“Fernando” by Alan Curtis

I listened to Handel’s opera “Fernando” conducted by Alan Curtis with Il Complesso Barocco.

I thought the more one is American and older, he tends to be more conservative and more settled in style. This is not the case for the two American elder Baroque music conductors/directors, William Christie and Alan Curtis.

William Christie just changes color, atmosphere, speed and balance of over all music for each production.  But his music is always lively and passionate even when he plays slow music. And it often has high musical quality

Alan Curtis changes quality of music itself. The quality of his music is very different from one production to another. The biggest problem I have with his music is the stagnant dullness of his sounds. His music often has the sound quality of a pianist who pushes piano keys rather than hitting them.

And his “Fernando” is one of his worst productions along with Handel’s “Alcina” and Vivaldi’s “Ercole sul Termodonte” he has done. His music is very subtle in this production. This is such uninspiring, boring Handel I’ve ever listened to.

And it is very pity because all the singers in this production are very good such as Lawrence Zazzo, Veronica Cangemi, Filippo Adami, Mariana Pizzolato, and Max Emanuel Cencic. They all sung well and yet, even such good assemble of the singers couldn’t save this production.

Handel was incapable of writing bad music. It sounds arrogant but this is very true. I haven’t yet encountered any of his music that is bad or boring. His music is always impressively good including “Fernando”. Handel’s music always falls into the category of either “great”, “very good” or “good” but never ever being “bad”.

"Ariodante" by Alan Curtis (concert in April 2011)

I watched the concert version of Handel’s opera “Ariodante” conducted by Alan Curtis with Il Complesso Barocco, which was staged back in April 2011.

Even though I believe no one can surpass the sublime Marc Minkowski’s production for this opera, I thought this production was very good. Alan Curtis’ orchestration was lively a lot of times even though it still feels the undertone subtleness as the whole. The sound quality was much better also and definitely there was least amount of dullness in this production than his other productions I listened to.

Even though I also think no assemble of singers surpass the singers in the Marc Minkowski’s production, all the singers in this production were expressive and they sung very well especially Ann Hallenberg.

Mezzo-soprano, Ann Hallenberg’s Ariodante was wonderful and very exciting to listen to specially when she sung the upbeat arias.

Soprano, Roberta Mameli had silky beautiful rich expressive voice.

Mezzo-soprano, Varduhi Abrahanyan had the wonderful voice with the shade of darkness.

Soprano, Ana Auintans had beautiful voice but was little weak in expression.

Tenor, Nicholas Phan had very good firm lower to middle register but little shaky on upper register.

Baritone, Matthew Brook sung firm father/king.

The singers are the following.

Ariodante: Ann Hallenberg
Ginevra: Roberta Mameli
Polinesso: Varduhi Abrahanyan
Dalinda: Ana Quintans
Lurcanio: Nicholas Phan
Re di Scozia: Matthew Brook