Two forms of sorrowful music were popular in the renaissance and
baroque eras, one religious, one secular, though the two sometimes
overlapped. The popularity of settings of the Lamentations of
Jeremiah, alone or as part of Tenebræ for Holy Week is
matched by the secular lament, several of which are performed
on this new recording, including what may be considered the pattern
for them all, Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna. Ariadne’s
desertion by Theseus rarely figured in art until the subject was
popularised by Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, now in the
London National Gallery.
Ariadne’s Lament was originally part of Monteverdi’s
1608 opera Arianna, now lost, only the enormous popularity
of the Lament having preserved several versions of this one
small part. Surprisingly, Emmanuelle Haïm or the producer has
decided not to place this piece first on the CD where it surely
ought to be, but that doesn’t prevent my considering it first
– surely, the performance of this piece makes or breaks the
CD.
Véronique Gens (tr.4) begins her performance almost
inaudibly, her voice nearly lost against the accompaniment;
though she increases the volume as she turns from longing to
die to an appeal to Theseus to return and save her, this is
quiet, undemonstrative grief. It’s not ineffective, but I’d
have liked the stops to have been pulled out a little more,
as they are by Emma Kirkby with the Consort of Musicke. Kirkby’s
voice is clearer and more audible against the chitarrone accompaniment
from the start and her grief more palpable. Her account is
also considerably more drawn out – 9:52 against Gens’ 7:12 –
without dragging or sounding at all lugubrious. I like most
of what I’ve heard from Véronique Gens in the past, but I have
to declare Kirkby the clear winner here. (Deutsche Harmonia
Mundi 05472774302, at super-budget price).
If, as I have said, the performance of this piece
makes or breaks the CD, I have to declare it a limited success
– all is still to play for.
The other respect in which the Kirkby/Rooley recording
gains is in setting this one work in context, with Monteverdi’s
own later arrangement for five voices (1614) and his 1640 reworking
of the Lament in the persona of the Virgin Mary as il
Pianto della Madonna for voice and organ, with Jesus replacing
Theseus as the object of longing. To these Monteverdi settings,
the DHM recording adds settings by Severo Bonini, Francesco
Costa and Antonio Verso of Ariadne’s Lament, a superb CD, let
down only by its lack of texts.
Of the other Monteverdi works on the new CD, Natalie
Dessay’s Lamento della Ninfa (tr.2) is rather more impressive,
the sense of betrayal which she feels more palpable. Of course,
lamenting lovers of both genders are part of the post-Petrarchan
game of the madrigal, but one might as well enter fully into
the spirit of the game, as Dessay does here. If anything, she
sounds a little strident, but I suppose that it’s in the nature
of neglected nymphs to sound strident.
The competition here, too, is intense – no less
than the Concerto Italiano directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini
in their excellent account of the Eighth Book of Madrigals,
reissued last year at mid-price on Naïve OP30435 (3 CDs – see
review
by Glyn Pursglove). On the Alessandrini recording, the nymph
is sung by Rossana Bertini, a sweeter-sounding singer if that’s
the way you like your nymphs. For me she made a more convincing
nymph than her better-known rival, successfully blending vulnerability
and grief. If I preferred Kirkby’s more elongated version of
Arianna’s lament, it may seem illogical to prefer Bertini’s
slightly faster account of the nymph’s lament, but I did. I
also much preferred Alessandrini’s supporting singers – and
the whole of his set of Book 8 is so engaging that I couldn’t
take the CD off after hearing the lamento.
If you want the Lamento della Ninfa slightly
slower and more grief-laden, there is an excellent version on
a collection of Madrigali Amorosi from Monteverdi’s later
madrigal books from Cantus Cölln and Conrad Junghänel, another
super-budget CD from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (05472778552).
I couldn’t take this CD off, either, after making the comparison;
I bought it several years ago at full price – it’s excellent value
now at around £5.
On track 6 of the new CD, Joyce DiDonato sings
Addio Roma from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea,
which I found rather more convincing than either of her rivals
in the Laments – this is an Ottavia with more bite than Arianna
and less stridency than the nymph, which is as it should be
– while Rolando Villazón rounds off the CD on track 11 with
the fourth Monteverdi piece, Tu se’morta from L’Orfeo
in which I actually preferred his singing to that of Nigel Rogers
on my ‘benchmark’ recording of this work. Orpheus’s grief
at the loss of Eurydice is, of course, an even better-known
classical tale of loss than that of Ariadne.
Villazón offers the most pleasant surprise on the
new recording: I hadn’t associated his voice with baroque music,
but Cavalli’s Lasso io vivo, with which he opens the
CD in fine style, and the concluding piece from L’Orfeo
make me hope that he will visit this repertoire more regularly,
perhaps even a complete Monteverdi opera? If anything, I found
his two tracks more attractive than anything which the more
established baroque voices here have to offer.
