholarly effort at editing the score at Morley College.  It was the 1962 production prepared by Raymond Leppard for the Glyndebourne Festival that reintroduced L’Incoronazione di Poppea to 20th-Century music lovers, its accomplished cast—including Richard Lewis, Magda László, Frances Bible, Walter Alberti, Carlo Cava, Lydia Marimpieri, Oralia Dominguez, John Shirley-Quirk, and Hugues Cuénod—recorded for posterity by EMI.  Leppard’s edition of the score arranged Monteverdi’s delicate instrumentation, ever subject to debate owing to lingering uncertainty about the precise complement of instruments for which Monteverdi’s score was written, for a large modern symphony orchestra; at Glyndebourne and on EMI’s recording the Royal Philharmonic under the baton of Sir John Pritchard.  Like most of its few contemporaries, the Glyndebourne production also transposed several important rôles for singers whose genders matched those of their characters rather than the vocal ranges indicated in Monteverdi’s score.  Nerone, likely first sung by a soprano castrato, thus became a tenor, and the alto rôle of Ottone was reassigned to a baritone.  Though musically far removed from any notion of authenticity, the Glyndebourne recording offered several exceptional performances that revealed the great beauty, variety, and dramatic vitality of Monteverdi’s music: the tonal allure and sensuality of Magda László’s Poppea, the dignity of Carlo Cava’s Seneca (in what may be the finest recording of his career), the histrionic power of Frances Bible’s Ottavia, and the standard-setting Lucano of Hugues Cuénod all contributed to a considerably abridged recording that now sounds like a bloated fossil from an operatic Stone Age but remains an enjoyable example of legitimate efforts to marry good voices with great music.  It was not until Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s pioneering 1974 recording that a credible attempt was made at restoring L’Incoronazione di Poppea to something resembling what Monteverdi’s audiences might have heard in Venice in 1643 or in Naples in 1651, during what is believed to have been the only revival of the opera until the early 20th Century.  Staged productions of the opera—notably the 1963 performances at the Wiener Staatsoper conducted by Herbert von Karajan, benefiting from the radiant Poppea of Sena Jurinac—were slow to follow Harnoncourt’s example until the historically-informed performance practice movement was firmly established throughout Europe.  After the publication of American conductor Alan Curtis’s edition of the score, which sought to preserve fidelity to the surviving Venice and Naples manuscripts to the greatest extent possible, productions have increasingly utilized versions of the opera that honor musicological concepts of period-appropriate performance values in terms of instrumentation and vocal styles.  If some early efforts at presenting L’Incoronazione di Poppea in an historically-sensitive manner resulted in fragile musical qualities that seemed effective only in the settings of small Baroque theatres, this production by Jean-François Sivadier—taped by Virgin Classics during performances at the Opéra de Lille in March 2012—proves that Monteverdi’s opera, even when performed on period instruments, is the equal of the greatest masterpieces in the operatic repertory and is capable of being produced effectively in any theatre in the world.

Mr. Sivadier’s production plants L’Incoronazione di Poppea firmly in a world of decadence, aestheticism, casual morals, and recreational sex used as a weapon in political turf wars.  Superbly enhanced by scenic designs by Alexandre de Dardel, lighting by Philippe Berthomé, and gorgeous costumes by Virginie Gervaise (not to be confused with French adult film star Virginie Gervais, whose presence would be strangely appropriate in this deliciously sexy production), Mr. Sivadier refines his extensive experience in French lyric theatre and opera—including a psychologically thrilling production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck—into an organized but enthrallingly ambiguous account of Monteverdi’s score.  Perhaps the most intriguing dramatic aspect of the opera is the composer’s portrait of his title character: one of the most duplicitous figures in Roman history, as ruthless in pursuit of her ambitions as any Emperor or Senator, Poppea is shaped by Monteverdi with music of almost ethereal beauty.  No other operatic heroine of such cruelty conducts her conspiracies more attractively.  The nastiest sentiments in Giovanni Francesco Busenello’s libretto are set by the composer to the most extraordinarily captivating music.  Mr. Sivadier’s production explores this dichotomy entrancingly, portraying Poppea as a sociopathic manipulator who calculatingly exploits every tic of Nerone’s neuroses.  Considering the opera merely as a series of emotional exchanges removed from their specific historical context, L’Incoronazione di Poppea is—like the plays of Shakespeare—surprisingly modern.  Paranoia, cheating spouses, rampant narcissism, and obsession are all as central to Monteverdi’s opera as to any 21st-Century novel or film.  Mr. Sivadier explores all of these elements in his production without in any way distorting Monteverdi’s finely-crafted drama, sharpening the opera’s edge while avoiding damaging its 17th-Century patina.  There are manic moments in the production, but it cannot be denied that L’Incoronazione di Poppea is not populated by completely sane people.  Mr. Sivadier’s gifts for creating edge-of-the-seat, meaningful theatrical experiences are validated in this production, in which there are strokes of genius.

As too many performances in the past half-century have proved, even the most innovative production falls flat when musical values do not keep pace with the dramatic ventures.  Having gone all in with Mr. Sivadier’s production, Opéra de Lille matched the magnificent dramatic qualities with the trend-setting musical values of Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée.  An acknowledged mistress of Early Music and Baroque opera, Maestra Haïm brings dynamic instincts for thoughtful shaping of Monteverdi’s music to this production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea, her fidelity to presumed notions of authentic instrumentation never standing in the way of adroit exploration of the textures of sound possible with period instruments.  None of the players in Le Concert d’Astrée displays anything less than absolute virtuosity, and the musical quality of the recorded production is nothing short of incredible.  Thankfully, Virgin Classics’s engineers, guided by Philippe Béziat, have avoided problems of balance that can imperil the distinctive sounds of period instruments, placing the performance within a recorded acoustic that suggests a natural theatrical space but also fosters an exemplary blend between stage and pit.  L’Incoronazione di Poppea is a long night at the theatre, but Maestra Haïm keeps the performance moving without rushing or adopting tempi that are quick solely for the sake of brevity.  Joining with Mr. Sivadier and the production team, Maestra Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée lay a foundation upon which a talented cast can build a memorable L’Incoronazione di Poppea.

