Caldara: Lo seguitai felice (L'Olimpiade)

Philippe Jaroussky, described by Germany’s Die Zeit as “the Apollo of countertenors’, stands out among his many talented contemporaries as much for the soprano-like beauty of his tone as for the elegance and insight of his interpretations and his adventurous and erudite approach to repertoire – whether unearthing neglected scores by little-known composers or venturing beyond the Baroque into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Established as one of Virgin Classics’ bestselling artists, Jaroussky, now aged 34, has been honoured three times in the Victoires de la Musique awards in his native France and has also received Germany’s most prominent music prize, the Echo Klassik. His diverse achievements are saluted in two new collections on Virgin Classics – the 2CD set “The Voice” and the DVD and Blu Ray “La Voix des rêves: Greatest moments in Concert”.

“LA VOIX DES RÊVES - Greatest Moments in Concert” (available on DVD & Blu Ray) features video footage from a number of occasions and venues – including items from a concert given among the crystal chandeliers of the splendid Galerie des Glaces in the palace of Versailles, and works by Handel and Vivaldi performed in another jewel of French Baroque architecture, the sumptuously decorated Chapelle de la Trinité in Lyon. Also included are exclusive interviews an array of fellow musicians: Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Emmanuelle Haïm, Christina Pluhar; Jérôme Ducros, Quatuor Ebène, Gautier Capuçon, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Renaud Capuçon.

Jaroussky and his appeal were aptly summarised in a recent profile in the French magazine Balthazar: “Philippe Jaroussky alternates between opera and recitals, bringing his sensual, graceful voice and matinee idol looks, and this has made him a key star of classical music. But his recordings also reveal a skilled musicologist who has revived numerous forgotten artists like the castrato Carestini [and the composers] Johann Christian Bach and Caldara. Jaroussky simply glows. Anyone who has had the opportunity to meet him will find it hard to forget his enthusiastic conversation and his magnetic gaze.”

The singer made his passions clear in an interview with Crescendo magazine, revealing that “I don’t like being told I have the ‘voice of an angel’, because that would just mean that it sounds pretty and takes people out of themselves … I want to be able to evoke more human emotions too: sorrow, despair, jealousy.” Speaking to the leading French newspaper Le Monde, he went into more detail on his philosophy as a maturing singer: “Ten years into your career, you reach a certain level of purity in your approach. You are always set on improving – strengthening your high notes, your low notes, your projection or your expressivity – but you also accept what it means to be an artist.”

Philippe Jaroussky continues his rediscovery of long-forgotten arias for high male voice with this collection of music by Antonio Caldara, a contemporary of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, who was the first composer to set many librettos by the great Metastasio and Zeno.

“When you are discovering music that has not been recorded before, it’s like your own treasure,” Philippe Jaroussky told Early Music Today, when discussing his last Virgin Classics recital, La dolce fiamma, a programme of arias by Johann Christian Bach.

With this new album, he revives a number of forgotten works by a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel and Vivaldi – the Venetian-born Antonio Caldara, who made his career in Mantua, Barcelona, Rome and, finally, Vienna. All the arias – several recorded for the very first time – come from operas with librettos by Metastasio (1698 –1782), whose noble texts defined the genre of opera seria. Both Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, first performed in 1791, and Caldara’s opera of the same name, first performed nearly 60 years previously, were settings of Metastasio, while the writer’s text for Caldara’s Demofoonte, first performed in 1733, went on to inspire more than 70 stage works, including operas by Gluck, Paisiello, Piccinni, Graun and Cherubini.

As usual, Jaroussky has done his own musicological research for this album. “I’m always very curious and love to go to libraries. When you are in direct contact with manuscripts, it’s like you are touching history; it’s important for me to do the research myself, to be in direct contact with the material.”

La dolce fiamma, also both a musicological and vocal tour de force, prompted The Guardian to affirm that: “You can't help but be seduced by the passion and range of Jaroussky's singing, which embraces everything from perfect coloratura to rapt introversion”, while in the countertenor’s native France – where in 2010 he won his third award in the high-profile annual Victoires de la Musique – Diapason asked: “Can Philippe Jaroussky’s talent be praised any further? … His indomitable technique enables him to tackle the wildest vocalises, but also, thanks to his cultivated legato, to caress sinuous melodic curves. His even, wide-ranging voice charms from the first moment. There’s a touch of mystery, great gentleness, subtlety and sweetness – and the magic of singing does the rest.”

This is Jaroussky’s eighth solo album for Virgin Classics and his second recital to be conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm. Their previous collaboration was on Carestini: The story of a castrato, released in late 2007, which, according to Gramophone found Jaroussky “in brilliant, ravishing voice,” while BBC Music Magazine judged that: “This programme of operatic arias provides [Jaroussky] with a spacious shop-window to display both his pyrotechnical skill … and his ability to express tender, reflective emotions: the ravishing ‘Scherza, infida’ from Ariodante, is handled with yearning sensibility by singer and instrumentalists alike … In summary a rewarding recital, stylishly directed by Emmanuelle Haïm.”