Forbes Classical CD of the Week

…in a way the additional highlight-disc, compiled from both versions, is a real kicker! A tasteful Best-Of that combines the strengths of both versions with the added bonus of brevity…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Orfeo And Counter-Orfeo

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#morninglistening: The Greatest Pre-Mozart Opera

#morninglistening to the greatest pre-Mozart opera: #Gluck’s Orfeo on @dgclassics w/@Equil… https://t.co/6Whh5m4iOz pic.twitter.com/m2IpFRDyGz

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) November 11, 2015

The highlights-disc, basically a shortened hybrid taken from both versions, is real treat!

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Venzago, Watts with the BSO

O. Schoeck, Sommernacht (inter alia), Berner Symphonieorchester, M. Venzago (Musiques Suisses, 2015)

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is approaching the celebration of its 100th anniversary this Thursday. For the last program before that event, conductor Mario Venzago returned to the podium, with a pleasing selection of music that was full of surprises, heard on Thursday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. Opening with Gluck, some odd selections from the marvelous opera Armide, was an inspired choice, music that few BSO listeners are likely to have heard, at least from the BSO.

The Gluck set included the overture and several dances, plus a chaconne and finale, with a concentrated number of players, including a harpsichord for the continuo part and, somewhat mysteriously, a part for harp. The modern brass instruments had to play in a rather contained way, so as not to overwhelm the ensemble, revealing many delightful sounds, especially the hypnotic Elysium number and an ornately beautiful flute solo in the Siciliana. Gluck premiered this opera in Paris in 1777, the same year that Mozart composed his ninth piano concerto, K. 27, in Salzburg for Victoire Jenamy, the daughter of dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre. It is a jewel of a piece, given a pretty if not always easily flowing account by pianist André Watts. Venzago kept the orchestra at just the right levels to allow his soloist to come to the fore, making many little adjustments to realign the ensemble. Watts performed the cadenzas and other solo moments with some panache, but this was not exactly a rendition to be remembered, although the third movement had a daring spirit.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, BSO welcomes back Andre Watts, Mario Venzago (Baltimore Sun, February 6)

Schumann's symphonies often bore me, but good conductors know how to fix balances to make the best of the composer's sometimes dull orchestration. Venzago did just that in this performance of Schumann's fourth symphony, in D minor, reigning in the string and brass sound to reveal the winds more and applying generous rubato to bring out the Romantic nature of Schumann's phrases. The second movement was delicate and wistful, with some tuning issues when the oboe and cello section shared a melody (not a good combination), but a lovely violin solo in the middle section. The scherzo felt plenty fast but was limber and lively than just forceful, and a trio of charming, murmuring sounds that Venzago's rubato touch brought to life. Venzago's earlier restraint of the brass now paid off, as he finally gave that section its head, driving an exciting finale to its conclusion.

This concert repeats this evening, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

Dominique Labelle at Dumbarton Oaks

Moments of Love, D. Labelle, Y. Wyner (Bridge Records, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Dominique Labelle masters a subtle style at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, March 17)

Canadian-born soprano Dominique Labelle gave a recital of sometimes frustrating contrasts on Sunday evening at Dumbarton Oaks. Some of her selections, mostly on the second half, showed her voice in its best light, with limpid and floating high notes, while others revealed musical struggles.

Both Labelle and her talented accompanist, the composer Yehudi Wyner, were at their best in Ravel’s enigmatic “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.” Here Wyner gave just enough sound to the rustling, often static harmonies of the keyboard part so that Labelle did not have to force her sound. The result was just the right amount of suggestive... [Continue reading]

Dominique Labelle (soprano) and Yehudi Wyner (piano)
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Gluck Sells out the Concert Hall (Ionarts, February 3, 2010)

Best Recordings of 2014 (#8)

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2014 (published in whole on Forbes.com). My lists for the previous years: 2013, 2012, 2011, (2011 – “Almost”), 2010, (2010 – “Almost”), 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 8 - New Release

Nicola Porpora, Arias, Franco Fagioli (countertenor), Alessandro de Marchi (conductor), Academia Montis Regalis, Naïve 5369

N.Porpora, Arias F.Fagioli / A.de Marchi / Academia Montis Regalis (Naïve)

Neapolitan Gallantries

Countertenor Francoa Fagioli, whom I heard as a wonderful Andronico in the 2012 performance of Handel’s Tamerlano and whose outings on the Carus-label (Teseo, Canzone e Cantate) I have enjoyed well enough, has made a disc comprised of the best arias that Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) ever penned. I have a funny feeling it’s awfully good of him to spare us the other bits of this completely-unknown-except-perhaps-as-a-historic-voice-teacher-in-the-early-18^th-century composer. On the other hand, the quality of the pieces he did opt for is astounding! At his best, this Neapolitan-style gallant-era composer seems to have written nothing but hard rocking, socking, and heart-string-pulling opera highlights that the Academia Montis Regalis under Alessandro de Marchi plays with unremitting zest. Then again, it could be Fagioli who elevates this music towards greatness. He is of a generation of counter-tenors (which also includes Philippe Jarrousky, David Hansen, Terry Wey, Xavier Sabata) whose sheer ability and complexity of timbre makes them transcend the early-music specialist niche. When my step-father, reasonably classical music loving but frankly on the unadventurous side, walked in on my listening to the Porpora arias I expected him to flinch. Instead he perked notably, inquired what I was listening to, commented on how beautiful it was, and lamented my unwillingness to part with the disc. Back in Salzburg I admired Fagioli’s wide timbered voice with a particularly good lower register but cautioned that looking at his grimacing made him a dramatic liability. He’s only added quality to his impressive voice since, and on CD you can’t see him anyway. That makes this disc an easy and simply gorgeous inclusion in this list.

# 8 – Reissue

Christoph Willibald Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, René Jacobs (conductor), Harmonia Mundi 921742

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Ionarts-at-Large: A Special Place in Hell (Orfeo with Minkowski)

Picture (detail) courtesy Salzburg Mozart Woche, © Matthias Baus

Bejun Mehta will never be my favorite countertenor, but singing Orfeo as he does here in Salzburg, in Ivan Alexandre’s lame demi-production of Orfeo ed Euridice, he makes it impossible not to admire him. Relaxed and more naturally confident than his supercilious stage demeanour usually suggests, he is in splendid, show-stealing form throughout the evening. He is partnered with Camilla Tilling’s Euridice, who has a voice so very plain, so clean, so secure, with such lack of sensuality, that I feel guilty...

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Briefly Noted: Gluck's 'Ezio'

Gluck, Ezio, S. Prina, A. Hallenberg, Il Complesso Barocco, A. Curtis (released on September 27, 2011) Virgin 5099907092923 | 146'53"

We are on record as wanting to hear much more of the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck. Of course, as a Baroque fanatic, I am thrilled by the revival of the operas of Handel and Vivaldi, but Gluck's operas are much more influential on the history of opera, because it is on his groundbreaking reforms that the operas of Mozart and Wagner were built. So, it is odd that many opera companies -- Washington and Santa Fe among them -- have only recently been programming Gluck, and then rarely and often just the few better-known operas. This is Alan Curtis's first foray into the Gluck operas, after so many fine recordings of the operas of Vivaldi and especially Handel, and one hopes that his well-honed ensemble, Il Complesso Barocco, will turn to more of the composer's works.

