“Ariodante” by Marc Minkowski

Handel’s opera, “Ariodante” is emotionally dramatic love story with Shakespearean scale.

It is about Ariodante and beautiful princess, Genevra.

They are in love with each other and happily engaged to be married with the blessing of the king, Genevera’s father. But the tragedy turns their happiness into tears when jealous Polinesso who is like the character of Iago in “Othello” set the trap on them.

Polinesso wants Genevra so he uses Genevra’s lady-in-waiting, Dalinda’s affection for him, by having her dressed up as Genevra. And he makes sure Ariodante sees him being let in by the disguised Dalinda as Genevra from the inside of Genevra’s quarter through the secret garden door at night.

On witnessing this, Ariodante was devastated and tried to kill himself by throw himself onto his own sword. He was rescued by his brother, Lurcanio who also witnessed what happened. Lurcanio tells him to live, but Ariodante cries out in despair and afterwards throw himself into sea from cliff. The news of his death breaks the hearts of King and Genevra. Further more, Lurcanio tells the king that his brother died because of his daughter’s infidelity and asks for justice.

This story is set in Scotland where infidelity was automatic death penalty. So Genevra did not get only the news of her beloved fiancé’s death but also the death sentence of herself. Thereafter, she just goes through series of emotional utter hells. And after the long painful torments, she tells her father she’ll die willingly but she cannot bear the thought of her father thinking of her as guilty. She tells him she still loves him even though the hand she’s giving her final kiss is also the hand that signs her death warrant.

Polinesso unleashes hit men to kill the only witness, Dalinda in woods. She was rescued by Ariodante who was moaning his fate after his second failed suicide attempt. Dalinda explains the whole scheme of Polinesso to Ariodante.

Polinesso takes up the challenge of duel by Lurcanio as the defender of Genevra’s honor hoping to get marry her but instead, he gets mortally wounded. When angry Lurcanio asks for more challengers, Ariodante steps up and declares the Genevra’s innocence at everyone’s surprise. Dying Polinesso confesses his crime.

Genevra was in painful torment waiting for her death in her confinement when Ariodante rushed in. She initially thought she’s delirious but finally embraces him with joy.

I wanted to listen to this opera because it contains my favorite aria “Scherza, infida” sang so deeply by Philippe Jaroussky. I also heard that Anne Sofie Von Otter who sang the title role including this aria in this production is very good.

She was superb. Her voice in this recording is much richer than when she sang in DVD, “L’incoronazione di Poppea”. Her “Scherza, infida” is as the deepest as the Jaroussky’s rendition. They each take different takes for this aria but have the same depth of the man who is in ultimate pain.  Her “Dopo Notte, Atra E Funesta” is absolutely delight to listen to.

She has such elegant, sophisticated and emotionally rich expressive beautiful voice. Her singing is technically outstanding and very exciting to listen to. Her voice goes                                                                                 so well with the elegant beauty of Handel’s music and they also share the same psychological depth, the musical sophistication and full of the passionate emotions. After I listen to her, it’s hard to imagine someone else singing this role.

The rest of the singers also sang at the highest quality you can ever hope for.

Initially I thought the jewel-like rich soprano voice of Lynne Dawson who sang Genevra was little dark. But the more I listened, I realized that her voice actually fits into the character so well because this role sings lots of slow painful arias which requires such emotional depth and weight.  Her and Anne’s last duet, “Bramo Aver Mille Vite” was absolutely gorgeous. Like Monteverdi, Handel also writes the most beautiful soprano-mezzo soprano duets.

Soprano, Veronica Cangemi sang naïve Dalinda. This production is about 10 years older than Vivaldi’s “Orlando Furioso”. It might be because of this, her voice sounds younger and much girlish in this opera. Even back then, she sang so beautifully and skillfully with her emotional delicacy.

Richard Croft as Lurcanio also sung so wonderfully. He has the modern tenor voice. His voice has the similar beautiful and romantic texture in popular love songs you might hear on TVs and movies.

