Alan Curtis

The Handel arias and orchestral pieces on this disc span a narrow spectrum from the comparatively unfamiliar to the practically unknown. Nine of the twelve arias are recorded here for the first time, as is the D major March, HWV 416. The arias are mostly arie aggiunte, composed for insertion in later performances of existing operas to accommodate a different cast of singers. Some of these arias have come to light only recently or have previously been inadequately identified. The interspersed instrumental works were produced for purposes still uncertain. Yet, despite the sometimes shadowy origins of this music, it is all vintage Handel, and arias such as ‘La crudele lontananza’, ‘Sa perché pena il cor’ and ‘Farò così più bella’ rank among the composer’s most eloquent dramatic utterances.

The Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg has become established as one of Europe’s leading mezzo-sopranos. Her operatic repertoire includes a large number of roles by Rossini, Mozart, Gluck, Massenet, Handel, Vivaldi and Monteverdi. Equally at home on the concert platform, she frequently appears in concert halls and festivals throughout Europe and North America.

She has recorded more than 30 CDs and DVDs, most recently, with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fabio Biondi, a CD of 'Arias for Marietta Marcolini' for Naïve [V5309].

"Having won plaudits in Handel and Vivaldi, Ann Hallenberg proves no less persuasive in bel canto...her even, gleaming tone, eloquence of prase and fluent, never mechanical coloratura give virtually unalloyed pleasure...few could equal her style, zest and coloratura brilliance." Richard Wigmore, Gramophone, Jan 2013

Crowned with a Grammy Award for her last album, Diva, Divo, Joyce DiDonato joins conductor Alan Curtis and Il complesso barocco for Drama Queens, an electrifying programme of royal arias from the 17th and 18th centuries, composed by figures as famous as Handel and Vivaldi and as little known as Orlandini and Porta. As DiDonato says: “High drama, profound emotion, fearless vocal writing, time-stopping passages, historical significance and real discovery ... What more could I ask for?”

The impact achieved by Joyce DiDonato with her last Virgin Classics album, Diva, Divo, was summed up by her triumph at the 2012 Grammy Awards in February: victor in the Classical Vocal Solo category, the ‘Yankee Diva’ also became the first classical singer to perform live at the Grammy ceremony, receiving a standing ovation for her spectacular rendition of the final rondo from Rossini’s La Cenerentola.

Enterprising as ever, DiDonato now presents a new themed recital, conceived in partnership with Alan Curtis, who also conducted her Virgin Classic recordings of Handel’s Ariodante and Radamisto and her duet recital Amore e Gelosia with Patrizia Ciofi. Drama Queens sees DiDonato portraying a parade of royal personages in a diversity of challenging situations and extreme states of mind.

“For me, this is my most exciting recording project to date,” says Joyce DiDonato,” because it is everything I deeply adore about the world of opera: high drama, profound emotion, fearless vocal writing, time-stopping passages, historical significance and real discovery. What more could I ask for?

“I wanted to return to this genre of music I love so deeply: the free, mysterious, profoundly moving world of Baroque opera, but to do it in the grandest fashion – from the throne of royalty! Each of the characters is a queen (or a sorceress, which equals queen in this fantastical world) ... Well, we have allowed one princess, because the aria is completely unknown and it is simply too beautiful to be left out: ‘Madre diletta, abbracciami’ by Giovanni Porta [c1675-1755].

“What more could a singer ask for than to indulge in the antics of rage and bliss, despair and jubilation, heartbreak and true love?” she continues. “It will be an extraordinary journey, thanks to these larger-than-life characters, and I fully expect to learn a lot about myself along the way.”

Conductor and musicologist Alan Curtis explains that: “Our Drama Queens are a motley group. Our idea was to cultivate extremes, to gather arias that show larger-than-life emotions. They range from noble, but sultry seductiveness, through the hysterically happy to vindictive despair and royal rage. The musical styles are also as varied as possible.”

The arias range in period from the dawn of opera, Monteverdi and Cesti, to lesser-known works by Gluck and Haydn. “We also include some little-known music by Reinhard Keiser [1674-1739], notably an aria with an amazing five-part accompaniment for solo bassoons, without strings,” adds Curtis. (Joyce DiDonato describes it as “an aria of jealousy, suspicion and torment with the bassoon and voice chasing each other.”)

Alan Curtis continues: “Two flashy arias by Giuseppe Orlandini [1676-1760] come from an opera about the great Jewish Queen Berenice, thought to be lost, but found in a California library ... But we have not totally excluded well-known works either. There is Joyce's beloved ‘Sposa son disprezzata’, a YouTube favourite, which most people know in the version for Princess Irene, the rejected bride in Vivaldi's Tamerlano. But it was actually taken by Vivaldi from an earlier opera by Geminiano Giacomelli [1692-1740], where it was sung by a male character and performed by the famous castrato Farinelli. Another Farinelli aria we include comes from an early serenata by Hasse; he sang in drag as one of the greatest drama queens of all time – Cleopatra! And, of course, we include everybody's favourite Cleopatra aria: Handel's ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’, from Giulio Cesare.”

The three madrigal cycles by three of the most important figures of the Italian proto-Baroque: Claudio Monteverdi, Sigismondo d’India, and Luca Marenzio. All three are based on the same scene from Guarini’s famous tragicomedy “Il pastor fido" and reflect the vivid and dramatic changes undergone by the Renaissance madrigal, bringing it to its spectacular climax of expressive maturity and its inevitable demise. Il Complesso Barocco founded in 1992 by Alan Curtis is today one of the leading ensembles for the music of Handel and the Italian baroque. Their first CDs in the 90s together with appearances at major international festivals and concert series quickly established their reputation for arresting and passionately expressive interpretations rich in fantasy, together with high standards of intonation and stylistic accuracy.

