RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Emilio de CAVALIERI (c.1550-1602)
Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (1600) [93.18]
Marie-Claude Chappuis (mezzo) - Anima
Johannes Weisser (baritone) - Corpo
Gyula Orendt (baritone) - Tempo/Consiglio
Mark Milhofer (tenor) - Inteletto/Piacere
Marcus Fink (bass-baritone) - Mondo/Compagno di Piacere
Berlin State Opera Chorus; Concerto Vocale
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/René Jacobs
rec. 2014, Teldex Studio, Berlin, Germany. DDD
Texts and translations included
HARMONIA MUNDI HMC902200.01 [38.15 + 54.33]
Anyone, especially music students, who has been brought up
with Curt Sachs' iconic 'A Short History of World Music'
(Dobson, London, 1956) will have read about the extraordinary ‘three
scores’ of 1600 that altered the course of music. One of the three was
this work which Sachs describes as in the tradition of ”moralities of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, its dramatic personae were allegories
or abstract conceptions - Time, the World, Life and Intellect and its attitude
was strongly didactic and edifying rather than dramatic.” So it was
with a certain trepidation that I picked out the thick booklet with its two
essays and texts and started to work through this famous piece which is probably
more written about than heard.
Indeed my fears were not allayed on reading the text by Padre Agostino Manni
— wonderfully translated in the booklet by Charles Johnston. It’s
difficult nowadays to agree with or to get a handle on texts like this. Life
according to the character ‘Prudent’ in the opening spoken dialogue,
is a ‘dark vale of tears, a barren source of thought, a river swollen
by tears and a stormy sea of miseries”. The only way to live is to think
upon heavenly rewards and joys. ‘Body’ wants to enjoy fame and
fortune in the present world., ‘Soul’ tries to draw him “towards
loftier impulses”. But, like Jesus in the desert ‘Body’
is tempted. However the heavenly angels eventually carry him through and into
the final ‘Festa’ which is a celebration in paradise with singing
and dancing. Manni was a follower of Filippo Neri and his confraternity, a
group that emphasised a personal need for salvation. To make the venture so
successful we must also assume that Cavalieri was at least in considerable
sympathy with their ideas.
I was expecting a series of somewhat dry (secco) recitatives and slow arias
rather in the manner of Jacopo Peri’s Dafne of the same year
but I was utterly wrong. I should have recalled the delight and fun we had
in the late 1970s putting on a London performance of the music for the 1589
Medici wedding to which Cavalieri made such a joyous contribution. There are
many reasons for wallowing in and really enjoying this work.
As René Jacobs writes, the piece “offers an ideal vehicle for studying
the role of dance as an integral element of baroque culture and mentality”.
Clearly then, there are dances and bouncy dance rhythms. There is much use
of instrumental colour and contrast, some of which is dictated by the composer
but much else is I assume of Jacobs’ own imagination. There are passages
for instruments alone – Interludes - some by Cavalieri himself but also
employing extracts from Schein’s Banchetto Musicale (not actually
published until 1617, but never mind) and some Masque music (I assume) by
Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger including a superb Infernal Sinfonia.
Jacobs' scoring is for strings but with added recorders, cornets, trombone
and percussion and a continuo including an organ. These help to delineate
characters very successfully. One of my favourite moments is in Act 3 when
a ‘Heavenly Sinfonia’ of strings plays a little interlude of Ferrabosco’s
just before ‘Intellect’ sings ‘Souls who rejoice in Heaven’.
These instruments are split into three groups to allow these colour spacings.
In the theatre Jacobs places them to the sides and behind the singers and
this also allows for some delicious ‘echo’ effects.
Next, the vocal lines, which are often restricted in scope. These do not encompass
a wide range and are not particularly virtuosic. It is as though the composer
does not want us to enjoy the worldly ornamentation of the singers —
although Jacobs does permit some — in favour of a simpler vocal line.
There is, in addition, little text repetition. The style is more arioso than
recit, and there is much for the chorus to do, commenting on the action and
leading us on quickly to the next scene. In Act 3 a real sense of drama is
felt in the contrast between Heaven and Hell with an audible hell-fire, a
sort of musical realisation of the kind of doom painting you might find in
England, say at the Guild Chapel in Stratford-on-Avon or above the chancel
arch in St. Thomas’s church. Salisbury.
As to whether the piece is Opera or Oratorio, a topic dwelt on in the booklet
essays especially by Silke Leopold, in this performance the drama of the opera
house seems to be very close but to the Romans of 1600. It was nothing but
a presentation and an entertainment. Anyway Jacobs staged the work at Berlin’s
Staatsoper im Schiller-Theater so one can see clearly where he is coming from.
The work has no story-line as such — just a series of conversations
between good and earthly characters. Thus, it is not in the tradition of the
third great score of 1600 Monteverdi’s Orfeo, being much more
static.
Jacobs extracts from his performers a strong sense of drama and momentum.
This is instinctive but also carefully calculated through an in-depth understanding
of the music and its period. I have not heard any other recording or performance
but all I can say is how impressed I became. It's something to do with
the strength of the musical ideas and the determined work which Jacobs and
his supporters, including those in the technical department, have applied
to this project.
My only gripe is that I don’t understand why Act 2 had to be split between
the two CDs. It would have fitted on disc one perfectly well. Anyway, both
CDs and the one hundred-page booklet are in a sumptuous cardboard case which,
very aptly is decorated with scenes from Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel
ceiling.
Gary Higginson
Previous reviews:
Brian Wilson ~~
Johan van Veen
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