When I first heard the voice of Polinesso in this recording, I thought it is sung by a countertenor because it sounded masculine, dramatically dark and evil. So I was surprised to see the woman’s name on the casting credit. Her name is Ewa Podles, mezzo-soprano. She sounds so wonderfully devilish in this production.

I also loved the beautiful and rich orchestration conducted by Marc Minkowski. His orchestration is amazingly sophisticated and his sounds are so elegant. I would definitely follow his other works.

This opera became one of my favorite operas by Handel. Musically, he completes me.

Scherza Infida (Anne Sophie Von Otter)

Dopo Notte, Atra E Funesta (Anne Sofie Von Otter)

Bramo Aver Mille Vite (Lynne Dawson & Anne Sofie Von Otter)

Vezzi, Lusinghe, E Brio (Lynne Dawson)

Dover, Giustizia, Amor (Ewa Podles)

Il Mio Crudel Martoro (Lynne Dawson)

Del Mio Sol Vezzosi Rai (Richard Croft)

Apri Le Luci (Veronica Cangemi)

Con L'Ali Di Constanza (Anne Sofie Von Otter)

Invida Sorte Avara (Denis Sedov)

“Griselda” by Vivaldi

I listened to Vivaldi’s opera “Griselda” conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi.

Though Spinosi’s orchestration is always very crispy, this production is the crispiest opera by him I know so far. And not only his orchestration, all the six singers in this opera have also clean crispy voices, so the whole album have the feel of drinking sparkling Champaign.

Contralto, Marie-Nichole Lemieux sang the title role. In “Orlando Furioso”, she was Hulk while her role in this opera is a tragic queen so she showcased the feminine suave beauty of her voice at full extent. While I’ve listened to this opera, I reaffirmed how truly gorgeous the texture of her voice is.  There are always moments when she’s singing, I have to stop what I’m doing and just listen. Her voice has such power to grasp listener’s full attention.

This opera as the whole does not have the lavishness of “Orlando Furioso” or “Ercole Sul Termondonte“ and its arias are not as memorable as the arias in these two operas. But it is filled with the arias which are highly demanding, vocally difficult and amazingly coloratura. According to the production notes, they were so difficult for some of the original singers so Vivaldi had to adjust his original scores.

Especially Vivaldi wrote the highly demanding arias for the roles of Ottone sang by Simone Kermes and Costanza sang by Veronica Cangemi.

The role of Ottone is semi-bad guy.  Simone Kermes has beautiful and very flexible soprano voice with porcelain serine quality (she looks like a wild red haired punk rocker on some of the videos and if you just turn off the sound, she really looks like singing punk rock instead of opera arias, with amazing voice).  I thought her voice is almost too femininely beautiful to sing a bad guy. But somehow Vivaldi wrote the most difficult and most coloratura arias in this opera for this role.

Soprano, Veronica Cangemi also has the most difficult arias such as “Agitata Da Due Venti” which is more like mezzo-soprano piece. But she sang it perfectly and almost effortlessly. I also listened to this aria sang by Vivica Genaux and Cecilia Bartoli. Though they both are impressive technical singers and much more famous, I love Veronica’s rendition better because she sounded more unforced, natural and feminine.

I was very impressed by her singing in “Orlando Furioso”. And the more I’ve listened to her, the more I’ve become to love her voice and her singing techniques. How she interprets and develops her arias have similar naturalness and dramatic skills as Jaroussky’s. They bring moments of psychological realisms and sensitive nuances of emotional layers to their arias.

The rest of the singers, Philippe Jaroussky (countertenor), Stefano Ferrari (tenor) and Lestyn Davies (countertenor, also sung Otto in “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” by Emanuel Haim very well) sung wonderfully.

On the surface, Vivaldi’s music might sound cheesy, hyper and lacking musical depth, but I would say that his music is more like rough gemstones. For instance, the quality of Handel’s music is refined and steadfast so no matter who performs them, it does not affect the quality of the music itself. But Vivaldi’s music is very depending upon performers’ – not only singers but also instrumentalists – abilities to express, in order to extract its rich and true beautiful colors. When in the hands of wonderful musicians, his music shins its true exuberance.

