RECORDING OF THE MONTH / May 2015: Gaetano Donizetti – LES MARTYRS (J. El-Khoury, M. Spyres, D. Kempster, B. Sherratt, C. Bayley, W. Evans; Opera Rara ORC52)

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Les Martyrs—Joyce El-Khoury (Pauline), Michael Spyres (Polyeucte), David Kempster (Sévère), Brindley Sherratt (Félix), Clive Bayley (Callisthènes), Wynne Evans (Néarque), Simon Preece (un Chrétien), Rosalind Waters (une femme); Opera Rara Chorus; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Sir Mark Elder, conductor [Recorded in St Clement’s Church, London, UK, during October and November 2014; Opera Rara ORC52; 3 CDs, 188:12; Available from Opera Rara, harmonia mundi USA, and major music retailers]

Few events are as exciting to the opera lover as the release of a new recording by Opera Rara. For the past four decades, Opera Rara's efforts have unearthed scores buried beneath generations of dismissal and neglect and revealed their finest qualities via performances and recordings featuring world-class casts, orchestras, and conductors. These efforts have in many cases reshaped modern notions of composers and their music, as well as having expanded the woefully inadequate discographies of important singers and bel canto exponents such as Annick Massis, Nelly Miricioiu, Bruce Ford, and Colin Lee. The enduring popularity of Lucia di Lammermoor, L'elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale, and La fille du régiment has kept the music of Gaetano Donizetti playing in opera houses large and small for nearly two hundred years, but even with milestones like a Glyndebourne production of Poliuto and the Metropolitan Opera première of Roberto Devereux achieved or planned there are significant products of Donizetti’s creativity that remain in the shadows. Opera Rara’s specialty is shining the lights of rediscovery and rejuvenation upon the hidden works of Nineteenth-Century masters of bel canto, and these lights have never shone more brightly than in this studio recording of Donizetti’s 1840 leviathan Les Martyrs. Many of recent years’ well-intentioned forays into ignored music have ultimately revealed that there are more instances than it seems fashionable to admit in which neglect is not unjustifiable, but the performance of Les Martyrs on these discs is a case of a superb score receiving long-overdue recognition from artists capable of doing it justice. Like most of the grands opéras of the Nineteenth Century, the extravagant musical demands of Les Martyrs render the opera unlikely to claim a permanent place in the international repertory, but this recording confirms the impression made by Opera Rara’s concert performance of the opera in Royal Festival Hall in November 2014: if today’s listeners regard Les Martyrs primarily as a curiosity, it is a score that richly rewards inquisitiveness. Hearing the opera performed as it is on these discs causes one to shake one’s head and wonder why Les Martyrs is only now being returned to life, but singing of the quality that is preserved on these discs is worth any expenditure of patience.

Premièred at the famed Opéra in Paris in April 1840, Les Martyrs was the product of a turbulent genesis. Under contract to provide a new opera for the 1838 Season at the Neapolitan Teatro di San Carlo, Donizetti and his librettist, Salvadore Cammarano, turned to Pierre Corneille’s Seventeenth-Century epic Polyeucte, which they adapted in Italian as Poliuto. Mere days before the opera’s scheduled opening, the opera fell victim to the censorship of the court of Ferdinando II, King of the Two Sicilies, and was withdrawn by the incensed composer, who declined to substitute another new score and begrudgingly paid the fine for breaking the San Carlo contract. When a commission for two new operas was offered by the Opéra in Paris, the composer recognized an opportunity to revisit his music for Poliuto, which he esteemed very highly. With Grand Opéra librettist par excellence Eugène Scribe taking Cammarano’s libretto and Corneille’s text in hand, Poliuto was reborn as Les Martyrs, a score of proportions adhering to Parisian standards. The obligatory ballet was inserted, and Donizetti repurposed the lion’s share—an apt designation considering the opera’s ending—of his music for Poliuto in the score of Les Martyrs. Introduced to the Parisian audience by an accomplished cast including Julie Dorus-Gras, Halévy’s first Eudoxie in La Juive and the creator of Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, as Pauline and the celebrated Gilbert Duprez as Polyeucte, Les Martyrs was a considerable success. Like Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Les Martyrs was subjected to cuts by the composer even before the first night. For this recording, Opera Rara made use of a new critical edition of the opera by Dr. Flora Willson in which many of those cut passages are reinstated. The resulting score is one of dramatic tautness that belies its hulking pomposity. Like Aida and Don Carlos, Les Martyrs is an incredibly intimate piece despite its large scale. Musicologists have long suggested that this score contains some of Donizetti’s most finely-crafted and perceptibly personal music. Hearing the opera performed as it is on this recording, who could disagree?

Much of the praise for the sweep and serenity of this performance is garnered by Sir Mark Elder, who again confirms that no conductor in the world today has a surer grasp on idiomatic pacing of bel canto repertory than his own. Responding to his propulsive but cool-headed tempi, the musicians of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment play superlatively, giving an account of the opera’s innovative Overture that boils with contrasting eloquence and tension. The dances in Act Two—‘Lutte des gladiateurs,' 'Pas de deux,' and 'Danse militaire'—are executed with Gallic charm that rubs shoulders with Donizetti’s innate Italian fervor. Throughout the performance, conductor and instrumentalists rise to every challenge of Donizetti’s score, providing a musical setting for a traversal of Les Martyrs that transcends the limitations of a studio run-through. Directed by chorus master Stephen Harris, the fine voices of the Opera Rara Chorus are effective in every guise in which they appear in the course of the drama, beginning with a beautifully-shaped chorus of Christians in the Overture, 'O Dieu tutélaire.' Both 'Amis...silence...Du silence' and the maiden's chorus, 'Jeune souveraine,' in Act One are strongly sung, and the monumental triumphal chorus in Act Two, 'Gloire à vous, Mars et Bellonne,' is delivered with an abundance of gusto. 'Dieu du tonnerre, ton front sévère' in Act Three is appropriately ardent. Conductor, orchestra, and chorus all collaborate not in accompanying but in creating a performance of Les Martyrs in which their contributions are no less important than those of the principal singers.

In the small rôles of un Chrétien and une Femme, baritone Simon Preece and soprano Rosalind Waters sing capably, both possessing voices that promise future success in lead rôles. Welsh tenor Wynne Evans is a confident, athletic-voiced Néarque who takes advantage of every opportunity offered to him in his Act One duet with Polyeucte, singing ‘Arrêtons-nous, Polyeucte, et dans l'instant suprême’ with supple line and vivid characterization. Likewise, Manchester-born bass Clive Bayley seizes every moment that Donizetti allows him as the obdurate priest of Jupiter Callisthènes, his sinewy, Stygian-hued voice lending the character a frightening element of zealotry. Occasionally slightly unsteady, his singing never lacks impact, and the brutal impetus of his pronouncements is enjoyably potent.

As Félix, the governor of Armenia and Pauline’s father, bass Brindley Sherratt, a native of Lancashire, credibly portrays a man torn between commitment to his gubernatorial authority and love for his daughter, who married Polyeucte at his bidding despite her enduring love for the missing and presumed dead Sévère. In Félix’s Act Two aria 'Dieux des Romains, dieux de nos pères,' Sherratt uses his fibrous, gravelly voice with great intelligence, revealing the depths of his artistry with his attentiveness to nuances of text. A few moments of discomfort at range extremes are put to telling dramatic use, and the wide vibrato of his capacious voice rarely impedes the accuracy of his pitch. His singing in the Act Four trio with Pauline and Sévère is superb, the aggrieved father’s plight limned with gripping immediacy in ‘Qui défend la victime approuve son erreur’ and ‘Leur voix immortelle réchauffe mon zèle.’ Dramatically, Félix has much in common with Oroveso in Bellini’s Norma, but Donizetti was more musically generous. Sherratt gives the rôle dignity and, in the opera’s final scene, unexpected piteousness, qualities kindled by his sonorous singing of Félix’s music.

The imperial proconsul Sévère receives from Welsh baritone David Kempster a performance defined by complementary muscle and musicality. Thought to have been lost to battlefield misadventure, Sévère returns to Roman-occupied Armenia as the representative of the Emperor, finding his beloved Pauline married to Polyeucte, a clandestine new convert to Christianity. In Sévère’s Act Two Romance, ‘Amour de mon jeune âge,’ the baritone conveys the tenderness from which the character’s ferocity arises, tracing the bel canto line of the music with assurance, only a handful of struggles with intonation marring his estimable intentions. Kempster sings ‘En touchant à ce rivage' in the Act Three duet with Pauline, one of the finest numbers in the score, with focused, attractive tone, and his Sévère interacts with Pauline with a believable blend of exasperated indignation and still-pervasive affection. In the Act Four trio with Pauline and Félix, his exclamations of ‘Arrachons la victime a leur juste fureur!’ and ‘A tes lois rebelle ce glaive fidèle combattra pour elle en face des dieux!’ throb with the ambiguity of a man whose duty commands him to acts that conflict with the desires of his heart. Like Camoëns in the 1843 Dom Sébastien, also a setting of a libretto by Scribe, Sévère clearly stoked Donizetti’s imagination, inspiring the composer’s most profound sympathy: the music that he wrote for the rôle is not unworthy of comparison with Verdi’s music for Macbeth, Don Carlo in Ernani, or even Rigoletto, and Kempster’s performance, rough patches and all, is worthy of the music.