Curtis goes back to Gluck's original version of Ezio, premiered at the Teatro Nuovo in Prague in 1750. After the premiere of Orfeo in Vienna in 1762, the first salvo in the composer's campaign to reform opera seria, he revised Ezio according to his reform-oriented ideas, for the Burgtheater in 1763. The revisions were significant, in part because Gluck had recycled some of his music from Ezio in Orfeo, so the opera had to be redone to play for Viennese audiences. Gluck used a libretto by Metastasio, set multiple times by many composers, including Handel in 1732 (an opera also recorded beautifully by Curtis). The title character is a Roman general, Flavius Aetius, fighting just before the Western Roman Empire's flame was finally extinguished. Popular because of his military successes against the Huns, he ran afoul of the jealous emperor Valentinian III and ended up murdered, only to have his friends avenge his death by murdering the emperor in turn. Curtis is not slavishly faithful to the original text, keeping some of the cuts of possibly unflattering texts Gluck later made to the libretto and incorporating some musical changes and embellishments from other sources.

A meddling notable, Petronius Maximus (Massimo), acts on his grudge against Valentinian by encouraging the emperor's jealousy. Massimo's conniving plots and Ezio's stubborn pride appear to seal Ezio's fate -- execution for treachery he did not commit -- but the required lieto fine demands a series of unlikely twists so that it all works out in the end. Even though Gluck was writing a traditional opera seria according to the expected star singer-driven conventions, Gluck's approach even to the stock arias is original. One example is Massimo's Se povero il ruscello, with murmuring strings evoking the babbling waters of the gently flowing stream in the A section, and lovely ornamentation from tenor Topi Lehtipuu and the solo oboist. It is music so good that Gluck used it again for the moment when Orfeo beholds the Elysian fields. Curtis returns to some of his favorite singers, with contralto Sonia Prina and mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg reunited from his recording of Handel's Ezio. Prina astounds in the title role by both her daredevil technique (on display in the bravura aria Se fedele mi brama, from the end of Act I) and robust, melting legato tone (in the luscious aria Ecco alle mie catene, sung by Ezio in prison). Hallenberg is equally affecting as Ezio's daughter Fulvia, with dramatic presence for the striking accompagnato Misera dove son! and edgy force for the following aria Ah, non son io, in Act III. Croatian countertenor (and former Vienna Choirboy) Max Emanuel Cenčić has a satisfying turn as the emperor Valentiniano, with a radiant tone in the aria Dubbioso amante in Act II.

DCist: 'Iphigénie en Tauride'

See my review of the Washington National Opera's production of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, published at DCist today:

DCist at the Opera: 'Iphigénie en Tauride' (DCist, May 9):

Gluck, Iphigénie en Tauride, M. Delunsch, S. Keenlyside, Les Musiciens du Louvre, M. Minkowski

Washington National Opera has made another significant advance in catching up to the latest trends in opera houses around the world, by staging its first-ever opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787). The new production of Iphigénie en Tauride, which opened on Friday night, turns out to be the best work in an otherwise downsized and somewhat ho-hum season -- not only because it is the company's first Gluck opera and such a beautiful work, but because of a superb cast that proves gripping both musically and dramatically, in a production that is intriguing, stark and far from ordinary.

Gluck premiered Iphigénie en Tauride in Paris in 1779, the culmination of the composer's heroic attempt to reform opera from a genre that was more about vocal pyrotechnics and stage diversions into something closer to its origins, the revival of the expressive power of ancient Greek tragedy. Continuing from where his previous opera Iphigénie en Aulide had left off, the libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard draws on Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris. The goddess Diana spares Iphigenia from being sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, at Aulis, to provide winds for the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. Iphigenia is magically transported to Diana's temple in Tauris, a part of Scythia known today as the Crimean peninsula. Iphigenia's brother Orestes and his friend Pylades arrive at the temple, sent by Diana herself to bring her sacred images from the temple back to Greece. The Greek visitors are sentenced to be sacrificed at the hands of Iphigenia, as priestess of Diana. Unnerved by visions of who the strangers are, she agrees to let one of them escape and cannot bring herself to kill Orestes, whom she eventually recognizes as her brother. Pylades returns with soldiers to try to free Orestes, when Diana herself descends in a cloud to put all to right.

Without any daringly ornamented arias or anything extraneous that might divert attention from the story's dramatic continuity, a Gluck opera will succeed only with talented singing actors and compelling direction. There are almost none of the tried-and-true operatic clichés to fall back on, not even a romantic intrigue: the central relationship here is of brother and sister, who do not even recognize one another until the end. In the title role, soprano Patricia Racette was riveting, the searing strength of her voice underscoring the still intensity of her stage presence. This was certainly what one expected of Racette, after such satisfying turns here as Jenůfa in 2007 and Ellen Orford in 2009, but her bold and electrifying performance far exceeded my hopes. After some tentative notes at the top of her range in the first hour or so, Racette hit her stride, singing with lyrical abandon in the Act IV aria "Je t'implore et je tremble." [Continue reading]

Gluck, Iphigénie en Tauride
P. Racette, P. Domingo
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

Patricia Racette (Iphigénie) and Plácido Domingo (Oreste) in Iphigénie en Tauride, Washington National Opera, 2011 (photo by Scott Suchman)

'Iphigénie en Tauride'

Gluck, Iphigénie en Tauride, M. Delunsch, S. Keenlyside, Les Musiciens du Louvre, M. Minkowski M. Ewans, Opera from the Greek: Studies in the Poetics of Appropriation

We love the operas of Gluck, so we are exceedingly happy that Washington National Opera has finally gotten around to staging one of them: a new production of Iphigénie en Tauride opens this Friday. Gluck premiered Iphigénie en Tauride in Paris on May 18, 1779, a follow-up of sorts to his Iphigénie en Aulide from 1774. (In the ongoing pamphlet war in that era, Piccinni set the same story as an opera, which was premiered in 1781.) Gluck reused some of the music from his ballet Sémiramis in the French version and then made a revision in 1781, in German for Vienna, modifying the role of Oreste from (high) baritone to tenor. Julian Rushton, in the liner notes for this worthy recording of the original Paris version of Iphigénie en Tauride, made live at La Maison de Radio France in March 1999, puts this recycling of music into the best context: rather than understanding Gluck's self-borrowings as representing a paucity of ideas, one should compare Gluck's masterful adaptation of his own earlier music, which had few chances of ever being heard again, to "the assembly of Bach's B Minor Mass from earlier cantatas," part of "a curiously modern mode of self-criticism."

