Salieri slips the shadow of Amadeus

SALIERI: TARARE

Les Talens Lyriques Aparte Music

Poor old Antonio Salieri may be finding it difficult to live down the unjustifiably malign portrait of him in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, but at least it means curiosity has been stimulated and his music is getting more of a hearing than it was a generation ago. It turns out Salieri was much more talented than Shaffer suggests.

He wrote about 40 operas in the course of a long career that spanned the French Revolution, and the changes of taste it provoked. Recently I enjoyed Bampton Classical Opera’s revival of his early comedy La Grotta di Trofonio – an obvious precursor to Così fan tutte. And now comes this excellent recording (drawing on concert performances staged in 2018) of Tarare, a more dramatic and ambitious work that seems to emanate from a radically different sensibility.

First performed in Paris, where Salieri was held in high repute, it dates from 1787 and has a French libretto by Beaumarchais, author of the play on which Le Nozze di Figaro is based. It is, however, very different from that masterpiece. A semi-satirical fantasy set in the Turkish empire, it shows the tyrannical King Atar seizing Astasie, wife of the heroic warrior Tarare and putting her in his harem. When he is defeated, Tarare is crowned in his place.

There are five acts framed by an allegorical prologue and epilogue, with dances, marches and a large role allotted to the chorus. Rather than full-scale Italian arias, much of the opera is in a sort of heightened recitative, closer to Rameau and Gluck than to Mozart, but the use of the orchestra has a robust swagger that pre-echoes Beethoven.

Christophe Rousset conducts Les Talens Lyriques with all the stylishness for which he is noted. The choral singing invigorates, and there are vividly characterised solo contributions from Karine Deshayes (Astasie), Cyrille Dubois (Tarare) and JeanSebastien Bou (Atar).

Over more than three hours of music there are inevitably some stiff passages, but there is enough energy and invention here to make Tarare something more significant than a historical curio for opera buffs.