With singers as gifted as musicians and actors as Nicholas Mulroy, Mathias Vidal, Patrick Schramm, Aimery Lefèvre, Camille Poul, Khatouna Gadelia, and Anna Wall in secondary rôles, this production immediately offers a richness of casting that is virtually impossible in a production of any Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, or Puccini opera today.  An artist of proven excellence, Mr. Mulroy brings his engagingly plangent tenor voice to all of the parts that he sings in this performance.  His unerring dramatic instincts and superb musicality are matched by the fantastic tenor Mathias Vidal, whose bravura Lucano is a worthy successor to the legacy of Hugues Cuénod, and promising young bass Patrick Schramm.  Baritone Aimery Lefèvre joins rambunctiously into the spirit of the production, his singing as Mercurio especially animated.  Soprano Camille Poul sings attractively as Amore and the Damigella.  The exotic young soprano Khatouna Gadelia makes the most of every line she sings as la Virtù and the Valletto.  Fortuna, Venere, and Pallade benefit from the lovely voice and lively stage presence of mezzo-soprano Anna Wall.

Moroccan countertenor Rachid Ben Abdeslam, whose Metropolitan Opera début as Nireno in the Company’s first presentation of the celebrated David McVicar production of Händel’s Giulio Cesare garnered praise from both audiences and critics, is in this production of L’Incoronazione di Poppea a commanding presence as the Nutrice, the elderly nursemaid of the rightful Empress Octavia.  The voice is a vibrant instrument, and Mr. Ben Abdeslam brings unexpected depths of feeling to the Nutrice’s words of comfort to the disenfranchised Ottavia.  Equally impressive as one of the followers of Seneca, he is a consistently gripping actor and energetic singer in this performance.  Another singer of North African extraction contributes beguilingly to the production: Algeria-born soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloul offers an intriguingly wide array of emotions in her performance as Drusilla, her trials endured with dignity and a sense of dedication to making the most of her destiny.  A very attractive young woman with an endearingly expressive command of stage motion, Ms. Brahim-Djelloul bears Drusilla’s betrayal with integrity, the voice poised and freely-produced even in moments of greatest emotional stress.

The Swiss-born son of Chilean parents, tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro is an accomplished performer of the unique haute-contre rôles in Baroque opera.  Possessing a technique that enables him to sing even the most demanding music without worry, Mr. Gonzalez Toro has carefully honed his skills as an actor.  The humor that he brings to his performance as Arnalta, Poppea’s nurse, is broad but understated: without conveying condescension to the spirit of his travesti rôle, Mr. Gonzalez Toro reveals the innate absurdity of having an older woman sung by a male singer.  This respects Monteverdi’s handling of this convention of his time, of course, and Mr. Gonzalez Toro is a pleasingly shy presence as the wilting nurse.  Surprisingly, Arnalta was blessed by her composer with one of Monteverdi’s most enchantingly comely melodic inspirations, ‘Oblivion soave,’ the so-called lullaby sung to the uneasy Poppea.  The passage is no easy sing for a tenor, the artist’s command of the tessitura notwithstanding, but Mr. Gonzalez Toro sings it winningly.

It is easy to understand the mindsets of editors of L’Incoronazione di Poppea who transposed the rôle of Ottone from Monteverdi’s original contralto register to baritone range.  In addition to making the opera more palatable for modern audiences by having characters sing with voices that adhere to conventions of how they should sound, with male characters having men’s voices, making Ottone—and Nerone, for that matter—a rôle for an ‘ordinary’ male voice mitigates a preponderance of high voices in the opera.  There can be little doubt that Monteverdi created a sound world in which Seneca was the only deep-voiced principal character with very deliberate intentions, however, and musicians who approached L’Incoronazione di Poppea in the early years of its renaissance did not have today’s crop of good countertenors at their disposal.  Few performances of the opera have enjoyed an Ottone as fine as British countertenor Tim Mead, whose centered, focused voice aligns with acting that gets at the heart of the character.  Facing misfortune and rejection, Ottone’s character is not entirely unblemished: he, too, engages in artifice, all too willingly accepting Drusilla’s affection for his own benefit when he is keenly aware that his heart pines only for Poppea.  Mr. Mead reflects this duality convincingly in his performance, coloring the voice intelligently and summoning dulcet tones for Ottone’s most heartfelt utterances, not least in his first scene.  A lithe, handsome performer, Mr. Mead interacts with his colleagues fascinatingly, his Ottone generating great chemistry with Ms. Brahim-Djelloul’s Drusilla.  Mr. Mead’s voice is genuinely beautiful, and the sincerity of his performance makes Ottone an unusually looming presence in the opera.

Youth is not a quality that is typically associated with Seneca, the legendary philosopher and tutor having been in his mid-sixties at the time of his death.  New Zealand-born bass-baritone Paul Whelan is a young singer, but he wisely allows the low tessitura of Monteverdi’s music for Seneca to depict the character’s age and wisdom rather than adopting any sort of embarrassing attempts at aged frailty.  History suggests that Seneca was likely innocent of Nero’s charges of complicity in an assassination plot, but Monteverdi’s point in giving Seneca’s forced suicide such a prominent place in the drama—and in having the dazzlingly difficult coloratura duet of celebration for the drunken Nerone and Lucano follow hard on its heels—is that morality cannot survive in a world such as that inhabited by Nerone and his court.  Mr. Whelan plausibly enacts this sense of Seneca against the World, and the gravitas with which he sings Seneca’s death scene is commanding but not unduly heavy.  While other, older, darker-voiced singers have conveyed greater mystery and hoary unflappability in the rôle, Mr. Whelan’s performance—unimpeded by unnecessary posturing, creatively-phrased, and firmly-voiced—is completely successful on its own terms.

