PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gioachino Rossini — IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA (T. Cook, C. Hall, A. Owens, A. Lau, T. Simpson, M. Ashley; North Carolina Opera, 1 April 2016)

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione—Troy Cook (Figaro), Cecelia Hall (Rosina), Andrew Owens (Il Conte d’Almaviva), Adam Lau (Don Basilio), Tyler Simpson (Dottore Bartolo), Marie Ashley (Berta), Charles Hyland (Fiorello), Wade Henderson (Un ufficiale); North Carolina Opera Orchestra and Chorus; Timothy Myers, conductor [Stephanie Havey, Director; Scott MacLeod, Chorus Master; Jeff Harris, Lighting Designer; Sondra Nottingham, Wig and Makeup Designer; North Carolina Opera, Memorial Auditorium, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina; Friday, 1 April 2016]

Whether in opera, theatre, literature, or any other artistic genre, one of the finest of the proverbial fine lines is that separating true comedy from the merely inane. Few evenings in the opera house are more excruciating than those on which audiences are exposed to scores or productions—or scores and productions—that aim at comedy but consistently miss the mark. On the other hand, those few occasions when composers’, librettists’, and performers’ efforts at comedy find their targets can produce unforgettable experiences. Directed with flair and a raucous sense of joy by Stephanie Havey, North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia—a staging that originated at the Glimmerglass Festival and will be revived by Opera San Antonio in 2017—came tantalizingly close to stepping wholly over the line into genuine comedy that could be enjoyed without reservations; so close, in fact, that the performance’s few defects, none of which upset the equilibrium of the performance, quickly faded into insignificance. Perfection is admirable, but how often is it enjoyable on a level that prompts patrons to leave a theatre after a show, saying to one another, ‘That was really fun’?

When Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione, a setting of Cesare Sterbini’s adaptation of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s seminal 1775 play Le barbier de Séville, premièred at Rome’s Teatro Argentina on 20 February 1816, Rossini was a week away from his twenty-fourth birthday. Several of his most noteworthy and lucrative successes were already behind him, and his final opera, Guillaume Tell, lay only a dozen years in future. Despite the quality of many of his scores and the recent interest in them beyond the Rossini shrines of Pesaro and Bad Wildbad, Barbiere remains the opera upon the shoulders of which its composer’s fame is hoisted, and, no matter how many times an observer has seen the opera performed, a wholly satisfactory Barbiere justifies the score’s prominence in both the Rossini canon and the international repertory at large. With wonderfully colorful and occasionally slightly confusing costumes by Howard Tsvi Kaplan, originally designed for Sarasota Opera [Lindoro looked as though he strolled out of the pages of Pride and Prejudice, but the Conte was the epitome of Eighteenth-Century chic: were poor students more ‘fashion forward’ than aristocrats in Rossini’s Siviglia?], Sondra Nottingham’s typically effective wigs and makeup, and Jeff Harris’s intuitive lighting designs, North Carolina Opera’s Barbiere looked as lively as it sounded. The production’s mobile sets by the widely-admired John Conklin were essentially a character in the comedy but one whose part was not over-done, and strategically placing Rossini’s portrait above the rickety piano—no Bösendorfers or Broadwoods, chez Bartolo—for the Lesson Scene was a crafty touch. Best of all were the bicycles: Figaro ringing his bike’s bell in time to the orchestral introduction to his celebrated cavatina was fantastic. One shudders to think of the piles of money that are spent on far more elaborate productions that are far less successful than this picturesque but abidingly uncluttered Barbiere at conjuring the worlds depicted in composers’ scores.

Stationery storm: Bass-baritone Tyler Simpson as Dottor Bartolo (center) in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

After witnessing his masterful conducting of Mozart, Timothy Myer’s confident, debonair handling of Rossini’s music was not unexpected, but it is always astonishing and gratifying to observe the manner in which this insightful musician wields his baton like a spotlight, focusing performers’ and listeners’ attention on details large and small that facilitate full appreciation of composers’ and librettists’ creations. In this performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Myers lit firecrackers in the orchestra that detonated hilariously, the playing of the North Carolina Opera Orchestra first-rate from the opening bars of the famous Overture—borrowed, of course, from Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, both serious operas. Guided by Myers, whose ear for instrumental timbres rivals the late Sinopoli’s, the woodwinds had a particularly fine evening, their phrasing and intonation setting a high standard for their colleagues in the pit and on the stage. Even in the Temporale, its opening wind passages prefiguring the similar scene in Act Three of Verdi’s Rigoletto, the percussionists’ playing was restrained, allowing the palette of colors in the music to emerge with atypical clarity. In Myers’s handling of the score, complemented by Laurie Rogers’s inventive harpsichord continuo and red-blooded but always shapely singing by the gentlemen of Dr. Scott MacLeod’s impeccably-trained North Carolina Opera Chorus, it was unusually easy to imagine the central characters in Barbiere morphing into their older, more careworn selves in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. The enthusiastic ovations that Myers receives from Raleigh audiences are merited, not just for individual performances but, perhaps more significantly, for the continuing elevation of standards that his leadership has initiated, as well. With exuberant but logical tempi and management of ensembles that went awry commendably infrequently, Myers guided a performance of tremendous humor possible only through the work of a very serious musician.

A reliable aspect of recent North Carolina Opera productions has been excellent casting of secondary rôles, and this Barbiere di Siviglia furthered that trend in glorious fashion. Though not uttering a single word, Joseph Stephens’s Ambrogio enriched every scene in which he appeared, whether partially hiding under his laundry basket, suddenly taking a liking to swordplay, or rejoicing in the final scene at the return of a purloined equine figurine. The foremost regret inspired by tenor Wade Henderson’s singing as Melot in North Carolina Opera’s November 2014 concert performance of Act Two of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was that he had so little to sing, and the same complaint must be made about his Ufficiale in Barbiere. Appearing in the Act One finale, Henderson was splendidly commanding as the voice of constabulary authority, the voice ringing like the clink of handcuffs. As the bandmaster-for-hire Fiorello, baritone Charles Hyland sang ‘Piano, pianissimo senza parlar’ at the opera’s start with handsome tone and acted his part to perfection. [The onstage musicians’ eager petitioning of the Conte for immediate and generous payment brought to mind the Duke of Plaza Toro’s assessment in the Gilbert and Sullivan gem The Gondoliers: ‘That’s so like a band!’] A member of the University of Mount Olive music faculty, mezzo-soprano Marie Ashley schooled the audience in the art of operatic comedic timing with her live-wire performance as Berta, Bartolo’s long-suffering housemaid. Ashley’s voice soared in the Act One finale, encountering no trouble with doubling Rosina’s line as it climbed above the stave, and she was the rare Berta whose Act Two arietta ‘Il vecchiotto cerca moglie’ was a delight. Rossini clearly intended that Berta should be entrusted to a singer no less capable than the lady cast as Rosina, and North Carolina Opera heeded this implicit instruction, Ashley proving as wonderful in the second finale as in the first. The character’s predicament notwithstanding, there is no reason why Berta must sound like a superannuated comprimaria: rather, she ought to sound as Ashley sang her in Raleigh.