Simply put, the performance of American tenor Michael Spyres as Polyeucte is a marvel. His voice is difficult to classify except as an instrument of virtually boundless aptitude. In this performance of Les Martyrs, the voice is ideal for a rôle created by Gilbert Duprez, the tenor celebrated for his espousal of the do di petto and creations of several of Donizetti’s finest tenor parts, including Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (for whom, as is often overlooked, the composer included a stratospheric top E♭ in the Act One duet with Lucia, ‘Verrano a te, sull’aure’). In Act One, Spyres delivers a rugged ‘Que l'onde salutaire,’ the voice glowing with a golden sheen. ‘Dieu puissant qui voit mon zèle’ in the Act Two finale finds him on roof-raising form, his singing taking on increasingly heroic dimensions as the character’s fortunes become ever more imperiled. Spyres’s performance reaches its zenith in Polyeucte’s scene in Act Three, beginning with a composed account of the aria ‘Mon seul trésor, mon bien suprême’ in which the emotional temperature gradually rises to the boiling point. The dramatic agitation explodes in the cabaletta ‘Oui, j'rai dans leurs temples,’ a cousin of Arnold’s ‘Amis, amis, secondez ma vengeance’ in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and ‘Di quella pira l’orrenda foco’ in Verdi’s Il trovatore. Here, Spyres’s incendiary singing ignites the sentimental kindling of the music, and the formidably secure E5 that he unleashes thrillingly suggests the character’s—but not the singer’s—desperation. In Act Four, the tenor’s subtle voicing of ‘Rêve délicieux dont mon âme est émue’ is followed by an extraordinarily telling articulation of ‘Qu'importe ma vie sauvée ou ravie.’ Dramatically, Spyres encapsulates the essence of Polyeucte’s nature with his sweetly enraptured elocution of ‘La foi sainte brille à tes yeux!’ As portrayed by this incredibly gifted young singer, Polyeucte faces death with the steely resolve of Radamès in Aida and the soaring vocal refinement of Arturo in I puritani. Surveying the history of recorded singing from its infancy, encompassing the work of artists as masterful as Miguel Fleta and Ivan Kozlovsky, there is no finer example of bel canto tenor singing on disc than Spyres’s Polyeucte.

Singing Pauline in Les Martyrs, the captivating soprano Joyce El-Khoury again ventures into vocal territory that was the natural habitat of the late Leyla Gencer. Like Antonina in Belisario, another Gencer rôle that she recorded for Opera Rara, Pauline is no typical sighs-and-high-notes bel canto heroine. Attached before his rumored death to Sévère, Pauline is convinced by her father to take Polyeucte as her husband, whose conversion to Christianity is an affront to the pagan gods of her upbringing. The central crux of her predicament is that Sévère is not dead and eventually returns, covered in glory, as the Roman Emperor’s proconsul in Armenia. She still loves him, but Polyeucte’s determined integrity is not without its charms. Hers is a fate of questions for which there are no right answers. Why Pauline appealed to Gencer is obvious, and El-Khoury’s assumption of the rôle is even more complete. From the first bars of her Act One Prière, ‘Qu'ici ta main glacée bénisse ton enfant,’ it is apparent that the soprano is on ravishing form, the voice awesomely integrated and secure from bottom to top and the tone dark but entrancingly pure. Her voicing of ‘Mort à ces infâmes’ in Pauline’s Act Two scene with her father has the slashing forcefulness of a great Norma’s ‘I Romani a cento a cento, fian mietuti, fian distrutti,’ and the shock that emanates from her singing of ‘Sévère existe!... Un dieu sauveur, des ombres bords un dieu l'envoie!’ is heartrending. In El-Khoury’s and Kempster’s performances, Pauline and Sévère are as tempestuous a pair of troubled lovers as exist in opera, their destinies clashing in the Act Three duet ‘Souvenir cruel et tendre que sa voix vient de me rendre.’ Here and in ‘Ne vois-tu pas, qu'hélas! mon cœur succombe et cède à sa douleur!’ soprano and baritone spar with gladiatorial concentration, El-Khoury’s top notes electrifying the duet’s coda like lightning bolts. Pauline’s life hanging in the balance, El-Khoury detonates her lines in the Act Four trio with Félix and Sévère with virtuosic expressivity, her soaring ‘Oui, par la foir jurée’ matched by emotive readings of ‘O dévouement sublime!’ and ‘D'un chrétien rebelle epouse fidèle a toi j'en appelle.’ In the opera’s finale, as Pauline is transformed by faith and the example of Polyeucte’s nobility from a woman in crisis to a tragic heroine suited to the Comédie-Française of Corneille and Racine, El-Khoury employs her plaintive tones to illuminate the significance of lines such as ‘Seigneur, de vos bontés il faut que je l'obtienne!’ and ‘Pour toi, ma prière, ardente et sincère.’ The catharsis that she makes of ‘Miracle soudain...Lumière immortelle sa flamme nouvelle embrase mon sein!’ is extremely poignant: in Polyeucte’s arms she finally claims the peace of mind that has eluded her throughout the opera. El-Khoury’s technique never deserts her, however: not one passage of the music asks for more than she can give. Suggesting that any singer is Gencer’s equal is the kind of assertion that provokes hostility among aficionados, but as a dramatic portrayal El-Khoury’s Pauline is the peer of Gencer’s. As idiomatic bel canto vocalism, this performance surpasses not only Gencer’s towering efforts but also Maria Callas’s unforgettable Paolina in the famed 1960 La Scala Poliuto.

Opera lovers are a bewildering lot. We like what we like and dislike what we dislike, not always with justification that adheres to the tenets of basic logic. It seems unreasonable that audiences willing to endure, even embrace the marathon durations of Wagner’s mature operas and many of the Baroque works revived in recent years should ignore a score of the quality of Donizetti’s Les Martyrs. The past forty years have often found Opera Rara leading the conversation about unjustly-neglected gems of the operatic past. With a recording of Les Martyrs that rivals the label’s most exalted achievements, Opera Rara and some of today’s finest singers again reveal to opera lovers of what pleasures our prejudices have deprived us.

Beaming bel cantists: Soprano Joyce El-Khoury as Pauline (left) and tenor Michael Spyres as Polyeucte (right) in Opera Rara’s concert performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Les Martyrs at Royal Festival Hall, 4 November 2014 [Photo © by Russell Duncan]

CD REVIEW: Richard Wagner – DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER (H. Janssen, K. Flagstad, L. Weber, M. Lorenz, M. Jarred, K. Ostertag; Immortal Performances IPCD 1051-2)

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Der fliegende Holländer—Herbert Janssen (Der Holländer), Kirsten Flagstad (Senta), Ludwig Weber (Daland), Max Lorenz (Erik), Mary Jarred (Mary), Karl Ostertag (Steuermann); Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Fritz Reiner, conductor [Recorded in performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, UK, on 11 June 1937, with supplemental material necessary to fill gaps in the original broadcast recording; Immortal Performances IPCD 1051-2; 2 CDs, 132:48; Available from Immortal Performances]

