REVIVING VIVALDI'S OPERAS
GUREWITSCH, M. ANATOLE
On Music REVIVING VIVALDI'S OPERAS BY M. ANATOLE GUREWITSCH At his death in 1741, Antonio Vivaldi left the world hundreds of compositions: concertos for violin and other solo instruments,...
...With its bracing sound and its vivid attack, the Kammerorchester Berlin is a pleasure throughout...
...Marilyn Home leads the cast as OrANTONIO VIVALDI lando, the mirror of chivalry who goes mad for unrequited love of the fair Angelica...
...In 18th-century Venice, theater patrons would conic and go during the action, conduct business, pledge trysts, snack, and debate issues of state...
...Only the young British soprano Margaret Marshall, as Lucio, a Latin knight and turncoat-for-love, lends her part a thrill of ardent immediacy...
...Vivaldi has signally failed to breathe life into these unconvincing situations...
...In all fairness, Tito Manlio does give us something to listen to...
...Carmen Gonzales sings the amazon Bradamante, and has the thankless task of competing with Home in the same heroic style...
...fall to dramatic coloratura sopranos and mezzos...
...Even in moments of supreme crisis, little more is inherent in the notes than polite interest...
...The recitatives are similarly all-purpose...
...The problem is how to present those jewels...
...in the individual excursions, the spotlit members positively gleam with proud musical authority...
...This respectful treatment, though, is a mistake-and boring...
...The tedious parade of the three-section (ABA) da capo arias is enlivened by the shifting textures and densities of their accompaniments, and especially by the colorful band of virtuosic solo instruments: the trumpet, the recorder, the oboe, the violin, and the cello...
...dying, releases the newly kennelled hounds of war...
...every self-respecting baroque performer today does...
...In the tamer passages, she comes across favorably...
...but her blow-sy florid outbursts curdle the blood...
...Bass Sesto Bruscantini, as the errant knight Ruggiero, loses out to the brilliant flautist Andras Adorjan, who plays the eloquent obbligato to his aria "Sol da te...
...Home flies through the first statement of a prestissimo A section and through the B section as though there were nothing to them...
...The cast boldly attempts to supply the missing intensity...
...This is not to say that the operas are wholly worthless...
...Victoria de los Angeles, as Angelica, who should be springlike, is autumnal: short of breath and thin of voice, yet possessed of a touching sweetness...
...The Tito Manlio crew, headed by Vittorio Negri, simply pretends that no problem exists: The recitatives have been only slightly trimmed, and the long score is given virtually complete in a performance that runs close to four hours...
...Lucia Lancetti, the Venetian powerhouse for whom the role was conceived, can hardly have been Home's equal...
...Still, from the evidence already before us, it is, I think, possible to make at least a partial judgment-and myjudgment isnegative...
...The musical expression seems now here to derive from the professed emotion...
...Over the past few decades, however, Vivaldi has been the subject of a grand recovery mission...
...One looks forward to seeing and hearing her lavish her gifts on a worthier object...
...As the wizardess Alcina, Lucia Valentini-Terrani fails to place her handsome mezzo-soprano well forward, so her sound never quite flies free...
...Nevertheless, she conveys the witch's poisoned charm, and her recitatives, shaded by the organ, have real enchantment...
...I suspect this performance, actually no more than a string of excerpts, is the best model for future editors of the Red Priest's operas...
...Then, taking off on the repeat, she finds (without sacrificing tempo or distorting her phrases) space within the densest vocal lines for ornaments of the most startling intricacy: gruppettos and ribattutas too tiny for notation delivered with flawless clarity...
...But how she embellishes...
...La-jos Kozma, as her lover Medoro, is much better, bringing to his music a musician's line, supple phrasing, and a tenor of pleasing lightness...
...every "surprise" is a cliche...
...Unfortunately, the prizeworthy patches are tiny within the vast, rotten fabric of the whole...
...Serious interest in them is hard to justify...
...Two new releases-Tito Manila (Philips 6769 004) and Orlando Fa-rioso (RCA ARL3-2869)-take opposite approaches, achieving strikingly contrasting results...
...Numerically inexhaustible, his concertos of all kinds are essentially undistinguishable-formulaic journey-work constructed on an unvarying foundation of a metronomic beat...
...Her dashing account of the role, not surprisingly, pales besides the blazing Orlando's...
...Modern scholars set the figure as "low" as 39...
...They might be momentarily distracted by spectacular scenic effects or vocal extravagances, but the stage served mostly as a backdrop for the social commotion...
...Vivaldi's audiences did not follow operas as we do...