The technique of Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg is a wonder of nature, her mastery of even the most dizzying coloratura equaled by her ability to project long arcs of lustrous tone in cantilena.  In her performance of Ottavia in this production, she also proves to be a tragedienne of unimpeachable serenity.  The daughter of the Emperor Claudius, a cousin of Caligula, and a descendent of Tiberius, Claudia Octavia was the first wife of Nero and the rightful Empress regnant: unsettled by her inevitable involvement in the power struggles between Nero and his mother, Agrippina, she was an upright, moral woman.  It is not surprising that Nero quickly tired of her.  If Poppea was the Wallace Simpson of Imperial Rome, Ottavia was its Queen Mother: unbending and courageous even in the face of great adversity and danger, she won the hearts of Romans and was passionately mourned when she, too, was forced to ritualistic suicide.  Ms. Hallenberg’s singing wins the hearts of the Lille audience, the stylishness of her execution of Monteverdi’s music providing moment after moment of fire and tenderness.  The passion of her reaction to Nero’s rejection brings to mind the intensity of Maria Callas and Leyla Gencer in the scene in which Henry VIII orders the rightful Queen’s imprisonment and trial in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.  Ms. Hallenberg’s Ottavia is deflated but audibly never defeated by the machinations that deprive her of her throne, and any sense of bitterness or contempt is dispelled by her heartbreakingly beautiful performance of ‘Addio, Roma,’ the scene in which she laments her impending exile from her beloved Eternal City.  Knowing that she is capable of almost unbelievable feats of vocal virtuosity, Ms. Hallenberg touches the heart most viscerally in this performance with her moments of lyrical quietude.  Her music leaves no doubt that Ottavia engaged Monteverdi’s sympathy: Ms. Hallenberg’s performance permits no question of the importance of Ottavia as a musical ancestor of the most affecting tragic heroines in opera.

Nero has one of the most unflattering and contentious legacies in history.  Maligned by many historians, some of whom have suggested that Rome collectively rejoiced in his death, other scholars—both ancient and modern—argue that Nero has been unfairly criticized and made a scapegoat for the unsavory politics that festered in Rome during his reign.  Mostly overlooking his less attractive qualities, Monteverdi portrays Nerone as a lover whose sense of morality is secondary to his chasing of carnal pleasure.  Unbecomingly bewigged but a swaggeringly masculine, libidinous participant in the drama, countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic is the arrogant, hormonal Emperor to the life.  The boundless energy with which Mr. Cencic portrays Nerone admits no doubt that his thinking is mostly done in his trousers, but the glorious singing makes it clear that this Emperor’s richest treasures are in his throat.  Mr. Cencic’s voice is unlike those of many countertenors, his timbre deep and more conventionally operatic: completely absent are the hootiness familiar from the singing of many countertenors and the clumsy register breaks that undermine the best efforts of even very good falsettists.  There are occasional moments of concern when it seems that Mr. Cencic pushes his upper register hard, but the results are unfailingly exciting and put to vivacious dramatic use.  Like Ms. Hallenberg, Mr. Cencic is a celebrated practitioner of bravura singing, and his delivery of the coloratura in Nerone’s duet with Lucano—‘Hor che Seneca è morte, cantiam’—is breathtaking.  His come-hither tones lend his performance a steamy eroticism that is complemented by his frenetic acting, his Nerone slinking through the performance with the sleazy charm of a playboy known in every house of ill repute in Rome.  The tessitura of Nerone is high for a countertenor, but Mr. Cencic, whose voice has a slightly higher center of vocal gravity than those of many of his counterparts, has all of the notes comfortably in the voice.  There are moments of luminously beautiful and restrained singing even in this impetuous performance, and Mr. Cencic makes Monteverdi’s ornaments sound completely natural.  With a DECCA recording of the rôle of Andronico in Händel’s Tamerlano scheduled for release in October, 2013 is poised to be another year of tremendous success for Mr. Cencic.  Based solely on his singing of Nerone in this performance of L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Mr. Cencic’s importance as a singer is indisputable.

Supported by a cast of such distinction, young Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva more than holds her own as a determined, irresistibly tantalizing Poppea.  A woman with Hollywood starlet looks and curves, Ms. Yoncheva has engagements as Donizetti’s Lucia and Verdi’s Violetta on her horizon, and her Poppea might be viewed as a study for both rôles.  Spinning out golden tones from start to finish, it is hardly astonishing that her Poppea should so captivate Ottone or so arouse Nerone.  Costumed like a Jean Harlow vixen, Ms. Yoncheva exudes sex appeal, her hold on Nerone developing as surely as though she were Salomé performing the Dance of the Seven Veils before Herod.  Physical beauty, alert acting, and capable singing are rarely as absorbingly combined in a single performance as in Ms. Yoncheva’s Poppea.  Perhaps Monteverdi intended his portrait of Poppea as a sly commentary on the power of a pretty seductress to triumph over goodness, her misdeeds forgiven and forgotten as soon as she smiles.  In Poppea’s toying with Nerone and Ottone, her triumph might also be interpreted as a victory of lust over love, though here, too, a musical problem is encountered: ‘Pur ti miro, pur ti godo,’ the concluding duet for Poppea and Nerone, though almost certainly not the work of Monteverdi (modern scholarship suggests the little-remembered Benedetto Ferrari as the most likely candidate for having composed both the music and the text), is unabashedly beautiful.  If truly not the work of Monteverdi, it was almost certainly appended to L’Incoronazione di Poppea either by the composer himself or with his blessing [the duet is present in autograph materials of both the Venice and Naples versions of the opera], so it is possible that the apparent celebration of the triumph of scheming, the text of the duet ripe with subtle sexual undertones, was at least partially intentional.  Ms. Yoncheva’s and Mr. Cencic’s voices intertwine like a lovers’ embrace in the duet, closing the opera in an atmosphere of relative dramatic calm and sensual release.  Visually and musically, Ms. Yoncheva leaves nothing to be desired, her performance as Poppea the proper centerpiece of a potent account of Monteverdi’s opera.