The libretto is based on Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides, a story that was set many times in the 18th century, notably as a play by Goethe in 1787. The goddess Diana spares Iphigenia from being sacrificed by her father at Aulis, to provide winds for the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. Iphigenia is magically transported to Diana's temple in Tauris, a part of Scythia known today as the Crimean peninsula. Orestes and his friend Pylades arrive at the temple, sent by Diana herself to bring her sacred images from the temple back to Greece. The Greek visitors are sentenced to be sacrificed (a ritualistic practice among the Scythians, mentioned by Herodotus). As the punishment is to be carried out by Iphigenia as priestess of Diana, she agrees to let one of the prisoners escape but cannot ultimately bring herself to kill Orestes, whom she eventually recognizes as her brother. Pylades returns with soldiers to try to free Orestes, when Diana herself descends in a cloud to put all to right.

Many specialists regard the opera as the pinnacle of Gluck's achievement of his goals in operatic reform. Because he was working with a younger librettist, Nicolas-François Guillard, Gluck was able to oversee and often overrule his less experienced colleague on dramatic decisions, even as he was setting the text to music. Michael Ewans, in his book Opera from the Greek, writes about Gluck's attempt to bring opera back to its dramatic roots, namely the Florentine Camerata and the restoration of Greek tragedy: "in the second Iphigénie Gluck was able to create a new operatic drama, in which musical effects are employed solely for dramatic purposes, and the interaction between text and music is extremely close" (p. 32). One measure of success in this aim was the enthusiastic response of audiences: even the notoriously critical Grimm wrote, "when I hear Iphigénie, I forget that I am at the opera; I believe that I am listening to a Greek tragedy" (quoted by Ewans). This is true even though, as Ewans points out, Gluck and his librettist make the ultimate sacrifice in their pursuit of the ideal of Greek tragedy, dispensing with any element of a love interest in this opera. The passionate loves here are between siblings (Iphigénie-Oreste) and friends (Oreste-Pylade).

True to his ideals, Gluck excised from the libretto any text not critical to moving the action forward. To add further to the work's dramatic leanness, Gluck included no divertissement, the often unrelated ballet scene that concluded most operas in Paris in this period. (One was added by the Opéra de Paris, The Scythians in Chains with music by Gossec, after only a few performances of the opera, to please the audience's demands.) There are two ballet scenes, however, but building on Gluck's work making ballet into a more dramatically coherent genre, they are integrated fully into the opera's story: when the wild Scythians demand the execution of the two Greek prisoners, and when the Furies (and Clytemnestra's ghost) appear to Oreste and torment him in a dream. Gluck prefers a Greek chorus-style interaction of soloist and chorus instead of the traditional solo aria: as Ewans notes, "the recreation of a truly Greek chorus is one of the most remarkable aspects of Iphigénie" (p. 46). At the same time he purposefully avoids ensembles of soloists, which tend to obscure comprehensibility of text: there is really only the one trio and one duet in Act III.

The bloody plot -- well, at least the threat of the sacrifice that never happens -- tends to attract controversial stagings for this opera. WNO has imported a production directed by Emilio Sagi from Spain's Opera de Oviedo, reportedly minimalist and updated to the modern era, and the choice of Gluck is in some ways the parting gift of Plácido Domingo, who has also starred in the opera in recent stagings at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The role is a good fit for Domingo, who is exploring baritone roles these days and often has to transpose his tenor roles downward. As the editors of the critical score note, Oreste was originally written for a high baritone, even notated in C clef, and then sung by a tenor in the Vienna revision. Instead of mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as the Iphigénie to his Oreste, Domingo will star with Patricia Racette in the title role. With so few moments of vocal decoration or musical extravagance, the dramatic punch of the opera rests on the stage presence of the singers, and Domingo and Racette both have it in spades. The cast is rounded out by promising young tenor Shawn Mathey as Pylade, and Simone Alberghini as the spiteful Scythian Thoas. Thomas Lacey, who was at the podium for Domingo's star turn in Handel's Tamerlano, will conduct.

Washington National Opera's production of Iphigénie en Tauride has performances on May 6, 9, 12, 15, 17, 20, 25, and 28.

Notes from the 2010 Salzburg Festival ( 7 )

Christoph Willibald Gluck • Orfeo ed Euridice

Perhaps uniquely, the Salzburg Festival is the one place where you can dislike one performance after another, and still have a great time. The cute city, the spicy late-night “Bosna” hot dogs, the chats and beers with colleagues from near and afar, the professional organization (German efficiency with southern touches of hospitality) all allow to enjoy oneself when the stages offer little enjoyment.

I noticed, inadvertently almost, that except for the performance of one replacement pianist (Polina Leschenko), I haven’t much enjoyed the particular concerts I’ve been to—for a variety of reasons. All were a mixed bag, offering their share of interesting repertoire and terrific performances, but never consistently, never without the odd movement, composition, or execution gone wrong. In a way last night’s Orfeo ed Euridice, in Gluck’s 1762 Vienna version, was the nadir, so far. The music is great, of course. In anticipation I listened to René Jacobs’ recording (Harmonia Mundi), and under his hands the opera sounds something like this. Gluck is the beginning of opera as I understand it… the beginning of equivalence of music and text, the beginning of intelligent drama. Obviously there are other, earlier operas that, given the right production and discriminating editing hand, are great. And many that followed that aren’t… but in any case Gluck is a watershed composer for opera perhaps in the way that Monterverdi and Wagner are.

The musical interpretation wasn’t great… but it was solid. Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic don’t sound like Jacobs’ Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and obviously are not supposed to. You get a bigger, burly Gluck, with a token harpsichord more for looks than sound, since you only hear it once, vaguely, during the overture. After that it disappears in the pit never to rise out again. But after a spirited lush beginning, the performance more and more, seamlessly adapted to the level of the production and the singers which is to say it petered out with overtones of dullness. Homogenized Gluck, played like backwards Mozart, not opera radical for its time.

Nothing compared to the rest of the show, though. Elisabeth Kulman and Genia Kühmeier as Orfeo and Euridice, respectively, stood out only for staggering blandness, complete lack of stage presence, and being bewilderingly devoid of any dramatic flair. Acting? What acting? Even the singing, in a perfectly capable way, was featureless, bordering dull. An exception must be made for Christiane Karg’s Amore who, with the little stage time she had and despite the lack of direction, stood out for seemingly accidental liveliness and flair; her twittery vibrato coming across as very likeable, indeed. Sadly that didn’t so much provide respite but painful contrast to the rest of the goings-on.

Compared to another recent direction that absolutely incensed me—Neuenfels’ Medea in Corinto in Munich (yet to be written about)—I realized: Neuenfels infuriated me for badly executed, painfully bad and banal ideas with faux-leftist politics exposing an ultimately racist undercurrent. With Dieter Dorn that clearly wasn’t the problem. Usually you know what you get with Dorn: conservative, minimalist, possibly lovely, and perfectly predictable productions. Combined with Gluck and Muti, that might have been intended as a tonic to the festival goers who are already taxed with Rihm (to attend or avoid), Lulu (to love or loathe), and other assorted modernities.

