Patricia Petibon / Philippe Jaroussky / Freiburger Barockorchester / Andrea Marcon HANDEL Alcina (Video)

ALCINA

 

Formato: mp4

Subtítulos: Italiano, Inglés, Francés, Alemán

Philippe Jaroussky / Artaserse LA VANITÀ DEL MONDO

 

LA VANITÀ DEL MONDO

 

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar HIMMELMUSIK

Himmelsmusik (‘heavenly music’), a programme of sacred songs and cantatas by German composers of the 17th century, presents a striking contrast with the previous Erato album from Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata: Händel Goes Wild. 

Himmelsmusik sees Pluhar taking a more sober and traditionally scholarly approach. She and L’Arpeggiata are joined by star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the distinguished Belgian soprano Céline Scheen in a programme that includes the celebrated lamento ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ by Johann Christoph Bach (born over 40 years before his relative Johann Sebastian), Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Erbarm Dich mein, o Herre Gott’ and prompts discovery of works by such lesser-known figures as Johann Theile, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Christian Ritter and Franz Tunder. An instrumental piece by the Verona-born Antonio Bertali highlights the influence of Italian music on German composers of the time.

In an interview with the Bremen-based newspaper Weser-Kurier, Christina Pluhar provided some insights into the balance she strikes in her music-making with L’Arpeggiata. 

“A way of escaping any categorisation as a specialist in improvisation is to undertake projects in which I play pure Baroque music. I always try to reinvent myself, to create something from my innermost being … I can be quite satisfied with music as it was originally written, and we will play this music without making excursions into other fields … But it is also always exciting to look at this music through the eyes of musicians who come from a different musical genre, since it opens up new perspectives and gives rise to a kind of new music. That can only work when you are well acquainted with the original music and its style, and have great respect for it … There are pieces that lend themselves to being developed into something new, and there are others that must simply be presented in all their purity and beauty – works which must be left as they are. Sensitivity is everything.”

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar LUIGI ROSSI La Lyra d’Orfeo - Arpa Davidica

The latest album from Christina Pluhar and her instrumental ensemble L’Arpeggiata sheds new light on the chamber cantatas of 17th century Italian composer, Luigi Rossi. He wrote more than 300 of these works and Christina Pluhar’s new double album includes an impressive number of 21 world premiere recordings, which are the fruit of Christina Pluhar’s research among music manuscripts held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Vatican Library.

“These cantatas are works of rare beauty,” says Pluhar, who describes Luigi Rossi as “one of the shining lights of 17th-century Italian vocal music. Supremely inventive and extremely versatile, he juxtaposed styles within a single work, often shifting from intense recitative to mellifluous song, while also venturing into daring harmonic regions.”

She has assembled a dazzling line-up of singers to perform the cantatas: sopranos Véronique Gens and Céline Scheen, mezzo-soprano Giuseppina Bridelli, and countertenors Philippe Jaroussky, Jakub Józef Orliński and Valer Sabadus.

Luigi Rossi, born in Puglia in 1597, was highly successful in his time, serving three of the most illustrious Italian dynasties – the Borghese and Barberini families in Rome and the Medici in Florence – and subsequently France’s King Louis XIV. His L'Orfeo, which received its premiere in Paris in 1647, was among the first operas to be staged in France. Rossi is also associated with the first Parisian appearances by castrato singers – their voice-type was not integral to France’s musical traditions.

Rossi had gone to Paris in 1646, where he joined the Barberinis, exiled from Rome the previous year following controversy over their handling of Papal funds. Some of their other musicians, including several castratos, also went to France with them. In Rome they had been noted for marking important occasions with commissions for masses, oratorios and operas, among them Rossi’s Palazzo incantato (Enchanted Palace), inspired by Orlando Furioso, which enjoyed a great success in 1642.

At the time, the man who wielded the most power in France was not the King – just four years old when he came to the throne in 1643 – but his godfather and Chief Minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin, an Italian by birth, enjoyed close links with the Barberini family, which had played an important role in furthering his diplomatic career in the 1630s. He was also a great advocate of Italian style in the arts and it was thanks to him that L’Orfeo, a sumptuously scored work, was lavishly staged at the Palais-Royal before Louis XIV and his mother, Queen Anne of Austria. Rossi returned to Italy in 1650 and in due course another Italian-born composer of opera, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-87), became the musical supremo at the court of the Sun King.

