Critic’s Notebook: Mars – Bringer of Early Italian Baroque

Also reviewed for DiePresse: Konzerthaus: Punktgenaue Marslandung

A rocking dose of early Italian Baroque from Concerto Scirocco

“Resonanzen“, the annual early music festival of Vienna‘s Konzerthaus, circled around to Mars only to land in a heap of early Italian baroque, courtesy of the engaged and dynamic, young baroque ensemble Concerto Scirocco. The instruments signaled “authenticity” from afar. The long neck of the theorbo has become a real tell, and is well known, by now. Not so much that conical recorder that looks like a truck drove over it and bent it. It’s a zink (or cornetto; not the ice-cream). The wooden contraption, thick as a young tree and looking conspicuously like a blunderbuss, turned out to be a Dulcian, a Renaissance predecessor of the bassoon. Add to that a chest organ in combination with a harpsichord, a violin, violone, two trombones, enough actual recorders to bring back up some unwanted childhood memories, and things were ready to get under way. Composers like Biagio Marini, Marco Uccellini, Andrea Falconieri, Antonio Ferro came and went. Rarities that only specialists might know but everyone (everyone likely to go to such a concert, anyway) can readily enjoy. Especially in such spirited performances. Despite the smallish ensemble of a maximum of eight performers, the Mozart Hall was humming with energy. With a song referencing “Mars” and two with “battaglia” in the name, there was sufficient reference made to the Planet in question. And the last encore was the same as the opening piece (Marini’s Canzon VIII à 6), things thus coming – very planet-like – full circle.

Even if, by then, a sense of sameness had taken hold, there were plenty of highlights along the way that turned out very memorable, indeed. The Corale à Violino solo, for example, of William Brade’s – one of the earliest (if, apparently, apocryphal) pieces for solo violin altogether. Violinist Alfia Bakieva played, as early music parlance would have it, the heck out of that work. The trombones (Susanna Defendi and Nathaniel Wood) were terribly impressive, for their faultless agility, and the continuous continuo presence of Givanni Bellini (theorbo) and Luca Bandini (violone) gave everything a most bracing underpinning. The zink (Pietro Modesti) was formidable in substituting for a trumpet, at times, and being a sensitive chamber music partner at others. The solo passages for the dulcian of Antonio Bertoli’s, the founder of Concerto Scirocco, as called for in Antonio Bertoli’s Sonata Settima Passacaglia, had a downright jazzy, improvisatory character. A crumpled old gentlemen next to me, by whose looks you might have thought was not safe in found on public land in Portland, turned to me after the first half had been closed with Samuel Scheidt’s Canzon Bergamasca and sighed, from the bottom of his heart: “How divinely beautiful!” A sentiment that pretty much applied to the whole evening.

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Photos © Manuel Chemineau

On ClassicsToday: Under The Radar - Cavalli’s Should-I-Die-Before-I-Wake Requiem

Under The Radar: Cavalli’s Should-I-Die-Before-I-Wake Requiem

by Jens F. Laurson

Francesco Cavalli is a lesser-known composer of the Italian high baroque, known best (if that’s the word) for his opera La Calisto that René Jacobs and, back in the days, Raymond Leppard have recorded. If you ever have a chance of catching David Alden’s wild production at the Munich State Opera... Continue Reading

Cavalli: Domine Jesu Christe

Best Recordings of 2015 (#9)

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

# 9 - New Release

L.v.Beethoven, The Piano Sonatas, vol. 2 (Opp. 10/1-3, 53 “Waldstein”, 52, 57 “Appassionata”), Paavali Jumppanen (piano), Ondine

Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonatas Paavali Jumppanen (Ondine)

That Paavali Jumppanen has one of the most prodigious techniques, he’s already shown years ago in his recording of the Boulez Sonatas (Dip Your Ears No.30a), for which he was allegedly hand-picked by the composer himself. That skill shows (but is never shown-off) in the total ease and control with which dashes Beethoven’s sonatas off at any tempo. The Waldstein Sonata’s first movement would be a great place to listen to, for confirmation. That’s not to suggest he’s necessarily playing fast, even if he averages out on the quicker side: The Hammerklavier Sonata (back in volume 1 of this finished but piecemeal-released cycle), for example, is on the decidedly slow side, way south of Beethoven’s post-ex-facto metronome markings. It would be short-changing Jumppanen to make it just about tempi or chops.

