Another Baroque New Year’s Eve with ABS

Christoph Platzer’s 1710 portrait of George Frideric Handel, who would have been about 25 years old at the time (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Last night, as has been the case for quite some time, American Bach Soloists (ABS) closed out 2024 with its annual Baroque New Year’s Eve concert in Herbst Theatre. As usual, the program was dominated with a generous selection of excerpts from the operas of George Frideric Handel. In “order of appearance” these were Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra (HWV 23), Partenope (HWV 27), Flavio, re de Longobardi (HWV 16), Rinaldo (HWV 7), Ariodante (HWV 23), and Giulio Cesare (HWV 17), along with the HWV 46a oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth. These were complemented by selections from three operas by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Naïs (RCT 49), Platée (RCT 53), and Les indes galantes (RCT 44), as well as Carl Heinrich Graun’s opera Cesare e Cleopatra.

The ABS instrumental ensemble was jointed by two vocalists, both familiar to ABS performances: soprano Maya Kherani and countertenor Eric Jurenas. All of the selections were solos except for the final selection, which was the duet for Cleopatra and Cesare in HWV 17. [added 9 a.m.: The encore selection was also a duet, this time from HWV 23 sung by Ariodante and Ginevra.] There were also several instrumental offerings of overtures and sinfonias.

As usual, in spite of all that quantity, the program proceeded at a relatively fast clip. Each aria had its own characteristic say, and Kherani was particularly engaging for finding just the right body language for each of her appearances. A pessimist might have picked up the program at the beginning of the performance and thought, “One damned thing after another!” However, the selections provided an engaging diversity of musical settings for a generous variety of dramatic situations. As a result, there was never a dull moment; and, with an encore following the conclusion, the performance left the audience with the high spirits necessary for New Year’s Eve celebrations!