...Besides, the enchanted setting and the cast of knights errant, lovelorn damsels, and crafty conjurers quickly induce us to suspend the disbelieving demands of reason...
...First, the work traverses a far more checkered expressive range...
...the four meatiest roles (six or seven arias each...
...Although Claudio Sci-mone-who prepared this version from the full score and also is the excellent conductor-may have failed to extract a coherent story line, confusion is intrinsic to Ariosto's epic from which the libretto derives, and it is doubtful that the complete text of the opera would be more enlightening...
...second, it has been radically abridged (and thus does not keep repeating itself...
...Yet until recently the composer's dramatic works were excluded from the wholesale revival...
...It is hard to decide where Home is most stupendous...
...J. S. Bach, his younger and incomparably greater contemporary, paid attention to him...
...the succeeding two centuries of musicians and audiences were generally content to let his music rest in peace...
...The sameness is compounded by the presence of three highly imperfect mezzos...
...For us, who concentrate on the players and the play, any Venetian opera of Vivaldi's time would be too protracted and discursive even in a fully staged production with lots to look at...
...In the 18th century, two of these parts probably would have been assigned to castrati to provide a measure of timbre diversity that is no longer possible today...
...The other members of the cast, whose assignments do not invite direct comparison with Home's, give mixed performances...
...Whatever the truth, many of them are lost, few are published, and not one has achieved what might be called a performance history...
...The plot revolves around political and amorous conflicts among the ancient Romans and their disaffected allies, the Latins...
...The Red Priest, as Vivaldi was known in his own day, claimed to have penned 94 compositions for the stage...
...As the Latin and Roman noblewomen with whose marriage vows the general peace is finally sealed, Julia Ha-mari and Birgit Finnila, sound eerily similar...
...On the Philips recording these four parts fall to women, and male voices account, unmemorably, for only nine arias in all...
...that aspect of her artistry is most prominent in the mad scenes, made vibrant and compelling by her dramatic presence and masterfully modulated moods...
...The role of young Manlio overtaxes the ambitious Rose Wagemann...
...At the end of the first act, the wrangling parties resolve to avert war by celebrating two love matches that will renew their alliance when, unforgivably, one of the prospective bridegrooms loses his temper, provokes a duel, and...
...Of course she embellishes the repeats in her arias...
...for two reasons...
...If cultural historians of the future ever wish to establish that the second half of our century was an age of compulsive and undiscriminating nostalgia, they will easily make their case by pointing to our disproportionate labors on behalf of Vivaldi...
...Vivaldi (whom I suspect was an outrageous liar) claims he set the piece in a mere five days, despite the fact that the pains he took with it suggest otherwise...
...And the constant asides are a dramatic clog...
...o verall, Orlando Furioso makes a much happier impression...
...Orlando's mad scenes are, very fittingly, set as re-citativo accompagnato with defeated lapses into recitativo secco and inspired outburst of full song, reflecting the troubled state of the hero's mind...
...His instrumental literature was taken up first...
...While Hamari's voice is prettier and her phrasing more various, like Finnila she gargles much of her music and vocalizes with noticeable strain...
...The arias come in two basic varieties -fast and slow, with the message implied in the vocal line at all times general and undifferentiated...
...On Music REVIVING VIVALDI'S OPERAS BY M. ANATOLE GUREWITSCH At his death in 1741, Antonio Vivaldi left the world hundreds of compositions: concertos for violin and other solo instruments, concerti grossi, church music, cantatas, and other vocal works...
...Since the record companies have just started taking notice of the material, it will be years before Vivaldi's contribution to the genre can be evaluated comprehensively...
...Buffeted by the stock passions and abstractions, the cast of cardboard soreheads execute the expected designs of treachery, magnanimity and change of heart...
...In consequence, the opera drags itself through two more weary acts...
...Their efforts are partly undermined by the vocal distribution...
...Nor does she neglect telling verbal nuance...
...As in his instrumental pieces, like The Four Seasons, there are jewels scattered sparsely in the slag...
...In the varied use of the orchestral forces, the score has a genuine distinction...
...Orlando's steeplechases would seem to allow nothing more than a judicious trill or an interpolated high note...
...Her fire is matched by a sharp musical intelligence and technique, and her clear, fresh voice is an instrument of ravishing transparency...
...The protagonist's arias are unparalleled vocal displays requiring the greatest precision in pitch and articulation...
...and all we do with a recording is to listen...
...In the endless top-speed melismas in unison with solo instruments, the slightest deviation from perfect accuracy would be egregious...
Vol. 62 • January 1979 • No. 3
