“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”.