He actually looks to be delivering one of the consistently most playful, subtly surprising Beethoven cycles around, and the early sonatas are doing much to that end. The F-major Presto of op.10/2 superbly embodies these impish qualities; the opening and third movements of op.10/3 sound just about perfect: youthful, impetuous, gripping, steady, quick and with perfect delineation of all lines. Occasionally – largely in the early sonatas so far – Jumppanen inserts personality and interpretation that will make the purist blanch and musicians snigger: A bit of cheek, but never outlandish. Ondine’s direct, close, but not claustrophobic sound is very gratifying—dare I say: ideal!

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

# 9 – Reissue

F.Cavalli, La Calisto, Soloists, René Jacobs, Concerto Vocale, Harmonia Mundi

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Briefly Noted: Von Otter's Baroque Dream

Sogno barocco, A. S. von Otter, S. Piau, S. Sundberg, Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, L. García Alarcón (released on August 28, 2012) Naïve V 5286 | 71'

Anne Sofie von Otter is a versatile singer. She was an asset to an otherwise mixed performance of Mahler's third symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra earlier this month. She returns to Washington this evening in an entirely different repertory, lute songs and Baroque pieces with Thomas Dunford and Jonathan Cohen, at the Library of Congress (November 17, 8 pm). This is the same selection of music she has performed earlier this week, at the Frick Collection and in Philadelphia. Apart from an ill-advised set of songs by Simon and Garfunkel, it will hopefully have an effect similar to that heard from Iestyn Davies when he partnered with Thomas Dunford last year.

By way of introduction, revisiting von Otter's rather lovely recital disc of Baroque duets and solos with Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea is a listening pleasure. Von Otter has previous credentials in Monteverdi, and here she has three exquisite duets with the equally delectable soprano Sandrine Piau, two from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea and one from Cavalli's La Calisto. The famous duet from the former, Pur ti miro, is almost certainly not originally by Monteverdi, but this is a rendition to be treasured. Von Otter is also beautifully matched with contralto Susanna Sundberg in another Monteverdi duet, "Di miseria regina" from Il ritorno d'Ulisse. Von Otter has the musicality and care with diction to hold interest in the long recitative solos by Cavalli and Luigi Rossi. On the instrumental side, Leonardo García Alarcón's forces are all in top form, with especially gorgeous work by Gustavo Gargiulo.

Briefly Noted: Cavalli's Vespers

F. Cavalli, Vespero delle domeniche, Coro C. Monteverdi di Crema, La Pifarescha, B. Gini (released on May 26, 2015) Dynamic CDS7714 | 87'04"

Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) was one of the important composers of the first wave of Venetian opera. As such we have even had the occasional chance to review his work in live performance. He was also one of the successors of Claudio Monteverdi, his one-time teacher, as director of music at San Marco in Venice. Italian conductor Bruno Gini has been undertaking a recorded survey of Cavalli's sacred music with his Coro Claudio Monteverdi di Crema. The most recent disc includes all of Cavalli's late Vespers service, including the five standard psalms of Vespers plus Magnificat, as well as a series of alternate psalms, from which one could have all possible versions of the Vespers service for Sundays throughout the year.

The connection to the ensemble is pleasing, since Cavalli was born and raised in Crema, receiving his first musical education as a boy chorister in the cathedral there, and this disc was captured in the Chiesa di San Bernardino in Crema, which has been made into an auditorium. To date, Gini and his forces have also made recordings of the composer's Requiem Mass, his five other settings of the Magnificat, and the Vespero Delli Cinque Laudate for San Marco. By comparison to the works on those recordings, which feature more operatic pieces for solo and duo voices, the rather plain double-chorus style Cavalli sticks to in these Vespers pieces is boring and homophonic, with the only variation between a small chorus of favoriti and full chorus. On one hand, Gini's singers are not all exceptional, and there are some infelicities in blend, intonation, and tone color. On the other hand, the CD is presented without "any manipulation, equalization, or dynamic alteration," which is refreshing by its bracing qualities, with generally fine instrumental playing from the ensemble La Pifarescha sometimes overpowering the voices.