The slandering music tutor, or Seiji Ozawa makes a cameo in Raleigh: (from left to right) Baritone Troy Cook as Figaro, bass Adam Lau as Don Basilio, and bass-baritone Tyler Simpson as Dottor Bartolo in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

The casting of Adam Lau, the fantastic Leporello in North Carolina Opera’s 2015 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as Rossini’s Don Basilio was an instance of an ideal intersection of singer and rôle. A delectably conspiratorial—and kleptomaniacal!—presence in Act One, Lau delivered the aria ‘La calunnia è un venticello’ with amplitude that packed the punch of a ‘colpo di cannone,’ only the final bars slightly compromised by forcing. In the Act One finale, Lau voiced Basilio’s lines with sonorous aplomb. His collapse when ‘wounded’ by a flying pillow in the cleverly-staged ‘battle’ between rival factions was worthy of vintage Rick Flair. As the centerpiece of the Act Two Quintetto, Lau amusingly sang and acted Basilio’s befuddlement, willing both to suffer his sudden malady’s ill effects and to recover from them with equal rapidity depending upon which circumstance yielded the greater windfall. Vocally, Lau was as solid a Basilio as can be heard in any production of Barbiere today, a rival to the exalted legacies of Ezio Pinza and Cesare Siepi, and he was fabulously buffo without being a buffoon.

Bass-baritone Tyler Simpson proved to be one of the most elusive commodities in opera: a Bartolo who actually sang his music. Looking quite smart and engagingly smug in his emerald-green suit and polished-copper periwig, Simpson’s Bartolo stalked the stage with the nervous energy of an out-of-practice predator. Briefly sparring with Rosina before her window in Act One, his was paternal sternness not to be ignored, and bass-baritone and bass were particularly well-matched in Bartolo’s scene with Don Basilio, Simpson’s querulous ‘No’ when rejecting Basilio’s suggestion of eliminating the Conte as a rival for Rosina via well-timed slander enunciated with deadpan disposition. Simpson’s performance of the aria ‘A un dottor della mia sorte’ was marvelous (and, again, truly sung), the patter dispatched with brilliance and the full range of the music covered with ease. Simpson took command of the Act One finale with sly humor, throwing caution to the wind and thrillingly unleashing the full power of his voice—and brandishing a walking stick with the braggadocio of Douglas Fairbanks. In his scene at the beginning of Act Two, this Bartolo made something peculiarly touching of his statement of ‘Ma vedi il mio destino!’ Like the most insightful interpreters of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Simpson allowed Bartolo’s heart to penetrate the brusqueness for a moment, giving his interpretation even greater immediacy. In the duet with the Conte, now disguised as Don Basilio’s supposed protégé Don Alonso, the bass-baritone’s vocalism radiated annoyance and suspicion. Unsurprisingly, his account of the arietta ‘Quando mi sei vicina amabile Rosina’ in response to Rosina’s singing lesson was music, not bluster. In the grand Quintetto and the opera’s final scene, Simpson gradually transformed Bartolo’s foolishness into graciousness: his gesture of kissing Rosina’s hand after realizing that he was outwitted was both conciliatory and affectionate. Vocally and histrionically, Simpson was a Bartolo in the now-endangered tradition of Sesto Bruscantini. Above all, his performance was a rousing confirmation of the oft-ignored wisdom of good singing being just as important in comedy as in tragedy.

The Doctor is in: Mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina (left) and bass-baritone Tyler Simpson as Dottor Bartolo (right) in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

The rôle of the amorous young Conte d’Almaviva was first sung by Spanish tenor Manuel García, a legendary figure in the history of opera as both a singer and a pedagogue, and has subsequently been interpreted by a wide array of tenors, some of whom had as little business singing Rossini as García would have had singing Verdi’s—rather than Rossini’s—Otello. To the class of natural-born modern Conti d’Almaviva like Cesare Valletti, Ugo Benelli, Alfredo Kraus, Luigi Alva, Bruce Ford, and Juan Diego Flórez belongs Andrew Owens, whose singing in Raleigh combined technical brilliance with tonal beauty that served as a reminder that the clever aristocrat was also an early rôle for Giuseppe di Stefano. All being fair in love and war but emphatically not in opera, it is sometimes difficult to ascertain during performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia why the cultivated Rosina would prefer her earnest but supposedly penniless swain Lindoro—our quick-thinking Conte in disguise, of course—to the canny Figaro. Looking as though he just stepped off of a Hollywood studio lot, Owens scored a triumph for the ranks of less-glamorous Conti by leaving no doubt of why Rosina’s well-guarded heart palpitated for him and him alone. What counted most was that the sounds that he made were as attractive as the smile that he wielded like a starburst. Spreading his irrepressible elation over the stage like a sunrise, this Conte serenaded his beloved with plangent tones. Owens phrased the Act One cavatina ‘Ecco ridente in cielo spunta la bella aurora’ with effortless bel canto, rising to the tops As and B with aptly noble poise. He decorated his performance of the lovely serenade ‘Se il mio nome saper voi bramate, dal mio labbro il mio nome ascoltate’ with dashingly original ornaments. Rosina was surely not the only lady in the theatre inclined to open her window to take in such golden sounds. Owens made easy going of the punishing triplets in the passaggio in the duet with Figaro, and his singing of ‘Ehi di casa...buona gente’ as the inebriated soldier in the Act One finale was side-splitting. The Act Two duet with Bartolo drew from this natural comedian repetitions of ‘Pace e gioia sia con voi’ that grew steadily more insistent. Accompanying Rosina’s lesson, Owens’s mock-pianism would have caused Victor Borge to blush with admiration and envy. His voice fizzed with excitement in the spirited Terzetto with Rosina and Figaro. With such a capable Conte on hand, it was a pity that time constraints conspired to exclude the aria ‘Cessa di più resistere’ from the performance, but Owens was in every other way a winningly complete Almaviva who emitted many a phrase that brought the inimitable Tito Schipa to mind.

Alter egos: Bass Adam Lau as Don Basilio (left) and tenor Andrew Owens as ‘Don Alonso’ (né Conte d’Almaviva, right) in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

Rossini is rarely cited as a master of deeply-considered characterizations, but Rosina is a deceptively difficult rôle, especially for younger singers. Being a Spanish lady with a piquant streak, Rosina too often falls victim to interpretations that make her a sort of coloratura Carmen. Underplay her vivacity, and she is apt to seem a pallid waif unlikely to attract as practiced a tomcat as the Conte: overplay her independence, and she can seem an equally undesirable shrew. North Carolina Opera’s Barbiere di Siviglia had in mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall a Rosina of both style and substance, one who created a carefully-balanced, three-dimensional character without sacrificing any of the sheer fun—or the volleys of notes—of the part. Occasionally, she was slightly too subdued for her surroundings, though this admittedly deepened the contrast between this innocent young woman—she intended to bring along her doll, teddy bear, and favorite pillow when fleeing with the Conte, after all—and her boorish guardian. It was a most timid creature who appeared at the window during Lindoro’s serenading in Act One, but sparks flying in the recitatives with Bartolo and the Conte hinted at the fire that burned beneath the cool exterior. The newly-ignited conflagration melted the frost in Hall’s demeanor in the cavatina ‘Una voce poco fa,’ the singer spitting out the words in the Moderato section, ‘Io sono docile, son rispettosa,’ with well-controlled abandon. In the duet with Figaro, ‘Dunque io son...tu non m’inganni,’ her singing combined feminine charm and a wily grasp of sexual politicking. Hall’s awestruck articulation of the Andante ‘Freddo ed immobile come una statua fiato non restagli da respirar’ in the Act One finale was wonderful. In the Lesson Scene in Act Two, Rossini’s intended aria, ‘Contro un cor che accende amore,’ was preferred, and Hall reached its top As effortlessly. The Terzetto with the Conte and Figaro received especially dulcet treatment from the comely young lady, her unaffected pronouncement of ‘Ah! qual colpo inaspettato’ garnering a deserved burst of laughter from the audience. Her joy spilling over the footlights in the opera’s finale, Hall’s Rosina earned her happy ending. Aside from a few inaudible notes at the very bottom of the compass, likely the results of the singer’s judicious way with balancing head and chest registers, Hall’s comfort with both the range and the bravura requirements of Rosina’s music—including a respectable trill—was praiseworthy. Barbiere can function effectively enough with a merely serviceable Rosina, but how exhilarating this Barbiere was with an expert one!