With its complex relationships, destructive sexual politics, and crumbling social orders, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea is as psychologically momentous as any of Wagner’s operas.  Nerone shares with Wotan the dubious distinction of being a man of absolute but dwindling power with both a strong wife of noble birth and a roving eye.  Like all the best works of art, Monteverdi’s opera is both decidedly of its specific time and place and definitively universal.  Recordings of L’Incoronazione di Poppea on DVD are no longer rare, but this version from Virgin Classics—a record of what is without question one of the best-sung productions of the opera in its history—can be jubilantly crowned the best of the lot.

a scene from Jean-François Sivadier’s production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the Opéra de Lille, with Ann Hallenberg as Ottavia, Max Emanuel Cencic as Nerone, and Sonya Yoncheva as Poppea [Photo by Frédéric Lovino for Opéra de Lille]

CD REVIEW: Richard Wagner—DAS RHEINGOLD (T. Konieczny, C. Elsner, I. Vermillion, G. Groissböck, J. Schmeckenbecher, A. Conrad; PentaTone PTC 5186 406)

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Das Rheingold—T. Konieczny (Wotan), A. Yang (Donner), K.-J. Dusseljee (Froh), C. Elsner (Loge), I. Vermillion (Fricka), R. Merbeth (Freia), M. Radner (Erda), G. Groissböck (Fasolt), T. Riihonen (Fafner), J. Schmeckenbecher (Alberich), A. Conrad (Mime), J. Borchert (Woglinde), K. Kammerloher (Wellgunde), K. Pessatti (Floßhilde); Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; Marek Janowski [Recorded ‘live’ during a concert performance in the Philharmonie, Berlin, on 22 November 2012; PentaTone PTC 5186 406]

Few conductors of Wagner repertory during the past forty years have been as fortunate on disc as Marek Janowski.  Though generally not considered one of the seminal recordings of the Cycle, his Eurodisc Ring des Nibelungen nonetheless offered attentive listeners many splendid qualities: in addition to recorded sound at its early digital best, Maestro Janowski’s Ring offered uncomplicatedly linear dramatic momentum and introduced listeners to the uncommonly musical and impeccably-phrased Sieglinde of Jessye Norman, who would reappear a few years later on the DGG recording of James Levine’s Ring that commemorated the Metropolitan Opera’s Otto Schenk production.  Detailed, spacious recorded sound is a trait that Maestro Janowski’s Eurodisc Ring shares with this recording of Das Rheingold, the seventh installment in PentaTone’s series of recordings of Wagner’s mature operas and the inaugural release in the Ring Cycle component of that series.  Recording the operas in concert has naturally neutralized the dangers of stage noise, and in this Rheingold as in other operas in their series PentaTone’s engineers have minimized intrusions by the audience, as well.  With a 1962 Bayreuth Ring conducted by Rudolf Kempe recently unearthed from the personal collection of mezzo-soprano Grace Hoffman and released by Myto, a complete Ring with Valery Gergiev and Mariinsky forces in progress, and DGG’s recording of the 2011 Wiener Staatsoper Cycle conducted by Christian Thielemann soon arriving in stores worldwide, the Wagner Bicentennial is producing what will likely prove an unmatched glut of complete Ring recordings.  In terms of casting, the 1962 Bayreuth Ring towers over the other releases, with Astrid Varnay and Birgit Nilsson sharing duties as Brünnhilde and an array of the most compelling artists active at Bayreuth at that time singing with unerring sense of Wagnerian style.  The clarity of the sonic landscape in which Wagner’s Vorspiel to the Ring takes root in PentaTone’s Rheingold is exciting, and this gives PentaTone’s Ring great promise as an opportunity to experience Wagner’s music with more vibrancy and immediacy than ever before.

Sound reproduction of such quality creates its own perils in that any mistakes by the orchestra or missteps by the conductor are in sharp focus.  The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin does not enjoy the sterling reputation of the Berliner Philharmoniker, but this performance confirms that the less familiar ensemble can rival its more famous counterpart when on best form.  The riparian music that opens the opera with a depiction of the undulating Rhine—the music that announces from that first ominous E-flat that the Ring is something unique in the history of opera—sounds almost Stravinskian when played and recorded with the precision heard in this recording.  Throughout the performance, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester players respond to Wagner’s and Maestro Janowski’s demands with great virtuosity, secure intonation, and many displays of first-rate playing, especially from the horns.  There are refreshingly few of the errors that mar many recordings of live performances, and the handful of slips in ensemble and lapses in tuning neither impede the musical flow of the opera nor lessen its cumulative impact.  Maestro Janowski is not a young man, but his pacing of Das Rheingold suffers from no suggestions of lethargy.  Though lacking the unrelenting intensity of a conductor like Knappertsbusch or the expansive treatment of the opera as an extended musical paragraph exhibited by Böhm, Maestro Janowski’s conducting reveals a learned mastery of the score that includes intuitive shaping of the opera’s most important dramatic moments but does not quite extend to a natural placement of the significant Leitmotifs within their respective musical contexts.  Many conductors bruise the music by over-accentuating the Leitmotifs, and while Maestro Janowski’s approach avoids this pitfall it also allows crucial musical aspects of the opera to pass virtually unheralded.  The mystery of Erda’s rise from the earth and dire warnings is compellingly conveyed, but music as significant as that introducing the Ring, Alberich’s Curse, and Walhalla is played with little notion of its importance both to Rheingold and to the Ring as a whole.  Dramatically, the performance is most effective from Erda’s appearance through the entry of the gods into Walhalla: nothing that comes before Erda’s ascent could be said to be perfunctory, but much of Wagner’s musical and dramatic cleverness remains unexplored, particularly in scenes as rich for exploitation as Alberich’s taunting by the Rhinemaidens and the journey of Wotan and Loge to Nibelheim.  Ultimately, this is not an inert Rheingold, but it is not a fully-realized performance of Wagner’s score.

Vocally, the Rhinemaidens—soprano Julia Borchert as Woglinde, mezzo-soprano Katharina Kammerloher as Wellgunde, and contralto Kismara Pessatti as Floßhilde—start the opera uncertainly, occasional problems with intonation and a combination of individual timbres that do not blend ideally mitigating the effectiveness of the opening scene.  Once Alberich lumbers into their presence, however, the ladies improve immeasurably, and their singing in the final minutes of the opera, when their not-so-gentle reminders of the true ownership of the Rhine gold so annoy Wotan, is playful and often lovely.