Barbara Strozzi’s L’Eraclito amoroso (tr.3)
offers an unusual view of the philosopher Heraclitus who averred
that everything is in flux, panta rhei. Even philosophers
fall in love – in the late medieval and early-modern periods the
legend of Socrates making himself a fool for love’s sake was a
popular theme. Barbara Strozzi, a rare female composer in a male
world, would have been delighted at the thought of a man besotted
by his beloved and her setting of this text is one of the reasons
why she is often thought of as a proto-feminist. It’s a fine
work and Philippe Jaroussky delivers it convincingly. Strozzi
certainly deserves to be much better known; sadly, the Musica
Oscura label, on which she had a CD to herself, is no longer operative.
Johan van Veen strongly recommended a mid-price Harmonia Mundi
CD of her music which includes two laments (HMX2901114 – see review:
NB the heading omits a vital 1 in the catalogue number.)
For poets and composers in Catholic Europe, Mary
Stuart became a modern martyr for the cause. The usually moderate
Ronsard makes her an iconic figure in his Elégie à Marie
Stuart (ed. Laumonier XIV, 152), even before her imprisonment
and death, conveniently ignoring her chequered history. Carissimi’s
Lamento di Maria Stuarda (tr.8) belongs to this genre;
its text is more passionate than Ronsard and it receives an
appropriately declamatory performance from Patrizia Ciofi, preferable
to the slightly over-the-top and rather drawn-out performance
of this piece by Elisabeth Speiser on a deleted all-Carissimi
1988 recording on the Jecklin label (JD 5004-2). The Jecklin
version takes over 12 minutes, which is over-egging the tragic
pudding a little – the new Virgin version lasts only 9:13 and
the version on Naxos (Lamenti Barocchi, Volume 3, 8.553320)
falls in-between at 11:32. For all my reservations, the Jecklin
offers a valuable collection, worth looking out for in remainder
bins or second-hand.
Ciofi also sings Tremulo spirito from Cavalli’s
la Didone on track 10 with Marie-Nicole Lemieux. This
extract portrays the grief of Hecuba, part of the story of the
destruction of Troy which Æneas relates to Dido; the booklet
doesn’t make the connection clear – many listeners will be left
wondering how the grief of Hecuba comes into an opera about
Dido.
Hamlet wonders at the way in which an actor could
invoke sympathy for a long-dead Trojan woman, that he:
Could force his soule so to his own conceit,
That from her working, all his visage wann’d;
Teares in his eyes, distraction in’s Aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole Function suiting
With Formes, to his Conceit? And all for nothing?
For Hecuba?
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba
That he should weepe for her? (Hamlet 2.2.530-7)
We may equally admire the quality of Cavalli’s
music and its rendition on this recording.
Dido was, of course, the other great classical
model of the abandoned lover, the love of Dido and Æneas in
Book IV of Vergil’s Æneid being, then as now, the best-known
part of that work. Another excerpt from la Didone appears
on track 7, not so much a lament as the regret of Æneas that
fate calls him away, sung this time by Topi Lehtipuu, a tenor
whom I had not encountered before but whom I am very much looking
forward to hearing again on the strength of this piece.
Christopher Purves gives a good account of Landi’s
Superbe colli (tr.5) and Laurent Naouri also sings well
in Cesti’s Dure noie (tr.9). On the whole, the male
singers acquit themselves better than the ladies on this CD,
which is surprising in view of the fact that few of the men
are well known, other than Villazón – and he is not normally
associated with the baroque – while the ladies are mostly baroque
specialists.
The accompaniment by the members of Le Concert
d’Astrée is mostly suitably low-key and Emmanuelle Haïm’s direction
equally unobtrusive. The recording is good and the notes brief
but to the point. The English notes are the original text,
so no problems with translation there; the translations of the
texts are also idiomatic.
The CD as a whole may be recommended, individual
reservations notwithstanding, though it may be timely to reinforce
my recommendation of the two much less expensive DHM recordings
which I have mentioned. I haven’t heard any of the Naxos series
of Lamenti Barocchi, but they, too, of course, are very
inexpensive. Let cost be no object, however, in obtaining the
Alessandrini CDs of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book – in any case,
they are a sort of bargain in that the three discs are offered
at effectively the price of two.
Brian
Wilson
Patrizia Ciofi (soprano); Natalie Dessay (soprano); Véronique Gens
(soprano); Joyce DiDonato (mezzo); Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto);
Philippe Jaroussky (counter-tenor) ; Topi Lehtipuu (tenor);
Rolando Villazón (tenor) ; Simon Wall (tenor); Laurent Naouri
(bass-baritone); Christopher Purves (bass-baritone);
