Francesco CAVALLI (1602-1676)
Elena, Dramma per musica in a Prologue and Three Acts (Venice, 1659)
Elena,Venere - Emöke Baráth (soprano)
Menelao - Valer Barna-Sabadus (countertenor)
Teseo - Fernando Guimarães (tenor)
Ippolita, Pallade - Solenn’ Lavanant Linke (mezzo)
Peritoo - Rodrigo Ferreira (countertenor)
Iro - Emiliano Gonzalez Toro (tenor)
Menesteo, La Pace - Anna Reinhold
Tindaro, Nettuno - Scott Conner
Erginda, Giunone, Castore - Mariana Flores
Eurite, La Verità - Majdouline Zerari
Diomede, Creonte - Brendan Tuohy (tenor)
Euripilo, La Discordia, Polluce - Christopher Lowrey
Antiloco - Job Tomé
Cappella Mediterranea [Anne Millischer and Stéphanie de Failly (violins and
violas), Gustavo Gargiulo and Rodrigo Calveyra (cornets and recorders), Rodney
Prada (viola da gamba and lirone), Margaux Blanchard (viola da gamba), Éric
Mathot (double bass), Monica Pustilnik (theorbo, archlute and guitar), Quito
Gato (theorbo, guitar and percussions), Ariel Rychter (harpsichord with gut
strings and harpsichord)]/Leonardo García Alarcón (harpsichord and organ)
Director: Jean-Yves Ruf
rec. live Aix-en-Provence Festival, July 2013.
Recorded in conjunction with and also available for streaming from Medici
TV.
RICERCAR RIC346 [2 DVDs: 2:57:20 plus book]
Excerpts available on Daily
Motion.
This production, recorded live at the Aix-en-Provence Festival
in July 2013 – subsequently revived at Versailles, Opéra de Lille and elsewhere
– was the first time that Elena had seen the light of day for more
than three centuries, apart from a 2006 revival at Cornell University and
three brief orchestral excerpts, also performed by Cappella Mediterreana on
Sogno Barocco (Naïve V5286, a mainly vocal album with Anne Sophie von
Otter, Sandrine Piau and Susanna Sundberg: ‘a must for baroque enthusiasts’
– see review
by Göran Forsling.)
Having missed Sogno Barocco when it appeared in 2012, I downloaded
it from eclassical.com, intending to review it in a forthcoming Download News,
only to find that tracks 2-4 were not what they purport to be but music by
Mozart and Schubert. Having streamed from it from Qobuz
I can now happily endorse Göran Forsling’s high opinion.
Those titbits apart and a few others in a more recent 2-CD set of Cavalli,
Heroines of the Venetian Baroque (Ricercar RIC359 – Download News 2015/9)
we have been missing some very fine music. Even when Cavalli is in comic
mood in some of his other operas the music often belies the foolery; here
music and overall tone are more in accord. I certainly can’t agree with the
Opera Today reviewer who thought this an opera ‘perhaps best forgotten’.
This being Cavalli, Elena is not exactly free from foolery, though
neither the composer nor the director overdoes it. There’s innate humour
in the number of suitors queuing up for Helen herself but if anything Monteverdi
satirises the suitors in Il Ritorno d’Ulisse more, and that’s a serious
opera, with the suitors meeting a dire fate. Even the jester Iro is less
slapstick than his parasitic namesake in Ulisse, often speaking sense
in his ‘madness’, as when he lectures Eurite on the prime renaissance theme
of the Golden Age. Emiliano Gonzalez Toro revels in the role without overdoing
it.
A baroque prologue is usually a serious affair, but here the goddesses are
deceived by Discord, disguised as Peace, sowing dissent by making them squabble
over the golden apple – there’s no Paris in this version to award the prize.
Perhaps the production, with the goddesses queening it with absurd hair styles,
comes a bit close to overstepping the mark, but I’m not complaining and I
usually hate hammy opera productions: though I enjoyed the Opus Arte DVDs
of Ercole Amante, I did so with reservations about some unnecessary
stage business – review.
In any case, there’s a point to the action in the prologue of Elena:
as a result of the discord sown between the goddesses, though Menelaus is
destined to win Helen, she is doomed to be abducted first by Theseus and later
by Paris. By the time that Truth and the real Peace arrive, the future is
fixed.
King Tyndarus, who falls in love with the ‘Amazon’ Menelaus in disguise and
loses ‘her’ to Pirithous, could easily have become a figure of fun, but instead
we tend to sympathise with his predicament. If anything it’s the lovers who
are gently made fun of, with quotations from Cavalli’s mentor Monteverdi’s
madrigals such as Ardo, avvampo, on their lips.
The singing is uniformly good, especially in the main roles, with those of
Emöke Baráth as Helen and Valer Barna-Sabadus as Menelaus blending especially
well in their duets. The instrumental support is first-rate. We see quite
a lot of Leonardo García Alarcón in the pit directing his small and accomplished
team, but never so as to distract from the action. In the final analysis
he and they are as much real stars of the show as the singers, as they also
are on the Naïve CD and the Ricercar 2-CD set mentioned above. The camera
work in general is as accomplished as it is in showing those moments in the
pit.
Elena would lend itself to a more lavish production than we could expect
from the Aix Festival, but the simple set is well employed, with an occasional
hint of what something more sumptuous might look like, as when a large sail
is unfurled to simulate a sea voyage. No modern opera house could afford
to have a ship on stage, such as appeared in the Florentine Marriage Intermedii
of 1589, themselves the precursors of the operatic form. In the second half
clever use is made of hanging clusters of threads. If the singing, the instrumental
support and Alarcón’s musical direction are my prime objects of praise, Jean-Yves
Ruf deserves as much. Not only does nothing really annoy me, as stage directors
nowadays seem bent on doing; I thought that he made excellent use of his limited
resources.
I enjoyed this as much as any baroque opera that I’ve seen or heard recently,
sustaining interest for almost three hours. I must, however, award some black
marks for presentation: despite the luxury appearance in the form of a hardback
book with DVDs in pockets fore and aft, no indication is given of availability
of sound formats, apparently 2-channel stereo only – that was the option I
could find in the menu – or of region limitations, if any. The booklet contains
a synopsis, but in such an elaborate presentation it should have been possible
to include the libretto. We don’t even have the opportunity of seeing the
original Italian from subtitles – these are French and English only. Thankfully
Kristin Kane’s 2006 Cornell doctoral dissertation and edition, resuscitating
the opera from its long slumber, is posted online here
.
I played the DVDs first on television with a sound-base, then sampled the
sound via my audio system. Though DVD only, apparently with no blu-ray equivalent,
the picture is very sharp and the sound is good though, paradoxically, the
sound-base made it sound fuller than my audio system and floor-standing speakers.
I played the discs in 2-channel stereo and I assume, for lack of information,
that the DVDs are Region 0, universally playable. Nor are the voice ranges
of the singers listed: I’ve supplied the main ones. Getting the DVDs in and
out – especially in – without touching the playing surface is somewhat hazardous.
That said, this is a luxury offering, with plenty of colour illustrations
of costume designs, trilingual notes on the opera and the raison d’être
of this production and a useful synopsis.
All in all this ‘lost’ opera has been triumphantly restored to life after
more than three centuries. I enjoyed it even more than my earlier encounters
with other Cavalli operas on DVD: Ercole Amante (above) and La Didone
– review.
Brian Wilson
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