Ionarts-at-Large: Sex, Drinks, and Leotards

The Bavarian State Opera’s David Alden production of La Calisto constitutes the three shortest hours I’ve enjoyed anywhere in an opera house. The wild story about Jupiter's lust for the nymph Calisto, who is eventually turned into a bear by his jealous wife, Juno (and then into the big dipper) is such a romp and such pure entertainment, it’s like going to the movies. All the signature items of an Alden production are there: loud colors, creative costumes, polished floors, zebra-striped walls and curved laminated wood paneling—courtesy Paul Steinberg’s set and Buki Shiff's wildly diverse costumes, which range from a Tin Woodman-business suit for Mercury to a beautifully realistic Chameleon-butler to a salaciously detailed faun costume for Satirino, a creature half goat, half counter tenor Domique Visse (who has played the part in every of the now four runs of La Calisto).

Only the plastic machine gun of Giove’s was new to this revival, and pathetic, as every

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David Alden's La Calisto at the Bavarian State Opera: A Dreamboat Production

Picture courtesy Bavarian State opera, © Wilfried Hösl

See also my 2007 review of this production.

The Bavarian State Opera’s David Alden production of La Calisto are the three shortest hours I’ve enjoyed anywhere in an opera house. The wild story about Jupiter's lust for the nymph Calisto, who is eventually turned into a bear by his jealous wife, Juno (and then into the big dipper) is such a romp and such pure entertainment, it’s like going to the movies. All the signature items of an Alden production are there: loud colors, creative costumes, polished floors, zebra-striped walls and curved laminated wood paneling—courtesy Paul Steinberg’s set and Buki Shiff's wildly diverse costumes, which range from a Tin Woodman-business suit for Mercury to a beautifully realistic Chameleon-butler to a salaciously detailed faun costume for Satirino, a creature half goat, half countertenor Dominique Visse (who has played the part in every of the now four runs of La Calisto).

Francesco Cavalli, La Calisto PERFORMERS LABEL

Only the plastic machine gun of Giove’s was new to this revival and pathetic as every fake machine gun on stage must invariably be. That prop has never worked and won’t likely ever will. That’s annoying, as are the fake smoking of fake cigarettes and drinking from empty plastic glasses. I might expect such cheap cardinal sins of staging from more provincial houses, but not the Bavarian State Opera. Pet peeves of mine though those are, what can they matter when compared to the saucy joviality of the work, and the beguiling music of Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni (1602-1676), better known as Francesco Cavalli.

The best of Alden’s productions are acts of light genius, ever straddling the fence between high camp and cleverness, and always coming down on the right side. That’s certainly true for this one, and his deft touches show everywhere. One example: When Giove (Luca Tittoto, dashing between bravado, bluster, and meekness) impersonates Diana (to get Calisto, the chaste follower of Diana into the sack) Anna Bonitatibus’s sings from the darkened pit in front of the stage while Tittoto acts and lip-syncs with aplomb on stage, flimsily disguised as Diana. There is one exception: Giove sings his part in falsetto when conversing with Karina Gauvin’s Giunone when he clings to his disguise even though his act is obviously up.

Nikolay Borchev’s Mercurio—Giove’s Leporello of sorts—started a little congested but came through in stalwart manner. Anna Bonitatibus, as Diana (on and off stage) championed a fruity mezzo with vibrato and volume to fit a performance that played everything up. For comedic effect, she would channel an Erika-Köth-memorial-vibrato that challenged the goat bleating of Dominique Visse, but as Diana she went back to a plainer gorgeousness. In the love-quest sideshow, maybe-not-so-chaste-Diana-after-all falls hard for her tall dark stranger Endimione who convinced vocally and visually with rare boyish-yet-manly countertenor charm and sonority.