The Royal Opera House Coronation Season of International Opera mounted in celebration of the 1937 enthroning of King George VI and his consort, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, opened on 19 April with a performance of Verdi's Otello with Giovanni Martinelli in the title rôle, Fernanda Ciana as Desdemona, and Cesare Formichi as Iago. During the course of the subsequent eleven weeks, the operatic homage to the royal couple encompassed performances of Borodin's Prince Igor and Bizet's Carmen with Eduard Kandl as Igor and Escamillo; Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, in which Vanni-Marcoux bade farewell to London as Golaud; Donizetti's Don Pasquale with Mafalda Favero as Norina and Dino Borgioli as Ernesto; Dukas's Ariane et Barbe-bleue with Germaine Lubin as Ariane; Gluck's Alceste with Lubin in the name part and Orphée et Eurydice with Dame Maggie Teyte as Eurydice; Euguene Goossens's Don Juan de Mañara, given its world première with Lawrence Tibbett as Don Juan; Puccini's Tosca with Gina Cigna as the eponymous diva, Martinetlli as Cavaradossi, and Tibbett, appearing for the first time at Covent Garden (and also alternating with Formichi as Iago in Otello), as Scarpia and Turandot with Dame Eva Turner, Licia Albanese, and Martinelli; Verdi's Aida with Cigna, Ebe Stignani, and Martinelli and Falstaff with a fantastic cast including Formichi, Maria Caniglia, and Albanese; and Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer with Herbert Janssen and Kirsten Flagstad, Tristan und Isolde with Lauritz Melchior and Flagstad, Der Ring des Nibelungen with Flagstad as Brünnhilde under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Parsifal with Torsten Ralf and Kerstin Thorborg. By any standard, it was an extraordinary season, rivaled in Covent Garden's history—indeed, in the history of opera in the modern era—only by the fourteen-week season presented on the occasion of the 1911 coronation of George V. Even in the context of such musical excellence, the season's Wagner productions were remarkable, none more so than Charles Moor's staging of Der fliegende Holländer. The production united Kölner baritone Herbert Janssen (1892 – 1965), then starting his second decade on Covent Garden's roster, as the Holländer, Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895 – 1962), still new to Covent Garden (she débuted at the Royal Opera House as Isolde on 18 May 1936: though she was ill with a nasty head cold on her first night, she received fifteen curtain calls at the performance's end), as Senta, Düsseldorf-born tenor Max Lorenz as Erik, and Viennese bass Ludwig Weber (1899 – 1974) as Daland, under the direction of Fritz Reiner (1888 – 1963), also a recent Covent Garden débutant. [His début was in Parsifal with Ralf and Frida Leider on 29 April 1936: he also conducted Flagstad's début and the three subsequent performances of Tristan und Isolde in May 1936.] If there were an operatic Eden, Kirsten Flagstad would surely be its Eve: from her intoxicating example Wagner singing in the later Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries was born. The 11 June broadcast of Der fliegende Holländer is rightly a famous performance. Now, owing to the painstaking restoration and conservation work of Richard Caniell and Immortal Performances, the listener in 2015 can truly hear rather than merely perceiving the performance’s importance. The current Queen could hope for no finer tributes to the musical heritage of the opera company under her patronage and to a tremendously important time in her and her parents’ lives.

Following accomplished but stylistically uncertain early efforts, Der fliegende Holländer was the score in which the twenty-nine-year-old Wagner found his mature voice, a fact that he acknowledged in his sprawling 1851 manifesto Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde. The Leitmotifs in Der fliegende Holländer are primarily dramatic devices rather than the psychological acuities in musical form that they would become in Der Ring des Nibelungen. The undistorted sound quality achieved by Caniell’s remastering of this performances enables contemplation of the standards of Wagner performance at Covent Garden in Fritz Reiner’s first seasons on the company’s podium. Compelled by the necessity of filling gaps left by portions of the 11 June performance that have not survived, Caniell seamlessly integrated material from other performances: unlike the proprietors of many labels, Caniell provides detailed information about the sources of the excerpts used as patches. The Overture and a few choral interjections before Erik’s entrance in Act Three are sourced from the Metropolitan Opera broadcast performance of 30 December 1950, in which Reiner presided over Hans Hotter’s Holländer and Astrid Varnay’s Senta (Ljuba Welitsch was the originally-scheduled Senta). The continuity of Weber’s Daland and Karl Ostertag’s (1903 – 1979) Steuermann is preserved by using brief passages from a 1936 Munich broadcast conducted by Carl Leonhardt. It was impossible to replicate the scene for Senta and Erik in Act Two with a recording featuring Flagstad and Lorenz, so the scene’s omission sensibly was not rectified. Most importantly, Caniell has corrected and equalized the pitch bar by bar, producing a recording that is a faithful document of how the performance must have sounded in the theatre (or over the wireless) in 1937, in addition to providing extensive, educating rather than pedantic liner notes that provide the listener with fresh insights and a sense of context whether hearing this performance for the first or the fiftieth time.

Under Reiner’s baton, the Covent Garden chorus and orchestra give an invigorating account of Wagner’s score. Neither the choral singing nor the orchestral playing is perfect: the earnestness of their efforts notwithstanding, the choristers often sound stressed by their music, and the instrumentalists make enough mistakes to remind listeners that even in such legendary settings musicians are fallible creatures. Still, the positive effects of what was surely a rigorous regimen of preparation are audible in the work of both chorus and orchestra. Reiner’s pacing of the performance is surprising, especially when compared to the familiar 1950 MET broadcast performance. The expected thrust is present throughout the performance, but there are scenes in which the conducting evinces a profoundly poetic wistfulness. The casts of the Covent Garden and MET performances are very different, of course, but it seems unlikely that this alone accounts for the marked dissimilarities between the two broadcasts. Whatever factors contributed to the nuances of Reiner’s interpretation of the score in London, the results are magical. Owing in large part to the support that they receive from the conductor, the singers are able to create characters who are credible as genuine individuals rather than typical Wagnerian archetypes, and the drama is engagingly visceral, not coldly symbolic. An erotic electricity crackles in the orchestra when the Holländer and Senta interact in Act Two, and the opera’s finale ultimately does not seem—as is usually the case—like an early study for Isolde’s Liebestod and Brünnhilde’s Schlussgesang but like the desperate action of a young woman consumed by a love too great to be sacrificed to conventionality. Reiner’s approach introduces an element of inevitability into the drama that makes the characters’ decisions all the more engrossing. These people are destined to collide, but Daland chooses to offer Senta to the Holländer as a bride in exchange for treasure, and Senta chooses to reject Erik’s warnings and join her fate to the Holländer’s. Her choice is not death: it is merely to follow the man she loves into his world, the eternal sea. Perhaps it would be hyperbolic rhetoric to term this performance visionary, but Reiner’s conducting of this performance conveys a quixotic but very specific exegesis. The keystone of this Fliegende Holländer is introspection. As a manager of musical personnel, Reiner is known to have been an exacting, sometimes intractable figure, but as the manager of this performance he displays perceptiveness unique in both his and the opera’s discographies.

Despite the participation of titans of Wagner repertory, Covent Garden’s Coronation Season Fliegende Holländer had as unified an ensemble cast as has ever been heard in the opera on recordings. Singing Mary, Senta’s nurse, Yorkshire-born contralto Mary Jarred (1899 – 1993) is a lovingly maternal but vivid presence, delivering ‘Ei, fleißig! Fleißig, wie sie spinnen!’ energetically and dotingly. Ostertag shames a number of today’s exponents of his rôle by truly singing the Steuermann’s music. His account of ‘Mit Gewitter und Sturm aus fernem Meer’ is a model of intelligent phrasing.

With the duet for Senta and Erik missing from the recording of Act Two of the 1937 broadcast and no suitable replacement being known to exist, there is only Erik’s scene in Act Three by which to judge Lorenz’s degree of comfort in the music. It is an awkwardly-written rôle, virtually a holdover from Weber’s Der Freischütz or Euryanthe. In the opening of the scene, Lorenz voices ‘Was mußt ich hören! Gott, was mußt ich sehn!’ with frenzied intensity. Reiner sets a measured tempo for the Kavatine, ‘Willst jenes Tags du nicht dich mehr entsinnen,’ enabling the singer to accurately place tones in the upper register and execute the ornaments gracefully. Lorenz sings the top As and B♭ and turns very elegantly indeed. Unlike many Eriks, the character portrayed by Lorenz does not badger Senta: he is none too happy about the path that she chooses, but his concern is that of affection rather than possessiveness. Musically, Lorenz’s voice was an ideal instrument for the rôle: commanding the resources to project over Wagner’s orchestrations, he also had the full range and the sweetness of tone demanded by the part. In this performance, he earns adulation even with nearly half of his music missing.

When Wagner’s libretto suggests that Senta is still in the full flush of youth, why is her father so often depicted as an old man in various stages of decrepitude? Visually, audiences in large theatres may well benefit from the generation gap between father and daughter being made artificially wide, but Wagner’s music for Daland benefits tremendously from youthful, virile singing like that offered by Weber in this performance. Without question, his was one of the finest bass voices of the Twentieth Century, but this Daland is notable for the lightness of both timbre and characterization. In the Act One duet with the Holländer, Weber’s singing of ‘Wie? Hört ich recht?’ is brawny but not unduly heavy. At the time of this performance, he seems to have been capable of doing almost anything he wanted to do with his voice, and his singing of ‘Mein Kind, du siehst mich auf der Schwelle’ and Daland’s aria ‘Mögst du, mein Kind, den fremden Mann’ in Act Two is poised and powerful. His lines in the trio with Senta and Holländer are shaped with dramatic alertness, beginning with a bristling pronouncement of ‘Verzeiht! Mein Volk hält draußen sich nicht meht.’ In Weber’s performance, Daland is his own man and less obviously a prototype for Pogner, König Marke, or Gurnemanz. As Weber portrays him in this performance, Daland is far more winsome than he often is: for once, he is not a figure who seems to have soured in the briny salt air.