Philippe Jaroussky OMBRA MAI FU

“Beyond the great musical interest that Cavalli offers, his operas are notable for their richness and modernity, and for the diversity and complexity of their characters,” says countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. “Stage directors and opera houses are increasingly keen to stage his works. His operas are full of fantasy, craziness, humour and emotion. They offer a variety we don’t find in the opera seria of the 18th century.”

Francesco Cavalli (1602–76) is an important figure in the history of opera and his works, which first experienced a revival in the 1960s, have been growing in currency in recent years. The most prominent successor to Monteverdi, Cavalli was active in Venice at a time when opera was moving out of aristocratic palaces and into public theatres. Musically, his operas are notable for the fluid expression of their recitar cantando (“acting in song”), and dramatically for their variety of tone, combining noble, mythical or tragic drama with teasing or bawdy comedy.

As Philippe Jaroussky explains: “Cavalli played a major role in establishing opera – the new genre created by Monteverdi and others – as popular entertainment. He composed many operas for the Teatro San Cassiano, which was the first theatre in Venice to stage opera.” 

Cavalli was also active in the field of religious music. As a boy, he had sung under Monteverdi’s direction in the choir of St Mark’s Basilica. He went on to become the cathedral’s organist and eventually, in 1668, to follow in Monteverdi’s footsteps and become its maestro di cappella, the equivalent of a modern-day music director.

When preparing this album, Ombra mai fù, Jaroussky was able to study the manuscripts of most of Cavalli’s 37 surviving operas. “I really wanted to use the album’s playing time to show all the variety and all the qualities of Cavalli’s music. It can sometimes appear disarmingly simple, but it has a very special and distinctive melodic and harmonic flavour. The album is designed to illustrate the contrasts in his operas as they move from one scene to the next, where a lamento might be directly followed by something very humorous.”

Jaroussky has included vocal and instrumental numbers from more than a dozen of Cavalli’s operas, ranging from comparatively well-known works such as Calisto, Ercole amante, Ormindo and Giasone through Eliogabalo, which was recently staged in both Paris and Amsterdam, to such rarities as Statira, principessa di Persia and La virtù dei strali d'Amore. He is joined for the love duets by soprano Emőke Baráth (whose recent Erato recital, Voglio cantar, highlighted the music of Barbara Strozzi, a student of Cavalli) and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who spars with him in the comical duet ‘Ninfa bella’ from Calisto. 

The title track is taken from the opera Xerse, which dates from 1654 and is set to the same libretto that Handel used for his Serse more than 80 years later. Outside the world of opera, Handel’s version of Emperor Xerxes’ ode to a plane tree is known simply as ‘Handel’s Largo’. Cavalli’s version, while less famous and less dignified, is more graceful and lilting. 

“Curiously there are similarities between Cavalli’s and Handel’s settings of Ombra mai fù,” explains Philippe Jaroussky. "Both are quite short and in triple time. Did Handel knew Cavalli’s Xerse? It’s a possibility. An interesting difference between the two arias is that in Handel’s version the first violin plays along with the voice. In Cavalli’s version the violin parts are higher and fill in the harmonies, changing constantly and creating a very beautiful effect of iridescence and colour.” On this recording those violins belong to Ensemble Artaserse, which Jaroussky launched in 2002 in collaboration with other leading musicians in the field of Baroque music.

L’Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar HIMMELSMUSIK

Himmelsmusik (‘heavenly music’), a programme of sacred songs and cantatas by German composers of the 17th century, presents a striking contrast with the previous Erato album from Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata: Händel Goes Wild. 

Himmelsmusik sees Pluhar taking a more sober and traditionally scholarly approach. She and L’Arpeggiata are joined by star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the distinguished Belgian soprano Céline Scheen in a programme that includes the celebrated lamento ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ by Johann Christoph Bach (born over 40 years before his relative Johann Sebastian), Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Erbarm Dich mein, o Herre Gott’ and prompts discovery of works by such lesser-known figures as Johann Theile, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Christian Ritter and Franz Tunder. An instrumental piece by the Verona-born Antonio Bertali highlights the influence of Italian music on German composers of the time.