Sally Matthew created the role of Calisto for Alden and so threw herself into her part, that it seemed impossible to repeat the success with subsequent casts. I was proven wrong by a fine second cast some years ago, and again on January 15^th, when Danielle de Niese and her colleagues on stage showed that this production will make any good singing actor shine. De Niese is a brilliant young operatic plaything who wiggles and struggles like Penelope (Pepe le Pew’s love interest in the Warner Brothers cartoons) while making big innocent eyes that would put Bugs Bunny to shame. It’s a different kind of act than Matthew’s: more visceral, with a warm, pretty, and slightly forgettable voice, but she certainly filled Calisto’s leotard with aplomb.

Ivor Bolton, the linchpin of Munich's Baroque revivals, uses a specially created edition of the score by Álvaro Torrente which applies much appreciated and very prudent cuts. The band, which performed entirely on period instruments for the first time when this La Calisto was first shown in 2005, was in fine fettle and just a little kick and jolt shy of a perfect night. Let’s hope the set gets a good shine and another few revivals.

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January 2014

Cast list:

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Opera Lafayette

Charles T. Downey, At Kennedy Center, duo adds to Opera Lafayette’s cachet
Washington Post, October 26, 2011

Lambert (et al.), Airs de cour, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt [MP3]

One can count on Opera Lafayette to choose lesser-known but worthwhile music and to perform it beautifully. This was true Monday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, when it performed an assortment of French and Italian music for solos and duets, featuring two of the ensemble’s favorite guest singers.

Soprano Gaële Le Roi and tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt were sympathetically matched in the duets, such as the lovely “Qu’il sait peu son malheur” from Lully’s “Atys,” two never-overbearing voices that blended with and supported each other.

Fouchécourt was at his best in the comic solos, camping it up in the cross-dressed role of the old nurse Berenice, in excerpts from Cavalli’s “Ipermestra,” an opera rediscovered at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2006. Le Roi, who is a formidable singing actress, excelled in the dramatic recitatives for Galatea, bewailing the death of Acis in “La Galatea” by Loreto Vittori. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Cavalli, Ipermestra (performed at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2006) [Part 1 | Part 2]

Ionarts-at-Large: La Calisto in Munich

See also my 2014 review of this production.

Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni (1602-1676), better known as Francesco Cavalli, has long been ignored in the revival that baroque works have seen in opera houses around the world. That is surprising, given how many of his 40-plus operas survive and how they serve very naturally as a bridge between the three extant and popular Monteverdi’s and the sheer infinite number of equally popular Handel operas.

Of course, not all Cavalli operas are of equal merit. The North American premiere of La Didone, for example, showed that to thoroughly enjoy some four hours of secco recitativo you really need to love early baroque – a touch of masochism being a bonus. Ignoti Dei Opera’s shoe-string production was a musicologist and early-music geek’s delight, but it was (though shortened already) interminable and – in all truth – boring.

La Calisto, Cavalli’s 13th (?) opera from 1652 is, to these ears, a vast improvement over the eleven years younger Didone… and not only because the Munich Staatsoper – who introduced Calisto into its repertoire two seasons ago – can luxuriate such a performance with a staging and singers like few other opera houses in the world.

The story in a nutshell is that Giove (Jupiter/Zeus) falls in love with the chaste nymph Calisto (Callisto = “the most beautiful”) who is a follower of the cult of goddess of hunting and the moon Diana (Artemis/Selene). Since she resists Giove’s advancements, he assumes the form of Diana (his daughter) and seduces her thus. Diana herself is desperately in love with Endimione (Endymion, arguably a son of Zeus/Jupiter, too). But since Diana is supposed to be chaste (a staunch trait of Artemis – but her Roman version Diana seems to have taken a slightly more liberal approach), that leads to some complications. Giunone (Juno/Hera) discovers the illicit cause for Calisto’s pregnancy and, vengeful and hurt, turns her into a bear – thus avoiding any further amorous advances on the part of Giove. Pitying beautiful Calisto’s beastly state, Giove promises her eternal life as one of the stars. (In the common telling of the story he saves the bear-shaped Calisto from death at the hand of her hunter-son Arcas (whom Zeus also turns into a bear) by throwing them into the firmament – thus creating the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.)

