“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.