In an interview with the Bremen-based newspaper Weser-Kurier, Christina Pluhar provided some insights into the balance she strikes in her music-making with L’Arpeggiata. 

“A way of escaping any categorisation as a specialist in improvisation is to undertake projects in which I play pure Baroque music. I always try to reinvent myself, to create something from my innermost being … I can be quite satisfied with music as it was originally written, and we will play this music without making excursions into other fields … But it is also always exciting to look at this music through the eyes of musicians who come from a different musical genre, since it opens up new perspectives and gives rise to a kind of new music. That can only work when you are well acquainted with the original music and its style, and have great respect for it … There are pieces that lend themselves to being developed into something new, and there are others that must simply be presented in all their purity and beauty – works which must be left as they are. Sensitivity is everything.”

I Barocchisti / Diego Fasolis GLUCK Orfeo ed Euridice

Gluck, Mozart opines in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, created characters “so lofty they sound as though they shit marble”. Shaffer’s imagined Mozart is not only potty-mouthed but also harsh on his esteemed predecessor – something the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky confirms on this new recording, singing a very human Orpheus whose story can end only in rejoicing, as Amor obligingly restores Euridice to life in the then-traditional happy ending.

Jaroussky is joined by conductor Diego Fasolis and his ensemble I Barocchisti – almost exactly the same forces as for La Storia d’Orfeo, a lovely disc released last year that spliced together bits of Orpheus operas by Monteverdi, Rossi and Sartorio. Here, again, they are doing something slightly different: this is not the familiar version of Gluck’s work heard in Vienna at the 1762 premiere, but the one performed in Naples 12 years later. For Naples, the opera was tweaked to accommodate a higher-voiced Orfeo and to appeal to a fashionable Italian audience, who expected more contrast and more in the way of florid, yet mellifluous, vocal display. 

The most noticeable changes comes in the music for Euridice. Two of her numbers are new, attributed not to Gluck, but to Egidio Lasnel (pen name of the aristocrat Diego Naselli): the duet as Orfeo leads her towards the edge of the Underworld, in which the short exchanges give the music an almost Mozartian sense of bustle, and her ensuing aria, in which her passion now sounds a bit more marmoreal, for all the expressiveness Amanda Forsythe throws at it. Forsythe, her soprano bright yet soft-grained, contrasts well with Emöke Baráth, whose crisp, knowing Amor makes the prospect of a journey through the Underworld sound almost fun. Fasolis and his players wear the music lightly. As for Jaroussky, his sound isn’t always entirely beautiful, but it’s beguiling, and every syllable means something. (Erica Jeal / The Guardian)

Le Concert d'Astrée / Emmanuelle Haïm UNE FÊTE BAROQUE!

This "fête Baroque" occurred in December 2011 at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, marking the tenth anniversary of the ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée under founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm. The concert was a benefit for a French cancer research facility, and it attracted a galaxy of guest stars. Le Concert d'Astrée is one of the very best Baroque vocal ensembles, and this release never descends to a low common denominator. Haïm's trademark expressive phrasing is everywhere in evidence, but the biggest attraction is the selection of singers, with several figures from the mainstream showing up alongside established Baroque specialists. You might not think that tenor Rolando Villazón has quite the right voice for an aria from Handel's Tamerlano, HWV 18, but he's clearly wrestling with the problem, and he gets an appreciative roar from the Parisian crowd (who are given full voice on the recording). Right after that comes a delicious duet from mainstreamer Anne Sofie von Otter and countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the Cornelia-Sesto duet from the second act of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17, a pure feast of sensuous singing. Established Baroque vocalists like Natalie Dessay and Sara Mingardo are on hand, as well as a few up-and-comers who seized the chance to put their names and voices in front of a well-heeled crowd. Rather than try to cover the entire range of Baroque opera, Haïm wisely chooses to focus on three composers: Rameau, Lully, and Handel, whose vocal riches occupy the entire second CD. The sound picks up unadulterated audience noise, but nothing interferes with the spontaneity the musicians bring to the event. (James Manheim)

Philippe Jaroussky / Emöke Baráth MONTEVERDI - SARTORIO - ROSSI La Storia di Orfeo

With Philippe Jaroussky’s new album, Storia di Orfeo, the French countertenor realises a long-held dream: to portray the mythic Orpheus – divine musician who ventures into the underworld to retrieve his beloved wife Eurydice from the clutches of death – in his many guises, an inspiration for the very first opera and beyond.

