Deutsche Grammophon’s early music
label Archiv Produktion have released a world première recording
of Vivaldi’s recently rediscovered opera Motezuma.
This is performed on original instruments by Il Complesso
Barocco and directed by Alan Curtis.
Two-hundred and seventy-two years
earlier Motezuma had its first performance on 14 November
1733, at the Teatro di Sant’Angelo, in Venice. The manuscript
score, which has had a most convoluted history, was found
to be incomplete and was reconstructed by musicologist Alessandro
Ciccolini.
Vivaldi may have exaggerated when
he claimed to have written over ninety operas, but I understand
that some fifty librettos survive along with sixteen full
and four partial scores. Releases of Vivaldi operas are now
becoming increasingly common in the catalogues with at least
three labels currently providing a series of new recordings
of these previously ignored dramatic scores. The present
version was recorded as recently as November 2005 in Italy,
at San Martino al Cimino, near Viterbo.
Following hot on the heels of
acclaimed new recordings released last year of Orlando
furioso on Naïve and Bajazet on Virgin Classics,
Naïve have this month (February 2006) released a studio version
of Tito Manlio with the Accademia Bizantina under
the direction of Ottavio Dantone, on Opus III, OP 30413.
Within the last two weeks a review copy arrived of a live
recording of Tito Manlio on period-instruments with
Modo Antiquo under the direction of Federico Maria Sardelli
on CPO 777 096-2. So much for the contention that recordings
of operas are a thing of the past.
The record labels Archiv Produktion,
CPO and Naïve are to be congratulated for enabling the listener
to explore the extensive variety of Vivaldi’s output by using
the finest possible period-instrument ensembles, eminent
late-baroque vocal specialists and the finest choirs in the
field of historically informed performance. I believe this
may prove to be the golden age for recordings of period-informed
performances of Vivaldi scores.
Until recently, the only surviving
trace of Vivaldi’s opera Motezuma was the published
libretto by Luigi (Girolamo?) Giusti. In 2002, the German
musicologist Steffen Voss was searching the archive in the
Berlin Sing-Akademie for lost Handel cantata scores and discovered
the manuscript to Vivaldi’s Motezuma; a score long
believed lost. Although the score’s cover page was missing
Steffen Voss was familiar with the libretto of Motezuma and
recognised the names of the voice parts, convinced he had
found a missing treasure. Kees Vlaardingerbroek, a Vivaldi
scholar and artistic director of the Congresgebouw de Doelen
in Rotterdam holds the view that, “This is the most important
Vivaldi discovery in 75 years, since Vivaldi’s own archives
were found in the 1920s.” Incidentally, the Berlin Sing-Akademie
is the music society that in 1829 organised Mendelssohn’s
famous performance of J.S. Bach’s rediscovered St. Matthew
Passion.
The disorganized music library
of the Berlin Sing-Akademie archive, strangely enough in
the 150 years of their stewardship, had never been properly
catalogued. In 1943 owing to severe Allied bombing, Joseph
Goebbels the German Propaganda Minister in his position of ‘Gauleiter’ of
Berlin ordered that over 560 mostly private art collections
be taken to safety. They were removed from the City for safekeeping
and housed in suitable locations, far away from the turmoil
of war, in a variety of mines, tunnels, cloisters and castles.
It seems that the music archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie
was packed up and included in this evacuation. The Third
Reich would normally have kept meticulous records of such
treasures, however, in this case only a basic log was noted.
This indicated that a collection fourteen boxes with more
than five thousand compositions, in old manuscripts and prints
from the Berlin Sing-Akademie archive, were to be transported
to Schloss Ullersdorf, in Silesia. This was the last sign
of life for the archive in the West for the next 56 years.
During this time many devotees became worried and unsure
whether everything had been destroyed after all. Ironically,
less than three months after the evacuation of the archive
an allied air-raid on Berlin destroyed the building of the
Sing-Akademie. It would seem that at some stage the occupying
Red Army commandeered the Sing-Akademie archive from Silesia,
which was taken into the USSR to the Conservatory of Kiev
(now Ukraine). Apparently in 1973 the whole archive was moved
to the new Central State Archive and Museum of Literature
and Art of Ukraine, in Kiev. In 1999, investigations by researcher
Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted uncovered the whereabouts of
the secret archive, who in turn alerted Christoph Wolff,
Professor of Music at Harvard University to the discovery.
There was much political wrangling
and considerable financial restitution to the Ukrainian authorities
from Germany for the return of the archive. Perhaps the Ukrainian
authorities wanting to become more acceptable to the European
Union was a factor in returning the archive to their rightful
owners in Berlin in 2001. It was during research of the archive’s
treasures in Kiev that Vivaldi’s Motezuma was identified
by Steffen Voss and the manuscript was returned to Berlin
the same year. The score to Motezuma is now appropriately
housed in the Staats-bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library).