Turns out it wasn’t a tonic, it was a barbiturate. Dorn couldn’t have taken more than five minutes to conceive this production, and no more than another five to execute it. A proscenium frame (expected; lovelessly painted like a Club Med swimming pool) to avoid having to work with the space of the Großes Festspielhaus. A few vista shots, to pretend to work with the space. A Hades scene (Orfeo entering via a ladder from above) in sulfuric yellow lighting, a semicircular hall of mirrors (plagiarized, to boot), illogical movements of the protagonists, unmotivated action on the part of the chorus, with the housewifey ladies of the Vienna State Opera Chorus rolling about in the most unnatural manner, making the chorus scenes sights of supernumerary embarrassment. In the underworld that Gluck asks to look strangely pleasant, heaven-like, Asian chorus members had to wear (horrible) blond wigs to look like the type of ‘proper people’ that is apparently allowed in Dorn’s heaven (or Dorn’s idea of Gluck’s heaven). The only thing heartbreaking about Euridice’s and Orfeo’s interaction was how ridiculous it all looked.

Almost every instance in the staging could be singled out for halfheartedness, complete lovelessness and listlessness, lack of ideas. And when an idea did pop up—in the dance interlude of the finale—it gets silly with minutes of pantomime of boy-girl chases, the most civilized rape you have ever seen, hammed-up reconciliation, cheesy, bouquet smashing temper tantrums… the painfully campy conclusion to an insultingly thoughtless ‘direction’.

Tomorrow about Lulu which, so much for now, was fantastic.







All pictures courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Hermann und Clärchen Baus

Gluck Sells Out the Concert Hall

Gluck, Armide, Les musiciens du Louvre, M. Minkowski Lully, Armide, Opera Lafayette, R. Brown

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Opera Lafayette, the talented and adventurous company specializing in French opera of the grand siècle, rented the Kennedy Center Concert Hall for a performance of Gluck's Armide. With tickets priced to move at $15, the performance quickly sold out, even after initial plans not to seat people in the highest tier were abandoned. This seems to provide some solid evidence that if you program interesting music (other than the same dull chestnuts), perform it well, and offer it at ticket prices that are not prohibitively expensive, people will come. It is a heartening sign that the star over the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck rises further with this performance, too. Any audience that can stomach a Mozart opera will likely find that Gluck goes down just as easily, and nothing could please me more that his operas are apparently on an ascendancy. This summer, during an interview with Santa Fe Opera General Director Charles MacKay, I told him that I hoped their performance of Gluck's Alceste would inaugurate an annual tradition in which the company replaced its regular Mozart opera with one by Gluck. In related news, Washington National Opera will finally get around to staging its first Gluck opera next season with Iphigénie en Tauride.

Armide (check out the online score of the 1783 edition scanned by the University of North Texas Libraries) is one of the lesser-known of Gluck's operas, judging from the number of folks who commented casually that Monday night's performance was the first time time they had heard it. With the opera's 1777 premiere, Gluck famously stood on the shoulders of giants, setting a libretto adapted (quite faithfully, although cutting the sycophantic prelude) from the brilliant one written by Philippe Quinault for Lully. It is an opera that I studied at some length for my doctoral dissertation (reading not for the faint of heart) and that I have written about here before, in reviews of the lone recording, by Marc Minkowski, and in a 2007 staging by Maryland Opera Studio. Opera Lafayette's Ryan Brown conducted that performance, presented in conjunction with his company's performance of Lully's Armide the same year, but it was hardly surprising to see Opera Lafayette return to the work this season, this time with much more appropriate dancing for the ballet music, performed by their regular partner, Catherine Turocy's New York Baroque Dance Company.

Brown felt compelled to make some cuts, to keep the performance time to three hours with an intermission: Minkowski made cuts, too, and his recording fits onto two CDs. The decision makes sense in terms of a live performance. , but one hopes that the group has set aside some time to record the music cut in concert, for the sake of their recording of the work, planned with Naxos. (I will reserve final judgment until I hear Opera Lafayette's recording, of course, but having all the music would be another consideration likely to tip my recommendation for a recording of the opera away from Minkowski.) [I have since been informed that this performance was not being recorded for Naxos.--Ed.] What they did perform sounded quite good, with Brown's conducting at his accustomed alternation of fluidity and crisp attack. There was only one noticeable blip, at the transition into Esprits de haine, a minor flaw that can be replaced with the tape from the New York performance. The strings played with an impressively tight sense of ensemble, especially in the many fast passages pulsating with tremolos, recalling the Dance of the Furies from Orphée et Eurydice, for example. The best solo performance came from flutist Colin St. Martin, who stood for his part in the sommeil scene ("Plus j'observe ces lieux"). He sounded just as good in the Air Sicilien in Act V, following Gluck's indication that the piece "doit être joué avec beaucoup d'expression."

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Opera Lafayette marks 15th anniversary with sold-out performance in a big space (Washington Post, February 3) Anthony Tommasini, Love and Sorcery in a Religious War (New York Times, February 4)

The singing was quite good, too, a fine balance achieved by placing the orchestra and singers on a platform at the back of the stage, which also left a space for the dancers at the apron. Tenor William Burden sounded much better as Renaud than he did as Vere in Santa Fe's Billy Budd two summers ago, with a heroic ping at the top of his voice, a cleaner attack and less noticeable scoop, and only a few of the highest notes that showed some strain. He was seconded by strong performances from tenor Robert Getchell, whose Artémidore and Chevalier Danois were high points, and the versatile baritone Darren Perry as Aronte and Ubalde. William Sharp sang well as Hidraot, but it was hard not to miss the obvious choice for this role, François Loup, who performs regularly with the company. He would have added some needed heft and a more venerable presence, but perhaps the part lay too high.

Among the women, the tall, confident Stephanie Houtzeel stole the show as La Haine, singing with a fierce, barbed tone and malicious presence, quite in keeping with what we have heard from her in the title role of Lully's Armide and in Handel and Haydn with Opera Lafayette. Gluck's Armide, however, lies much higher, and while soprano Dominique Labelle had a dramatic, cutting edge to her tone, the top was disappointingly strained, turning acidic. (With the orchestra tuned to A430, those high notes are still pretty high.) In the supporting cast, Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij's Sidonie stood out for the clarion resonance of her voice, overshadowing the lighter but still lovely Nathalie Paulin as Phénice. The talented chorus sang well, with a present sound that stayed remarkably unified from their unfortunately distant position in the chorister seats above the stage.