“This project, which was inspired by three key 17th-century operas, was conceived as a kind of opera in miniature or as a cantata for two solo voices and chorus, and features just two characters: Orpheus and Eurydice,” explains Jaroussky. “The three operas focus on different aspects of the story: Sartorio and Rossi depict the happiness of the young lovers and the scene in which Eurydice is bitten by the snake; Monteverdi, on the other hand, concentrates more on Orpheus’ search for Eurydice in the underworld, and the highpoint of his work is an aria that has remained without parallel in the history of opera: the magical ‘Possente spirto’, which I have the temerity to perform here as a countertenor, for the first time on record.” 

He is joined by sublime soprano Emőke Baráth and period-instrument ensemble par excellence I Barocchisti with Diego Fasolis at the helm. A journey to the beginnings of opera, to the Italian Baroque, to the underworld and back. (Warner Classics)

Orpheus, with or without his lute, is one of the most resonant figures in musical history, the inspiration for dramas from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. This cleverly assembled disc limits itself to the 17th century, and ranges from the Mantuan Orfeo of 1607 through to Antonio Sartorio’s little-known successor of 1672. The presiding genius is countertenor Philippe Jaroussky who sings gloriously (though he is arguably not best suited to Monteverdi’s high tenor hero in his lavish Possente spirto). Jaroussky is well matched by Emöke Baráth’s crystal-clear soprano. Sartorio’s post-Cavalli idiom is sweetly melodic; I was much more taken by the strong, eloquent extracts from Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo of 1647. (The Guardian)

Philippe Jaroussky / Freiburger Barockorchester BACH - TELEMANN Sacred Cantatas

For his first album devoted entirely to works sung in German, star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has chosen four religious cantatas: two by J.S. Bach (including the much-loved ‘Ich habe genug’) and two by Georg Philipp Telemann. Jaroussky is accompanied by the Freiburger Barockorchester, which also joined him for live performances at Berlin in 2015 as part of the singer’s season as artist-in-residence at the city’s historic Konzerthaus.

In late 2015 Jaroussky performed these works before a capacity audience at Berlin’s historic Konzerthaus, where he was artist-in-residence in the 2015-16 season; this concert marked the first time he had sung in German to a German audience. “The voice of an angel” were the words of the Berliner Tagesspiegel, which also made clear that Jaroussky had the vocal means to express the drama of Telemann’s ‘Mount of Olives’ cantata. The Berliner Morgenpost, meanwhile, highlighted the singer’s readiness to venture into new areas of repertoire, describing him as “perhaps the most adventurous of today’s countertenors”. The writer also praised Jaroussky’s “exquisitely fine legato” and evoked the way his “plaintive descant glowed over the inky-black accompaniment” in the Telemann. The instrumental ensemble in Berlin, as on this recording, was the Freiburger Barockorchester, which gave its first concert nearly 30 years ago and is established as one of the finest ensembles in the field of historically informed performance.

Christian-Pierre La Marca / Les Ambassadeurs / Alexis Kossenko CANTUS

If you are going to substitute the singing voice for an instrument what do you get? The warm and lyrical voice of the cello of course!

Christian-Pierre La Marca’s Cantus ticks all boxes when it comes to originality, having interpreted famous sacred pieces into a single-instruments voice - the cello. What is left is an understanding of the musical emotion displayed in these famous pieces, with his repertoire including the titles Mass, Stabat Mater and Agnus Dei.

Tackling on classics by Mozart, Bach and Pergolesi is a stupendous task, however Christian-Pierre successfully reveals the intensity of these melodies. In turn his album acts as a message, reinforcing the eighteenth century idea that music, by its power of proposition and submission, goes beyond words to express the unspeakable, often with clarity and extent.

