from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed
About two months ago Erato released its latest album featuring French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. (Yes, I know I have fallen behind schedule. When it comes to keeping up with releases of recordings, I tend to focus on running in place, knowing that, sooner or later, I will catch up with anything that has fallen behind by more than a month.) Jaroussky is one of those artists that I know best by finding him on annual lists of GRAMMY nominations involving recordings that I have not encountered. Indeed, my only “real” encounter with him goes all the way back to 2012, when Virgin Classics released a DVD of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Jaroussky in the role of Nero, working with William Christie conducting the musical resources of Les Arts Florissants, which quickly became one of my favorite ways to appreciate the “virtues of vice” in this decidedly non-standard opera.
Jaroussky’s latest album is entitled Ombra mai fu. The first thing the reader must be told is, “Not that ‘Ombra mai fu,’” to clarify that the album has nothing to do with the operas of George Frideric Handel. Rather, the entire album is devoted to the music of Francesco Cavalli, who, as a boy soprano at St Mark's Basilica in Venice, had the good fortune to be tutored by Monteverdi. Cavalli composed his own Xerse opera, which was first performed in January of 1654 and was based on exactly the same libretto by Nicolò Minato that Handel would subsequently use.
I have to say that I have been most fortunate in having many pleasant encounters with stagings of Cavalli’s operas, going all the way back to my “first contact” in the Eighties through a staged performance at Hunter College in Manhattan. Here in the Bay Area, Yefim Maizel had a particular fondness for presenting Cavalli operas in performances I saw given first by the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute and subsequently by Maizel’s own Opera Academy of California. Many of these operas were composed for performance during the pre-Lenten Carnival in Venice (for which Poppea was also composed), under the principle that one should indulge in as much ribaldry as possible to “get it out of one’s system” prior to the deprivations of Lent. Such ribaldry was abundant in Cavalli offerings, even when they were based on presumably serious subjects.
Nevertheless, while I continue to be unabashedly “hooked” on Cavalli, I have to say that his arias have their greatest impact when they are not deprived of context. Yes, this new Erato release abounds with opportunities to enjoy Jaroussky’s solid and expressive technique; and the same can be said of the Artaserse chamber ensemble that provides instrumental accompaniment without any explicitly acknowledged conductor. Nevertheless, the stylistic structures of these arias tend to be limited; and, about halfway through this new album, the attentive listener may be forgiven for feeling as if (s)he has heard one too many arias in lament form. (To be fair, that structure is one of the best platforms for exploring diverse paths of invention, not only in the manuscript but also in the interpretation of the marks on paper.)
Consequently, I continue to believe that the best way to get to know Cavalli is through full-length accounts of his operas, in which the arias assume their rightful significance along the path of the narrative thread; having acquired familiarity with Cavalli in this broader context, the listener may then appreciate the opportunity to enjoy some of those arias in isolation.
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