Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn ECCLES The Judgment of Paris - Three Mad Songs

At last we have a recording of John Eccles’s Judgment of Paris, the pastoral masque composed for a competition in 1701. The text itself, by Congreve, presents a contest between three goddesses (Juno, Pallas and Venus) for a golden apple, judged by a lowly shepherd (Paris). In the competition, organised by a group of English noblemen, Eccles came second to John Weldon, followed by Daniel Purcell and Gottfried Finger; Eccles’s version alone has stood the test of time, but except for a recording of the opening “Symphony for Mercury” by the Parley of Instruments (Hyperion, 11/88), none of the music has until now been available on CD.

Eccles’s one-act “semi-opera” calls for five solo singers, a choir and relatively modest instrumental resources – four-part strings, four trumpets, two recorders, kettledrums and continuo. Absent are castrati and countertenors. The music is tuneful, the boundaries between recitatives and airs often blurred. To address the lack of anguish or whiff of treachery in the masque, three “mad” arias by the composer, each sung by a different soprano, are included at the end. The Early Opera Company band delivers delicately balanced homophonic accompaniments to the airs, varied by ground basses that remind us of Henry Purcell, and occasional solos, duos and quartets. As charming as it is, it doesn’t bear comparison with opera seria of the day and, in particular, Handel’s Rinaldo, presented to London audiences a decade later.

Christian Curnyn offers an unaffected, faithful reading of the printed score. If anything, it is understated, the instrumental forces reduced (the premiere employed 85 musicians in addition to the “verse singers”) and the recording acoustic intimate. Lucy Crowe’s Venus may win the prize, but all of the soloists contribute beautifully judged portrayals. (Julie Anne Sadie / Gramophone)

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Semele

Performed “in the manner of an oratorio” (this was Lent 1744), Handel’s tragi-comedy of lust and ambition was far too depraved for contemporaries like Charles Jennens, who contemptuously dismissed it as “a baudy opera”. (A friend countered by dubbing it a “Bawdatorio”.) Today, of course, Semele is, with Giulio Cesare – another uninhibited celebration of the power of sex – the Handel work most likely to fill an opera house. Of a handful of previous recordings, none was entirely satisfying, though Gardiner’s 1981 Erato set might have been if had not cut around 40 minutes of music. Which makes this new version – complete save for an aria for Cupid that Handel later pilfered for Hercules – all the more welcome.

Christian Curnyn understands the unique tinta of this gorgeous score, and directs his spruce period band with a nice blend of nonchalant elegance and dramatic energy. Tempi are shrewdly judged, rhythms light and supple, and recitatives tumble inevitably into arias. The tragic d»nouement in Act 3 has due weight and intensity, whether in the tenderly inflected accompanied recitatives for Jupiter and Semele, or the awed chorus of Thebans after the heroine’s incineration. As at the English National Opera, Rosemary Joshua, radiant of tone, dazzling in coloratura, makes Semele far more than an over-sexed airhead. She is trills ethereally in “The morning lark”, distils a drowsy, erotic languor in “O†sleep, why dost thou leave me?”, and ornaments her “mirror” aria, “Myself I shall adore”, with dizzy glee. She is imploring and fiery by turns in her exchanges with Jupiter, and brings real pathos to the haunting siciliano “Thus let my thanks be paid” and her sublime death scene. As Jupiter, Richard Croft fields a honeyed, sensuous tone (heard to advantage in a seductive “Where’re you walk”) and formidable agility, though he could learn a thing or two about diction from Gardiner’s Anthony Rolfe-Johnson.

Like Handel himself, Curnyn assigns the virago Juno and Semele’s gentle sister Ino to the same singer. Hilary Summers, a true, deep contralto, characterises both roles well, though in sheer bitchiness her Juno yields to Della Jones (Gardiner) and Marilyn Horne, on the variably cast DG recording conducted by John Nelson (where Kathleen Battle’s ultra-knowing, heavy-lidded Semele may be more to your taste than mine). Brindley Sherratt, with his oaky bass, offers vivid, witty cameos as Cadmus and Somnus, while Stephen Wallace sings Athamas’s arias with smooth tone and a nimble florid technique, though a suspicion remains that the role lies a bit low for him. With excellent recorded sound and balance, and an informative essay from David Vickers, this becomes a clear first choice for an ever-enticing work. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Serse