From her first note, Flagstad’s Senta is precisely what the label promises—an immortal performance. After seeming to actually enjoy her volleys of ‘Ho jo hoe’ and the like, she phrases the Act Two Ballade, ‘Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an,’ with unerring control and complete confidence. Her lines in Senta’s duet with the Holländer, launched by ‘Versank ich jetzt in wunderbares Träumen,’ are phrased with imagination and individuality. ‘Wohl kenn ich Weibes heil'ge Pflichten’ is sung with girlish abandon, though there is nothing dainty about Flagstad’s top Bs. The soprano’s upper register likely gains most from Caniell’s stabilization of pitch: aside from a few top notes that sound slightly shrill, Flagstad’s voice is very flatteringly reproduced. Like Dame Joan Sutherland’s early broadcasts, this Fliegende Holländer likely gives a truer notion of the amplitude of the voice than almost any of Flagstad’s too-few studio recordings. The fullness of the middle octave of the voice is surpassed by no other Senta on disc, and those who allege that Flagstad’s singing was matronly throughout her career surely have not heard this release. In fact, her singing in Act Three is particularly significant for its freshness and undiluted expressivity. In the opera’s final moments, her singing of ‘Preis' deinen Engel und sein Gebot! Hier steh ich, treu dir bis zum Tod!’ erupts from the disc with an immediacy that could hardly be greater were the listener in a prime seat in the stalls at Covent Garden. The solidity of the top As and B♭ leaves no doubt about the firmness of Senta’s resolve, but these are not the defiant tones of Isolde or Brünnhilde: these are the sounds of a young woman embracing new, transformed life. Above all, they are the products of one of the world’s greatest voices, here on extraordinary form and finally preserved in sonics worthy of the singing. Also worthy of Flagstad’s artistry—and, from the perspective of this writer, reasons to acquire this Immortal Performances release as compelling as the 1937 Fliegende Holländer—are the 1949 and 1950 San Francisco broadcast recordings of Senta’s Ballade and three of Richard Strauss’s most celebrated Lieder included on the set’s second disc. The passage of twelve years robbed Flagstad of nothing in terms of her vocal and dramatic interpretations of the Ballade, which in the San Francisco performance conducted by San Francisco Opera founder Gaetano Merola has even greater lushness than in the Covent Garden broadcast. Flagstad premièred Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder in London’s Royal Albert Hall on 22 May 1950, less than five months before the performances of ‘Befreit,’ ‘Allerseelen,’ and ‘Cäcilie’ presented here. Though the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier was one of the rôles that Artur Bodanzky charged her with learning before traveling to the USA to fulfill her new contract with the Metropolitan Opera, she never sang any of Strauss’s operas in New York or elsewhere. The availability of these performances of ‘Befreit,’ ‘Allerseelen,’ and ‘Cäcilie’ in such fine sound partially makes amends for the missed opportunities of Flagstad’s Marschallin, Ariadne, and Färberin.

The near-impossible ambiguity of the Holländer is that, in order to be wholly believable in accordance with Wagner’s text, he must sound like both a man reckless enough to have made a deal with the devil and one capable of inspiring the sort of undeviating redemptive love that Senta develops for him. Bringing to the part a voice of a size appropriate for the music, Janssen has no need to cheat at either end of the range as many Holländers have done. Like Flagstad’s and Weber’s, his voice is appealingly spry, but his characterization is guided by an uncommonly thoughtful maturity. In the Act One aria 'Die Frist ist um, und abermals verstrichen sind sieben Jahr,' Janssen is untroubled by the frequent top E♭s, but the most arresting component of his interpretation is the world-weariness that he evinces without warping the vocal line with ponderousness. In the duet with Daland, he sculpts 'Weit komm ich her; verwehrt bei Sturm und Wetter ihr mir den Ankerplatz?' with poignant hesitation, the words those of a man too often injured to risk hoping anew. Janssen and Flagstad spellbindingly portray a man and woman falling in love rather than allegorical representations of sin and redemption in the Holländer’s Act Two duet with Senta, 'Wie aus der Ferne längst vergangner Zeiten.' The dramatic focus and beauty of tone that the baritone exhibits in his singing of 'Du bust ein Engel, eines Engels Liebe Verworfne selbst zu trösten Weiß!' are phenomenal, his security in the high tessitura ushering him into the rarified company of singers who can manage this music without strain. In Act Three, the heartbreak in his articulation of 'Verloren! Ach! Verloren! Ewig verlornes Heil!' is crushing, the climactic top F aimed like an arrow at the heart of fickle destiny. His pronouncement of 'den „fliegende Holländer“ nennt man mich' is crestfallen rather than menacing, the singer projecting the totality of the character’s troubled psyche through those six words. Cumulatively, Janssen is perhaps the most sympathetic Holländer on disc: Schorr had greater tonal orotundity, Nissen equal nobility of demeanor, and Hotter more sheer voice, but no recorded Holländer past or present is as moving as Janssen was in this 1937 performance.

Many singers’ and conductors’ work in Der fliegende Holländer suggests that their notions of effectively performing the opera—the score in which Wagner became Wagner, as it were—are that the composer’s stylistic advancement is best served by making Der fliegende Holländer sound like Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, or Parsifal. How wrongheaded the 1937 Covent Garden broadcast performance of Der fliegende Holländer proves this to be! As is almost always true in opera, the most effective performances of any score are those in which the characters, however parabolic, are invested with recognizable humanity. Similarly, the most effective recordings are those in which the performances at hand are lovingly prepared and presented. From both of these perspectives, Immortal Performances’ edition of the 1937 Covent Garden Der fliegende Holländer broadcast is one of the most important, most inspiring releases in more than a century of recorded opera.

Das Geisterschiff: Charles Moor's scenic design for Act Three of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer in the Coronation Season production of 1937 [Image from the collection of the Royal Opera House, © by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden]

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gioachino Rossini – LA CENERENTOLA (T. Erraught, D. Portillo, S. Alberghini, V. Lanchas, Shenyang, D. Nansteel, J. Echols; Washington National Opera, 17 May 2015)

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo—Tara Erraught (Angelina), David Portillo (Don Ramiro), Simone Alberghini (Dandini), Valeriano Lanchas (Don Magnifico), Shenyang (Alidoro), Deborah Nansteel (Tisbe), Jacqueline Echols (Clorinda); Washington National Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Speranza Scappucci, conductor [Directed by Joan Font; Set and Costume Designs by Joan Guillén; Lighting Designs by Albert Faura; Choreography by Xevi Dorca; Washington National Opera, John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC; Sunday, 17 May 2015]

Who has not dreamed of being transformed by the unseen hand of fate into a beautiful princess or of being the magnanimous prince who values pulchritude of spirit above loveliness of face and form? These are the fantasies personified by Angelina and Ramiro, the protagonists of Gioachino Rossini’s 1817 comic masterpiece La Cenerentola, and their journeys from downtrodden housemaid and lonely bachelor to partners in marital serendipity can be some of the most enjoyable adventures in opera. The score is vintage Rossini, with whirling coloratura, manic ensembles, and frolicsome crescendi aplenty, but the true heart of La Cenerentola is the well of sadness that lurks beneath the brilliant patina of Rossini’s polished music. The most successful productions of the opera are those that draw from that well without bleeding it dry, and this is precisely what Washington National Opera’s production achieved in spades. Comedy is meaningless if the audience is given no reason to care about the characters whose antics inspire mirth: in this performance, the audience’s ebullient hilarity was an organic response to the exploits of an unusually lovable cast. For a few hours on a balmy Sunday afternoon, a congregation of people united by nothing more than holding tickets to the same performance laughed together without concern for race, religion, or social status. Equality, Rossini intimates, really can be that simple.

Conducted by Speranza Scappucci with the flexibility and genuine Italianate finesse missing from so many of today’s performances of Rossini’s operas and bel canto repertory in general, WNO’s Cenerentola—a production shared with Welsh National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu, and Grand Théâtre de Genève—was in a number of ways a feast for the senses. Visually, Joan Guillén’s sets and costumes placed the action in a fantastical fairytale dominion in which ladies were effortlessly prepossessing, men were heroically handsome, and even the shabbiest creatures had the good taste to adopt genteel manners. The rainbow-colored costumes, complemented by outrageous wigs in corresponding hues, were a vital component of the comedy: who else in opera but Don Magnifico could pull off donning a ripe-grape purple suit and periwig? Alidoro’s celestial robe was straight out of Harry Potter, and the choristers looked like a splendid hybrid of the Swiss Guard and courtiers of Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. Mr. Guillén’s designs shone in the glow of Albert Faura’s intelligently-managed lighting, which bathed the stage in glows both natural and appropriately magical.

One of the production’s strokes of genius was the team of mice that shadow Cenerentola throughout the opera: her gentle caressing of them was surprisingly touching, and their expertly-enacted choreography, devised by Xevi Dorca, was fabulously witty. The team of dancers beneath the mice’s cleverly-crafted masks—Nancy Flores-Tirado, Damon Foster, A. Maverick Lemons, Monica Malanga, Alvaro Palau, and Christopher Pennix—were lithe, winningly charming, and utterly believable as mice. They provided so many small details that enriched the production immeasurably: unobtrusively moving props, quietly watching the action, lovingly comforting the downtrodden Angelina, and, most critically, using a dose of mouse ingenuity to ensure that the Prince’s carriage wrecked conveniently in the vicinity of Villa Don Magnifico. In the interactions of cast members both human and murine, Joan Font’s and Tanya Kane-Parry’s direction was consistently shrewd. Tellingly, not one member of the cast ever looked uncomfortable with any component of the staging. The focus was on ordinary people finding themselves in near-impossible situations, having a few laughs at their own expense, sorting things out as best as they could, and singing great music all the while—in short, on performing Rossini’s Cenerentola, not some wrongheaded reimagining of it.