Boredom is hard to bear: Mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

With a Rosina and Conte such as North Carolina Opera’s production supplied, it was difficult for a Figaro to dominate the opera, but baritone Troy Cook left no doubt about whose name—or professional identity, at any rate—is on the score’s title page. [The opera having been first performed with the title Almaviva was an act of deference to Giovanni Paisiello, composer of a then-still-fashionable earlier setting of Il barbiere di Siviglia, it should be remembered.] Entering on bicycle like a vision from Il postino, Cook sang Figaro’s Act One cavatina ‘Largo al factotum della città,’ one of opera’s most iconic numbers, with swaggering virility, the high tessitura and tongue-twisting patter manfully conquered. The prowess of this Figaro’s Dulcamara-esque matchmaking was indeed magical: the portrayers of the adorable sevillano couple that he brought together on the stage, Chandler Clarke and clarion-voiced chorister Jacob Kato, are betrothed off the stage, too. Bravissimo, Figaro! Joining with the Conte in their brainstorming duet, the glee in Cook’s voicing of ‘All’idea di quel metallo’ was infectious, and he and Owens exhibited finely-honed synchronicity in the difficult triplets. Similarly impressive was Cook’s reading of Figaro’s part in the duet with Rosina, ‘Dunque io son...tu non m’inganni.’ Unlike many singers, he resorted to no faking or simplification: he had the notes and the skill needed to project them into the auditorium. With his cherry-red top hat and feline suavity, Cook’s Figaro danced through the Act One finale like a benevolent Mefistofele. Bounding about the stage with growing anxiety in the Act Two Quintetto and, even more so, the Terzetto with Rosina and the Conte, Cook’s Figaro was clearly unnerved by feeling dominion over his situation slipping from his fingers, but the baritone’s vocalism never faltered. Even in the opera’s final scene, Cook’s voice shone among his colleagues’ high-wattage singing. Hearing the assurance with which he sauntered through Figaro’s roulades, it was remarkable to recall that Cook was also a wholly satisfying Marcello in North Carolina Opera’s 2014 production of Puccini’s La bohème. Who since the retirement of Robert Merrill has beguiled the public with top-quality performances of such very different rôles?

Man in demand: Baritone Troy Cook as Figaro (center) in North Carolina Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, 1 April 2016 [Photo by Curtis Brown, © by North Carolina Opera]

What makes Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia genuinely funny is the nucleus of humanity that exerts an insurmountable force on the buzzing particles of the music, keeping even the orbits of the frothiest moments of comedy on course. What too many performers fail to realize or fully respect is that Rossini suffused his score with music that pulses with laughter of its own accord: Barbiere does not need singers’, conductors’, or directors’ assistance to be funny. No, what Barbiere needs is the integrity of a team of artists who approach the score not as a comic opera requiring special tinkering but simply as a musical work of art that deserves unbiased, unblemished interpretation and integrity, and this is what North Carolina Opera’s performance bestowed upon this still-precious gem of an opera.

CD REVIEW: F. Chopin, R. Schumann, & A. Eliasson — PERSONAE (Beth Levin, piano; Navona Records NV6016)

FRÉDÉRIC FRANÇOIS CHOPIN (1810 – 1849), ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 – 1856), and ANDERS ELIASSON (1947 – 2013): Personae—Beth Levin, piano [Recorded at Peter Karl Studios, New York City, USA, on 27 July 2015; Navona Records NV6016; 1 CD, 67:32; Available from ClassicsOnline HD (Download | Streaming), Amazon (USA), iTunes, Presto Classical (UK), Spotify, and major music retailers]

One of the foremost keys necessary to discerning an important pianist from the teeming throngs of people who endeavor to make their living by playing the instrument is the manner in which that key’s significance alongside its eighty-seven siblings is examined, analyzed, and conveyed to the listener. If such an assertion seems to be an exercise in semantics, that is because, as Hamlet might have suggested, knowing not ‘seems,’ it is, but it is nevertheless a logical assessment. The world’s conservatories continue to flood concert stages and recital halls with highly-educated pianists with chrome-plated techniques who play as though they cannot distinguish a ground bass from a gruppetto. When such distinctions are also lost on many audiences, it is too easy to surmise and accept that artistic standards no longer matter. Thankfully, vitally, there are some few artists like Beth Levin and discs of the calibre of her Navona release Personae to remind everyone from the casual listener to the aspiring pianist that important art and artists inevitably distinguish themselves: observers need only have the good sense to surrender to their charms. In the performances of works by Chopin, Schumann, and Eliasson on this disc, engineered by Peter Karl with balance and clarity that replicate the warm acoustic of an intimate recital hall, one of today’s most poetic pianists crafts musical verses that proclaim, ‘The legacy of great pianism is far from dead when fingers such as these still the keyboard tread.’

It is sometimes suggested that aural evidence of Robert Schumann’s struggles with sanity is manifested in his music. Perhaps there is some validity in this assertion, but it is equally valid to argue that the very act of attempting to translate one’s thoughts into musical notation that can be followed by others is madness. Insanity, it has been said, is performing the same action repeatedly with an expectation of different results, but is this not a defining property of artistic endeavor? That Beth Levin’s playing of Schumann is different from other pianists’ is what makes her work unique and markedly elevates the intrinsic merit of Personae. Essentially dances in name only, Schumann’s Opus 6 Davidsbündlertänze—mature works despite the opus number—are vibrant pieces that soar to the euphoric highs and plunge to the despondent lows that characterized the composer’s courtship of his beloved Clara. In the first three of the ‘dances,’ I. Lebhaft, II. Innig, and III. Mit Humor, Levin immediately discloses her uncanny ability to simultaneously pinpoint the vast differences among the pieces and establish and maintain an extraordinary degree of continuity. The extent to which Levin conveys the essence of each individual piece is exceptional, but her ability to identify and perpetuate the parallels among them is a hallmark of an atypically perceptive musician. The next sequence—IV. Ungeduldig, V. Einfach, and VI. Sehr rasch—also reveals surprising breadth of kinship, complemented by the searching treatment that they receive from Levin. Her approach to VII. Nicht schnell is particularly successful, but she plays VIII. Frisch, IX. Lebhaft, and the ingenius X. Balladenmäßig - Sehr rasch with similar effectiveness, the irreproachable rhythmic consistency of her playing lending each number its own expressive microcosm and also links it to its brethren among the Davidsbündlertänze. Most significantly, Levin unaffectedly realizes Schumann’s goal of pacing Davidsbündlertänze as a metaphysical conversation between his much-discussed musical alter egos, Florestan and Eusebius. In XI. Einfach, XII. Mit Humor, XIII. Wild und lustig, and XIV. Zart und singend, the debate rages, points and counterpoints discharged by Levin’s wrists with electric intensity. The final four pieces—XV. Frisch, XVI. Mit gutem Humor, XVII. Wie aus der Ferne, and XVIII. Nicht schnell—are played as thoughtfully as they are powerfully, the pianist’s technique encompassing fingering that enables her to bring off marvels of phrasing that elucidate frequently-overlooked details of Schumann’s impressive musical architecture. Some pianists make the mistake of misinterpreting the title of Davidsbündlertänze and playing the score as though it were a miniature Swan Lake, thereby depriving the work of much of its special cogency. Levin’s performance is perfectly calibrated to the scale of the music, divulging both the inventiveness of Schumann’s music and her incredible skill for playing it.