‘One of the worst that Handel ever set to music’, ran a contemporary verdict on the libretto of Serse, whose ‘mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery’ fazed London audiences in 1738. History, of course, has had its revenge. Today the very qualities that puzzled its original hearers – the lightly ironic, occasionally farcical tone, the fluid structure (many short ariosos, relatively few full-dress da capo arias) – have made Serse one of Handel’s most attractive operas for stage directors and audiences alike. There are episodes of high seriousness, above all in the magnificent sequence of Act 2 arias beginning with Serse’s aria di bravura ‘Se bramate’. But much of the invention has an airy melodiousness, whether in the dulcet minuet songs for the coquettish Atalanta, or Serse’s invocation to a plane tree, ‘Ombra mai fu’, immortalised and sentimentalised as ‘Handel’s Largo’.

Until now the CD choice has been between the performances directed by Nicholas McGegan and William Christie. While there is much to enjoy in both, the Christie especially, they suffer from uneven casting. Not so this new recording, finely sung and conducted with style and spirit by Christian Curnyn. From the opening ‘Ombra mai fu’, taken flowingly (Anne Sofie von Otter and Christie are indulgently languorous here), Anglo-French mezzo Anna Stéphany sings superbly as the capricious Serse. Von Otter makes the king more of an absurd, if dangerous, psychopath. With her glowing, impassioned mezzo, Stéphany presents a more sympathetic character in arias such as the touching ‘Il core spera’, while giving full vent to Serse’s petulant wilfulness elsewhere. She hurls herself into the frenzied coloratura of ‘Se bramate’ and rages thrillingly in the torrential invocation to the furies just before the denouement.

As the heroine Romilda, Rosemary Joshua far eclipses her counterparts on the rival recordings, singing with sweet, sensuous tone and characterising deftly. She can be blithe, as in her Act 2 aria ‘Se l’idol mio’, but brings a fiery intensity to her agonised central aria, ‘È gelosia’. As her long-suffering lover Arsamene, David Daniels is at least a match for Lawrence Zazzo (with Christie), colouring his tone sensitively in the grief-laden ‘Non so se sia la speme’ and relishing the indignant coloratura brilliance of his one bravura aria, ‘Sì, la voglio’.

With her highly distinctive androgynous contralto, Hilary Summers suggests the pathos as well as the outrage of Serse’s wronged fiancée Amastre (Christie’s Silvia Tro Santafe turns her into a frenzied virago on speed); and Joélle Harvey catches the flighty grace, as well as the hints of deeper feelings, in Handel’s delicious arias for Atalanta. Brindley Sherratt, oakily sonorous of tone as the worthy-but-dim general Ariodate, and the incisive Andreas Wolf as an unhammy comic servant Elviro, complete a near-ideal cast. Once or twice – say, in Romilda’s aria ‘Chi cede al furore’ at the end of Act 1 – I thought Curnyn’s tempi a shade deliberate. But on the whole he paces the opera acutely, not least in the long stretches of recitative. For anyone wanting to acquire this jewel among Handel’s later operas, this beautifully recorded new version is the one to go for. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Partenope

Partenope was not a highly regarded work in its day, though it subsequently enjoyed the distinction of being among the first Handel operas to receive a decent recording with period instruments. That was Sigiswald Kuijken’s in 1979, with La Petite Bande and a cast that included Krisztina Laki, René Jacobs and Helge Müller-Molinari, and its quality and many wisdoms were sufficient in themselves to attract attention at a time when the Handel opera revival was yet to get under way. The work has not been recorded again until now, when greater general familiarity with Handel’s output renders it not only less of an exotic stranger but also reveals it to be one of its composer’s more interesting dramatic creations.