Una famiglia insolita: (from left to right) Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as Tisbe, bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas as Don Magnifico, and soprano Jacqueline Echols as Clorinda in Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Washington National Opera, 17 May 2015 [Photo by Scott Suchman, © by Washington National Opera]

La Cenerentola is a score that I have known and loved for nearly twenty years. I have attended performances by opera companies large and small, and each performance has educated me about previously-unnoticed aspects of Rossini’s effervescent music. Appreciating this music as much as I do, I can offer no greater praise for Maestra Scappucci’s pacing of the performance than stating that she conducted the opera precisely as I would do if an opera company were foolish enough to trust me with a baton. Refreshingly, she was never afraid of applying the brakes when the musical and emotional atmosphere warranted doing so. The madcap Rossini prestissimi were there, to be sure, but neither the music nor those performing it were rushed. Also proving an imaginative maestra di cembalo in Luca Agolini’s secco recitatives, she adopted tempi that enabled a rare level of appreciation for the bel in Rossini’s bel canto. Under Maestra Scappucci’s baton, the WNO Orchestra and Chorus performed with the vivacity and unfettered musicality that the score demands. The orchestra delivered an especially spirited account of the Sinfonia in which, as throughout the performance, the conductor heightened the emotional ‘messages’ of the music by observing Rossini’s markings and employing great flexibility in resolving cadences. The kinship among La Cenerentola and the two great ‘last stands’ of Italian comic opera, Verdi’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, was unusually apparent. Rossini is not renowned for his aptitude as an orchestrator, but his writing for woodwinds in Cenerentola is often quite inventive: in this performance, the WNO woodwind players left no felicity of their parts undisclosed. The gentlemen of the chorus sang robustly, their performances of ‘O figlie amabili di Don Magnifico, Ramiro il principe or or verrà’ and ‘Scegli la sposa, affrettati’ in Act One bustling with enthusiasm and of ‘Della Fortuna instabile’ in Act Two filling the auditorium with finely-blended sound.

As Cenerentola’s delectably nasty stepsisters, mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel and soprano Jacqueline Echols were ideally paired vocally, comically, and temperamentally. Making enormous pink and yellow wigs look like the pinnacle of swanky ‘mean girl’ style, the ladies pranced and pouted like a spoiled Dorabella and Fiordiligi. [Note to WNO and other companies: a production of Così fan tutte with this twosome would be smashing!] An alumna of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, Ms. Nansteel exhibited such naturalness in Tisbe’s tantrums that she hardly seemed to be acting at all, and the Nationals would do well to invite her to spring training next season: her aim when hurling slippers at poor Cenerentola was deadly. Ms. Echols, an unforgettable Violetta in North Carolina Opera’s La traviata earlier in the present season, equaled Ms. Nansteel’s every gesture and soared in Clorinda’s high lines in ensembles, displaying firm, attractive top As, B♭s, and Bs. The spiteful sisters were riotous in the Act Two Sextet, and their eventual resignation to Alidoro’s suggested reconciliation with Cenerentola, Tisbe coming to her senses rather more readily than Clorinda, was managed humorously but with real feeling. Though it is the work of Angelini rather than Rossini, it was unfortunate that Clorinda’s aria was suppressed: Ms. Echols deserved the additional opportunity to shine.

Winner of the 2007 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, Chinese bass Shenyang was an imposing Alidoro who vocal power matched his towering physique. WNO’s production preferred the aria that Rossini composed for Alidoro in the 1820 revival of Cenerentola, ‘La, del ciel nell’arcano profondo,’ and the performance that it received from this talented young bass fully justified its inclusion. His dark tones were occasionally lost in ensembles, but he was an implacable voice for integrity whose expertly-sung utterances could not be ignored.

Il padre riluttante: Bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas as Don Magnifico (center) in Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Washington National Opera, 17 May 2015 [Photo by Scott Suchman, © Washington National Opera]

Colombian bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas, also a veteran of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program, portrayed Don Magnifico as a foolish man but not a fool. Possessing a large sound, a lively stage presence, and an easy command of the stage, total mastery of Rossini's idiom is not yet a weapon in his impressive operatic arsenal. In Act One, Mr. Lanchas gave an account of Magnifico's cavatina ‘Miei rampolli femminini’ that was dramatically captivating but musically rough around the edges. He sang ‘Mi sognai fra il fosco e il chiaro’ and ‘Per pietà quelle ciglia abbassate’ excitingly, and he combined with Dandini with spitfire exasperation in their duet in Act Two. Mr. Lanchas was at his best in ensembles, in which he dedicated himself to the task of maintaining Magnifico’s central part in the drama. Even when his bravura technique was slightly overwhelmed by Rossini’s patter writing, Mr. Lanchas created a larger-than-life character, and it was a legitimate pleasure to hear such a big, bold voice in Magnifico’s music.

​A native of Bologna, bass-baritone Simone Alberghini is to the Rossinian manner born, and his impersonation of the wily Dandini was the work of both a very capable singer and a comedic mastermind. The dryness of his timbre lent his characterization an unexpected sophistication that in no way inhibited his instincts for comedy.​ Seizing his opportunity to experience the master’s perspective on giving and taking orders, this Dandini let no chance to exercise his temporary authority pass him by. Many singers might have overplayed Dandini’s dropping his hat so that the disguised Prince must retrieve it, but Mr. Alberghini made it funnier each time he did it. His singing of the cavatina ‘Come un’ape ne’ giorni d’aprile va volando leggiera e scherzosa’ was more forced than forceful, the top Fs secure and ringing if tightly-muscled, but he rousingly met every demand of the duet with Ramiro, ‘Zitto, zitto; piano, piano.’ The Act Two duet with Magnifico, ‘Un segreto d’importanza,’ was all the more effective for being understated: when the scene is written so perfectly, there is no need for a plethora of slapstick shenanigans. The most treasurable moment of the afternoon was when, after a bit of particularly funny stage business between Dandini and Magnifico, a small child’s laughter rang out. Dandini’s next lines were delivered through the singer’s own laughter. It was the kind of moment that cannot be rehearsed and makes an enjoyable performance an unforgettable one for artists and audience. Mr. Alberghini dispatched the mercurial writing of ‘Questo è un nodo avviluppato’ in the Sextet with astounding technical acumen, and he contributed a high level of accuracy in florid music to all ensembles. So impressive was his dancing that it seemed that he was preparing for the Royal Ballet’s visit to Kennedy Center in June. Mr. Alberghini sang impressively throughout the performance, but the hallmark of this Dandini was unalloyed, good-natured fun.

Il servo ed il principe: Bass-baritone Simone Alberghini as Dandini (left, in disguise as the Prince) and tenor David Portillo as Ramiro (right) in Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Washington National Opera, 17 May 2015 [Photo by Scott Suchman, © by Washington National Opera]

With recent triumphs as Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Houston Grand Opera, Tonio in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment with Arizona Opera, and Tebaldo in Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi with Washington Concert Opera to his credit, Texas-born tenor David Portillo brought to his portrayal of Ramiro in WNO’sCenerentola an estimable bel canto curriculum vitae that belies his youth. Singing his first part with WNO, he dominated the stage with his mischievously handsome presence, disarming smile, and natural flair for Rossinian comedy.​ Aside from his Puckish characterization, the principal glory of Mr. Portillo’s Ramiro was the elegance with which his ravishing tenore di grazia rendered Rossini’s vocal lines. From the first notes of ‘Tutto è deserto,’ his singing combined near-perfect diction with undeviating assurance in coloratura passages. In the duet with Angelina, ‘Una soave non so che in quegl’occhi scintillò,’ his wide-eyed wonder was outstanding, and the cute detail of the Prince chivalrously offering to sweep up the remnants of the cup broken by Cenerentola but having no clue about what to do with a broom was endearingly managed. Mr. Portillo was a source of poised, skillfully-projected singing in the sensational Quintet and the duet with Dandini, in which he and Mr. Alberghini interacted with the conspiratorial conviviality of Conte d’Almaviva—in which rôle Mr. Portillo will be heard at the Metropolitan Opera in December and January, reuniting with Mr. Lanchas, who will make his MET début as Bartolo—and Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia. In Act Two, the four top Cs in Ramiro’s aria ‘Sì, ritrovarla io giuro’ were launched effortlessly, and the tonal sheen of Mr. Portillo’s singing of the Andantino section of the aria, ‘Pegno adorato e caro,’ was arresting. His performance of the cabaletta ‘Dolce speranza, freddo timore dentro al mio core stanno a pugnar’ was galvanizing, the pair of written top Cs supplemented by an interpolated third, as well as a breathtaking top D. Like Elvino in Bellini’s La sonnambula, Ramiro has little to do after he and his true love are reunited, but Mr. Portillo’s amorously benevolent part in the drama continued to the opera’s final chord: his new bride seemed almost to float upon his affectionate gaze.