Vede Orgoglisio L'Onda  (Simone Kermes)

Agitata Da Due Venti (Veronica Cangemi)

Dal Tribunal D'Amore (Philippe Jaroussky)

Ho Il Cor Gia Lacero (Marie-Nichole Lemieux)

Tu Vorresti Col Tuo Pianto (Stefano Ferrari)

Sonno, Se Pur Sei Sonno (Marie-Nichole Lemieux)

Estinguere Verrei La Fiamma (Philippe Jaroussky)

Scocca Dardi L'Altero Tuo Ciglio (Simone Kermes)

Ritorno A Lusingarmi (Veronica Cangemi)

La Rondinella Amante (Lestyn Davies)

Ombre Vane, Ingiusti Orrori (Veronica Cangemi)

“L’Incoronazione di Poppea” by Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Initially I avoided this DVD “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” counducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt because I’m not big fan of the 70’s fashion even though musically, it had the best Poppea video clips on YouTube.

But after the previous two disappointing productions, I watched it and I’m much happier that I did. Once you overcame huge blue eye shadows and Technicolor pink nightgown (which was not so hard), revealed the most excellent production. This DVD might be the closest to the best among the currently available “Poppea” DVDs (I still cannot find the perfect production for this opera).

The orchestration was carefully detailed and very authentic to Monteverdian sounds. Musically, it was impressively sophisticated version of Monteverdi.

All the singers are superb. Rachel Yakar’s voice is the one of the best voice for Poppea. Especially in the garden scene, her voice was so breathtaking and out of worldly beautiful. Alexander Oliver as Arnalta also sang the most beautiful "Oblivion Soave". I also loved Paul Esswood’s voice as Otto. The boy soprano as Love (Cupid) was very good. The rest of the singers were also the very top class including tenor, Eric Tappy as Nero.

His voice was beautiful and sounded so good enough to make you think that his role was written for tenor but not for soprano if you watch this opera at the first time. His voice and Rachel Yakar’s voice also harmonized so well. And yet, I still prefer soprano voice for this role simply because Monteverdi wrote the most beautiful soprano duets for this role.

I also enjoyed the stage direction. It was well done in the Hollywood style and the spirits of this opera was well expressed throughout the production. It was nice that the boy soprano sang as Love/Cupid instead of female soprano as in the previous productions which diluted the difference between three (Love, Fortune and Virtue) being all sopranos.

Love is the above of all in this opera. You really don’t see so many arts that emphasize sexual love in the degree as in this opera. So it was not only musically but also visually important to see the symbolization of Love as sublime and pure.

I liked how they positioned these three Gods of the values (Love, Fortune and Virtue) at every decision-making scene by all of the characters. They all had both good and wicked sides which made them somehow so human.

If there is one withdraw in this production, it is the fact that not only this production but also other productions have caricatured the characters especially Nero because of the historical prejudice. The real Nero was neither angel nor evil not as much as the other historical emperors. Like the movie ‘the social network”, this opera also overly dramatizes the actual events which are not historically accurate. When Monteverdi and Giovanni Francesco Busenello wrote these beautiful music and lyrics, they were certainly not caricaturizing these characters. More than that, I think the actual events inspired them deeply.

Usually lyrics in operas are very simple, straightforward and you don’t expect much poetry out of them. But in this opera, literary, the lyrics are realistic, deep and so beautifully written (the below is the lyrics from one of Otto’s laments). This opera is the perfect marriage between beautiful music and lyrics.

“How could my sudden fury
and political calculations
ever lead me to think
of killing Poppea?
O, accursed mind,
why are you immortal, that I cannot
slaughter you, punish you?
I thought, I spoke of killing you, my love?
My demented spirit
repudiated the affection
that for a while you gave me,
gave way, fell, broke down
in a thought so loathsome and so vile?
Change this monstruous soul,
give me another less impure spirit,
in your great mercy, O gods!

Despise me as much as you wish,
hate me as much as you can,
I wish to be eclipsed by the sun of your eyes.

I shall love without hope,
in spite of fate,
my pleasure being to love you in despair.

I shall cherish my torments,
born of your lovely face,
I shall be damned, yes, but in paradise.”