Playing Frédéric Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B♭ minor (Opus 35), often called the Funeral March owing to its emblematic third movement and the prevailing sobriety of the Sonata as a whole, is a pianist’s equivalent of singing the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde. The opening movement, Grave – Doppio movimento, demands the concentration of a prize fighter: if the pianist loses focus for a moment, Chopin’s music will leave her breathless and embarrassed on the mat. Levin’s playing of the movement combines the near-operatic phrasing of Ivan Moravec with the pragmatism of John Ogdon, but her reading is very much her own. Her handling of the Scherzo shudders with aggression masquerading as broad humor, and the rhythmic precision of her performance never jeopardizes the elasticity of her emotional response to the music. It is here especially difficult to believe that all of the music on Personae was recorded in a single day: few performances edited from material recorded in multiple sessions reach the levels of technical and sentimental mastery of the music that Levin exhibits. She plays the bel canto Marche funèbre: Lento with unexaggerated sincerity, finding Chopin’s tempo and dynamic markings liberating rather than confining. In the final movement, Finale: Presto, the pianist consistently places principal emphasis on the music itself rather than her playing of it, meeting Chopin’s requirements with unperturbed dignity. This is an account of the Sonata projected not to the last row of a recital hall but to each listener’s singular sensibilities, both engaging and empowering the hearer’s imagination. With her performance of the Sonata on Personae, this Brünnhilde of the keyboard earns her arms and armor.

Published in 1987 and first performed in Stockholm in 1988, Swedish composer Anders Eliasson’s Disegno 2 for piano solo is a mature but exploratory work, roughly contemporary with several of the larger-scaled pieces for which Eliasson is most known. The composer’s innovatively contrapuntal idiom is always apparent, but this is audibly the music of an artist still grappling with the collisions of centuries-old formulae with trends in late-Twentieth-Century avant-garde composition. It is a gift for pianists with the technical competency necessary to navigate its difficulties and interpretive insights sufficient to face its evocative nuances head on. Levin brings precisely these qualities to her playing of Disegno 2, her performance highlighting the cleverness of the piece’s construction. The ears are always lured to the primary subject as Eliasson surely intended, but none of the music’s inner voices can complain of being unheard. Perhaps most surprisingly, Levin’s execution of Disegno 2 causes Eliasson’s music to seem a wholly appropriate bridge between the works by Schumann and Chopin.

That Personae is a valuable release is evident from the first bars that issue from it. That it is a disc of rare interpretive insight and technical achievement becomes more evident with each subsequent bar. There are legions of pianists capable of accurately playing notes, but only true artists lift music from the page and give it life that becomes a part of the listener’s community of musical experiences. It seems counterintuitive to state that an artist should carve her own path within the landscape of traditions and methodologies because individuality is such an inalienable component of art, but the work of so many of today’s pianists suggests that they are taught that, like far too much of modern education, the interpretation of music is a conveniently finite, multiple-choice undertaking; not so Beth Levin’s profoundly personal playing on Personae. Emily Dickinson wrote that ‘Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed.’ As this disc plays, the sounds of true artistry at the piano fall all the more sweetly upon ears so unused to encountering them.

CD REVIEW: Lennox Berkeley, Gavin Bryars, Herbert Howells, & John Jeffreys — BRITISH MUSIC FOR HARPSICHORD (Christopher D. Lewis, harpsichord; NAXOS 8.573668)

SIR LENNOX BERKELEY (1903 – 1989), GAVIN BRYARS (born 1943), HERBERT HOWELLS (1892 – 1983), and JOHN JEFFREYS (1927 – 2010): British Music for Harpsichord—Christopher D. Lewis, harpsichord [Recorded at Belvedere Estate, Belvedere, California, USA, 16 – 18 March 2015; NAXOS 8.573668; 1 CD, 71:17; Available from ClassicsOnlineHD (Download | Streaming), Amazon (USA), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Like many aspects of human culture, as well as life itself, music is in many ways inherently cyclical. Musical styles are continually evolving, but the courses of trends in both composition and performance are rarely linear. Perhaps the greatest marvel in music in the past century is the way in which musicians have simultaneously looked to the past and the future, the revival of interest in and study of music from the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries markedly influencing the creation of new music. Still, this is anything but an isolated reality. From the pioneering efforts of Wanda Landowska, now regarded by the outspoken Early Music community in nearly equal measures as pariah and prophetess, to the attention of an array of composers spanning the spectrum from Francis Poulenc to Gerald Busby, the harpsichord has benefited enormously from the unique rejuvenation of an unparalleled fusion of past and present. At the apogee of this juggernaut of reassessment and repurposing of an instrument still linked in the minds of many listeners solely with music composed before 1800 is Welsh harpsichordist Christopher D. Lewis. As much a musical adventurer as a well-trained virtuoso, Lewis takes the listener during the seventy-one minutes of this thoughtfully-planned and expertly-engineered NAXOS disc on a sometimes challenging, always captivating trek through under-explored compositions for the harpsichord by contemporary British composers. Like Poulenc’s Concert champêtre and Busby’s Court Dances, Parallel, and Camera, these works greatly enrich the harpsichord repertory. Hearing them played by Christopher D. Lewis with a delightfully sophisticated but still unsullied blend of youthful exuberance and artistic maturity substantially enriches appreciation of the capabilities of the harpsichord.

Born in Rhiwbina, Wales, Lewis has obviously been influenced virtually since infancy by his native land’s love of music. His pursuit of education and expansion of his cosmopolitan sensibilities having taken him throughout the world and brought him into contact with some of the foremost masters of the harpsichord, he is especially qualified to bring ‘new’ music for the instrument to the attention of today’s listeners. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Mr. Pilkington’s Toye and For Vere are ideal showcases for Lewis’s abilities. Playing harpsichord music of any era naturally requires mastery of the technical constitution of the instrument’s mechanism, and this Lewis has of course attained and displays uninhibitedly, but engagingly performing music for an instrument that in many modern minds belongs in Baroque basso continuo consortiums and opera house orchestra pits demands interpretive skills of a particular order. It is apparent in his jocular, even impish playing of Berkeley’s Mr. Pilkington’s Toye that Lewis is the man for the job. Of a wholly different emotional fettle is For Vere, but the performance that it receives from Lewis is of complementary excellence, technique again sharing pride of place with expressive intuition. These pieces do not inhabit the progressive world of Berkeley’s Symphonies, the opera Ruth, and the Missa Brevis, but they possess a purity of invention that is tellingly highlighted by Lewis’s unaffected style of playing.

