When
Monteverdi published his Madrigali guerrieri
et amorosi in 1638, he almost certainly
envisaged them as being performed to a small
audience in an intimate setting, and indeed
that’s how many of us first came to know this
music – a vivid memory of mine is hearing
Emma Kirkby and Nigel Rogers performing it
in York sometime around 1977, with the audience
sometimes outnumbered by the orchestra in
tiny rooms like the upstairs chamber in the
Treasurer’s house. Does it work in a vast
and soulless space like the Barbican? Yes,
when it is sung and played like this: the
tenors John Mark Ainsley and Paul Agnew are
without equals in this kind of florid music
today, and Emmanuelle Haim, whilst I still
hesitate to find her as fascinating as my
colleagues do, directed her ensemble in an
admirably unfussy way, taking her cues from
the singers – which was just as well, since
Ainsley in particular seldom seems to take
much notice of what a conductor is doing anyway.
Many
of the large audience had presumably been
lured to the Barbican by Mlle Haim’s presence,
and I’m sure that a lot of the singing was
a complete revelation to them – and a good
thing too, if they then go away wanting to
hear more, but it’s very sad that Haim seems
to have recognized Ainsley’s unique qualities
rather late in the day, since although he
would have been the obvious choice as her
Orfeo on the new recording, that part came
the way of Ian Bostridge, who is about as
suitable for this music as Ainsley would be
for something like ‘Di quella Pira.’ In fact,
Bostridge was originally scheduled to sing
in this very concert, until, we are told,
ill health (or good sense?) intervened. I
mean no disrespect to Bostridge, who is a
wonderful singer of Schubert and Britten and
much else, but the prospect of him anguishing
his way through Testo’s frighteningly taxing
narrative was not a happy one. In the event,
we were treated to some truly exciting singing
by two tenors whose voices may cover the same
registers but whose tone, phrasing, articulation
and stage presence are very different. The
striking Italian soprano Patrizia Ciofi was
either having a bad evening or is simply out
of their league.
‘Interrote
speranze’ was a sombre opening, sung with
wonderful unity by the tenors, and it was
followed by Agnew’s ideally passionate ‘Ecco
di dolci raggi:’ what a joy to hear this dulcet,
mellifluous voice with its genuine trill
and its confident but never overbearing presentation.
The tremendous ‘Si dolce è ‘l tormento’
was given to Ainsley, thus providing a direct
comparison between these voices: where Agnew’s
is naturally warm, soft, sweet and caressing
in phrase, Ainsley’s is the kind of voice
often called ‘plangent’ by those who don’t
actually know what this word means (it’s having
a loud, deep, mournful sound, and comes from
the Latin plangere, meaning beating the breast
– anyone less likely to indulge in such behaviour
would be hard to imagine) but might be better
described as plaintive – this is not to say
that it is thin, far from it, but it has a
kind of elegant spareness which makes it highly
distinctive, and of course it is used with
such at times almost incredible virtuosity
as to render it unique, at least amongst currently
active singers. The lines ‘Se fiamma d’amore
/ Già mai non senti / Quel rigido core’
were typical in their fluent phrasing and
quiet intensity.
‘Ohimè,
ch’ io cado, ohimè’ was sung by Patrizia
Ciofi as though it were a comedy piece – perhaps
it is, and I have totally misinterpreted it,
but to me lines like ‘Lasso, del veccho ardour
/ Conosco l’orme ancor’ don’t really lend
themselves to this kind of mugging. She has
a very dramatic mode of delivery, replete
with gesture, but her voice is rather monochrome
in timbre, lacking in subtlety and poise at
least on this hearing: no doubt I’ll soon
have the chance to hear her in better form
and write more positively, since she has a
full calendar for the year ahead. She showed
her dramatic strengths in Carissimi’s ‘Ferma,
lascia ch’io parli’ although her tone seemed
to me rather hard and lacking in colour. Ainsley
provided an object lesson in fluency, delicate
gradation of tone colour and sheer virtuosity
in Frescobaldi’s ‘Dunque dovrò’ which
would have made a better end to the first
half.
No complaints
about the placing of the first piece after
the interval: Marino’s words and Monteverdi’s
music in ‘Tempro la Cetra’ express very similar
sentiments to those of Bruchmann and Schubert’s
‘An die Leier’ - ‘…per cantar gli onori /
Di Marte….mai risuoni altro che Amore / ‘Ich
will von Atreus Söhnen … Nur Liebe im
Erklingen’ and both pieces are perfect first
songs: the singer expresses the desire to
praise gods and heroic deeds, but his lyre
expresses his own underlying desire to sing
only of love. Paul Agnew sang it superbly:
the technical assurance is all there, even
if it is not quite at Ainsley’s spectacular
level, and his final line, ‘In grembo a Citerea
dorma al tuo canto’ was perfection, the voice’s
beautiful diminuendo at ‘canto’ shading gently
into the organ’s soft phrases so that for
a moment voice and keyboard seemed like one.
The
evening’s main work was Monteverdi’s ‘Il Combattimento
di Tancredi e Clorinda’ which the composer
saw as reviving the ancient Greek differentiation
between the three styles of emotion – anger,
equilibrium and the touching, and these three
were all ideally provided in Ainsley’s narrative.
What distinguishes great singing in this repertoire
is no different from that which marks it out
in others: when you hear Pavarotti almost
sounding hungry for the notes as he leaps
onto them in ‘Questo o Quella,’ you are hearing
exactly the same kind of relish, confidence
and desire for the music as you hear when
Ainsley sings a phrase like ‘…e ne l’oblio
fatto si grande’ – and it is exactly the same
kind of facility with narrative which makes
this singer the ideal Evangelist and which
provides Monteverdi singing of such freshness,
consummate technical skill and sheer excitement.
He told the story of the ill-fated warriors
as though it had been written yesterday, his
use of contrasts between the stately and the
frenetic beautifully counterpointed by the
continuo, and he made every word tell, not
only in the exact depiction of ‘..e ‘l sangue
avido beve’ (he avidly drinks her blood) but
most vividly in the torrent of notes which
Monteverdi pours out in ‘E las vendetta poi
l’onta rinova…’ He was rightly given a huge
ovation for this piece of superb singing,
and Paul Agnew’s contribution as Tancredi
shone equally brightly: in such a context
it was a pity that when Ciofi’s Clorinda sang
that final heavenly cadence she was musically
descending below the note rather than soaring
up to it.
Haim’s
musicians provided clean, finely articulated
and committed support throughout, with some
exceptional playing by the violins in the
brief instrumental interludes: in all, an
evening of the highest musical and dramatic
excellence. Those lucky enough to have access
to the city of Lille, amongst whom I am glad
to say I am one, are sure of further delights
in the coming season when Le Concert d’Astree
takes up residency at the Opera House there.
Melanie Eskenazi
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