Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Hasse: Opera Arias (Cencic, Armonia Atenea/Petrou)

Until the 1980s Johann Adolf Hasse remained a historical footnote – a famous and prolific opera composer in his day of whom one had hardly heard a note. Then in 1986, William Christie made a landmark recording of Cleofide with an exotic line up of four counter-tenors and he was gradually rediscovered. Fast-forward to today and counter-tenors are superstars and major labels release whole recitals of Hasse – who’d have thought?  Max Emanuel Cencic was first heard as first boy on Solti’s 1991 Die Zauberflöte and has since developed into one of those aforesaid superstars. This superb recital includes seven world premiere recordings plus a mandolin concerto for instrumental interlude. Cencic’s voice is one of the richest around today with a gleaming top, a fulsome but firm bottom register and his technical facility is spectacular yet always beautifully expressive. His fiorature runs are cleanly articulated but always maintain a legato line with no nasty aspirates.  The accompaniments are bold, energetic yet elegant and technically immaculate; intonation is spot on. Theodoros Kitsos plays the mandolin concerto with limpid tone. The recording is close but not annoyingly so and wonderfully firm and weighty. Hasse’s arias rival Handel for invention but the whole…

May 18, 2014
Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Strauss: Complete Operas (Various Artists)

Even though his father Franz had played horn in the premieres in several of Wagner’s operas, the old man was not a fan of Herr Richard’s music dramas. His son, the composer Richard Strauss, would hold a similar position until his late teens when he discovered the piano score for Tristan and Isolde and he would prove a master of the orchestral tone poem and lieder before writing his first opera – the Wagnerian pastiche, Guntram – around his 30th birthday. However it was not until his third work in the field – Salome (1905), after Oscar Wilde’s notorious play – that he would have a major success de scandale with many productions being rapidly presented across Europe.  With this and his take on the classical tale of Elektra a few years later, Strauss would electrify audiences while balancing precariously on the edge of tonality. However he would suddenly pull back to celebrate his other major influence, Mozart, and with the likes of Ariadne auf Naxos and particularly Der Rosenkavalier, he would create the much loved dramas wherein his unique ability to write for the female voice would shine, creating a template for the rest of his operatic output amounting…

May 18, 2014
Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Caccini: L’Euridice (Concerto Italiano/Alessandrini)

The 1600 marriage of Maria de’ Medici to Henri IV of France was more than just a Renaissance knees-up. For two composers, Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, it was the opportunity for each to claim to have produced the first example of what came to be known as ‘opera’. On the day, the performance was 90% Peri. Caccini went on to compose an entirely different version (and to subject his colleague to polemical broadsides over the ensuing decades). It’s his version recorded here. L’Euridice relies to a greater extent on recitative than later works by Monteverdi and Cavalli, with fewer ritornelli and choruses to liven things up. A comparison with Peri reveals Caccini to be a tauter dramatist, no bad thing given the tendency towards verbosity at the expense of action. Alessandri’s version, here captured in a live recording from the Innsbruck Festival, also has the advantage of a more imaginative instrumental realisation with three twangling theorbos, a host of keyboard instruments and a beautifully rich double lyre. He also has the benefit of supremely creative singers: Silvia Frigato as a fetching Euridice, Furio Zanasi as a moving Orfeo, Sara Mingardo poignantly announcing the fatal snake-bite and Antonio Abate as…

May 16, 2014