The 20-head strong original instrument orchestra – a novelty for the Staatsoper when it was introduced for this opera in 2005 – is led by Ivor Bolton and plays (at Venice baroque pitch of A=465hz) from a score that the musicologist Álvarro Torrente has edited specifically for these performances. As there can be no “Urtext” in baroque music (the idea of the composer’s ‘will on paper’ being sacrosanct is a fairly modern one – and back then composers required impromptu improvisation and guesstimating their way through the score as regards dynamics, tempos, harmony, or embellishments), continuo player Chris Moulds added little parts to suit dramatic needs of the staging. (Not that you’d ever notice – without, or even with, score in hand.)

And what a staging it is: One of the last new productions under the auspices of the former General Manager Sir Peter Jonas, it brings together Munich’s “Dream Team” of baroque opera, director David Alden and said Ivor Bolton. The entire team, including the principal singers, have continuously worked on, and fine tuned this Calisto . And the continuous work shows. La Calisto is a unity of music, singing, and staging that the composer and librettist (Giovanni Faustini) could never have imagined. It is a proto-Gesamtkunstwerk and the performance on Wednesday, November 7th, was a wonder to behold, even with some minor imperfections that would have been noticeable to few – if any – viewers, but were bemoaned by the cast afterwards.

The set (Paul Steinberg) and the costumes (Buki Shiff) are a colorful and quirky romp that seduce on the account of their visual appeal and they remove the story from any particular time or period (as should be, in a story about Gods, Demigods, and Nymphs) by means of abstraction. Words won’t quite do justice to the amorphous walls with patterns of bright swirls, or the long bar where the subsidiary characters (Pane, Silvano, Satirino et al.) get together for a drink, accompanied by assorted non-speaking creatures chosen from the signs of the zodiac and a most amusingly realistic, dramatically oversized drink-serving chameleon.


The figure of Linfea, a desperately horny nymph who wants a man (and badly so! - w“D’haver un consorte / io son risoluta / voglio esser goduta.” – “I’m absolutely resolved to have a partner; I wish to be enjoyed now”), is transposed for tenor which leaves Guy de Mey to sing the part in drag. Making Linfea a manly and ungainly transvestite-like character is apt, logical, and hilarious since the desperate thing can’t find a willing suitor except a young, equally horny Satyr. The Satyr – a mythical figure half countertenor, half singing goat – is embodied by Dominique Visse who visibly relishes every part of it, including the costume that is realistic down to the not-so-tiniest anatomical detail.

To leave a slightly disguised Umberto Chiummo on stage during the scenes where his Giove assumes the form of Diana (see picture above), too, was a fine inspiration, too. Chiummo acts and lip-syncs with aplomb while Monica Bacelli (Diana) sings from the darkened pit in front of the stage. (The one exception is Giove singing his own part in falsetto in conversation with Geraldine McGreevy’s Giunone, clinging to his disguise even though his act is obviously up.)

There are many more similar (if less obvious) touches in the direction – and as a result the rather cockamamie story is told in a way to make it riveting, plausible, and highly entertaining theater. The acting of the singers is fearsomely good – Sally Matthews’ clear, strong voiced Calisto, Umberto Chiummo’s strapping Giove, Monica Bacelli’s lyrical and charming Diana, Guy de Mey’s uproarious Linfea, and Dominique Visse’s inspired Satirino foremost.

This is a well honed ensemble and there is always that hint of self-deprecating irony in the scenes that are most over-the-top, saving the adventure from being pathetically hammed up in the sense of that most awful of haw-haw knee-slapping humor all too often found in opera. To mention all the delicious details of this production would make for a tediously long review; to mention just a few would not get the cohesion of it all across. Suffice it to say that with vocal contributions that were excellent throughout (countertenor Lawrence Zazzo’s Endimione, Vito Priante’s Silvano, and Markus Werba’s Mercurio need to be mentioned, also), the Calisto from Munich makes for the shortest three hours of baroque opera you will ever have experienced. For me it was one of the operatic highlights of this year and well beyond.