Herbert Howells was one of Britain’s most gifted composers of the Twentieth Century, but aside from his poignant motet Take him, earth, for cherishing, written to memorialize President John F. Kennedy and imbued with the composer’s mourning for the death of his own son, his work is little known and far too infrequently performed beyond Britain’s borders. The excerpts from Howell’s Clavichord presented here by Lewis provide opportunities to examine facets of Howell’s ingenuity that are astonishingly unlike the melancholically atmospheric choral works upon which his reputation is mostly—and not unjustly—founded. The pieces on this disc afford a glimpse of a lighter-hearted Howells, his talent for musical portraiture making the sequence of works played by Lewis a study in the art of tuneful characterization akin to Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The identities of the ‘visitors’ in each of the pieces are not difficult to discern, but the voice that emerges most resonantly from the chorus is Howells’s. The lovely ‘Goff’s Fireside’ is offered in performances on the 1997 Flemish double harpsichord after the Ruckers school by San Francisco-based maker Kevin Fryer employed for the balance of the Howells pieces and a 1982 Australian replica of a 1604 muselar, the peculiar northern European, right-oriented virginal, both responding dulcetly to Lewis’s touch. [Other selections on the disc are played on a Pleyel harpsichord dating from the 1930s, an instrument of the type espoused by Wanda Landowska and in this case originally purchased by Toronto’s historic Eaton Auditorium.] The Arcadian lilt of ‘Patrick’s Siciliano,’ enchantingly phrased by Lewis, is followed by the explosive ‘Jacob’s Brawl,’ in which the young harpsichordist’s nimble fingers deliver jabs and hooks that never miss their marks. Then, the deceptive flow of ‘Dart’s Sarabande’ is transformed by Lewis into a radiant, almost operatic account of ‘Andrew’s Air,’ the musician’s technical and interpretive dexterities finding compelling outlets in Howells’s music. An early champion of restoring to Baroque repertory some measure of authentic, period-appropriate performance practices, Sir Adrian would be thrilled by Lewis’s crisp, rhythmically dazzling playing of ‘Boult’s Brangill.’ ‘Dyson’s Delight’ is, as played here, just that: a delight. ‘Ralph’s Pavane and Galliard’ are unconventionally symmetrical, and the intelligence with which they are dispatched by Lewis gives them elements that bond as naturally as hydrogen and oxygen. The title of ‘Finzi’s Rest’ might at first glance be deemed a misnomer, but the quietude at its core, enhanced by Lewis’s finely-judged approach, confirms the sagacity of Howells’s insight. There is indeed a visionary epic lurking beneath the simple façade of ‘Malcolm’s Vision,’ and Lewis is careful to spotlight but not exaggerate it and succeeds by interpreting the piece succinctly. His performance of ‘Julian’s Dream,’ one of the finest of these pieces, is aptly ethereal without descending into saccharine over-emoting. Any listener whose view of Howells is of a humorless wretch composing in order to excise his demons should hear Lewis’s performance of ‘Walton’s Toye’ if only to realize how unfair it is to thus dismiss this wonderfully multi-dimensional composer. Lewis has performed a great service to Howells with this recording.

Played by Lewis with precisely the right balance of free-spiritedness and seriousness, Gavin Bryars’s After Handel’s “Vesper” is a work of considerable charm and artistic merit, an affectionate homage that wields the cutting edge of typically British parody. There is nothing explicitly satirical in Bryars’s music, per se, but the nod to the great tunesmith of Brook Street is at least as good-naturedly humorous as it is artistically reverential. The same can be said of Lewis’s playing of the piece: in short, his performance is tremendous fun but never farcical. One hears Händel like a voice from another room—a mighty, strongly-accented voice, natürlich, but not an overbearing one. The amiable conversation that Bryars shared with Händel is gleefully shared by Lewis with the listener.

Among the composers whose works are featured on this disc, John Jeffreys will perhaps be the least-familiar to listeners without in-depth knowledge of British music in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Lacking the widespread recognition allotted to Britten and Tippett, Jeffreys was no less a dedicated artist than his more famous countrymen, and in certain respects, not the least of which is its unapologetic melodic appeal, his music is more accessible than his colleagues’ frequently-played scores. His Four Little English Dances in the Georgian manner are vibrant pieces, their broadly-styled structures reminding the listener that, from a strictly historical perspective, the ‘Georgian manner’ encompasses virtually all of the Eighteenth Century and a sliver of the Nineteenth, too. The Poco allegro dance transports the hearer to the stately sitting rooms of Bath, where one might have a turn about the floor with the denizens of Henry Fielding’s novels. There is as much of Sir Arthur Sullivan in Jeffreys’s idiom as there is of Thomas Arne and William Boyce, and Lewis plays the music with sonorous, mercurial charm. He phrases the Andantino with a delicacy that seems more Victorian than Georgian, disclosing a lightness in the music that hints at strict-mannered aloofness. Likewise, the subtle but uncomplicated strains of the Poco andantino might just as accurately be described as being in the Edwardian manner, there being a vein of restraint coursing through the music. Ever a communicative artist, Lewis here divulges that his gift for subtlety is as commendable as his flair for boldness. The vivacious Allegro ma non troppo dance is a boisterous British stag party in musical form: Lewis’s playing earns him—and the composer—a hearty pint.

For many otherwise well-informed advocates of Classical Music, the harpsichord is perceived as an instrument that, in its natural habitats of sorts, tinkled unobtrusively as fat castrati shouted hours of tedious recitative at one another and as bewigged ladies, corseted within a millimeter of asphyxiation, chatted about nothing; and that it is now a living relic, a quaint musical dinosaur encountered without great interest except when entrusted to the hands of virtuosi who play the immortal masterworks of Bach, Händel, Rameau, the Couperins, and the Scarlattis. In music, though, anything of extraordinary merit is unlikely to go unnoticed indefinitely, and it is to their credit that Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century composers have embraced the harpsichord as a thriving, thrilling vehicle for their creative impulses. Neither this fascinating instrument nor the contemporary composers who write for it could hope for representation on disc by a more persuasive musical proselytizer than Christopher D. Lewis.

Old instrument, young master: Welsh harpsichordist Christopher D. Lewis [Photo © by Christopher D. Lewis]

CD REVIEW: Georg Friedrich Händel — ARMINIO (M. E. Cenčić, L. Claire, R. Donose, V. Yi, J. Sancho, X. Sabata, P. Magoulas; DECCA 478 8764)

GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759): Arminio, HWV 36—Max Emanuel Cenčić (Arminio), Layla Claire (Tusnelda), Ruxandra Donose (Ramise), Vince Yi (Sigismondo), Juan Sancho (Varo), Xavier Sabata (Tullio), Petros Magoulas (Segeste); Armonia Atenea; George Petrou, conductor [Recorded in Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall, Athens, Greece, 7 – 18 September 2015; DECCA 478 8764; 2 CDs, 150:35; Available from DECCA, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

When Georg Friedrich Händel’s Arminio was premièred in London on 12 January 1737, with alto castrato Domenico Annibali in the title rôle, soprano Anna Maria Strada del Pò as Tusnelda, and soprano castrato Gioacchino Conti as Sigismondo, the remaining days of the composer’s career as a purveyor of Italian opera were numbered. The growing popularity of satirical, vaudevillian works in the manner of The Beggar’s Opera, as well as his own English oratorios, combined with decreasing tolerances for singers’ and audiences’ capriciousness and the endless responsibilities of managing operatic enterprises to sour opera in Händel’s esteem. A product of a burst of operatic creativity that also yielded Giustino and Berenice, Arminio is one of its composers tautest scores, musically and dramatically, the skill with which the characters’ emotions are given musical expression exceptional even for Händel. Having created an opera of such quality, Händel’s increasing frustration with the musical fickleness of his adopted countrymen is understandable. What is less easily comprehended is why, in this era of interest in every niche of Händel’s output for the stage, Arminio has waited so long for its sole commercial recording, an engaging performance with the late Alan Curtis leading the Arminio, Tusnelda, and Sigismondo of Vivica Genaux, Geraldine McGreevy, and Dominique Labelle, to be joined in the discography by a competitive alternative. With the gender paradigms of the rôles composed for castrati reversed, DECCA’s new studio recording of Arminio is more than just a welcome alternative to the Curtis set. Few claims in the realm of Baroque music are more provocative than assertions of faithfully restoring to any of Händel’s large-scale theatrical compositions a full measure of authenticity, this being a commodity for which there is no reliable, universally-accepted gauge, but this Arminio provides a carefully-judged performance which the demanding Meister from Halle would surely endorse with enthusiasm and gratitude.