I primi sorrisi d’amore: Tenor David Portillo (left) as Ramiro and mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught in the title rôle (right) of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola at Washington National Opera, 17 May 2015 [Photo by Scott Suchman, © by Washington National Opera]

The much-discussed interpreter of the title rôle in Glyndebourne’s 2014 production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught also made her WNO début, as well as her American staged opera début, in the current production of La Cenerentola. Sadly, the principal focus of last summer’s furor in the British press was not this lovely young singer’s voice, which is a well-controlled, amber-hued instrument of excellent quality, but the kind of inexcusable stupidity that makes not only opera itself but also those who love it seem shallow, outmoded, and no longer significant. WNO's Cenerentola was an ideal setting for​ the unpretentiously beautiful Ms. Erraught to display her capabilities as a singer and an actress, and what a display she gave! She looked as pretty as a fairytale princess even in Cenerentola’s ‘rags’—which, in truth, were rather smarter than in many productions of the opera—and acted the rôle with simplicity and sweetly feminine grace, ashamed at first of her burgeoning feelings of love for the disguised Prince and gradually blossoming into a bonafide romantic leading lady. Especially in Act One, in which Ms. Erraught phrased the delicate ‘Una volta c’era un re’ with excellent breath control, the voice was not ideally projected and was sometimes difficult to hear, especially in phrases in the lower octave of the part. In the duet with Ramiro, ‘Io vorrei saper perchè il mio cor mi palpitò,’ she sang dulcetly, and the expansiveness of her account of ‘Una grazia, un certo incanto par che brilli su quel viso’ was absorbing. The entreaties of ‘Signor, una parola’ were harrowing, and the seeming spontaneity of her enunciation of ‘Ah! sempre fra la cenere, sempre dovrò restar?’ deepened the poignancy of the scene. Ms. Erraught conveyed all of Cenerentola’s hope for a happier future in her sun-drenched singing of 'Sprezzo quei don che versa fortuna capricciosa,' and she made Cenerentola’s giving Ramiro the bracelet and charging him with searching for its mate a task no man could refuse. Every reappearance of 'Una volta c'era un re' grew lovelier, and the special intensity of the singer’s statement of 'Sposa...Signore, perdona la tenera incertezza che mi confonde ancor,' bolstered by Maestra Scappucci’s genial support, magnified the character’s altruistic spirit. Ms. Erraught approached the opera’s final scene as a musical and sentimental tour de force, singing the andante 'Nacqui all'affanno e al pianto’ with unaffected silkiness that she carried from the bottom of the range to her top B. Fittingly, Ms. Erraught’s finest singing of the afternoon was done in the rondò finale, 'Non più mesta accanto al fuoco starò sola a gorgheggiar.’ Here, the voice soared into the auditorium, the coloratura dispatched with complete adroitness, her trill invigorating, and her top Bs lustrous and secure. Her confidence flourished as the performance progressed, and she was ultimately a Cenerentola who proved equally adept at expressing the rôle’s joviality and profundity.

La Cenerentola is not a complicated opera, but far too many productions complicate it unnecessarily. It is unlikely that Rossini and his librettist, Jacopo Ferretti, ever intended for audiences who attend performances of Cenerentola to embrace the opera as anything but entertainment: perhaps they never envisioned that their opera would continue to be performed two centuries after its première. By approaching the opera with both creativity and fidelity to Rossini’s score, Washington National Opera affirmed that La Cenerentola deserves its place in the international repertory in the Twenty-First Century. Indeed, furnishing surroundings for singing such as that done by Tara Erraught and David Portillo on Sunday afternoon is reason enough to perform La Cenerentola anytime, anywhere.

Una donna ed il suo topo: Mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught in the title rôle of Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Washington National Opera, 17 March 2015 [Photo by Scott Suchman, © Washington National Opera]

ARTS IN ACTION: Spoleto Festival USA and a world-class cast resurrect Pier Francesco Cavalli’s 1652 epic VEREMONDA, L’AMAZZONE DI ARAGONA

 

When Don Luis Méndoz de Haro and Cardinal Mazarin met in 1659 on the Isla de los Faisanes in the middle of the Bidasoa River as the proxies of the Hapsburg Spanish and Bourbon French crowns, the Treaty of the Pyrenees that arose from their diplomacy ended a quarter-century of conflict between Spain and France that paralleled the broader Thirty Years' War that devastated much of northern Europe in the first half of the Seventeenth Century. The foundations of the regional politics that upset the balance of daily life in Spain even now, sometimes in tragic eruptions of violence that echo the 1640 Corpus de Sang, were already strongly fortified when, angered by Spanish abuses of Catalan troops and citizens during the Thirty Years’ War, the people of Catalonia rebelled against their Hapsburg oppressors, capitalizing on the differing agendas and distractions of the French and Spanish. This revolt perpetuated war between the neighbors across the Pyrenees that persisted after the Peace of Westphalia ended the hostilities of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. Though this clash of imperial ambitions would persist for another seven years, destiny deserted the proud Catalan when the Spanish captured Barcelona in 1652, capitulating Catalonia to Hapsburg dominion and solidifying Spain’s border with France. It was into this tempestuous environment that Pier Francesco Cavalli’s Veremonda, l'amazzone di Aragona was born. Premièred at the Nuovo Teatro del Palazzo Reale in Naples—another sparkling but problematic jewel in the Spanish Hapsburg crown—on 21 December 1652, the opera was an obvious paean to the Spanish conquest of Barcelona and expulsion of the Moors, its depiction of the 1462 conquest and annexation of Gibraltar by Enrique IV of Castile and the subsequent 1492 victory of his daughter Isabella I of Castile and her consort Ferdinand II of Aragon—Spain’s lionized reyes católicos, restyled by Cavalli and his librettists as Veremonda and Alfonso—over the Moorish Emirate of Granada [sailing the ocean blue was not all the royal couple had on their minds in that fateful year] standing in handily for the Spanish suppression of the Catalan revolt. Both the propagandizing and Cavalli’s music evidently proved palatable: scarcely more than a month passed before Veremonda was performed in Venice’s Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo on 28 January 1653. It is baffling to observe that a plot as startlingly modern as that of Veremonda has been so long overlooked by conductors, directors, and singers whilst the ancient and mythological denizens of Cavalli operas such as La Calisto, Ercole amante, Giasone, and Xerse—characters who Sir Peter Shaffer’s Mozart might accuse of defecating marble—have regained footholds along the sidelines of today’s operatic playing field. Histories musical and anthropological reveal that a woman like Veremonda will not be silenced forever, but where she will be heard depends upon a fortuitous arrangement of circumstances. Fortuitous indeed are the circumstances that bring Cavalli’s Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona to the 2015 Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina: 362 years after maiden voyages, Veremonda will trade the Golfo di Napoli and Canałasso for the Ashley and Cooper and drop anchor at the Dock Street Theatre in a production poised not only to resurrect but also to revitalize this mesmerizing collision of art and politics.

A queen regnant with both tremendous political power and the intelligence and wherewithal to wield it effectively, Isabella I was an anomaly in the predominantly primogenital social order of her time. That the Seventeenth-Century librettists who retrieved her from the recesses of history and repurposed her for the operatic stage with a symbolic Amazon slant seem somewhat chauvinistic from a Twenty-First-Century perspective is perhaps inevitable, but removing the operatic Veremonda from her singular historical context diminishes the impact of her histrionic power. She will be sung in Charleston by Fairbanks-born mezzo-soprano—and Spoleto USA débutante—Vivica Genaux, one of the few singers in the world whose dynamic dramatic instincts are equaled by her astounding bravura technique. Having in the recent past sung Händel’s Giulio Cesare and Ruggiero (Alcina), Purcell’s Dido, and Veracini’s Farnaspe (Adriano in Siria), Ms. Genaux is adept at portraying characters in extremis on both sides of the gender divide. As a woman of irrefutable power tested by the mores of a patriarchal society, Veremonda is not unlike Purcell’s long-suffering Queen of Carthage: more than a few Didos would surely have welcomed the notion of gathering an army of sympathetic ladies to punish Aeneas’s betrayal! Ms. Genaux excels at bringing nuanced characters to life without overdoing their emotions, and she is an ideal musical conduit for the dramatic electricity of Cavalli’s score, her inimitable vocal technique mirroring Veremonda’s no-holds-barred manner of taking charge of every situation in which she finds herself.