Fafter and Fasolt, sung by basses Timo Riihonen and Günther Groissböck, are suitably nasty pieces of work, sparring with Wotan and Loge—and, eventually, with one another—with delightfully mean stupidity.  Neither singer is completely convincing in his depiction of the block-headed explosion of temper that leads Fasolt to slay Fafner in their argument over the Rhine treasure, but the aptness of both voices for the music is rewarding.  Mr. Groissböck offers an unexpectedly eloquent, touching account of ‘Das Weib zu missen,’ the lines in which Fasolt laments the giants’ loss of Freia.  The squally singing of soprano Ricarda Merbeth, who also sang Senta in the PentaTone Fliegende Holländer, undermines the inspiration for Fasolt’s grief.  Obviously a dynamic performer with deeply-considered dramatic ideas, Ms. Merbeth possesses a bright, rather unwieldy voice that threatens to become sour, shrill, and unsteady above the staff.  Freia is a limited rôle, but Ms. Merbeth approaches the part with a rounded conception.  Dramatically, Ms. Merbeth makes Freia an atypically central presence in the drama, but the voice does not consistently perform with equal accomplishment.  The basic timbre is lovely and feminine, and moments that do not stress her with demands of volume or tessitura find Ms. Merbeth singing with lovely tone.  If the golden apples purveyed by this Freia are a bit tarnished, Ms. Merbeth is still mostly satisfactory in the part, putting vocal imperfections to dramatic use as expressions of desperation, shame, and flashing anger.

The Mime of tenor Andreas Conrad is a slimy creation, all too eager to recount Alberich’s activities and cruelty to Wotan and Loge.  Mr. Conrad’s voice is a character tenor of better quality than the voices of many Mimes, and the sharpness of his diction contributes meaningfully to the impression made by his performance.  Also duplicitous but less cunningly so is the Alberich of Jochen Schmeckenbecher, whose baritone voice is light for Alberich’s music.  Mr. Schmeckenbecher obviously knows his part, and his strong, generally dark-hued performance also contains moments of telling emotional insecurity.  There is an audible sense of disappointment, quickly metamorphosing into disillusionment, when Alberich realizes that the Rhinemaidens are merely teasing him, and the naïveté that enables Wotan and Loge to trick him is almost boyishly enacted.  Alberich is undone by his wavering resolve, and Mr. Schmeckenbecher ably portrays Alberich as an unstable, uncertain figure.  Unfortunately, this uncertainty extends to Alberich’s curse of the Ring, which lacks the power that it needs to be completely credible as the catalyst that starts the chain reaction of cataclysms that shape the Ring.  Vocally, Mr. Schmeckenbecher sings very capably, coping with challenges at both extremes of his range: some of Alberich’s music is uncomfortably low for him, but he compensates with alertness and a legitimate attempt to portray Alberich as something more profound than an oafish, bad-tempered dwarf.

One of the unqualified successes of this Rheingold is the Erda of contralto Maria Radner, whose stony timbre is fitting for the Earth Mother.  Her fleet-tongued enunciation of text is compromised only by her over-emphatic trilling of Rs, but even this adds to the impression of the character inhabiting a different world.  Musically, a couple of Erda’s highest notes lack authority, but Ms. Radner’s voice is otherwise very impressive in the part.  The air of haughtiness in Erda’s warnings to Wotan is not inappropriate, and Ms. Radner easily rises to the top of the admittedly underwhelming ranks of recorded Erdas.  If casting remains more or less consistent among the Ring operas, it will be good to encounter Ms. Radner’s Erda again in Siegfried.

Singing the brothers of Freia and Fricka are tenor Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Froh and baritone Antonio Yang as Donner.  Both characters have brief but memorable solo moments, and both singers in this performance are effective in ensemble.  Conjuring the rainbow bridge that enables the gods’ entry into Walhalla, Froh spins a beautifully evocative melody beginning with ‘Zur Burg führt die Brücke,’ raptly sung by Mr. Dusseljee.  Also lovely is his singing of the passage ‘Wie liebliche Luft’ in which Froh breathes a sigh of relief upon the safe return of Freia.  Donner’s summoning of the thunderstorm is one of the most famous passages in Das Rheingold, an orchestral tour de force in which Wagner depicts the blows of Donner’s hammer and the violent eruption of the elements in tempest.  Mr. Yang’s voice is slightly blunt and unyielding in tone, but he rises sonorously to his command of the clouds.

The rôle of Loge was created by Heinrich Vogl, who would go on to sing the heroic principal tenor rôles in all of Wagner’s mature operas, suggesting that he possessed a larger voice than is frequently heard in the part in latter-day performances of Das Rheingold.  Too often, Loge is assigned to aging Heldentenors who over-rely on Sprechstimme and barking to carry them through the music.  Richard Croft revealed in the Robert Lepage Ring at the Metropolitan Opera that a smaller but properly-projected lyric voice can be fascinatingly alluring in Loge’s music: Mr. Croft’s fluidly-produced singing brought tremendous beauty to Loge’s music, disclosing a bel canto grace in Wagner’s writing for the part.  Though he has sung Siegmund in Die Walküre and the title rôle in Parsifal, including the latter in PentaTone’s recording of the opera for this Wagner series, the voice of tenor Christian Elsner is more lyric than dramatic, some of his most successful singing having been done in the music of Mozart.  It is to his credit that he brings a Mozartean poise to his singing of Loge, especially in his dramatically vital Narration, and the success of his performance relies in no small part upon his careful placement of the voice and avoidance of forcing at climaxes.  Loge’s music is not at all like that of Siegmund or Siegfried, and unless one possesses a deteriorating Siegmund or Siegfried voice and can do little else there is no reason to sing Loge in a manner more suitable for those parts.  Dramatically, Loge is absolutely unique in the Ring: not seen after Rheingold, he is nonetheless omnipresent throughout the Cycle and, the extent of Erda’s omniscience being unknown, is seemingly the only character who is fully cognizant of the implications of the events that will transpire.  Avoiding strain, Mr. Elsner sings imaginatively, bringing to the music greater beauty than the basic color of his voice seems disposed to allow.  After the character has remarked on his vision of the impending twilight of the gods, Wagner’s stage directions state that Loge ‘geht, um sich den Göttern in nachlässiger Haltung anzuschliessen’: he leaves the place from which the gods contemplated Walhalla and nonchalantly joins them.  Ms. Elsner’s singing of the lines in which he reflects on the trials to come conveys a shrug of the shoulders that honors Wagner’s directions solely in musical terms.  The wry humor of Mr. Elsner’s Loge does not preclude shadows of melancholy and genuine concern.  There are many famous names in the annals of performances and recordings of Loge, but few singers have brought greater insight to the part or provided more pleasure to the listener than Mr. Elsner does in this performance.