A number of recent DECCA recordings of Baroque repertory have benefited from the playing of Armonia Atenea and the conducting of George Petrou, but their work in this Arminio sets new standards for performances of Händel’s operas. Bolstered by the basso continuo ensemble of Markelos Chryssikos and Petrou on harpsichord, Theodoros Kitsos on theorbo, Iason Ioannou on cello, and Dimitris Tigkas on double bass, the orchestra’s efforts serve as a catalyst to the opera’s drama, not just an accompaniment. Concertmaster Sergiu Nastasa leads the strings in a whirring, invigorating performance that honors the best elements of historically-informed performance practices without compromising listeners’ enjoyment with the acerbic sounds, faltering intonation, and exaggerated rhythms that constitute the worst aspects of period-appropriate methods. Capitalizing on the individually virtuosic but refreshingly tight ensemble playing of the strings and the wonderfully confident winds, Petrou paces the Allegro and Lentement of the Ouverture with fluidity that highlights Händel’s talents for orchestration and prefacing his operas with music that is considerably finer and more imaginatively conceived than similar pieces by many of his contemporaries. The elegant Menuet that launches the opera’s first scene and the tuneful Sinfonie that introduce Acts Two and Three are delivered with panache. Petrou uses Händel’s score as an atlas: each of the opera’s three acts is a journey with a clearly-defined destination. Reaching those destinations is here more enthralling than in the context of almost any other recording of any of Händel’s operas.

That Händel was a master dramatist has been irrefutably confirmed in recent years by productions of Alcina, Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda, and Tamerlano spanning the spectrum from unforgettable to unsightly, and his mastery of creating vibrant portraits of characters using a musical palette is as evident in Arminio as in any of his more familiar scores. Here, his writing for Segeste, Prince of the Chatti, provides Greek bass Petros Magoulas with the raw materials with which to construct even in the compact space of the rôle’s duration a fully-rounded figure whose part in the action is credibly rendered. Magoulas voices Segeste’s aria in Act One, ‘Fiaccherò quel fiero orgoglio,’ with robust tone and aptly regal declamatory power that in a few stressful passages threatens to upset the singer’s intonation. It is to Händel’s credit that he made from librettist Antonio Salvi’s somewhat stilted words for Segeste a man of flesh and blood, and it is to Magoulas’s credit that he audibly makes Segeste’s flesh ruddy with the rich flow of his vocal plasma.

The Roman Tribune Tullio roars to life in the resonant singing of Catalan countertenor Xavier Sabata, an artist whose every appearance on disc divulges new depths of his bold, charismatic musicality. Tullio’s Act One aria ‘Non deve roman petto dar all’amor ricetto’ inspires Sabata to a performance of uncontainable energy. His timbre glows with overtones that grant his diction special sharpness, and his bravura technique is, as ever, awe-inspiring. Sabata voices Tullio’s aria in Act Two, ‘Con quel sangue dipinta vedrai,’ with an unerring instinct for phrasing that exposes the heart of the text. He is uniquely qualified for enlivening music other singers are content to overlook, and his singing of Tullio heightens the character’s importance in the drama and enhances the histrionic impact of the performance as a whole.

In his heroic portrayal of the Roman general Varo, Spanish tenor Juan Sancho deploys the fearlessness in both fiorature and his upper register that have come to typify his work. In the Act One aria ‘Al lume di due rai più fiero io pugnerò,’ Sancho marches through Händel’s passagework commandingly, the occasional wiriness of the voice enhancing the martial sternness of the character’s proclamations. In Act Three, Sancho dispatches ‘Mira il ciel, vedrai d’Alcide le guerriere armi’ with slancio worthy of a servant of mighty Rome, every challenge met head-on. Sancho’s vocal production can sound strenuous, especially when he seems to be forcing the extreme top of the voice, but it is a process that, while dangerous for other singers, apparently works for him. In Arminio, Sancho’s singing certainly works for Varo.

Singing Sigismondo, Segeste’s son and Ramise’s beloved, countertenor Vince Yi deals handily with the challenging tessitura of music composed by Händel for Gioacchino Conti, known as Gizziello. A singer admired by fellow castrati Caffarelli and Farinelli, arguably the two most famous singers of the Eighteenth Century, Conti’s voice was appreciated for both its emotive capacities and its range, which in Händel’s parts for him extended to C6. A native of South Korea but a child of California, Yi is as plausible a modern stand-in for Conti as could have been engaged for this recording of Arminio, his timbre’s bright patina allied with vowel-centric, on-the-breath vocalism that is here stronger than in past performances and recordings. In Act One, Yi sings Sigismondo’s aria ‘Non son sempre vane larve’ compellingly, his demeanor convincingly masculine and the increased solidity of his singing’s core giving him an edge over similarly-voiced colleagues. Yi’s singing legitimizes Händel’s decision to entrust to Sigismondo the duty of bringing down the curtain on Act One: with his galvanizing account of the aria ‘Posso morir, ma vivere,’ the countertenor verifies that he is among today’s preeminent Händel singers, the voice secure throughout the range and the technique equal to every roulade. Sigismondo’s Act Two aria ‘Quella fiamma, ch’il petto m’accende’ is one of the finest numbers in Arminio, and Yi sings it accordingly, his manner melding refinement with vocal athleticism. In Act Three, Sigismondo’s pair of arias, ‘Il sangue al cor favella’ and ‘Impara a non temer dal mio costante amor,’ are effectively contrasted by Yi’s meticulously-managed tonal shading. Nature provides an unmistakable contrast between Yi’s and Sabata’s voices, but the singers’ stylistic choices, very different but equally effective, enable Yi’s Sigismondo to be easily distinguished from Sabata’s Tullio.

The object of Sigismondo’s affection (and Arminio’s sister), Ramise, is portrayed with sophistication and entrancingly cobalt-hued tones by Romanian mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose, a singer whose renown does not do justice to the tremendous singing of which she is capable. Marginally off her very best form, she is nonetheless a phenomenal asset to this recording of Arminio. As sung by Donose, Ramise’s Act One aria ‘Sento il cor per ogni lato circondato’ is a tour de force, the vocal line churning with the lady’s emotion and drawing from the mezzo-soprano an effusion of glamorous sound, steady and consistent in quality across the wide range. Of similar effectiveness is Donose’s singing of ‘Niente spero, tutto credo’ in Act Two, her dramatic restraint as mesmerizing as her skyrocketing coloratura. In the Act Three duetto with Tusnelda, ‘Quando più minaccia il cielo,’ Donose touchingly limns Ramise’s emotional response to her predicament, her voice shimmering with a theretofore-unheard determination. The electric atmosphere that she creates in the aria ‘Voglio seguir lo sposo’ is evidence of the breadth of Donose’s confidence in this music: whereas many singers must focus their attention primarily upon getting the notes right, Donose has even the most daunting passages well under control and is therefore free to search in her singing for the meanings beyond the notes. Her voice is a magnificent instrument, but her singing of Ramise here confirms anew that the voice is but one element in her vibrantly reactive musical molecule.

