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Reviewer:
Barry Brenesal
If you were
around Venice in 1718, I envy you. It was a watershed year for opera. The lavish
Teatro San Giovanni Grisotomo, the Teatro di San Moisè, and the popular Teatro
San Angelo were joined for the first time in five years by the Teatro di San
Cassiano, all four houses in competition with new, major operatic works.
Fourteen productions were unveiled among them that year, featuring the music of
such celebrated contemporary composers as Albinoni, Gasparini, and Orlandini.
Vivaldi, operating for several years out of San Moisè—the theater that opened
its doors in 1640 with Monteverdi’s now sadly lost L’Arianna, and closed
them a few years after premiering Rossini’s Il signor Bruschino, in
1813—worked with a young poet, Giovanni Palazzi, who gave way to the composer’s
demands for a pre-reform libretto. As a result, Armida avoids much of the
somber, dignified rhetoric and smoothly organized dramatic pace of Zeno and
Metastasio, in favor of fantasy, melodrama, and independently structured arias.
For whatever
reason, be it the San Moisè’s smaller size or budgetary concerns, Vivaldi’s
orchestra for this opera was limited to strings, two hunting horns, and a solo
bassoon. It was to the composer’s credit that he varied textures so
imaginatively in Armida, and avoided monotony. No better examples of this are to
be found than Tisaferno’s charmingly galant aria, “D’un bel volto arde
alla face,” in 6/8 time with a solo violin and cello weaving a tapestry of
successive arpeggios around the melody, or the mix of fugato and sighing violins
beneath Emireno’s “Il mio fedele amor.” The dramatic situations that the
libretto expertly provides find Vivaldi in excellent form as well, but as usual
with this composer, there’s little sense of character within the music. Its
melodic-harmonic style is instantly recognizable in the same way as so many
other Vivaldi works, but seldom moves away from his series of well-known,
well-worn patterns.
It should be noted that this isn’t the full score of Vivaldi’s
Armida. The edition used here employs the autograph in Turin’s Biblioteca
Nazionale, missing its second act, roughly one-third of the work. Frédéric
Delaméa and Rinaldo Alessandrini have done an excellent job of producing a
pastiche result with a new act II, however. The conductor composed new
recitatives in an appropriate style, while borrowing the music of eight arias
from Vivaldi’s Arsilda, La Senna festeggiante, La verità in cimento,
Medea e Giasone, L’incoronazione di Dario, and Teuzzone. (Three
additional arias of the original second act survive in other sources.)
Much of the team assembled for the production will be familiar to
enthusiasts of Baroque opera, and Vivaldi’s in particular. Furio Zanasi’s agile
baritone is welcome as the Caliph, while Romina Basso’s darkly rich,
well-produced mezzo displays admirable coloratura, pleasant cantabile, a variety
of colors, and an attention to dramatic values in “Pensa che quell bel seno.”
Martín Oro, a countertenor of notable vocal delicacy, is at his best in the
haunting “Quando in seno alla tua bella.” Sara Mingardo shows more temperament
in “Segui pur, chi t’inamora” than I’ve heard from this extremely agile but
placid contralto before—and though it heads in the right direction, still more
of the same would have been welcome in the key dramatic role of Armida. Monica
Bacelli is in reasonably good form: accurate, bright, phrasing intelligently,
though showing some breathlessness in “Languire costante.” Marina Comparato
sounds a bit acidic and strident, though she exhibits the same ease with
figurations put on display recently in Terradellas’ Artaserse. Rinaldo
Alessandrini isn’t the speed demon here that Sardelli and Spinosi are in the
Vivaldi Edition operas; while remaining on the fast side, his tempos tend to
greater variety, without ever achieving the manic gallop that afflicts his
fellow series conductors who equate heavy ornamentation with fireworks.
In short, this is a strong production of an opera whose main interest, outside
of its act II interpolations, are largely textural. If you’re following these
Vivaldi releases along, I would place this below Tito Manlio (Naïve
30413), Farnace (Alia Vox 9822), and Griselda (Naïve 30419) in
variety and brilliance of effect. Those are the ones I’d suggest investigating
first, if you want to hear what the Red Priest could accomplish on the operatic
stage.
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