“La verità in cimento” (Truth in chaos) by Jean-Christophe Spinosi

This is Vivaldi’s satirical family soap opera with Jerry Springer scale.

The singing methods in the late Baroque era opera is highly stylized. Especially Vivaldi goes extreme in the area. His music including his instrumental works is very instinctive, elaborate and flamboyantly playful. You can expect unexpected notes, sounds and tunes from his music. And he wrote many beautiful, memorable, sensationally captivating melodies. These are the reasons why his music is timelessly refreshing.

This production was produced in 2003 and this is the first opera recording for Jean-Christophe Spinosi. As always, he plays Vivaldi as he plays rock’n roll. Classical musical conductors generally tend to be older with conservative sounds so it’s nice to hear someone like him playing younger, athletic and refreshing sounds, which are very well suited for Vivaldi’s musical style.

But I have to give a minus point for his orchestration in this production. His orchestration is thinner and too light to the degree that feels like it used only little base instruments compare to his later Vivaldi operas. It also does not have the concentrative focus as much as his other works.

Some of the singers sung very well and the rest has some problems.

Philippe Jaroussky sung Salim very well with the pristine, pure - almost with the voice of boy soprano-like - innocence.

Sarah Mingardo who sung Melindo has very fine and light beautiful contralto voice. Though I’ve listened to her very little before, she sung much better and richer in these other recordings than in this production.

Gemma Beltagnolli sung coquettish, ambiguous Roxane with beautiful butterfly-like light soprano voice. Her voice was too light and her expression was shallow. This role is much more complicated than the surface which requires little more weight and realism.

Guilemette Laurens who sung Rustina has very beautiful light mezzo-soprano voice. She sung the naive wife with the simplicity and sensitive delicacy.

Anthony Rolf Johnson as Mamud sung well with very good tenor voice, though his voice is little thinner than I prefer.

The best singer in this production is contralto, Nathalie Stutzmann who sung Damira.

There are very interesting things about her voice. Her voice is light but somewhat dark, low and sounds very monotonic. And yet, it also sounds expressive. Damira is very complicated role. She has the patience of a yacht sailor who navigates and steers through ever changing winds. She is calculative and manipulative but also carries the blend of coldness and warmth by which she gains trust from others. And Nathalie Stutzmann’s singing expressed all these complicated qualities.

“Partenope” by Lars Ulik Mortensen

This is the Handel’s romantic comedy.

This production was played by the same dream team from the production of Handel’s “Guilio Cesare” which includes Andreas Scholl (countertenor), Inger Dam-Jensen (soprano), Tuva Semmingsen (mezzo-soprano), Palle Knudsen (baritone), Francisco Negrin (stage director), Lars Ulrik Mortensen (conductor) and Concert Copenhagen (orchestra), plus my favorite Cleopatra’s crazy half brother, Christophe Dumaux (countertenor).

The basic story line of this opera is that a young girl, Rosmira (Tuva Semmingsen) disguised as a man goes to Queen Partnope’s (Inger Dam-Jensen) palace in search of her lover, Arsace (Andreas Scholl). There, she finds him courting beautiful, sexy and powerful Partenope. Partenope is a queen bee and she has many suitors. Handsome and dashing Arsace is the front-runner.

Rosmira gets very outraged and accuses Arsace for betraying her and his promise of marriage, especially after she saw him making out with Partenope (though as much as angry she is, neither she can resist not be all over him). Playboy Arsace gets very embarrassed but cannot decide whom he wants to be with. She makes him swear (“on my fidelity, not yours!”) not to tell anyone that she’s woman otherwise she’ll expose him.

Shy and sensitive Armindo (Christophe Dumaux) is also in love with Partenope, desperately. But he doesn’t have courage to confess even though everyone knows it including Partenope. And everyone looks down upon him including Partenope who innocently teases him time to time.

Another suitor is Emilio (Bo Kristian Jensen) who is the macho ruler of neighboring region. He’s so in love with her to the extreme he invades her territory militarily. He gives her the ultimatum that he would surrender everything to her if she marries him otherwise he would take military action. Proud Partenope didn’t like the offer so she goes to war.

She commands her own military because all her suitors (including Rosmira, in order to keep up with her lies) are just too wimpy enough to command. Arsace begs Rosmira not to join the battle but as angry she is, she doesn’t listen. He saves her life when attacked by Emilio during the battle. Armindo’s bravely saves Partenope and forces the enemy to flee. Partenope wins the battle and takes Emilio as POW.

During the drinking cerebration, Rosmira brags that she is the one, not Arsace who took Emilio down and claims how cowardly Arsace was during the battle. From anger, at every opportunity, she verbally abuses and humiliates him in front of everyone.  He takes it all in silence. Everyone starts to think how unmanly he is for taking insults and yet, they also get confused when Rosmira defends him when they even try to insult him.

After the victory cerebration, Partenope realizes that there is no one worthy of her love than Armindo for he has done so much for her. But she goes into complete denial when she suddenly felt attraction for this “looser”.

By this time, Arsace is well aware that he loves Rosmira but is not able to stop her out of control fury. So he suffers in silence. And Rosmira’s anger comes to the boiling point that she challenges him for duel by telling Partenope how he betrayed a young noble lady and he (she) is there to duel in honor of the lady. This news sinks Arsace’s reputation very quickly at everyone’s eyes specially Partenope’s who angrily orders him for duel.

Arsace gets light ball moment right before the duel begins. He proposes the term of the duel as “bare-chested” which forces Rosmira to confess her own true identity at everyone’s surprise.