Born in British Columbia, soprano Layla Claire brings to her portrayal of Arminio’s wife and Segeste’s daughter Tusnelda a voice touched by a purity like that of the first autumn snows in the Canadian Rockies. From the start of Tusnelda’s Act One duetto with Arminio, ‘Il fuggir, cara mia vita,’ Claire sings attractively and often ravishingly, the freshness of the sound of her upper register bringing to mind the singing of the young Arleen Augér and Helen Donath. The arias ‘Scaglian amore e sangue’ and ‘È vil segno d’un debole amore quel dolore’ provide complementary vistas of Claire’s artistic intelligence, their sentiments handled with consummate good taste and the musical difficulties sweetly cajoled into submission. In Act Two, Claire summons delightfully unexpected bile in her assured, animated singing of ‘Al furor che ti consiglia.’ Tusnelda ends Act Two with her aria ‘Rendimi il dolce sposo,’ and it is difficult to imagine Anna Maria Strada del Pò singing it more plangently than Claire sings it here, the text communicated with great passion and the melodic line traced with moving delicacy. The youthful soprano voices ‘Ho veleno, e ferro avanti’ in Act Three with unstinting dramatic fortitude, her upper register sparkling. Duetting with Ramise in ‘Quando più minaccia il cielo,’ Claire joins her voice with Donose’s organically, their phrasing almost ideally matched. The arias ‘Tra speme e timore mi palpita il core’ and ‘Va, combatti ancor da forte’ are, like those in Act One, managed insightfully. The level of assurance in fiorature is never less than first-rate but is often stellar, and intonation is virtually unassailable. In her final duetto with Arminio, ‘Ritorna nel core vezzosa,’ Claire’s Tusnelda unites with her husband in a beautiful display of bel canto. Many are the Händel heroines who would benefit from Claire’s singing, but her Tusnelda is a particularly valuable addition to the discography.

Interpreting the title rôle of the proud Germanic prince Arminio, Croatian-born countertenor Max Emanuel Cenčić offers some of the best singing he has committed to disc since transitioning from a clarion-voiced male soprano to a mature countertenor with a voice of true star quality. The technical sorcery that Cenčić accomplishes in his traversal of Arminio’s music is not surprising, but it is the incisiveness and ingenuity that he invests in his depictions of the character’s emotions that mark him as an artist of particular importance. When hearing performances of Händel’s music for alto castrati by the preeminent Händel singers of past generations, male and female, the bravura singing is often rousing, but rarely have singers of any era brought to Baroque repertory the finesse and imagination that Cenčić devotes to the music that he sings, not least in Arminio. From his first notes and words in Arminio’s Act One duetto with Tusnelda, ‘Il fuggir, cara mia vita,’ delivered with nobility and focused tone in the lower register that resembles the plangent timbre of a bassett clarinet, Cenčić brings to mind the Angelica of Victoria de los Ángeles in the now-dated Scimone recording of Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso. Cenčić’s singing is a model of Händelian style, of course, but he shares with de los Ángeles a dedication to portraying a character to whose plight listeners will respond rather than crafting an aural pedagogy. The sheer dramatic force of his performance of ‘Al par della mia sorte è forte questo cor’ is riveting. Dominating Act Two as he ought to do, Cenčić’s Arminio lays his soul bare in the aria ‘Duri lacci, voi non siete per me rei di crudeltà,’ the singer’s invigorating vocalism seconded by an actor’s intuitive use of text. He sings ‘Sì, cadrò, ma sorgerà’ with unforced fervor, and his traversal of the exquisitely-written ‘Vado a morir, vi lascio la pace ch’ho nel cor’ throbs with emotion expressed through song. Cenčić catapults into Act Three with a fiery reading of the accompagnato ‘Fier teatro di morte!’ He follows this with an account of the aria ‘Ritorno alle ritorte’ that radiates familiarity with and love for Händel’s vocal idiom, qualities as audible in his singing as his impeccable training and experience. In both the aria ‘Fatto scorta al sentier della gloria’ and the duetto with Tusnelda, ‘Risplende nell’alma amante,’ Cenčić sings superbly whilst also characterizing with laudable specificity. His dexterity remains a marvel, but what distinguishes Cenčić from his countertenor colleagues is the calibre of the voice. Many countertenors sing opera, but Cenčić is a rare countertenor who is a true opera singer in the tradition of Farinelli, Malibran, Pasta, Flagstad, and Callas. His Arminio on these discs is a performance worthy of the tradition of Farinelli’s Artaserse, Malibran’s Maria Stuarda, Pasta’s Norma, Flagstad’s Isolde, and Callas’s Violetta.

Modern technology has in some ways made the recording of opera a far easier undertaking than it was in bygone years, but there are also drawbacks, not the least significant of which is a loss of the unique continuity possible with assembling a group of artists and recording in long takes that, in terms of personal interaction, replicated the excitement of the stage. The performance that the closing chorus, ‘A capir tante dolcezze troppo angusto è ’l nostro cor,’ receives on this recording perfectly illustrates the collaboration that gives this Arminio much of its charisma. The singers truly perform the opera: in recitatives, here rendered as engagingly as on any recording of a Baroque opera, they seem to listen to one another, something that too few singers bother to do even in staged performances. Whether the music being sung is by Händel or Henze, opera is a team sport. With Max Emanuel Cenčić and George Petrou as its co-captains and a team of all-stars playing all positions, this Arminio never misses an opportunity to score.

RECORDING OF THE MONTH / March 2016: Gaetano Veneziano — LA PASSIONE SECONDO GIOVANNI (R. Pe, L. Cervoni, M. Bussi, R. Dolcini, V. Argentieri; Glossa GCD 922609)

GAETANO VENEZIANO (1656 – 1716): La passione secondo Giovanni—Raffaele Pe (Evangelista), Luca Cervoni (Christus), Marco Bussi (Pilatus), Renato Dolcini (Simon Petrus, Servus I), Valentina Argentieri (Ancilla, Servus II); Ghislieri Choir; Cappella Neapolitana; Antonio Florio, conductor [Recorded in Collegio Ghislieri, Pavia, Italy, 12 – 15 April 2015; Glossa GCD 922609; 1 CD, 56:04; Available from Glossa, ClassicsOnline HD (Download | Streaming), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

For every work that clings to a place in the international repertory there are countless others that are neglected, forgotten, or lost. This is especially true of musical settings of scriptural accounts of and responses to the Passion of Christ. From the earliest unions of words and music, the persecution, death, and resurrection of Christ have been themes that engage the imagination, the parallels among Christ’s suffering, the tribulations endured—and perpetrated—by the Church, and man’s daily struggles inspiring artists to seek in music modes of expression for sentiments too ephemeral for words alone. From the medieval courts of Europe to the studios of Twenty-First-Century composers, music exploring the anguish of Christ’s crucifixion and the hope of the resurrection has occupied the creative energies of many artists, but it is no exaggeration to assert that the Passion music of Johann Sebastian Bach has not unjustly garnered prominence that casts shadows from which other scores toil, often futilely, to emerge. The prevalence of Bach’s fleet, viscerally exciting Johannes-Passion and compellingly profound Matthäus-Passion in Eastertide performance schedules leaves little time for the Passions of Heinrich Schütz, Johann Mattheson, and Georg Philipp Telemann, all more widely influential in the first half of the Eighteenth Century than Bach’s Passions. Händel’s Brockes-Passion remains lamentably under-appreciated, and even his Messiah, Parts Two and Three of which deal with Christ’s trial, execution, and resurrection, is often inexplicably scheduled for performance only in the Christmas season, especially in the USA. Aside from a pitifully small handful of works by Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Jommelli, Salieri, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, known but rarely performed, Italian Passion music is one of the least-explored niches of Classical Music. From this perspective, Glossa’s recording of Antonio Florio’s new performing edition of Gaetano Veneziano’s little-remembered Passione secondo Giovanni is especially treasurable, but a recording as fine as this one is welcome from any point of view. Given an opportunity of this artistic magnitude to make the case for its renaissance, Veneziano’s music brings John the Apostle’s harrowing recounting of his beloved master’s last days among men to poignant, devoutly melodious life in a performance that makes the more than three centuries of silence to which the score has been subjected all the more mystifying and exasperating.

