Tamerlane by Trevor Pinnock

This DVD production of Handel’s opera Tamerlane was conducted by Trevor Pinnock with the English Concert Orchestra.

The storyline of this opera is almost identical to the one in Vivaldi’s opera Bajazet. The libretto in Vivaldi’s version had much deeper human drama than Handel’s although the music of Handel is well written enough to overcome the weakness of its libretto.

But unfortunately, this production does not live up to such wonderful quality of Handel’s music.

This production had the bare minimal stage setting comparably to the gorgeous costume designs. And it had rather cheap acting directions.

The sound quality of the orchestration by Trevor Pinnock is very good. It had wonderful amount of vibrancy with plenty of colors and clear crisp intonations.  I couldn’t see inside of the orchestra pit but it seemed and sounded like very small numbers of instrumentalists were used. I’m not certain if it’s because of this, his orchestration sounded less full, less melodious and less dramatic at times. I love the sound quality of his orchestration but it also had less musical zest than I prefer to hear in Handel’s music.

All the singers had beautiful, well-trained voices. But most of them fell short on maturity or depth in their singings.

The best singer in this production though was mezzo-soprano, Anna Bonitatibus who played Irene. Her singing was vibrant with the rich expression and manner of easiness.

The next best singer is alto, Monica Bacelli who played the title role of Tamerlane. Her voice was big and she sung well though her make-up and comedic acting were rather on cheap side.

Thomas Randel who played Bajazet had strong very good tenor voice. The role of Saltan, Bajazet lost everything except his daughter and his pride in the defeated war with Tartar emperor, Tamerlano. He’s the larger-than-life character who is on the life-or-death desperations. But I hardly felt any of them from Thomas Randel’s singing.

Soprano, Elizabeth Noberg-Shulz who played Asteria had beautiful voice but she sung in the same tone throughout her da capo arias as jazz or blues singer. Take any part of her singing and it all sounded the same.

Countertenor, Graham Pushee who sung Andronico had both not so good acting and singing.  His voice had beautiful texture but was artificially shallowly and his singing was full of emotion but overly cheap.

These last two singers specially did not make good use of the da capo arias they sung.

Libretto in da capo aria consists of the set of A and B sections but it is sung as in the order of A, A, B, A, A. Composers composed only one set of score for each A & B section and singer is expected to develop and ornament the rest of repeated sections on his or her own. It means that singer is part of composing process of music he or she sings. This is the exciting part of da capo aria.

The-not-so exciting part of da capo aria is that because it depends on how skilled a singer is in developing da capo aria, it could be very long 5~15 minutes for listeners or it could be very short 5~15 minutes of amazing experience.

Handel strongly believed in da capo aria. Almost all of arias in his operas I listened to are in da capo form. Da capo aria is very restricted form but it is also very artistic and liberating style of human expression.

In spite of all these shortcomings in this production, I liked the orchestration and I love the opera. I would look for better production for it though.