Ideally, the rôle of Fricka requires an opulent voice of columnar strength throughout a tessitura that seems undemanding in comparison with any of Verdi’s great parts for mezzo-soprano but has unique needs for power and stamina.  Her part in Rheingold is not extensive, but she must be noticed.  Veteran mezzo-soprano Iris Vermillion has been noticed in numerous recordings of a very wide repertory, but she is only partially successful as Fricka in this performance.  The dedication, musicality, and surrender to the dramatic impulses of the text are undiminished, but this performance finds Ms. Vermillion’s voice sounding colorless and unsteady.  The voice does not wobble unacceptably, but the focus of the tone has loosened with time, and top notes are precarious.  The resulting Fricka sounds more like an unpleasant harridan than a justifiably exasperated consort of the ruler of the gods.  Ms. Vermillion makes the best of the resources at her disposal, however, contributing singing that maximizes her strengths.  She remains an innovative, valuable singer, but Fricka makes demands on the voice that can no longer be comfortably met.

Having sung Alberich in the first run of the Wiener Staatsoper Ring recorded by DGG, Polish baritone Tomasz Konieczny had already graduated to the rôles of Wotan and the Wanderer in full Ring Cycles in Mannheim and elsewhere prior to the November 2012 concert performance of Rheingold that was recorded by PentaTone.  [He is also scheduled to sing Wotan in Die Walküre and the Wanderer in Siegfried in PentaTone’s forthcoming recordings of those operas.]  Born in 1972, Mr. Konieczny has a wealth of experience in Wagner that is unusual for a young singer in today’s operatic environment.  In his performance of Wotan in this recording of Rheingold, it is a true joy to hear a voice in its prime in Wagner’s difficult, daunting music.  Billed by PentaTone as a baritone but by the Wiener Staatsoper and his own website as a bass-baritone, Mr. Konieczny displays gratifyingly few concerns with the tessitura of Wotan’s music.  Virtually a textbook example of a bass-baritone rôle, Wotan’s music descends to bass depths while also requiring the singer—especially in Die Walküre—to rise to baritone heights.  Mr. Konieczny’s vocal registers are well equalized, the bottom octave taking on a dark, slightly cavernous but never artificial resonance, allowing the singer to project in Wotan’s lowest lines without forcing the voice.  On high, Mr. Konieczny’s voice rings out splendidly, the manly timbre unflinchingly conveying godly authority.  It is obvious that Mr. Konieczny is an insightful artist, but the aspect of his singing of Wotan that will surely grow most during seasons to come is his phrasing.  Compared to a Wotan like George London, whose singing in a 1962 Rheingold from Cologne has recently been preserved anew in a remastered release from Archipel, the room for improvement is immediately audible.  Mr. Konieczny delivers the notes of the part better than almost any other artist singing Wotan today, but his phrasing remains stiff and uninflected.  His German diction is excellent, but he has not yet mastered the art of transitioning an informed enunciation of the text into an elevated presentation of the rôle in the broader context of Wagner’s music and drama.  Mr. Konieczny’s singing of Wotan’s greeting to Walhalla is wonderfully voiced but lacks poetry.  It is apparent in this performance that Mr. Konieczny possesses the voice to be an important Wotan: with time and collaboration with other dedicated artists, he may well achieve the stature of a great Wotan.

The most concise opera of the Ring, Das Rheingold can be challenging to bring off in performance.  Swift-moving and episodic, the opera can get bogged down with surreptitious layers of subtext that obscure the dramatic arc that, when allowed to develop naturally, so awesomely launches what remains the most ambitious creation in operatic history.  Even concert performances and recordings of Rheingold can lose the thread of the opera’s dramatic progression, and there are failings in this performance that hopefully will not be repeated in Maestro Janowski’s accounts of Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.  Capably but not luxuriously cast, this Rheingold is indicative of the near-impossibility of assembling a cast for any of Wagner’s operas today that would be wholly free of compromise.  This set, which preserves some very good singing, is far from a failure, however, and it raises expectations and piques curiosity for what Maestro Janowski will achieve in the final installments of his Bicentennial Ring.

CD REVIEW: Claudio Monteverdi—L’ORFEO (C. Daniels, F. Newton, E. Van Evera, C. Wilkinson, C. Purves; Avie Records AV2278

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567 – 1643): L’Orfeo, Favola in musica—C. Daniels (Orfeo), F. Newton (Euridice), E. Van Evera (Messaggiera, Prosperina), C. Wilkinson (Speranza), D. Hurley (La Musica), C. Streetman (Caronte), C. Purves (Plutone), G. Pelc (Apollo); Taverner Consort and Players; Andrew Parrott [Recorded in the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Summertown, Oxford, England, 23 – 28 July 2012; Avie Records AV2278]