Opera Lafayette will close its 15th anniversary season with the modern American premiere of Philidor's Sancho Pança (May 24, 7:30 pm), in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Alceste'

Christine Brewer (Alceste, front) and cast in Alceste, Santa Fe Opera, 2009 (photo by Ken Howard)

At the start of my meeting with Charles MacKay, General Director of Santa Fe Opera (interview forthcoming), I joked that it would be fine with me if the company replaced its annual tradition of a Mozart opera with an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) instead. We have had precious few opportunities to review Gluck's operas over the years, on stage or otherwise, but his operas are not only very important in the history of the genre's development -- his reform-minded ideas about opera were a major influence on Wagner, for example -- but also universally beautiful. Prior to this year's production of Alceste, heard on Wednesday night, Santa Fe Opera has mounted only one of Gluck's operas (Orfeo ed Euridice, 1990). During our interview, MacKay told me that soprano Christine Brewer has been talking to him about the possibility of singing in a production of Alceste for some ten years at Opera Theater of St. Louis. MacKay, who cast Brewer in her first solo role when he was general director of OTSL, was only too happy to be able to help make it happen in Santa Fe.

Gluck and his librettist, Ranieri de Calzabigi (1714-1795) -- a composer-librettist partnership on par with Mozart-Da Ponte or Strauss-Von Hoffmannsthal -- aimed to undo the anti-dramatic conventions of opera seria, set in place largely by Metastasio. Their reform has its roots in the academic origins of opera, the attempted recreation of ancient Greek tragedy. For that reason Gluck's operas lend themselves well to a sort of ritual staging, shown so effectively in Robert Wilson's gestural production of Orphée et Eurydice. Director Francisco Negrin went in a similar direction, setting his Santa Fe Alceste in a Thessaly of barren stone walls, haunted by masked, demon-like immortals (sets and costumes by Louis Désiré). In front of a temple dominated by the obsessive image of a large, all-seeing eye, the chorus commented on the action, making stylized emotional gestures right out of the Peter Sellars playbook (Mr. Roboto movements by Spanish choreographer Ana Yepes). The choreography was a mixture of classical ballet and the jerky blockiness and male-female inversions reminiscent of Mark Morris.

Tom Corbeil (Oracle, left), Matthew Morris (Apollo, top), and Christine Brewer (Alceste, right) in Alceste, Santa Fe Opera, 2009 (photo by Ken Howard)

The mythological story that underlies Calzabigi's original Italian libretto was drawn from the play Alcestis by Euripides. It concerns one of the many miracles accomplished by Hercules (on the way to his eighth official labor), in which he helped to rescue Alcestis, the virtuous wife of Admetus, from the underworld, where she had gone by choice, sacrificing her life for husband's. The libretto's happy ending, by which Alcestis and Admetus are made immortal as a model of perfect marital love, is undone by Negrin's staging. The powers of the underworld, portrayed by Yepes and six other dancers, plus the versatile Tom Corbeil, so inhuman in their white face makeup with blackened eyes, looked like members of the band KISS had been colonized by the Borg ("Resistance is futile -- prepare to rock and roll all night and party everyday"). They were omnipresent, moving menacingly during most of Alceste's arias and even claiming the mortals at the conclusion, by wrapping them in a black banner bearing the words "La mort." This is an unfortunate example of a director utterly missing the point: perfect fidelity is ennobled by the gods, not destroyed.

Christine Brewer, Alceste excerpts: Vol. 1 Vol. 2

Alceste was the second of Gluck's reform operas (see this piano-vocal score), premiered in Vienna in 1767 and then adapted in a 1776 French version for Paris, where Gluck followed his former student, Marie-Antoinette, when she married King Louis XVI. This version, with a revised French libretto by Leblanc du Roullet and some major changes to the music, is generally thought to be better and is usually chosen for performance, although it is sometimes translated back into Italian. Santa Fe, quite wisely, chose the French version and kept it in French. In the modern era, Alceste's gorgeous arias have attracted many great sopranos who have used their star power to insist on stagings of the entire opera: Kirsten Flagstad, Maria Callas, Eileen Farrell, Jessye Norman, Catherine Naglestad, and most recently Deborah Voigt, who will probably star in her own staged production soon. Christine Brewer sang the role with vitality, warmth, and shattering power, a resplendent earth mother of opulent potency. It might not be the optimal type of voice for Gluck, but all of the details were there, with more than enough expansive élan on the high notes of Divinités du Styx and a luscious, long-breathed legato in the slower pieces.

Tom Corbeil (The Infernal God) and Paul Groves (Admète) in Alceste, Santa Fe Opera, 2009 (photo by Ken Howard)

Paul Groves was a heroic, dynamic Admète, in keeping with the optimal recording of the work, where he costars with Anne Sofie von Otter under the baton of John Eliot Gardiner. In addition to his strong, even singing, Groves even joined in with the dancers in Act II and was pinned to the wall by them in Act III. Among the supporting cast, apprentice singer Matthew Morris distinguished himself with a resonant baritone as Apollo, but bass Tom Corbeil stood out head and shoulders above the others, singing well in the roles of the Oracle and the Infernal God: until he sang, however, one easily mistook him for one of the dancers, so convincingly did he move like them, after some intense study with the choreographer. The French version eliminates the roles of Alceste's children (they became mute parts in Santa Fe) but adds parts for the high priest (a stately Nicholas Pallesen) and Hercules (a particularly strong Wayne Tigges).

Other Articles: George Loomis, Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico (Financial Times, August 10) Sarah Bryan Miller, Singer Christine Brewer is back from injury — and "rollin' " (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera's 'Alceste' makes a simple story tiresome (Dallas Morning News, August 8) Photo Journal: Christine Brewer is Alceste in Santa Fe (Playbill Arts, August 7) Allan Kozinn, Heroines Sing Amid a Landscape of Boxes and an Egg of a Temple (New York Times, August 6) John Stege, It's the Music (Santa Fe Reporter, August 5) Lawrence A. Johnson, Fine cast, glitzy production provide mixed rewards in Santa Fe’s “Alceste” (Chicago Classical Review, August 3) Craig Smith, Lustrous music saves 'Alceste' (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 2)

Romain Rolland noted in his essay on Gluck's Alceste that, after the failure of the Paris production, Gluck spoke with his friend, the printer Corancez, about his disappointment. Alceste, he said, is a work "stamped with the truth of nature," not the kind of work "to give momentary pleasure or to please because it is new. Time does not exist for it, [and it] has nothing whatever to do with fashion." Rolland also took note of the weakness of the third act (it repeats some of the earlier material and has a weak resolution), which was also borne out by the Santa Fe production. It is essential with Gluck's operas to keep the ballet music, and this staging found an ideal solution to that problem, if perhaps making the dancers too important. The orchestra played beautifully, although the slightly mushy beat of conductor Kenneth Montgomery, stronger in Mozart last year, made the coordination between pit and stage tricky. The musicians played on modern rather than historical instruments, although sounds of harpsichord and (was it?) transverse flute were heard. One could imagine stronger renditions of the work, but for me this was one of the highlights of the Santa Fe Opera season.

Santa Fe Opera's production of Alceste will be repeated only three more times, on August 10, 14, and 19.