The oratorios from which Karina Gauvin and Marie-Nicole Lemieux perform excerpts on Streams of Pleasure were premiered between 1744 and 1750 and are among Handel’s last compositions. Soprano and contralto are joined for this pleasurable collection by internationally acclaimed early music ensemble Il Complesso Barocco under its musical director Alan Curtis.

Founded by Alan Curtis in Amsterdam in 1979, Il Complesso Barocco has become a renowned Baroque orchestra with a focus on Italian opera and oratorio of the period. Its rich discography was for a time devoted to the late madrigal repertory, but it has also released an award-winning recording of Rossi’s Primo Libro di Madrigali, as well as a disc of Handel’s arias and duets, Amore e Gelosia with Patrizia Ciofi and Joyce DiDonato. Il Complesso Barocco’s releases of Handel operas include Dmeto, Rodrigo, Arminio, Deidamia, Radamisto, Berenice, Alcina, and Ariodante, several of which have won the ‘International Handel Recording Prize’.

Highly regarded contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux has recorded for numerous labels, and now enjoys an exclusive contract with Naïve, for which she has recorded the title roles in Vivaldi’s operas Griselda and Orlando furioso, and La Fida Ninfa. In recent times she has released a critically acclaimed programme of Vivaldi arias with the Ensemble Matheus under Jean-Christophe Spinosi.

Fellow Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin’s has recorded for labels including ATMA, Astrée, and Dorian, and has appeared on Naïve’s recording of Vivaldi’s Tito Manlio as well Handel’s Ezio, Alcina, and Tolomeo with I’l Complesso Barocco for DG and DG Archiv.

Alan Curtis, described by the New York Times’ as “one of the great scholar-musicians of recent times”, conducts a brilliant cast including Sonia Prina, Ann Hallenberg, Max-Emanuel Cencic and Topi Lehtipuu in the original, 1750 version of Gluck’s Ezio, described by Curtis as “from a dramatic point of view, perhaps the finest of Gluck’s pre-Orfeo operas”.

Alan Curtis, described by the New York Times’ as “one of the great scholar-musicians of recent times”, feels that Gluck’s opera Ezio is “from a dramatic point of view, perhaps the finest of Gluck’s pre-Orfeo operas.” This recording presents the original version of Ezio, which received its premiere in Prague in 1750, some 12 years before Gluck’s revolutionary Orfeo ed Euridice was seen in Vienna.

Written to a libretto by the prolific and influential Metastasio, Ezio exemplifies the formal opera seria that Gluck sought to leave behind with his so-called reform operas such as Orfeo and Alceste; but after Orfeo’s epoch-making premiere in Vienna in 1762 he revised Ezio for performance at the city’s Burgtheater in 1763.

“Gluck’s revisions to Ezio were not motivated not by any dissatisfaction with the work itself, but by the larger size of the Burgtheater and the concomitant need for a larger orchestra,” explains Alan Curtis. “Ezio is one of Metastasio's most dramatic operas. It is also one of the few with a plot totally lacking any absurdities or situations which modern listeners could find difficult to accept. An unfortunate aspect of the later version is the omission of the magnificent aria for the tenor, Massimo – ‘Se povero il ruscello’. Gluck had adapted it for Orfeo, where it became ‘Che puro ciel’, so the Viennese public already knew it too well. We are especially happy to be able to include it in this new recording, sung magnificently by Topi Lehtipuu.”

Curtis provides illuminating insights into Gluck’s place in operatic history. “For a while during the twentieth century, Gluck was almost reduced to being a one-opera composer: the composer of Orfeo. One could even say that he suffered from too much praise as the reformer, the saviour of opera -- integrating the chorus into the action, liberating opera from the da capo aria and from solo virtuosity. But these days solo virtuosity and da capo variations are very much back in fashion, and people have come to realise that, especially in the first half of his mature years, he was also a master of this ‘old-fashioned’ seria style.”

Until now, Curtis’ operatic recordings for Virgin Classics have focused on Handel, with Berenice and Ariodante as the most recent additions to his discography of the composer’s works. Gramophone has said that “Alan Curtis has done more than most to prove that many of Handel's 42 operas are first-rate music dramas”, while the BBC Music Magazine has praised him as “a seasoned Handelian who has contributed, perhaps more than anyone now, to the composer’s operas on disc.” How, though, does Curtis view the relationship between Gluck and the older Handel?

“Gluck no doubt respected Handel,” he says, “though there is no direct evidence that he learned anything from him -- and certainly no example of his stealing any ideas. Unfortunately, the respect was not mutual. It is said that Handel remarked, after Gluck's visit to London, that his cook knew more about counterpoint than Gluck! Coming from the world of Handelian opera, one is first of all struck by the simplicity of much of Gluck's music -- a simplicity which can be mistaken (as it no doubt was by Handel) for a mere lack of complexity or even lack of skill. But Gluck’s music is much more revolutionary than that. It was a way of changing the musical language of the time, and of concentrating on dramatic situations and bare emotions: in short, a way of reforming opera, a process that Gluck and others began long before the appearance of Orfeo in 1762.

“Fortunately for us today, one does not have to choose between these two styles of opera. One can appreciate both. As I work with instrumentalists as singers, not only do we find it refreshing to approach a different style with different criteria, but we sometimes thereby discover new modes of expression. Listen, for instance, to the mezzo soprano Sonia Prina as Ezio, singing ‘Ecco alle mie catene’ near the end of Act II. She is justly famous for her lively, virtuosic Handelian coloratura, but while her Handel can astonish, her Gluck can move you to tears.”

and readings from Acqua alta by Donna Leon