Forty years ago, when the first fruits of the historically-informed performance movement were sweeping across Europe with a force that in musical terms rivaled the impact of the revolutions of 1848, a young Englishman in his mid-thirties named Andrew Parrott founded a choral ensemble and period-instrument band that, honoring one of the most significant composers in the history of British music, he named the Taverner Consort and Players.  It is perhaps ironic to note that Britain, where Victorian traditions of musical performances on an immense scale obliterated so much of the authentic performance heritage of Early Music and Baroque repertory (though, to be fair, it must be said that many performances in the ‘grand tradition’ of conductors such as Sir Henry Wood and Sir Malcolm Sargent were—and, thanks to remastered recordings, continue to be—tremendously enjoyable in their own right), has been the epicenter of the seismic shaking-up of historically-appropriate performance practices.  Four centuries ago, Mantua was similarly central to the eruption of a new musical volcano, the lava from which spread over the whole world and continues to boil magnificently today.  A composer from Cremona called Claudio Monteverdi created for the private enjoyment of the court of his employer, Vincenzo Gonzaga, a favola in musica—a musical fable—on the subject of the quintessential musician of lore, Orpheus.  It was neither the first such work nor even the first to propose Orpheus as its hero, but Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is the earliest creature in that fascinating species Opera that seized attention and fired imaginations far beyond its intended audience of Carnivale-celebrating noblemen.  It is hardly surprising that, celebrating four decades of redefining standards of excellence in historically-informed performances of Early Music, the Taverner Consort and Players should set their sights on L’Orfeo, not only as an exercise in homage to their achievements in 17th-Century vocal music but also as a logical successor to their groundbreaking recording of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespro della beata Vergine.  Like so many of the recordings by the Taverner Consort and Players, this L’Orfeo blows away cobwebs of conventionality that have gathered even on this most ubiquitous of Early operas.  Most rewardingly, this recording finds the Taverner Consort and Players still at the top of their game.

With instrumentalists of the calibre of Kirsty Whatley, Steven Devine, Jakob Lindberg, Hannah Tibell, and Susan Addison in their midst, the histrionic authority and virtuosity of the Taverner Players are self-evident, and indeed there are too many individual moments of particular brilliance to list.  Throughout the performance, the alertness and sense of crackling drama among all participants make this studio recording gratifyingly redolent of the theatre.  Uniformly wonderful in supporting rôles are members of the Taverner Consort: soprano Anna Dennis; tenors Rodrigo del Pozo, Gareth Morrell (himself an accomplished Orfeo on a recording by Apollo’s Fire), and Simon Wall; baritone Richard Latham; bass-baritone James Arthur; and bass Robert Macdonald.  These artists offer performances of a quality that exceeds that of the singing of the principal rôles in many performances of L’Orfeo, in fact, their unwavering involvement in the drama creating a foundation upon which an uncommonly persuasive performance is built.  Maestro Parrott has displayed an instinctive comprehension since his founding of the Taverner Consort and Players of the rôle of a conductor in Early Music: neither as simple as serving as a ‘traffic cop’ who keeps all performers moving in the right directions nor as self-righteously complex as many ‘experts’ on historically-informed performance practices might suggest, the conductor of a score like Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is above all the master of balance.  To Maestro Parrott falls the task of ensuring that instrumentalists and singers achieve and maintain balances that respect the composer’s intention of making music the equal rather than the servant of text.  It might seem critical to suggest that, when listening to any of his recordings, it would be difficult to discern any particular aspects of the performances that unquestionably identify the conductor as Maestro Parrott, but that is one of the most appreciable qualities of his conducting: leaving quirks and idiosyncrasies to others, Maestro Parrott focuses on the music at hand, trusting the abilities of his performers.  He has never done so more justifiably or more pleasurably than in this recording of L’Orfeo.

Recording vocal music in the acoustical space of a church can be very challenging, with concerns about echoes cropping up at one end of the spectrum and worries about some degree of claustrophobia in the recorded sound at the other.  When managed with skill and imagination, however, the results of recording in a church setting can be revelatory.  The DECCA recording of the soundtrack for Claude d’Anna’s 1987 film of Verdi’s Macbeth, so troublesome to the engineers, ultimately offered an intriguing performance that audibly inhabited the dank corridors of Cawdor Castle, for example.  A similar serendipity occurs in this recording of L’Orfeo, the close balance achieved by Avie’s engineer—Adrian Hunter—suggesting both the specific mythological environs in which the drama plays out and the intimate setting of Mantua’s Palazzo Ducale, where the opera was first performed.  Echo effects are very important in L’Orfeo, and Avie’s acoustics enable all of Monteverdi’s creative uses of these and other effects to enjoy full exposure.  A performance of a work that relies upon the distinctive timbre of an instrument like the regal demands a particular sonic ambiance, and the very important rhythms of Monteverdi’s music—so expertly shaped by Maestro Parrott and executed by the Taverner Consort and Players—require great clarity of sound.  Ambiance and clarity are ideally balanced in this recording, which further confirms Avie’s dedication to this project.

It is fitting that an opera about the most important musician in mythology should begin with a Prologue delivered by an allegorical representation of la Musica, music itself.  La Musica was written for a castrato voice that almost certainly fell into the range that would now be designated as soprano: indeed, all of the female rôles in L’Orfeo were sung in the first performance by male singers.  In the history of recording L’Orfeo, la Musica has usually been sung by female sopranos or boy trebles.  This performance achieves an exciting and atypically effective example of historically-informed practice at its best with the casting of David Hurley as la Musica.  The high voice in the celebrated King’s Singers ensemble, Mr. Hurley brings the purity of a treble and the power of an adult singer to his performance of the Prologue, ‘Dal mio Parnasso amato a voi ne vegno.’  Mr. Hurley’s musicality is irreproachable, and his elegance in negotiating the thorny tessitura is glorious.  The ethereal timbre of Mr. Hurley’s voice makes his Musica thoroughly credible as a figure descended from Parnassus.  Offering an artist of Mr. Hurley’s accomplishments as la Musica, whose contributions to L’Orfeo are confined to six minutes, is an instance of what might be termed ‘festival’ casting: it is apparent from Mr. Hurley’s first notes that this recording is a celebration of the Taverner Consort and Players and of Monteverdi.