Opera on DVD: Orphée et Eurydice

Gluck, Orphée et Eurydice, M. Kožená, M. Bender, P. Petibon, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, J. E. Gardiner (re-released on February 10, 2009) EMI Classics DVD 50999 2 16577 9 5

If you already know that you do not like Robert Wilson's highly idiosyncratic style of opera production, then you know that this DVD is not for you. The American-born director's stagings, like the infamous Châtelet Ring cycle in 2005, are mostly cut from the same cloth: a nearly empty stage with perhaps a drop cloth and a small outcropping of rock, a careful control of color and light, and mask-like facial expressions and stylized movement and gestures for the singers, derived from his interest in Japanese Kabuki theater. Wilson directed this production of Gluck's masterpiece Orphée et Eurydice at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, back in 1999, where it was double-billed with the same composer's Alceste to celebrate the completion of renovations to that theater. The DVD recording, now difficult to locate, will be re-released by EMI next month, and for the adventurous opera-lover it is well worth acquiring if you missed it the first time around.

Gardiner uses the Berlioz revision of the score (perhaps with a few changes -- the multiple editions of this opera are a nightmare), that is, sung in French but using many adaptations of parts of the Italian and Vienna versions (the trombones are back in the underworld). He has a mezzo-soprano Orphée, the lovely Magdalena Kožená, costumed in a shapeless midnight blue robe and made to look somewhat more masculine with short hair and diagonal swaths of blue eyeshadow. The Amour of wacky French soprano Patricia Petibon is fantastically outré, wide-eyed and goofy in a short silken slip of light blue. Soprano Madeline Bender is the least pleasing of the three as Eurydice, but the occasional stridency is balanced by the strength and edge of her voice. Overall, the sure-handed John Eliot Gardiner leads the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and members of his Monteverdi Choir in a luscious performance, captured in warm sound.

The production is classic Wilson, lots of various tints of blue, in the costumes and in glowing light behind the singers, with an overall darkness to the way it looks on DVD. Very little about the staging is literal, like a Dance of the Furies without furies, only Kožená passing through rock-shaped holes in hanging scrims. Only at the very end are there some unexpected gestures, as Amour rights the tragic ending and brings Eurydice back to life. The arches of an 18th-century proscenium stage descend into the blank space, framing the moment of the deus ex machina in a self-consciously theatrical pose. A slowly twirling cube, a Wilsonian symbol of fate, hovers in the background. The literalist will find himself befuddled, but Wilson's approach makes a connection to the mythological in opera, making a statement that is more profound than its simplicity might lead one to expect.

104'


Gluck, Orphée et Eurydice, M. Kožená, P. Petibon, Orchestre Révolutionnaire
et Romantique, J. E. Gardiner, Théâtre du Châtelet, 1999
(other YouTube videos)

Opera Lafayette Takes on Don Juan

Ryan Brown, director of Opera Lafayette

For interesting and beautifully performed programs of rare Baroque music, Washington listeners have Opera Lafayette. The historically informed performance (HIP) ensemble brought its season to a close on Sunday afternoon, with a survey of operas on the Don Juan legend at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. It was a fascinating conclusion to a season that opened with the first modern revival of a total obscurity, François Rebel and François Francoeur's Zélindor, roi des Sylphes, which they also performed in New York (see Anne Midgette's review for the New York Times). Naxos will release Opera Lafayette's recording of the work in 2009.

The legendary seducer of women is likely a folk myth in origin, but we generally trace him first in literature to a play by Tirso de Molina (né Gabriel Téllez) called El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest), from 1630. As described by Charles C. Russell in his book The Don Juan Legend before Mozart (University of Michigan Press, 1993), the story was a popular source for opera libretti before Mozart and Da Ponte got to it. What this selection of excerpts from Don Juan operas before Don Giovanni showed was what we have known for some time: while Mozart and Da Ponte's work relied on its predecessors, some more heavily than others, it far exceeded them in terms of dramatic ingenuity and musical brilliance.

Gluck, Don Juan, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner Gazzaniga, Don Giovanni, RCA Italiana, Herbert Handt Mozart, Don Giovanni, Freiburger Barockorchester, René Jacobs

Mozart certainly knew the music of Gluck's Don Juan (Vienna, 1761), a pantomime ballet created with Gasparo Angiolini, which opened this concert. Guided by the full-body, choreographic conducting of Opera Lafayette's artistic director, Ryan Brown, the orchestra of HIP instruments gave a suave reading of excerpts from this pleasing score. The serenade of Don Juan was a pastoral 6/8 Andante, with the solo oboe (struggling with tuning issues at the opening of the concert) accompanied by pizzicato strings. Other selections that are reminiscent of Mozart's opera are the accented strokes for the knock of the Stone Guest and some of the minor-mode angst of the damnation scene. The Dance of the Furies from that concluding scene (they issue forth in flames from Hell, to drag Don Juan away in chains) is the most famous music from the ballet (used again for the Furies in Orphée et Eurydice), but it is the Fandango, played here with charming castanets, that Mozart quoted in Le Nozze di Figaro.

The earliest opera selected here was Alessandro Melani's L'Empio Punito (1669, Rome). It featured two talented singers from the University of Maryland and a chamber assortment of instruments, including Ryan Brown on first violin. Adria McCulloch (the best part of a recent performance of Gluck's Armide) brought her powerful, dark soprano to the role of Atamira (who corresponds to Mozart's Donna Elvira), and Meghan McCall (reviewed last spring in Conrad Susa's Transformations) as Acrimante, the first Don Juan of the evening, a clear, silvery treble. The two gave a lovely performance in one of the opera's simple but effective duets (Assistimi Amore / Resisti mio core), while effervescent tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt camped it up in an aria for Delfa, an old woman who has also fallen for Acrimante. The most beautiful piece from this opera was Acrimante's slow minor-key aria Se d'Amor la cruda sfinge, sung with clarity by McCall and a heart-rending manipulation of the clashing dissonances between the two violin parts.

The major discovery of the concert was a new transcription of a section of Gioacchino Albertini's Il Don Giovanni (Warsaw, 1780), based on a manuscript given to Ryan Brown by Charles C. Russell (whose book was cited above -- hooray, musicology!). Far beyond the musicological interest (which made the scholarly side of my heart sing), the buffo escapades of bass-baritone François Loup as Ercolino (Leporello) made this modern premiere such a lark. With the imprecision of his now-tired high baritone range aside, Loup's rabid patter and falsetto imitation of a castrato (part of an extended monologue to entertain baritone William Sharp's Don Giovanni) were hysterical.

Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, tenor

The libretto of Gazzaniga's Il Don Giovanni, which premiered only six months before Mozart's opera, was the direct model referenced extensively by Da Ponte. The selections here (Act I, scenes 1 and 2) was copied rather closely by Da Ponte, with William Sharp as Pasquariello (Leporello) waiting outside while Don Giovanni (now the tenor Fouchécourt) seduced Meghan McCall's Donna Anna, followed by the murder of the Commendatore (Loup).