It is a mystery how a secondary
copy of Vivaldi’s Motezuma came to be stored in Berlin
in the first place. We know that J.S. Bach admired Vivaldi’s L’estro
armonico, the set of violin concertos published at Amsterdam,
in 1711. It is only speculation as to whether a member of
J.S. Bach’s family might actually have been interested in
studying one of Vivaldi’s operas in manuscript. There is
an excellent photograph taken in 1939 of the Library of the
Berlin Sing-Akademie contained in the article by Johannes
Boer entitled, ‘Will the Sing-Akademie remain master of
its music? Adventures around the Greatest Musicological Find
of the Century’ on: www.oudemuziek.nl/english/tijdschrift/artikelSAK.htm
Conductor Alan Curtis when asked
about how he first heard about the discovery of the Motezuma
manuscript stated, “One can hardly speak of the ‘discovery’ of
a manuscript which, clearly labelled, has been in a collection
open to the public for over 200 years. Before World War II,
there was really no interest in Vivaldi’s dramatic music,
and an announced discovery would in any case have received
very little attention. During the manuscript’s ‘exile’ in
Kiev, although it was consulted by Russian musicians, apparently
no one found it worth performing or publishing. Soon after
its return to Berlin, my friend Donna Leon told me about
it, having heard it described by her friend Natalie Luebben,
who works in the same law firm as Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell,
president of the Sing-Akademie. I immediately asked to see
it and spent several exciting hours studying and comparing
the hitherto unknown music with the known published libretto,
which I had from my old friend Jean-Claude Malgoire’s recording
of his pasticcio, made in 1992.”
Vivaldi’s opera Motezuma originally
contained 28 numbers, while the incomplete Berlin manuscript
contains only 17 (including all of Act II and important arias
in Acts I and III). Even so, Motezuma is unquestionably
one of the most exciting and significant Vivaldi discoveries
since the composer’s personal collection of manuscripts was
reunited at Turin in the 1920s. Performers and scholars were
faced with the challenge of reconstruction and the composition
of a large amount of missing recitative. The re-discovered
manuscript has three missing fragments, the opening of the
first act and the opening and the final chorus in the third
act. The American scholar, harpsichordist and conductor Alan
Curtis, who is one of the leading experts on Baroque music,
became involved with the editing and reconstruction of the
missing music from the recovered manuscript. Curtis explains
that the musicologist and composer Alessandro Ciccolini,
who is acknowledged as one of the greatest authorities on
Vivaldi, “composed the missing recitatives, adapted certain
arias that had prosodic, as well as musical and dramatic
affinities with the texts, and made use of his vast knowledge
of Vivaldi’s style and compositional practices combined with
his own skill and fantasy to supply the rest, always with
ideas from Vivaldi as the starting point.”
Luigi (Girolamo?) Giusti’s text
is set at the time of the conquest of the Aztec nation (Mexico)
by valiant Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (known here
as Fernando) and the downfall of its emperor Motezuma (Montezuma).
Vivaldi’s choice of Motezuma as his subject was unsurprising
since exotic stories set in distant lands were all the rage
in early eighteenth century Europe. The libretto includes
the inevitable fictitious love story between Motezuma’s daughter
Teutile and Cortés’s (Fernando) brother Ramiro. Later in
1755, Frederick the Great of Prussia himself wrote a fiercely
anti-Catholic libretto for Carl Heinrich Graun’s ‘Montezuma’.
Another ‘Montezuma’ libretto, written a decade later by Vittorio
Amedeo Cigna-Santi, was set to music by no fewer than seven
composers through 1781.
Vivaldi’s Motezuma had
its first performance on 14 November 1733 at the Teatro di
Sant’Angelo, perhaps directed by Vivaldi from the violin.
The Teatro di Sant’Angelo was one of Venice’s smaller opera
houses and could rarely afford to engage expensive famous
singers. Although Vivaldi appears normally to have preferred
to use alto castratos throughout his opera career, Motezuma featured
two young soprano castrati. In this recording the only male
voice is that of Motezuma (Vito Priante). Women sang the
roles of Mitrena, wife of Motezuma (Marijana Mijanovic),
Hernán Cortés, here called Fernando (Maite Beaumont), his
general Asprano (Inga Kalna) and Ramiro, the younger brother
of Fernando (Romina Basso) as well as Teutile, Motezuma’s
daughter (Roberta Invernizzi). Vivaldi elected not to employ
a chorus in the score of Motezuma and another break
from opera tradition is his decision not to compose a ‘love
scene’. The score to Motezuma has an unusually large
proportion of entirely new music, the inclusion of two soprano
castrato roles and at least four accompanied recitatives
shows his determination to keep abreast of the Neapolitan
style of Vinci and Hasse. These ingredients suggest that
Vivaldi was striving to evoke strong dramatic conflict and
to create sharply etched characterisations in his powerful
New World opera.