During the run of La Calisto I spoke to Monica Bacelli. Click here for the interview.


All pictures © Wilfried Hösl, published with kind permission of the Staatsoper München.

Long in the Waiting, Longer Still in the Hearing: Cavalli's Didone Hits Washington

Pier Francesco Cavalli’s La Didone got its North American premiere in Washington over the last three days, nestled away in American University’s pretty and functional Greenberg Theatre. Ionarts promised a little star for your book if you attended; we should offer another one for everyone who sat through the entire opera. If you did, you will have gotten your secco recitativo fill for the year, La Didone’s three-plus hours (after Ignoti Dei Opera’s artistic director Timothy Nelson had mercifully cut some 45 additional minutes) consisting of three-quarters recitative as it does. Baroque audiences were more different than alike us; and they would doubtlessly have experienced and enjoyed the entertainment and novelty that La Didone provides to its patient listeners in a different, perhaps more intense way. Baroque fanatics and musicologists alike must have been spellbound at the production, though: how long has it been since we saw and heard a little orchestra replete with cornettos, lirone, two (!) theorbos, viola da gamba, and the like?

The story is the popular myth of Aeneas (Enea), son of Venus and Anchises, the fall of Troy, his flight, the consequent stopover in Carthage, and the eventual founding of Rome. (Berlioz treats the exact same story in Les Troyens, which, at 5½ hours, feels nearly as long as La Didone.) Aeneas’s story is littered with various women, including Dido (the Didone of the opera’s title), Queen of Carthage, who falls in love (Amor’s intervention helps) with him after he left most of his female family members dead and/or raped in the rubble of Troy. Add insane African kings, assorted gods, children, and old fathers to taste and you are good to go. Librettist Giovan Francesco Busenello does the inevitable (even 300 years before Hollywood), he gives the story a happy end in that Dido does not (successfully) commit suicide.

Other Reviews: Joe Banno, 'La Didone': A Long, Slow Night at the Opera (Washington Post, June 19) Charles T. Downey, Going for Baroque in Washington (DCist, June 19) Tim Smith, U.S. premieres uncover roots of opera's past (Baltimore Sun, June 20)

Stage, costume, and set direction were all in the hands of Ignoti Dei Opera’s founder, Mr. Nelson – who also shared the music direction with harpsichordist Adam Pearl (whom I last heard during the Paris-on-the-Potomac celebrations, and Charles at La Maison Française). For a small company with the consequent financial limitations it is important that good ideas make up for the necessary lack of splendor. With evocative lighting (Kel Millionie) and pointed use of colors (crimson red and white, mostly), the spare sets with screens and backdrops were very effective, often beautifully setting the action. Costumes were simple, modern day dress and worked well enough for this production, too, even if they were devoid of new ideas. Unused to seeing Baroque opera in the U.S. as we are, much less in a modern staging, it didn’t bother that the blatantly symbolic garb (the male, the warrior, in camouflage with boots, the frail father – Anchise – in the latest nursing-home bespoke) smacked of 1980s theater direction.

The orchestra performed beautifully throughout, although one felt for Anna Marsh, the Tambourine-Lady, who got to clap her instrument six, seven times every half-hour, and could have knitted a sweater or two in the time between. On harpsichord and organ, Mr. Pearl led the troupe with seasoned skill that belies his relative youth. The singing, meanwhile, was a different story. To make mention of the proverbial “mixed bag” would be an understatement. There were basically three groups into which they fell: the admirably courageous, the admirably performing, and Rosa Lamoreaux.