If you admire the organ, viola and theorbo of sacred music than Cantus is for you, with Christian-Pierre’s repertoire covering the most important names in sacred music from the sixteenth to twenty-first century. Although you will not find me listening to Cantus I can still very much appreciate the depth of artistic expression and understanding that has gone into this album. (Taylor  Woodward)

Emmanuelle Haïm / Le Concert d'Astrée BACH Magnificat - HANDEL Dixit Dominus

The nuanced and lively playing Emmanuelle Haïm draws from Le Concert d'Astrée is the strongest element in this recording of Bach's Magnificat and Handel's Dixit Dominus. Its colorful, briskly articulated performance is a delight throughout, but the singing of the soloists and chorus lacks the same consistency. The chorus' sound is somewhat murky and doesn't have either the blend or the linear clarity this repertoire requires. Most, but unfortunately not all, of the solo work is beautifully executed, with several lovely individual performances marred by a jarring blooper or ill-conceived interpretive choice. Soprano Karine Deshayes handles Bach's long melismatic lines with remarkable smoothness and breath control, but drops a note, very obviously. Soprano Natalie Dessay sings with her typical purity and incisive clarity, but she lurches into the final cadence of her Bach aria with such surprising vehemence that it gives a jolt. The alto parts lie low for Philippe Jaroussky, and while he negotiates them gracefully, there are only glimpses of the brilliance and sensuousness he characteristically brings to parts that are better suited to his voice type. The gorgeous performances of the higher voices in the trio, "Suscepit Israel," from the Magnificat, and the duet for sopranos, "De torrente in via bibet," from Dixit Dominus, are highlights of the album. Tenor Toby Spence and bass Laurent Naouri sing competently, but their voices don't match the sumptuous luster of the other soloists. Virgin's sound is not up to its usual standards -- it's overly bright, and at the same time muddy and thick sounding in the tutti sections. (Stephen Eddins)

Jaroussky / Emmanuelle Haïm / Le Concert d'Astrée CARESTINI The Story of a Castrato

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky astonishes once again with a program of arias associated with castrato Giovanni Carestini. At the peak of Carestini's career, his supremacy was challenged only by that of Farinelli, the other reigning castrato of the era. Frédéric Delaméa's extremely informative booklet note relates that contemporary opinion, while it held that Farinelli had more technical facility, was that Carestini used his voice more expressively than Farinelli. Charles Burney wrote, "Carestini gratified the eye as much by the dignity, grace, and propriety of [his] action and deportment, as the ear by judicious use of a few notes within the limits of a small vocal compass."

Carestini, who was born in 1700, enjoyed a 38-year career, which is impressive even by modern standards. As a teenager, he acquired the patronage of Cardinal Agostino Cusani of Milan. From his debut in Milan, he traveled to Rome, Parma, Naples, and the other major musical cities in Italy. When he was 32, he went to London, where he spent two seasons singing roles written specifically for him by Handel, and creating a sensation. He then returned to the European mainland, and conquered new territory, including Dresden, Berlin, and, near the end of his career, St. Petersburg. Apparently, by 1758, his voice, heretofore carefully preserved, gave out, and his last appearance in Naples was a failure. "He withdrew immediately from public life," writes Delaméa, "and died two years later."

This program is in chronological order, from Porpora's Siface, in which Carestini appeared in 1725 or 1726, to Graun's Orfeo, which was premièred a quarter-century later. Most of these areas are unfamiliar, but certainly worth any listener's attention. I was particularly drawn to the two closing areas from Orfeo. For the most part, the Baroque revival has not yet caught up with Graun. We are due for major new productions of his operas, particularly the outstanding Montezuma (to which Joan Sutherland and husband Richard Bonynge briefly turned their attention in the 1960s). The first aria presented here, "Mio bel nume," is profoundly moving, and "In mirar la mia sventura" is a fiery virtuoso piece.

And Jaroussky … well, what a voice! No other countertenor at work today produces a sound of such beauty and touching clarity. It isn't a masculine sound, to be sure, but neither is it disconcertingly feminine – it's really in its own category. (His speaking voice, by the way, is clearly male.) As such, it might take some getting used to, but once you do, I expect that you'll find yourself often moved to tears by its purity, and also impressed by its range. Also moving is the effortless manner in which he deploys it, even in the most complicated music. It would be wonderful to know what Carestini sounded like, but given Burney's description, is it not possible that Jaroussky would have given Carestini a run for his money?

Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d'Astrée provide Jaroussky with stylish and scholarly support, as does the engineering team. In addition to the aforementioned booklet note, there are complete texts and English translations. In the last aria, though, surely stigi should be translated as "Stygian" not "Scythians," no? (Copyright © 2008, Raymond Tuttle)