At the end, Arsace takes Rosmira’s hand and Partenope takes Armindo’s while passing around “fire”, “peace” and “harmony”. And they live happily ever after.

This is not Handel’s best work and yet, musically it all sounded so gorgeous because all the singers and the orchestration from the dream team were just superbly good.

Like his orchestration in “Guilio Cesare”, everything about Lars Ulrik Mortensen’s orchestration in this production sounded just right. His orchestration reminds me the similarities of the orchestra sounds conducted by Daniel Beckwith in “Julius Caesar” at Fort Worth Opera. Their music are not too fast, not too slow and not too much, not too subtle but very rich and flexibly refined.

Tenor, Bo Kristian Jensen who I listened to first time has very virtuosic, full and beautiful rich voice.

Countertenor, Christophe Dumaux has the beautiful textured mezzo-soprano range voice with his own melancholic dark hue. His singing might sound monotone or inflexible on the surface. But you just could feel that he put so much technique and thought into his singing. There is the inner fire in his singing, which has the magical magnetic field.

This production is not only musically outstanding but also visually stylish and hilariously entertaining. The stage directions are very detail-oriented and there is no any dull moment even during long da capo arias. The stage director must’ve had such fun time making this production.

All the singers are not only wonderful singers but also very talented actors. There are quiet a lot of detailed acting directions either comedic or serious, which they had to keep up with while they’re singing.

Specially it was very funny to watch when Andreas Scholl and Christophe Dumaux each sung love songs to the Inger Dam-Jensen look-alike Barbie doll, or during the drunken cerebration while Emilio is singing his misery after being taken as POW, all the characters had great time abusing and hazing him. And also at the battle scene - it’s always interesting to see how opera production handles battle scene -, suddenly they all started playing musical chairs followed by rock-paper –scissors with lots of cheatings, which ended up into fist fights.

It was also funny to see how all the suitors including Emilio the enemy combatant forge easy-going, heat warming, kids’-like friendships with each other centering Partenope.

The stage settings are well thought through including the usage of small objects like the flame of candlelight (fire), the harmony ball (harmony) and the olive branch (peace), which had deeper meanings for each character.

The hand-held cameras were also used as they’re standing besides or behind the singers so not only there is very warm intimacy between cameras and the singers as watching a very good movie, but also you could see the singers’ viewpoints from the stage, which were very neat.

“Floridante” (Handel) by Alan Curtis

 Alan Curtis’ orchestration in this production is much livelier and attentive than his orchestration in Handel’s “Tolomeo”. And the sound quality is far better than his Handel’s “Alcina” and Vivaldi’s “Ercole su’l Termodonte”, which had the dull knife-like sounds. His sounds are much vibrant especially in the upbeat portions of the opera even though it can be still stagnant in slower arias. But this is the first time I actually get some enjoyment from his orchestration.

It is still puzzling to me the fact that there are such big differences in the sound quality between each production even though they are all performed by the same conductor and the same ensemble, Il Complesso Barocoo during the same period.

The selection of the singers in this production is high level. Handel wrote very beautiful arias and duets for this opera, but unfortunately this production is far from such perfection of his music. Partly because of the orchestration and the singers’ quality.

Contralto, Marijana Mijanovic who sung the title role has elegant tall slender stature, which also reflects in her voice characteristics. The texture of her voice is like the very beautiful tenor voice wrapped around with the very beautiful fine feminine mezzo-soprano voice with certain amount of masculine darker hue, which is well suited for both female and male roles.  

So the voice like hers should be well suited for the Handel’s tenderhearted hero like Floridante. This role mainly sings slow deep emotional ballad type arias. She sounded very good on the surface but the underneath, her singing sounded rather monotone and failed to convey the deep emotions of the character well enough. Even though I think she did her best in this role and I’m very fond of her as singer.

Exquisite mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonate sung passionate protagonist, Elmira. She always sings Handel excellently. She’s one of these singers who are just naturally rich in singing expressions.  She is without doubt, one of the current top opera singers.

Soprano, Sharon Rostorf-Zamir sung Rossane very well with beautiful sweet voice. This is the girl who sings the exhilaration of being in love. So Handel wrote very light melodic sensual arias for this role. I love light lyrical melodic songs generally, so naturally, the favorite arias below I listed are tend to be her arias.

Soprano, Roberta Invernizzi as Timante also sung beautifully but her voice is little sharp and less full for my taste. I listened to several arias and duet by her before but she had weakness in expression so her singing has never appealed to me.

Often in Handel’s operas, the two sets of lovers are pictured in opposite contrast. In this opera, musically, he distinguishes this strongly.

Floridante and Elmira go through all the pain and sufferings so their voices are lower and the music for their arias and duet are either deeply sentimental for Floridante or highly emotionally charged for Almira. 

Rossane and Timante fall in love during the opera so they are both sung by soprano (ranged) singers and the music for their arias and duet are light, sensual and intoxicating.

Alma Mia (Marijana Mijanovic)

Ma Pria Vedrò Le Stelle (Joyce DiDonate)

Sospiro, È Vero (Sharon Rostorf-Zamir)

Fuor Di Periglio (Sharon Rostorf-Zamir & Roberta Invernizzi)

Ma Un Dolce Mio Pensi (Sharon Rostorf-Zamir)

Vivere Per Penare (Joyce DiDonate)

Ah Mia Cara (Joyce DiDonate & Marijana Mijanovic)

Sventurato, Godi, O Core (Marijana Mijanovic)