F.Cavalli, La Didone, T.Hengelbrock et al. DHM

As Venus, the latter was simply a cut above the rest of the cast. Scott Elliot, in various roles, provided a nice bass and even better, well-judged and appropriately over-the-top acting. Emily Noel, as Creusa (Enea’s wife) and Anna (Didone’s sister), was very fine and arguably the best of the non-Lamoreaux singers. Aaron Sheehan’s tenor for Enea was variable but compared nicely to the other male voices, always good for a pleasant surprise here or there and admirable for his stamina, never mind learning all that text for a role that he won’t revive very often over the course of his future career. Rebecca Duren as Ascanio, Amore, and one of Didone’s girlfriends was the most versatile singer on stage. Her portrayal of Ascanio, the son of Enea, was so eerily on target (including the voice, which she was able to make sound like a treble’s), that I had to check the cast list to makes sure she was not in fact a little boy. Her training in dance and the ability to squeeze a casual cartwheel into her performance only enhanced matters. Bonnie McNaughton, the soprano who was Cassandra and Didone, too, was in the category of those that pleased – and not just for her ravishing appearance. Little wonder that countertenor Brian Cummings went – literally – nuts for her. His performance, sadly, was not his best on Friday; at times he did not even seem to be at home in the role of countertenor. That vocal region, usually the prerogative of frustrated or failed baritones, didn’t suit him as much as when he broke into full voice in the upper tenor regions. One good recitative (on ‘women and lies being but twins’) showed that he can do better. Kristen Dubenion-Smith had fine moments – as Hecuba, Queen of Troy, more so than “Dama,” one of Didone’s playmates. Tenor Jeffrey Rich (Anchise, Cacciatoro, Sicheo) did not have much to do but did that well. Elizabeth Baber (Fortuna, Juno, “Dama”) hid a good voice under the hazy veil of an insufficiently trained instrument.

With a more even cast and an opera that is more interesting to the music lover’s ear than to the scholar’s research (how I would love to hear a Lully work or Vivaldi’s La verità in cimento) Ignoti Dei Opera might even better fill that gaping Baroque opera void in Washington, and one wishes them all the experience, luck, and donations they need to continue to grow into their ambitious plans.

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Dido, Queen of Carthage

I raved about one of those neglected 17th-century opera composers, Antonio Caldara, when Cecilia Bartoli brought her Opera Proibita recital to Washington. Another prolific composer whose operas are now mostly forgotten is Francesco Cavalli (né Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni; he took the name of the noble patron who brought him to Venice as a teenage singer). We owe most of the authoritative information we know about him to three musicologists, Lorenzo Bianconi, Jane Glover, and Ellen Rosand.

This weekend, Washingtonians will have the rare opportunity not only to hear a live performance of one of this great composer's complete operas, La Didone (Teatro S. Cassiano, 1641) but also to see it in a full staging with Baroque orchestra. Any fan of opera or early music is hereby charged, in the name of the Ionarts honor code, to make it to one of the three performances this weekend (June 16 and 17, 8 pm; June 18, 2:30 pm), at American University's Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre. The production will feature members of the pride of Baltimore, Ignoti Dei Opera Company, with a cast of fine singers, including D.C. favorite Rosa Lamoreaux in the role of Venus.

Poor Dido's story comes from the first four books of The Aeneid (see also John Dryden's classic English translation). Her tragedy, as with all things in ancient Greece and Rome, was the fault of the gods. Venus sent Cupid to make Dido love Aeneas, who was washed up on the shores of Carthage. As Virgil recounts in The Aeneid, Aeneas leaves Dido once he is well again, and the queen, distraught, kills herself (Book IV). That was the crucial part of Dido's story, told also by Ovid in his perplexing work Epistulae Heroidum, known in English as the Heroides, letters from mythological heroines to their unfaithful lovers. The seventh letter is Dido Aeneae (see also James M. Hunter's English translation). Cavalli's La Didone, set to a libretto by Giovan Francesco Busenello, is the first of many operatic adaptations -- Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689), Metastasio's Didone abbandonata (set to music by Porpora, Handel, Jommelli, Piccinni), Berlioz's Les Troyens (1858) -- not to mention Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage (1594).