Finally, the Mozart selection took up exactly where the Gazzaniga left off, with Don Ottavio consoling Donna Anna and swearing to avenge her father's murderer. Surely, somewhere in the background of this performance was the groundbreaking recording of Don Giovanni released last fall by René Jacobs and the Freiburger Barockorchester. Once you have heard the more transparent orchestral texture of the score when played by original instruments, it is hard to go back to modern ones, although Brown happily eschewed the ultra-fast tempi for many numbers that Jacobs chose.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, A Long Line of 'Don Giovannis' (Washington Post, March 11)

The lighter instrumental background made possible the angelic rendition of Dalla sua pace by Fouchécourt's Don Ottavio, in which he could truly sigh without fear of being covered. The ethereal flutes provided a striking contrast to the thick, reedy sound of Millicent Scarlett's Donna Anna, although they did have one early entrance in the same scene (Act I, scene 3). The oboes and brass had more than their accustomed number of splats, and a general instability of ensemble (most noticeable in discombobulation in fast numbers like the Dance of the Furies) may be credited to the unusual arrangement of the players in the church's limited altar space.

Opera Lafayette's 2008-2009 season has not been fully announced yet, but it will feature the modern American premiere of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's Le Déserteur (1769), to be presented both here and in New York. The group will also make its Kennedy Center debut.

Gluck's Iphigenia in Abu Ghraib

Other Reviews: Stage Blood Flows in Berlin Production of "Iphigenia" (Deutsche Welle, April 23) Richard Jinman, Shock and awe and buckets of blood - it must be Kosky (Sydney Morning Herald, May 1)

I was just lamenting the absence of Gluck's operas from the stage. This sounds like a dark production of his Iphigénie en Tauride at the Komische Oper in Berlin. Shirley Apthorp reviewed it (The ruthless realities of myth, May 9) for the Financial Times:

Iphigenie has the worst job in the world, but she does it well. She grasps the half-naked prisoner around the shoulders and slashes his throat with her knife, holding him to drain the blood into her sacrificial tray. That done, she tumbles the corpse into an incinerator, following it with a squirt of disinfectant. But now Thaos’s soldiers march in with a dozen more victims, plastic bags on their heads, and she has to work faster. Barrie Kosky’s new production of Gluck’s darkly dramatic Iphigenie auf Tauris is nothing if not graphic. The prisoners are bruised and battered, the soldiers crazed and dishevelled, blood spurts in dirty gouts. In the pit, Paul Goodwin drives the score’s terrified heartbeat and bleak drama with equal clarity. In their hands, this 18th-century French tale of Greek antiquity becomes uncomfortably contemporary, a tale of military prisons where bad things happen and humans are driven to dreadful extremes.

You can watch a short and disturbing video excerpt of the production here. Five performances remain, through June 30.

Gluck's Armide, Maryland Opera Studio

Adria McCulloch and Eric Sampson as Armide and Renaud, Gluck's Armide, Maryland Opera Studio, photo © Cory Weaver 2007

What was I just saying about good collegiate opera companies? After mounting a fine, if slightly over-the-top production of Conrad Susa's modern opera Transformations last weekend, the University of Maryland Opera Studio has done another good thing. Why stage yet another chestnut like everyone else when you can showcase your young singers in something of much greater interest that major companies are too craven to try? Showing an awareness of a major trend among European opera houses, if not yet really catching on in the United States, Maryland has now partnered with a historically informed performance ensemble, the orchestra of Opera Lafayette and conductor Ryan Brown. This production of Gluck's Armide (1777) is the follow-up to the Armide Project, which began with Brown's concert performance of Lully's Armide (1686) in February. The Maryland program was richly rewarded, as even the last of four performances, a Sunday matinee, was well attended.

Tara McCredie (La Haine), Adria McCulloch (Armide), and Eric Sampson (Renaud) in Gluck's Armide, Maryland Opera Studio, photo © Cory Weaver 2007

Gluck adapted the libretto of the Lully opera, by Philippe Quinault, in response to a challenge during one of the opera controversies in Paris. In the pamphlet war between the gluckistes and the piccinistes, Gluck was heralded by his supporters, who included Queen Marie-Antoinette, as the champion of French opera. Partisans of Italian composers Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini in turn criticized Gluck's operas in favor of Italian ones. As part of the battle for heirship to the French grand siècle, composers on both sides created operas derived from the same sources that Lully had used and even created operas using the same libretti as Lully. In a book called Le due Armide (Florence, 1991), Italian scholar Mario Armellini showed that Gluck had actually been planning to make a new opera on the libretto of Lully's Roland (1685). When he learned that Piccinni and Marmontel were already planning their own version of Roland, eventually premiered in 1778, he turned instead to Armide. Sacchini later piled on with a sequel to Lully's Armide (one of three) called Renaud (1783).

For more information, if you are a masochist, see my doctoral dissertation on operas and other musical theater derived from the epics of Ariosto and Tasso. While I was writing my dissertation, I would have appreciated the opportunities I later had, of hearing Gluck's Armide in a concert performance in Paris and especially owning the superb recording of this opera made by Marc Minkowski and his Musiciens du Louvre. This is the first time I have seen the opera staged. There are many similarities between the Lully and Gluck versions, musically, that is, beyond the fact that they use the same libretto. (Gluck chose not to set the sycophantic prelude that Lully's opera addressed quite specifically to Louis XIV.)

Other Reviews: Ronni Reich, This 'Armide' Proves to Be a Choice Blend (Washington Post, April 22) Karren L. Alenier, The Cruelty of Armide's Beauty (The Dresser, April 21)

Available at Amazon: Gluck, Armide, M. Delunsch, L. Naouri, E. Podleś, M. Kožená, Les Musiciens du Louvre, M. Minkowski (1999)

A comparison of the two scores, especially when performed live, reveals that neither opera is entirely superior to the other. Lully's dramatic setting of Act II, scene 5 ("Enfin il est en ma puissance") is more electrifying than Gluck's. On the other hand, Gluck's setting of Act III, scenes 3 to 5, when Armide calls on La Haine to give her the strength to overcome her love for Renaud and kill him, is much stronger than Lully's, not least because La Haine is recast from a male role to a mezzo-soprano. One of the most charming scenes in Lully's opera, the sommeil, in which Renaud is charmed into a magical sleep by Armide's demons, is if not prettier in Gluck's version then just as lovely. It is a testament to Armide's powers (and Gluck's) that my concert companion for this afternoon performance, Master Ionarts, was sound asleep after just a few measures and slept soundly until intermission.

Ryan Brown led his orchestra through an energetic performance, perhaps a little too strong for some of the smaller voices. Soprano Adria McCulloch was vocally potent and ravishing to behold in the revealing costumes by Martha Mann. She had her best scenes with Tara McCredie's venemous La Haine, as Armide's spiteful alter-ego, and the robust Darren Perry as Hidraot but seemed mismatched with Eric Sampson's Renaud. The singers in minor roles pleased less, and the pathetic attempt to stage the dance music bordered on ridiculous. The production directed by Leon Major, although elegantly minimalistic, may have exaggerated the sense of unevenness between Armide and Renaud, represented by two opposing visual worlds. Armide seems to have been the leader of a cult for leather and bondage freaks -- the natural prop for this Armide to carry would have been a riding crop -- and Renaud was an apparently curious member of a beret-wearing para-militia. Except for the well-acted intensity of McCulloch's Armide, the staging was quickly forgotten. Still, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this production, because it provided the chance to see an operatic rarity live on the stage and in a compelling performance.