Soprano Faye Newton brings passion and an evocative fragility to Euridice, interacting poignantly with her Orfeo and making much of her character’s pathos despite the musical brevity of her rôle.  Following the example of likely casting in Monteverdi’s time, soprano Emily Van Evera does double duty as the Messaggiera and Prosperina.  The Messaggiera’s rôle is secondary in importance only to Orfeo: propelling the drama with her crucial (if fleeting) appearance in Act Two, she is virtually a Classical Oracle.  Prosperina’s part is smaller still, but Ms. Van Evera unmistakably differentiates her singing of Prosperina from her performance of the Messaggiera.  Both parts are sung with grace and the knell of tragedy in the voice.

Speranza (Hope) is given one of the most inspired passages in Monteverdi’s score, ‘Ecco l’atra palude,’ the centerpiece of the beautiful scene in which Speranza accompanies Orfeo into the Underworld, where he hopes to reclaim Euridice from death.  Speranza can lead Orfeo no farther than to the banks of the Styx, where she leaves him to reflect on his sense of purpose.  Sung in this performance by the lovely Clare Wilkinson, Speranza’s pronouncements are more haunting and more heartening than ever.  Ms. Wilkinson’s beautiful mezzo-soprano voice is on marvelous form, and the immediacy of her delivery of Speranza’s lines is gripping.

It is to Caronte, the menacing boatman of the Styx, that Speranza delivers Orfeo, and in this performance Caronte is portrayed by American bass Curtis Streetman, whose strong lower register heightens the mystery of the ferryman.  Accompanied by the strident tones of the regal, Mr. Streetman’s performance gives Caronte’s lines a weight of meaning that seems more weary than threatening.  Many performances assign Plutone, the god of the underworld, to the same artist who sings Caronte, but this recording scores a triumph by casting the fantastic British bass Christopher Purves as Plutone.  A singer whose artistic horizon seems unlimited, Mr. Purves’s discography has recently expanded to include an acclaimed recording of Händel arias and an extraordinarily nuanced account of the Protector in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, a part that he originated.  In the concise stretch of music allotted to him, Mr. Purves manages to create a rounded character, powerfully conveying Plutone’s nobility and ultimate circumspection.  Musically, this performance of Plutone gains immeasurably from the presence of an invaluable voice in its prime.

Young Israeli baritone Guy Pelc—recorded while performing his compulsory military service—sings Apollo, adapting his timbre and his phrasing masterfully to match those of Orfeo in the penultimate scene of the opera.  The lovely tones produced by Mr. Pelc create an exemplary aura of the god of light descending like the rays of the sun to earth.  In his succinct appearance, Apollo’s vocal demands are intimidating, but Mr. Pelc faces nothing that he does not conquer manfully.

Like Rodelinda, Norma, or Tosca, a performance of L’Orfeo without a savvy Orfeo at its core is destined for failure.  First performed by Francesco Rasi, a celebrated singer to whom contemporary accounts attribute remarkable capabilities for vocal and dramatic display, the rôle of Orfeo contains music of difficulty that has in the subsequent four centuries been equaled but never surpassed.  Musically, Orfeo is the starting block at which the race from the ambiguous comedic rôles of Neapolitan Baroque opera to the romantic tenor heroes of Verdi and Puccini was started, and ‘Possente Spirto’—Orfeo’s great aria of musical persuasion before Plutone and Prosperina—is the shot that spurred the runners off their marks.  Charles Daniels, a veteran of the British Early Music scene whose performances have garnered countless accolades, was an inspired choice for the title rôle in this recording.  There have been trends of casting singers with darker, heavier voices—including, across a number of years, such celebrated baritones as Gérard Souzay, Philippe Huttenlocher, Gino Quilico, Simon Keenlyside, and Stéphane Degout—as Orfeo, but Mr. Daniels’s performance reveals that the heady timbre of a light tenor voice is best-suited to Orfeo’s fearsomely demanding music.  There is an almost arrogant joy in Mr. Daniels’s singing about his love for Euridice, and the sting of his confidence being broken by the news of Euridice’s death is almost tangible, so sharp are Mr. Daniels’s musical accents.  The wildness of Orfeo’s despair is conveyed by Mr. Daniels with conviction that remains within the boundaries of good taste for what was a courtly entertainment for an assembly of very refined gentlemen.  Mr. Daniels’s singing of ‘Possente Spirto’ is as refulgent in its way as Jussi Björling’s singing of ‘Ah! lève-toi, soleil’ or Franco Corelli’s trumpeting of ‘Di quella pira.’  Mr. Daniels’s technique remains incandescent, his delivery of Monteverdi’s divisions accomplished without aspirates or breaks in the extended phrases.  Mr. Daniels shares with several of his colleagues in this performance an uncanny skill for executing the Early Baroque trillo, a further measure of the extent to which he commands Orfeo’s music.  Mr. Daniels’s voice is at its most beautiful in those moments in which Monteverdi allows him to relax into lyrical phrases, but Mr. Daniels’s aptness for the part is evident in every bar that he sings.  Global economics in the past decade have prevented a number of the early 21st Century’s finest singers from being recorded in their best rôles: special gratitude is owed to Avie for this preservation of the performance of one of the most complete singers of Orfeo of his generation.

In his remarks about this recording that are included in Avie’s liner notes, Maestro Parrott states that his goal in this performance was to approach L’Orfeo as a work ‘more poetic than theatrical, as a refined courtly creation and, not least, of an intimacy utterly foreign to later “grand” opera and to almost any large public arena.’  This might seem to be the only intuitive way of performing an opera of L’Orfeo’s dimensions, but few productions or recordings have achieved the goal of performing the opera in a manner that might seem familiar to Monteverdi with the stamp of absolute rightness exhibited by this recording.  There are in the crisp rhythms, the blaring timbres of period cornetts and bass trombones, and the jarring dins of Baroque percussion sounds that are arrestingly modern.  The legacy of the first forty years of the Taverner Consort and Players, guided by Andrew Parrott, is epitomized by this recording of L’Orfeo: rather than putting on some scholarly recreation of Monteverdi’s music, every singer, musician, and technician involved with this performance has contributed to a recording that not only offers tantalizing evidence of how the opera sounded when Monteverdi’s ears first heard it but also grants even the listener familiar with the opera’s extensive discography the opportunity to symbolically hear L’Orfeo as though for the first time.