Available at Amazon: Francesco Cavalli, La Didone, Yvonne Kenny, Judith Howarth, Thomas Hengelbrock, Balthasar Neumann Ensemble (released on September 10, 1998)

I confess that the only music I have heard before, I think, are the excerpts played by some of the musicians at a press roundtable introducing the production on Monday, at the Istituto Italiana di Cultura. The opera has been performed in a few places since the 1950s but is hardly common. What I heard was the best of what early 17th-century Italy had to offer in the lament of Cassandra (Act I) and the first lament of Dido (Act III), sung by a beautiful Bonnie McNaughton with an affecting, rose-hued soprano voice. The tall and dulcet-voiced tenor Aaron Sheehan gave an equally fine impression of his role, Aeneas, with the lullaby he sings to try to make Dido go to sleep before he slips out the door. Finally, countertenor Brian Cummings sang part of Iarbo's duet with McNaughton, from the end of the opera, when he prevents Dido from committing suicide. This opera, thanks to the unavoidable convention of the lieto fine, rewrites Virgil so that Venus cleans up the mess she created (highly unlikely) and Didone and Iarbo are united in joyous marriage. The orchestra will include strings, cornetti, and in the continuo group, viola da gamba, lirone, harpsichord, organ, theorbo, and guitar, presumably in various combinations.

There is, to my surprise, a complete recording, made from a live performance based on a significantly altered version of the libretto. Given the fact that the title role in this recording is none other than Yvonne Kenny, we could expect blogger Sarah Noble to have a post about it, comparing La Didone and Dido and Aeneas, at Prima La Musica, Poi Le Parole (March 15, 2006). Depending on how much I like the opera this weekend, I may be writing a review about the recording myself in the near future. Please, dear readers, go and hear La Didone so I have someone to argue with.

Cavalli Comes Back in Munich

I have suggested before that it is time for Washington National Opera to produce a Baroque opera. The latest proof that Baroque is hot comes from an article by George Loomis (Opera: A lusty production of 'Calisto', May 19) for the International Herald Tribune:

With six Handel and two Monteverdi operas included in its repertoire next season, the Bavarian State Opera sets the pace of major opera houses for Baroque opera. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, it had never performed an opera by the 17th-century composer Francesco Cavalli until last week. Among Baroque opera composers, Cavalli attracted attention early on as a candidate for modern revivals. Seminal productions of his operas appeared at Glyndebourne in the late 1960s, and later in Santa Fe; these companies offered Cavalli even before turning to Handel. [...]

But Cavalli operas can be immensely enjoyable, as Munich's lively new production of "La Calisto" makes clear. The producer, David Alden, has no trouble bringing out the humor of this story about Jupiter's lust for the nymph Calisto, who is eventually turned into a bear by his jealous wife, Juno. Paul Steinberg's sets have Cavalli's woodland setting looking like some kind of whimsical hotel lobby, with garish zebra-striped walls and curved laminated wood paneling. A neon sign reading "L'Empireo" suggests that we are in the domain where Jupiter rules. It is hard to generalize about Buki Shiff's wildly diverse costumes, which range from a metallic business suit for Mercury to bloated, furry attire for the god Pan. [...]

The excellent conductor Ivor Bolton, the linchpin of Munich's Baroque revivals, followed a new edition of the score by Álvaro Torrente. As with Bolton's Monteverdi performances, the edition favors a leaner, more literal approach to the sketchy source material than does that of the Baroque specialist René Jacobs, who is freer in spinning out instrumental textures. But the playing sounded excellent, and counts as something of a milestone, since it marks the first time the Bavarian State Opera's orchestra plays entirely on period instruments. It is a demonstration of versatility that other orchestras would do well to emulate.

Note the reviewer's comments about the importance of the edition used in Munich, by Álvaro Torrente, as opposed to that prepared by René Jacobs. For more information on La Calisto, you can download the .PDF version of the issue of TAKT dedicated to the production, all in German, including an interview with Sally Matthews (who "sings Calisto enchantingly and looks ravishing in a leopard-print swimsuit," according to Loomis). I take one look at the photographs of this crazy production (by David Alden) and wish again that American opera audiences (Washington's, in particular) were not so damned conservative.

The Bayerische Staatsoper will soon be going through some big changes, as Intendant Sir Peter Jonas and Music Director Zubin Mehta will both retire in August 2006. It was announced that Klaus Bachler, currently Director of the Vienna Burgtheater, will become Intendant in September 2008. Between Mehta's departure and the appointment of a permanent music director, Kent Nagano will be acting Director.