The Maryland Opera Studio will conclude its successful season with a revue of opera scenes (April 26 and 27) at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Bringing Philémon Back to Life

Available at Amazon: Gluck, Le Feste d'Apollo (Aristeo / Bauci e Filemone), Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset (released on October 31, 2006)

The first act of the incredible story behind this recording is the most horrible tragedy a parent can imagine, the sudden death of a young child from a mysterious disease. Having lost their baby son Philémon, Vincent and Caroline Guiot made the brave decision to honor their child and the tireless doctors and researchers who had labored to try to save him by producing performances and ultimately this recording of a lesser-known Gluck opera. By this point last year, their association (Les sept vies de Philémon) had already raised more than 40,000 € for the Genetic Center at the Hôpital Necker for Sick Children and the Association to Fight Mitochondrial Diseases. If I had gone through what these parents have, I would not be able to do much more than curl up in a corner and hope to die myself. If you love good music or even if you don't, buying this CD can help these parents make some good come out of what happened to their son.

Also on Ionarts: Summer Opera: J. C. Bach's Temistocle [conducted by Christophe Rousset] (July 13, 2005) Summer Opera: Rameau's Zoroastre in Drottningholm [conducted by Christophe Rousset] (August 17, 2005) Harpsichord Like Rarely Ever [Christophe Rousset recording] (November 2, 2005) Tamerlano-Alcina Double Bill in Paris [conducted by Christophe Rousset] (November 11, 2005) Handel Arias, Sandrine Piau [conducted by Christophe Rousset] (January 26, 2006) Vicente Martín y Soler, La Capricciosa Corretta [conducted by Christophe Rousset] (September 28, 2006)

As for the good music part, Christophe Rousset is also to be commended for bringing his excellent historically informed performance (HIP) ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, into this project. The Guiots were drawn, because of their son's name, to the recovery of the two operas that Gluck was commissioned to create for the marriage of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma (grandson of the King of France, Louis XV), and Maria Amalia, Archduchess of Austria (sister of Marie-Antoinette) in 1769. When the wedding festivities finally took place (delayed by the death of the pope) in August, the court celebrated with an elaborate fête in the style of those at Versailles since the time of Louis XIV. Among many lavish entertainments was a theatrical performance called Le Feste d'Apollo, with two operatic acts by Gluck. Each act sets a modified version of a minor myth, Aristeus in the first act and Baucis and Philemon (whence the connection to the Guiots' child) in the second.

Aristaeus was a minor agricultural deity, who mastered the arts of beekeeping and cheesemaking. Virgil added Aristaeus to the version of the Orpheus-Eurydice legend in his Georgics, saying that Aristaeus tried to rape Eurydice and caused her to be bitten fatally by a snake, which she did not see as she ran away from Aristaeus. (In Orphée aux enfers, Offenbach has Eurydice willingly take Aristée as her lover.) In the libretto by Giuseppe Pezzana, Aristeo suffers from his involvement in Eurydice's death and seeks to regain his bees, which were all killed by Eurydice's nymphs. (In the bronze sculpture by François Rude, shown here, Aristaeus stands mournfully by his empty beehive.) By faithfully listening to the counsel of his mother, Cyrene, he is able to bring his bees back to life and is ultimately wedded to his new love, Cidippe.

Ovid told the story of Baucis and Philemon in Metamorphoses (English translation: Book VIII), the contented, poor, and old husband and wife (in English, a Darby and Joan) who are the only ones in Phrygia to offer hospitality to the traveling gods Zeus and Hermes. When the outraged gods wipe out Phrygia in a flood, Baucis and Philemon are spared. The gods transform their house into a temple and the couple live there as priests and guardians. The couple get their wish to die at the same time and are transformed into two trees that stand next to each other in the sanctuary for all time. The librettist of Gluck's opera, the monk Giuseppe Maria Pagnini, altered the story so that Bauci and Filemone are a young shepherd and shepherdess (to reflect the youth of the noble bride and groom whose marriage was being celebrated) and their reward is to live together as guardians of Jupiter's temple.

Neither of these one-act operas is an unjustifiably lost masterwork, but there is plenty of good music to be heard, some of it borrowed by Gluck from his own operas or recycled into later operas. (As a self-borrower, he was no worse really than Handel or Vivaldi or Bach: this kind of plagiarism was perfectly acceptable in the 18th century.) The singing on this recording ultimately makes it worthwhile, beginning with the fine soprano of Ditte H. Andersen. As Cirene in Aristeo, she gives an excellent reading of the challenging aria Nocchier che in mezzo all'onde, in which she counsels her son, Aristeo, to remain steadfast in the face of trouble, like a confident mariner during a storm. In the most stunning performance on this recording, Bauci's coloratura aria in Bauci e Filemone (Il mio pastor tu sei), the Danish soprano ably negotiates the ultra-high notes that Gluck often has pop out of nowhere.

The soprano who created the role, Lucrezia Agujari (her illegitimate birth gave her the nickname La Bastardella), was something of a vocal freak, with a range of over three octaves, strong in both high and low registers. This recording's helpful liner notes, by Emmanuelle and Jérôme Pesqué, even quotes Leopold Mozart, who heard her sing while in Italy with his son in 1770, on both her voice and unusual manner of performing. Andersen is a strong and graceful singer, with admirable agility, but it is the high notes that are so stunning, soaring up to F#, with purity only occasionally perturbed by a slightly nervous vibrato. There is likely a Queen of the Night in Andersen's future.

French soprano Marie Lenormand has some lovely turns as Filemone, especially in several duets with Andersen (including the excruciatingly beautiful Se tuo dono, o fausto Nume), and as Cidippe in the first opera. Lenormand sang in Washington last March, with Steven Blier hosted by Vocal Arts Society, a concert I missed (review by Stephen Brookes). She now lives in New York. Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg is excellent as Aristeo in the first opera, especially on the brief cavatina Numi offesi, ombre sdegnate and her main aria, Cessate, fuggite. In the second opera, she sings the solo part of Una Pastorella with the chorus in Di due bell'anime, an utterly charming dance-like number accompanied by pizzicato strings.

Norwegian tenor Magnus Staveland is an excellent young voice. He is studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Opera but has already worked with Fabio Biondi and sang the role of Enea in Cavalli's La Didone at La Fenice in Venice this season. Conductor Christophe Rousset may have been put in contact with all these Scandinavian singers on his summer trips to conduct at Drottningholm. Rousset elicits a fine performance from his ensemble, in keeping with the high standard of sound they have set. The Chœur de Chambre de Namur, at a lean 18 voices, give a precise and subtly shaped rendition of the choral numbers.

Naïve/Ambroisie AMB9995