Motezuma, who has only three main
solo arias, is excellently performed by Vito Priante, the
Italian baritone. In the arias Gl’oltraggi della sorte’ and ‘Se
prescritta in questo giorno’ with rich and robust tones
Vito Priante demonstrates his beguiling voice. The baritone
makes a strong and characterful impression in one of opera’s
finest arias, ‘Dov’e la figlia’ where the defeated
emperor furiously laments his fate.
Vivaldi scholar Kees Vlaardingerbroek
is of the opinion that, “Mitrena is without doubt one
of the most impressive female characters in any Vivaldi opera.” Some
Vivaldi scholars hold the view that Vivaldi created the role
of Mitrena, the strong willed wife of Motezuma, specifically
for Anna Giró, his protégée. Giró was a young soprano and
former student of the Ospedale della Pietà and Vivaldi had
initiated a close relationship with her. The contralto Marijana
Mijanovic, born in the former Yugoslavia, appears miscast
in the challenging role of Mitrena to which her voice is
unsuited. None of the opera’s arias are more testing than
the dizzying coloratura of Mitrena’s aria, S’ impugni
la spada which was said to have been written especially
for Giró. Featuring two hunting horns, the aria requires
a voice with a wide range of agile coloratura and a phenomenal
technique. Marijana Mijanovic struggles disappointingly at
times in this difficult key aria which feels uncomfortably
high for her contralto. In Mitrena’s arias ‘La sull’eterna
sponda’, ‘La figla, lo sposo’ and ‘Nella stagion
ardente’ Mijanovic displays a ravishing mid-range but
her higher register when forced seems to lack the required
flexibility for the part and comes across as rather unsteady
and lacking in smoothness.
Teutile, the daughter of Motezuma
and Mitrena is sung by Italian-born Roberta Invernizzi. Teutile’s
arias ‘Barbaro, piu non sento’ and ‘L’agonie dell’alma
afflitta’ seem eminently suited to Invernizzi’s smooth
soprano voice. I found her high-quality singing expressive
and impressively controlled with a subtle manner of enunciation.
I especially admired Invernizzi’s bright and colourful singing
as Teutile in her aria ‘Un guardo, oh dio’.
The impressive Spanish mezzo Maite
Beaumont takes the part of Fernando (Hernán Cortés), the
General of the Spanish armies. Beaumont displays strength
and security in Fernando’s arias ‘Dalla sdegno che m’accende’ and ‘I
cenni d’un sovrano’. I found Fernando’s aria ‘Sei
troppo, troppo facile’ tidily performed, displaying significant
personality. The lengthy aria ‘L’aquila generosa’, which
features a rich orchestral accompaniment, is given a confident
interpretation by Beaumont, aptly demonstrating her attractive
timbre.
Ramiro, the younger brother of
Fernando is performed by Romina Basso, the Italian mezzo.
Basso displays her rich, warm and expressive voice in Ramiro’s
aria ‘Quel rossor ch’in volto miri’ which is a graceful
musical illustration of Ramiro’s rational and enlightened
thinking. In Ramiro’s aria ‘Tace il labbro’ Basso’s
attractive voice experiences some difficulties in her top
range with the complicated writing. I found Basso engaging
and warm voiced with her aria ‘In mezzo alla procella’ and
in ‘Anche in mezzo dei contenti’ she displays a fluid
control in an appealing interpretation.
One of the special successes of
the opera’s casting is Inga Kalna, the Latvian soprano, as
Asprano, the General of the Mexican army. Kalna’s coloratura
is impressive in Asprano’s technically difficult aria ‘Brilleran
per noi piu belle’, which is a good example of Vivaldi’s
use of strong contrasts. ‘D’ira e furor armato’ is
a bright aria with trumpet obbligato, considered one
of the finest in the opera and it presents no difficulty
for Kalna’s powerful and expansive voice. In Asprano’s aria ‘Nell’aspre
sue vicende’ Kalna displays her potency in a colourful
and appealing performance. The extended aria for Asprano ‘Dal
timor, dallo spavento’ reveals the polish and purity
of her soprano. The role of Asprano is a highly impressive
achievement for this thrilling Latvian soprano, Inga Kalna
who is destined for continued success.
One of the main highlights of
this release is the terzetto (trio)‘A battaglia, a battaglia’ which
is an unusually substantial, yet compact piece, that concentrates
on the dramatic conflict of the text without any distracting
orchestral flourishes. The trio of Vito Priante as
Motezuma, Maite Beaumont as Fernando and Marijana Mijanovic
as Mitrena provide an admirable performance that is dramatic
and swiftly paced.
The recording engineers are to
be congratulated for providing an excellent sound quality
and the comprehensive annotation is out of the top-drawer.
Vivaldi lovers will not want to be without this beautifully
performed and recorded opera.
Michael Cookson
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Motezuma, Vito Priante (baritone) 