Born in Bisceglie in the Apulia region of southeastern Italy in 1656, Gaetano Veneziano is now little more than a footnote in musicological tomes documenting the progress of Italian vocal music from the stylistic bellwethers Monteverdi, Cavalli, and Frescobaldi to the High Baroque of Alessandro Scarlatti, Benedetto Marcello, and Vivaldi. A pupil of Francesco Provenzale at Naples’s Conservatorio Santa Maria di Loreto, where he was named maestro di cappella in 1684, Veneziano was sufficiently respected as a composer of sacred music to later be selected as Alessandro Scarlatti’s replacement as director of the Spanish Viceroy’s Capilla Real in Naples—a post from which politics ousted him after only three years when the Austrian Hapsburgs wrested Naples from their Spanish cousins’ control. Early in his Neapolitan tenure, likely in 1685 [the year of Bach’s birth, appropriately enough], Veneziano composed his Passione secondo Giovanni for his adopted city, where he died in 1716. Whether the work, scored for soloists, a choir of nine parts, strings, and basso continuo, was intended for performance by Conservatorio Santa Maria di Loreto personnel is a matter of conjecture, but the dual intimacy and splendor of the edition and performance prepared by Florio suggest that Veneziano’s music would prove uniformly effective in academic, ecclesiastical, or theatrical settings.

The Passione is an intriguingly multi-faceted work, pockets of fiorature in the style of Provenzale mingling with pages of blossoming lyrical expression; and in that vein as much an intersection of old and new styles as Pergolesi’s Stabat mater. Following Florio’s lead, the musicians of Cappella Neapolitana play with technical acumen that never supersedes the beauty of the sounds that they produce. Organist Carlo Barile, harpsichordist Patrizia Varone, and theorbists Franco Pavan and Paola Ventrella collaborate to fashion a basso continuo that is a vibrant organism within the drama. They create a foundation upon which Florio and the strings—violinists Alessandro Ciccolini, Marco Piantoni, Rossella Pugliano, and Matteo Saccà, violist Rosario Di Meglio, cellists Jorge Alberto Guerrero and Adriano Fazio, and double bassist Giorgio Sanvito—create a stunningly beautiful aural edifice, the sounds of their instruments often eerily replicating the moods of the Latin text. It is expected that Florio’s knowledge of and affection for the Passione should be extensive, but the organic cohesion and unflagging drive of his pacing of this performance are admirable in any context. Aided by his cast and chorus, several of whom adhere to Baroque practice by singing solo and choir parts, Florio translates his zeal for revitalizing this score into a performance that, even on disc, exudes a deeply visceral commitment to musical storytelling.

In the introduction to the Gospel that begins the Passion, ‘Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi,’ it is immediately apparent that the Evangelista will face very demanding music and that countertenor Raffaele Pe will meet every demand unflinchingly. Articulating the words of the Apostle, Pe’s effortlessly-projected voice traverses the range of the music with chameleonic colorations rarely heard in a male alto’s singing. When joined by the sensitive but virile Christus of tenor Luca Cervoni and the chorus in ‘Iesus itaque sciens omnia,' Pe’s Evangelista interacts with his colleagues with far greater immediacy than many Evangelists in Bach’s Passions, participating in the events that are unfolding rather than uninvolvedly reciting Scripture. With the bass incarnations of Christ in Bach’s Passions prominent in the mind’s ears, a tenor Christ is a novelty, and Cervoni’s sympathetic portrayal is characterized by ingratiatingly full-toned but stylish singing. The Ghislieri Choir singers—sopranos Valentina Argentieri, Marta Redaelli, and Sonia Tedla, altos Isabella Di Pietro and Marta Fumagalli, tenors Michele Concato and Paolo Tormene, and basses Renato Cadel and Renato Dolcini—also dedicate their throats and their intellects to serving the needs of the drama, enhancing the performance with utterances that have the impact of chorus interjections in Greek tragedy.

Cervoni’s singing lends ‘Mitte gladium tuum in vaginam’ wonderful momentum, and Pe again delivers the Evangelista’s lines with astounding beauty of tone and a degree of technical accomplishment as near to perfection as is imaginable in such challenging music. Emerging from the chorus, Argentieri and Dolcini provide a dangerous account of the Ancilla’s accusation and a wrenching statement of Simon Petrus’s first denial of Christ. Pe phrases ‘Stabant autem servi et ministri’ with anxious intensity, the focus of his tone imparting the Apostle’s sense of foreboding, and his subtle but nuanced expressivity is matched by Cervoni and Dolcini. Cervoni voices ‘Si male locutus sum’ with refinement, but Argentieri’s reading of the Servus’s denunciation of Simon Petrus introduces a disquieting menace that erupts in Dolcini’s pained fulfillment of the prophecy of his threefold denial of Christ. The choristers again execute their parts with spot-on musical and dramatic instincts.

Bass Marco Bussi’s dark-grained timbre renders his Pilatus easily discernible, but he shares Pe’s gift for insightful inflection though, not inappropriately for Pontius Pilatus, his vocalism is less polished than his colleague’s. Bussi unleashes an unmistakable arrogance in ‘Quam accusationem affertis,’ openly challenging Christ and seemingly reveling in his character’s feeble but insurmountable authority. Singing with the unperturbed grace of undiminished faith, Pe’s Evangelista imparts to the listener that, for all of his self-conscious regality, Pilatus is merely playing the part meant for him by divine will. Here and in ‘Et dabant ei alapas,’ Pe, Bussi, and the choristers employ both their voices and the words that they sing like brightly-hued tiles in a mosaic, creating a landscape in which Gethsemane and Golgotha are conjured with plaintive credibility. The potency of Cervoni’s enunciation of ‘Non haberes potestatem’ is answered by Pe, the chorus, and Bussi in accents of starkly divergent despair and insouciance, differentiated not by compromising tonal quality but by giving full weight to every word and full expression to every emotion.

‘Ut Scriptura impleretur, dicens,’ the Passione’s closing sequence, in many ways resembles an extended motet for the Evangelista and Christus, a powerful exposition of the individual and universal implications of Christ’s death and resurrection. Pe’s interpretation of the Apostle’s words delves deeply into the man’s, not just the disciple’s, love for his master, but it is the unaffected beauty of his vocalism that reveals the Evangelista’s heart to the listener. Cervoni’s Christus, too, is a portrayal focused on examining Christ’s individuality by singing his music stylishly and straightforwardly. In this performance, Veneziano’s music succeeds as few composers’ works in a similar vein have done at humanizing both Christ and the Evangelist: they are archetypes, of course, but they are not carved-stone icons that sink in seas of symbolism. Owing to the uncommon musical integrity of this performance, they are here what they surely were in life: extraordinary, ordinary men.

Some scholars now question not only whether the Apostle John penned the canonical Gospel that bears his name but also whether such a man actually existed. The Twenty-First Century is an era of doubts of which even Thomas could not have dreamed—if there was a doubting Thomas, that is. Like the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare, though, is the question of authorship really so important that appreciation of the quality of the work is lessened by uncertainty? Music of the quality of Gaetano Veneziano’s Passione secondo Giovanni speaks for itself regardless of whose words inspired its melodies. Its beauties communicated by a performance like the one lead by Antonio Florio and Raffaele Pe, the only relevant question that should be asked about Veneziano’s Passione is, ‘How can such a consequential score have been so long unheard?’