Una bella amazzone: Mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux (center), who will sing the title rôle in Spoleto Festival USA’s production of Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona, in rehearsal; May 2015 [Photo by Aaron Carpenè; used with permission]

Aaron Carpenè, the Perth native and renowned Early Music specialist who prepared the score of Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona for the Spoleto USA production and will conduct the performances, cites the team of exceptional musicians assembled for the production as one of the greatest pleasures encountered in the initiative to breathe new life into Cavalli’s score. ‘We are proud to be working with a wonderful international cast led by Vivica Genaux and accompanied by the period instrument ensemble New York Baroque Inc.,’ he said recently. ‘We are [also] fortunate to have the prize-winning photographer Michel Juvet and author Allison Zurfluh, who will be publishing a book on the Veremonda production. It will include chapters on Cavalli, his life in Venice and the manuscript still conserved there today, the pre-production preparation with fascinating peeks into Ugo Nespolo’s art studio in Turin and the Oscar®-winning costume atelier Farani in Rome, as well as the backstage rehearsal work and première performance in Charleston. The book will be a fine souvenir of this extraordinary event.’

The wonderful international cast mentioned by Maestro Carpenè brings together a group of young singers already celebrated for musical and stylistic excellence. A like-minded partner for Ms. Genaux both on stage and on disc [their critically-lauded deutsche harmonia mundi studio recording of Johann Adolf Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra will be followed in autumn 2015 by fra bernardo’s release of a recording of their 2014 concert performance of Ferdinando Bertoni’s L’Orfeo], golden-throated Italian soprano Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli will portray Zelemina in Veremonda, bringing a wealth of experience in Baroque repertory to her reunion with Ms. Genaux. One of the finest young representatives of his Fach, handsome Italian countertenor Raffaele Pè will make his American operatic début in the rôle of Delio—a part so critical to the plot that his name serves as the alternate title for Cavalli’s opera. Another pair of gifted countertenors will lend further period-appropriate singing to the production, the impersonations of Zaida by high-voiced Michael Maniaci and of Don Alfonso and il Sole in the opera’s prologue by Andrey Nemzer, a youthful veteran of the 2013 revival of the much-discussed Herbert Wernicke production of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera, sure to be highlights of Spoleto USA’s Veremonda. Bass-baritone Joseph Barron’s Roldano, baritone Jason Budd’s Giacutte, tenor Steven Cole’s Don Buscone, and tenor Brian Downen’s Zeriffo and il Crepuscolo also promise musical flair. As the guiding force behind San Francisco-based Ars Minerva and the sagacious director and leading lady in that organization’s March 2015 modern-première performances of Daniele da Castrovillari’s 1662 opera La Cleopatra, coloratura mezzo-soprano Céline Ricci brings to her performances as Vespina in Veremonda vital experience with recreating a neglected operatic gem with complementary historically-informed practices and modern sensibilities. Completing the cast as the Sergente maggiore, a rôle that, as Maestro Carpenè notes, presents challenges to modern musicologists as the part’s tessitura shifts from bass to soprano halfway through the manuscript score, soprano Danielle Talamantes comes to Charleston for her first travesti rôle after an acclaimed turn as Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen at the MET.

An authority on music of Veremonda’s vintage, Maestro Carpenè is uncommonly attentive to the daunting task that reviving forgotten scores poses to even the most insightful artists. ‘There are many challenges in preparing a score from a manuscript,’ he states, ‘but, in particular for Veremonda, one of the great challenges was dealing with what is known as Cavalli’s messiest manuscript. There are evidently the hands of at least two copyists; Cavalli’s own hand in corrections, cancellations, and additions; and lastly [that of] Cavalli’s wife Maria, who also helped out in both copying and composing. Cavalli’s handwriting appears hasty and untidy, while the copyists—who presumably replaced Maria since she died in the same year as the production of the opera, 1652—have neat handwriting but present numerous musical errors which have to be corrected.’ Solving these problems, the Maestro muses, is only one facet of the endeavor of restoring an opera like Veremonda to its original glory. ‘A further challenge in bringing this opera back to life for a contemporary audience is the decision related to the style of production,’ he intimates. ‘Should a world première in modern times seek to propose a philological reinterpretation that reflects what Cavalli’s audiences would have seen and heard in 1652, or should there be a reinterpretation that reflects modern day tastes?’

Delio divino: Countertenor Raffaele Pè in rehearsal for his portrayal of Delio in Spoleto Festival USA’s production of Cavalli’s Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona; May 2015 [Photo by Aaron Carpenè; used with permission]

At this point, Maestro Carpenè’s thoughts turn to the inception of Spoleto USA’s production of Veremonda—a groundbreaking project typical of the Festival’s enterprising spirit. ‘It was the Spoleto Festival’s director, Nigel Redden, who proposed [Veremonda] to stage director Stefano Vizioli and myself,’ he recollects. ‘Having accepted the offer, the principal attraction of the project was the challenge of preparing a production score from the manuscript and then working in an organic way with Vizioli in the development of the staging concept that determines aspects such as sets and costumes based on our perception of what the music and the libretto were trying to express. We decided, for example, to work with one of Italy’s most famous contemporary artists, Ugo Nespolo. His colorful and vibrant style evokes a striking Mediterranean zest, and the sets themselves, perfectly suited to the Baroque dimensions of the USA’s oldest theatre—the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston, built in 1736 [the present structure was constructed in 1809, following a devastating fire],—actually follow closely the Baroque grammar of stagecraft. To create a philological production of what Cavalli’s audience might have seen would have been an interesting exercise, but we felt that some of the themes of the opera—the conflict between Christians and Muslims, the questions of gender and rôles in society—were just as relevant today as they were to those audiences and that the argument for a more ‘contemporary’ staging seemed to be more pressing. For me personally, an historically-informed approach is the starting point, not the finishing line. So while I am being very attentive to the Cavalli singing style of recitar cantando, the employment of period instruments, the appropriate pitch and tuning, and so forth, I feel that the message of the opera has to speak in the most accessible way possible to an audience of today.’

Spoleto USA and Charleston are ideal venues for the rediscovery of Veremonda, Maestro Carpenè feels. ‘The Spoleto Festival in Charleston prides itself on presenting little- or unknown works and artists to their audiences,’ he reflects. ‘Only recently, the festival director, Nigel Redden, proudly spoke of his policy of not presenting the familiar to his audiences but, rather, cultivating them and their curiosity in embracing the unfamiliar. Yet another Tosca or Traviata can be easily seen in any major opera theatre throughout the world: Veremonda has the privilege of [a] world première in modern times, just over 360 years since its original performance, at this festival.’ Moreover, the conductor suggests, both recent events and the annals of Charleston’s storied past as a cradle of the American Civil War make the city a fitting backdrop for the angst of Veremonda. ‘With respect to the [original] performance date, it is a story based on relatively recent history, in contrast to the mythical subjects found in Ercole amante, La Didone or La Calisto or more ancient historical references in Muzio Scevola or Il Xerse,’ he explains. ‘Veremonda is also unique because of the way the libretto was composed. Giulio Strozzi, writing under the pseudonym Luigi Zorzisto, took an earlier Florentine libretto entitled Celio by his colleague Giacinto Andrea Cicognini and literally copied and pasted much of the material to form a new libretto designed to entertain Venetian audiences. In many other ways, in style and form, Veremonda is quite close to the other masterpieces such as Giasone and La Calisto, and it is a great honor and privilege to be able to present this glorious music to a modern audience.’

Veremonda is an experience that will linger in the minds of Spoleto USA audiences for years to come, Maestro Carpenè believes. ‘There will be many things to remember: the fine singing, the skillful orchestral accompaniment, the enthralling staging, the artwork of the sets,’ he says with pride. ‘But besides all of this,’ he continues, ‘I would like the Spoleto audience to remember an unique and historical event; the resurrection of a long-forgotten opera by the most important opera composer of the day, whose operas helped shape the destiny of musical theatre performance that we know today.’ This, he suggests, is the greatest reward of the exhausting process of bringing Veremonda to Charleston. ‘To follow the growth and development of the project through all its phases, from the viewing of the old manuscript in the Marciana Library of Venice, to the transcription of the music and text, the elaboration of the staging, and finally the rehearsals with cast and orchestra with the mounting of the staging leading up to the première—to see and experience the final product is a great source of satisfaction.’

That satisfaction seems certain to be shared by cast, production team, and audiences alike. In advance of opening night, Spoleto Festival USA will offer a ‘Salon Series’ preview on Wednesday, 20 May. Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona opens at the Dock Street Theatre on Saturday, 23 May. Additional performances are scheduled for 26 and 30 May and 2 and 5 June.

