Athletic performances set this Argippo firmly apart
Christopher Cook Pasticcio or not, Vivaldi’s touch is clear to hear in this delightful theatrical display, says
Pizzolato gives a fine performance as the guilty seducer
Vivaldi
Argippo Em ke Baráth, Marie Lys, Delphine Galou, Marianna Pizzolato, Luigi De Donato; Europa Galante/fabio Biondi Naïve OP 7079 112:10 mins (2 discs) Here’s more recorded music from that remarkable collection of Vivaldi manuscripts acquired by the Italian National Library in Turin. Scholars may ask whether Argippo, first performed in Vienna and Prague in 1730, is an ‘authored’ Vivaldi opera as we understand the word, or a pasticcio knitted together from his own music and that of his most successful contemporaries? But scholarship aside, what counts is whether Fabio Biondi directing Europa Galante finds satisfying music theatre in this collage. And so he does.
Sebastiano Biancardi’s libretto skewers the early 18th-century fascination with the Orient as Europe’s trading powers scrambled to extend their trade routes to India and beyond. So the Mogul Emperor Tisifaro has a daughter Zanaida who has been married and ravished by Silvero, the man she loves, who has been pretending to be Argippo, the ruler of Chittagong, who really loves Osira.
Vivaldi’s musical fingerprints are everywhere on the score – those driving violins with their urgent rhythms, careful word painting and at best characters revealed through their music. You can hear Silvero’s remorse for what he has done in ‘Del fallire il rimorso è la pena’ in Act I, and the contralto Marianna Pizzolato gives a fine performance as the guilty seducer. The bass Luigi De Donato is a youthful Emperor and Em ke Baráth‘s Argippa sounds more satisfying as the plot curdles, with thrilling top notes, callisthenic coloratura and deep dives into the chest register. Of the women characters Delphine Galou’s Zanaida gets the pick of the arias in a recording that is bright and lets the singers lead, which is as it should be.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Hear extracts from this recording and the rest of this month’s choices on the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
Kleopatra
Lars Møller, Magnus Vigilius, Jens Bové, Ruslana Koval, Elsebeth Dreisig, Kirsten Grønfeldt; Danish National Opera Chorus; Odense Symphony/joachim Gustafsson Dacapo 8.226708-09
111:20 mins (2 discs)
Once Denmark’s most famous operatic composer,
August Enna (1859-1939) is now far from a household name, but this impressive new recording of his 1893 opera Kleopatra makes a firm case for a fresh revival of his music. Enna’s lush and ‘hyperromantic’ style (as the disc’s helpful sleeve notes aptly put it) meant his Wagnerian works were soon to fall out of fashion after the composer’s death, and his scores have largely gathered dust ever since. Sparked by the enthusiasm of their German artistic director, Philipp Kochheim, the Danish National Opera have however breathed new life into Enna’s Kleopatra some 122 years since it was last performed, bringing us this excellent new rendition of what turns out to be a very fine opera indeed.
With a libretto by the Danish playwright Einar Christiansen, the opera tells of a conspiracy hatched by Prince Harmaki to murder Queen Kleopatra and overthrow her rule. Harmaki is however overwhelmed by Kleopatra’s beauty and a knotty love triangle (which includes Kleopatra’s maid, Charmion) thus ensues. Enna’s score is gloriously rich, with echoes of Strauss’s tone poems and Wagner’s Tannhäuser particularly.
The Odense Symphony Orchestra is on excellent form and conductor Joachim Gustafsson allows Enna’s complex score to breathe but never sag. The cast is excellent, with standout performances from Danish soprano Elsebeth Dreisig as the eponymous queen and Ukrainian soprano Ruslana Koval, who brings diamond-like clarity of tone to the role of Charmion.
Beautifully recorded and presented, this is an altogether commendable new release.
Kate Wakeling
RECORDING ★★★★
PERFORMANCE ★★★★