Prima la musica: Pier Francesco Cavalli (1602 – 1676), composer of Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona, returning to the stage after 362 years at the 2015 Spoleto Festival USA [17th-Century engraving from private collection]

CD REVIEW: L. Boccherini, J.-P. Duport, G.A. Paganelli, D. Porretti, F.P. Supriano, P. Vidal, & J. Zayas – THE CELLO IN SPAIN (La Ritirata; Josetxu Obregón, cello & direction; Glossa GCD 923103)

LUIGI BOCCHERINI (1743 – 1805), JEAN-PIERRE DUPORT (1741 – 1818), GIUSEPPE ANTONIO PAGANELLI (1710 – circa 1763), DOMINGO PORRETTI (1709 – 1783), FRANCESCO PAOLO SUPRIANO (1678 – 1753), PABLO VIDAL (died 1807), and JOSÉ ZAYAS (died 1804): The Cello in Spain – Music by Eighteenth-Century Virtuosi—Josetxu Obregón, cello and direction; La Ritirata [Recorded in Sala Tomás Luis de Victoria, Real Conservatorio de Música, Madrid, Spain, in December 2014; Glossa GCD 923103; 1 CD, 57:05; Available from La Ritirata, La Quinta de Mahler, Amazon (USA), Presto Classical, and major music retailers]

I begin with an egregious but unmalicious act of heresy; or, from the perspective of my fellow violinists, perhaps treason. I have long thought that, if circumstances somehow permitted me to start my musical education anew, I should abandon the violin in favor of the cello. Hearing The Cello in Spain, the new Glossa disc featuring cellist Josetxu Obregón and La Ritirata, has both intensified my love for the cello and reassured me that I was right to have studied the violin: profaning the cello with my poor playing should have been criminal in comparison with what Mr. Obregón and his colleagues achieve on this disc, which Federico Prieto’s engineering gives the holding-one’s-breath ambiance of a live performance rather than that of an antiseptic recording studio. This music, much of which is undeservedly unfamiliar, demands this sort of vitality, and the advocacy that it receives on this disc is extraordinary. Even an imperceptive listener is seldom fooled by empty virtuosity, and there is no ignoring the tremendous dose of corazón that makes this disc so enjoyable. There are technical fireworks aplenty, but the defining quality of The Cello in Spain is passion.

Like so much in the glorious history of music, the lineage of the modern violoncello is open to interpretation. Likely first developed by luthiers working in and near Bologna in the 1660s, the cello was a gradual adaptation of the bass viol and viola da gamba—in short, a product of musical evolution that arose in response to the creation of metal strings that enabled reliable intonation on low pitches on instruments with smaller, more manageable bodies. Standardizations of size and design did not follow until the middle of the Eighteenth Century, after the efforts of makers such as Stradivarius elevated the cello to the level of importance at which it rendered earlier incarnations of the bass violin obsolete. The history of the cello in Spain travelled a course that can be most reliably documented via the music composed for the instrument by artists resident in the country and visiting the Hapsburg and Borbón courts of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Spain. In the selections on The Cello in Spain, Mr. Obregón and his expert colleagues—Daniel Oyarzabal on harpsichord and organ, cellist Diana Vinagre, Enrike Solinís on Baroque guitar and archlute, Daniel Zapico on theorbo, harpist Sara Águeda, violinists Lina Tur Bonet and Miren Zeberio, violinist and violist Daniel Lorenzo, double bass player Michel Frechina, and master of the castanets David Chupete—recreate with compelling musical narrative the formation of a tradition of composition for the cello that became as central to the artistic life of Spain as writing for the baryton—a bizarre relative of the cello and bass viol—was to Haydn’s composition of instrumental music during his tenure at Esterháza. Informed but never restricted by historically-informed performance practice scholarship, Mr. Obregón and his La Ritirata colleagues transport the listener to the alternately reverent and playful halls of el Escorial with sounds that engage and enthrall as viscerally now as when the composers represented on The Cello in Spain peddled their music to princes and popes.

Born into a musical family in Lucca, Italy, Luigi Boccherini was for much of his creative career in service to Spanish patrons, and his ‘transplanted’ music is now as widely—and more justifiably—associated with Spain as Bizet’s Carmen and Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. Collaborating with Ms. Vinagre, Mr. Solinís, and Mr. Oyarzabal, Mr. Obregón offers a standard-setting performance of Boccherini’s Cello Sonata in C Major (G.6), his enthusiasm for the music emanating from the energetic reading of the opening Allegro movement. Italianate melodic fecundity and Spanish soulfulness are combined in the lovely Largo assai, and Mr. Obregón revels in the expressivity of the music without diminishing the rhythmic crispness that gives his playing its stimulating power. The Allegro moderato movement also receives from Mr. Obregón a rousing performance of unflagging stylishness. His is the sort of virtuosity that is always secondary to emotional connection with the music: by exploring the sentiments around which the music was woven, Mr. Obregón discloses to the attentive listener the impetus for every musical gesture.

Like Boccherini, Padua native Giuseppe Antonio Paganelli was also an Italian who devoted the last phase of his compositional career to Spain. His Sonata in A minor displays a certain indebtedness to the style of Giuseppe Tartini, with whom Paganelli may have studied, as well as a nod to French models. The dulcet Largo that opens the Sonata is phrased expansively by Mr. Obregón, and his efforts are eloquently seconded by the playing of Mr. Zapico, Ms. Águeda, and Mr. Oyarzabal. The cajoling harmonies of the subsequent Allegro movement are blended with the richness of a traditional paella, and the undiluted feelings of the Adagio are poignantly but unexaggeratedly conveyed by Mr. Obregón. He and his colleagues give a nimble account of the spirited Gigue, its character that of the Gran Vía rather than the Champs-Élysées.

Jean-Pierre Duport and his brother Jean-Louis were pupils of the celebrated French cellist Martin Berteau, credited by many musicologists as the godfather of French cello technique. Both Duport brothers were acquainted with Beethoven in the years after Jean-Pierre’s sojourn in Spain, and the young Beethoven dedicated his Opus 5 Cello Sonatas to Jean-Pierre, who was master of chamber music at the Potsdam court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. Duport’s own Cello Sonata No. 1 in D Major was dedicated to the Duque de Alba, presumably Fernando de Silva Mendoza y Toledo, grandfather of Goya’s muse Doña María del Pilar de Silva, duquesa de Alba. Partnered by Ms. Vinagre and Mr. Oyarzabal, Mr. Obregón whizzes through the Sonata’s opening Allegro movement in a fantastic exhibition of bowing technique, and his mastery of the expansive Adagio is no less thorough. The final Allegro is rendered with consummate skill and obvious exuberance by cellist and his amigos musicales.

Dating from the second half of the Eighteenth Century, the anonymous Adagio in E minor from the Manuscrito de Barcelona is a subdued piece that pulses with the veiled desolation that lurks beneath the surface of so much Spanish music. Mr. Obregón, Ms. Águeda, and Mr. Oyarzabal immerse themselves in the spirit of the music without aggrandizing its moods, playing with perfect intonation and flawless musical teamwork. Mr. Obregón provides a deeply-felt interpretation of the Toccata prima in G major for solo cello by Francesco Paolo Supriano (né Scipriani), a product of the Neapolitan school and the famed Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini. He is joined by Ms. Vinagre in a beautifully-conceived performance of Pablo Vidal’s brief but memorable Duetto-Andante from Arte y Escuela de violoncello. Mr. Oyarzabal adds his insightful playing to theirs in a similarly affectionate traversal of José Zayas’s Última lección in B-flat Major from Manuscrito de Barcelona.

Thought to be the only extant example from the set of twenty-four concerti composed circa 1755 by Domingo Porretti, the Cello Concerto in G Major is, in terms of instrumentation, the most substantial work on The Cello in Spain. Its four movements of near-equal duration engender an uncanny symmetry, and this is also reflected in the performance by Mr. Obregón and La Ritirata. The pair of Largo movements are rapturously delivered, the melodic lines caressed by Mr. Obregón with the aura of song. The contrast with the Allegro movements is realized with exemplary artistry, the musicians shining the light of their talent on the colorations in the composer’s score rather than painting the music with artificial hues. If this Concerto is indicative of the quality of its missing brethren, the loss to the concert repertory of the cello is considerable.

A more thrilling finale for The Cello in Spain than the Fandango from Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet in D Major (G.448) could not have been selected. Though he was born in Italy, a half-century’s residency in Spain surely injected a transfusion of the musical sangre de España into Boccherini’s veins, and the resulting metamorphosis of his artistic DNA yielded a piece as quintessentially Spanish as the Fandango. As performed here by Mr. Obregón, Ms. Solinís, Ms. Tur Bonet, Ms. Zeberio, and Mr. Lorenzo, with a brilliant contribution from Mr. Chupete’s castanets, the Fandango evokes the dual freedom and formality, the palmas and pitos, the grit and grandeur of Spanish music and culture.

There are as many ways of describing the unique sonorities of the cello as there are methods of coaxing them from the instrument. Mstislav Rostropovich, one of the preeminent cellists of the Twentieth Century, wrote that he was initially attracted to the cello because its sound was to his ears like that of a voice—a voice that he recognized as his own. The marvel of this disc is that the playing of Josetxu Obregón and La Ritirata empowers the listener to hear the cello as the voice of a nation. The selections on The Cello in Spain and the zeal with which they are played illustrate the urbane roots of Spanish repertory for this four-stringed vessel of the musical soul. Fellow violinists, forgive me: The Cello in Spain inspires me to long to be a cellist—in Spain, por favor.