Handel composed it for the 1730 London season, less than a year into the so-called ‘Second Academy’ period in which he enjoyed increased artistic control over his productions. Partenope was a subject he had long coveted and with a new troupe of singers, less starry than before, he seems to have relished the chance to tone down the rattling virtuosity in favour of a more ‘company’ feel, and with it a more genuine and subtle mode of expression. He was helped by a strong libretto which is well set-out, humane with a touch of gentle humour, and features characters who are lifelike and credible. Partenope, Queen of Naples, is wooed by three suitors – the overly proud enemy general Emilio, the mopy but deserving Armindo, and her own favourite, Arsace. Arsace, however, is tormented by the woman he left behind, Rosmira, who is hanging around and making mischief disguised as a man. Eventually, and after much soul-searching, Arsace forces her to reveal her identity by challenging her to a bare-chest duel (which she declines). The couple are reunited, Partenope settles for Armindo, and Emilio accepts his rejection philosophically.

Christian Curnyn conducts a highly competent performance thoroughly in the groove of modern Handelian style, with a cast that has no vocal weaknesses and many dramatic virtues: Rosemary Joshua as Partenope and Hilary Summers as Rosmira have the most technically demanding music, but Joshua’s brightly confident singing also effortlessly suggests a woman both regal and desirable, while the dark-voiced Summers sounds like someone not to be messed with. Lawrence Zazzo conveys well the deepening suffering of Arsace, Stephen Wallace shows us the emerging nobility of Armindo, and if Kurt Streit sounds rather like a tenor stepping out of his usual Mozartian realm, then as the pompous Emilio he does need to be a little out of step with the others and his voice and Italian diction are both irresistibly splendid. In general the singing has a warmth to it that the (by no means redundant) Kuijken version does not always find, and although there are times when the recitatives could make room for more dramatic flexibility and conviction, this is nevertheless a thoroughly recommendable release for Baroque opera fans. (Lindsay Kemp / Gramophone)

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Alceste

After a century of neglect, many of Handel’s once sensationally popular operas are now an established part of the operatic mainstream. But here is something of a rarity: the incomplete ‘incidental music’ for Alceste.

Conceived as a hugely lavish production, it was possibly Alceste’s overreaching ambition that led to its downfall. A team of top talent was assembled for its creation: Scottish-born playwright Tobias Smollett, impresario John Rich, celebrated set-designer Giovanni Servandoni, Handel's librettist Thomas Morell and, of course, the towering genius composer of the opera world himself. Intended for performance at Covent Garden, the production collapsed soon after rehearsals had begun in 1749. Quite why remains a mystery – but it seems likely that the involvement of too many temperamental cooks spoilt the proverbial broth.

Smollett's play disappeared and remains lost; but, fortunately, Handel's music survives. Indeed, much of it will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the subsequent works into which Handel pragmatically recycled its material – The Choice of Hercules, Belshazzar and Alexander Balus. This new Chandos release offers a welcome chance to appreciate the music of Alceste in its original, never realised, guise.

The classical drama tells of Alceste's self-sacrifice to save her dying husband, King Admetus, and of Hercules' journey to Hades to bring Alceste back to the world of the living. Smollett assigned the principal roles to actors; Handel's arias are sung by secondary characters. Pick of the bunch is the ravishing ‘Gentle Morpheus, son of night’, in which Calliope (goddess of poetry) consoles Admetus, sung with affecting tenderness here by Lucy Crowe to sumptuously lilting accompaniment from the Early Opera Company orchestra under conductor Christian Curnyn.

Occasionally he doesn't get the mood quite right – the wedding celebration chorus ‘O bless, ye pow'rs above’ needs greater rhythmic spring. But, generally, Curnyn's lively and sensitive approach makes a strong case for this little-known score. (Graham Rogers / BBC Music)

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Acis and Galatea

The award-winning Early Opera Company under the direction of founder Christian Curnyn celebrates the 300^th anniversary of the premiere of one of Handel’s most sublime creations: Acis and Galatea.

This unique interpretation is performed as Handel himself specified in the manuscript: supported by fourteen period instruments, the outstanding cast of singers takes on the solo parts as well as the magnificent choruses. This is Handel writing at his highest levels of intimacy and intensity; the music superbly supports the libretto's evocative portrayal of the story, simultaneously restrained, economical, and deeply moving.

It is exquisite music, and has been the Early Opera Company’s most frequently requested and played performance over the last few years. With the addition of Baroque experts Lucy Crowe and Benjamin Hulett, previously featured on the award-winning Chandos recording of Alceste, this album in surround sound is not only an extraordinary achievement for the company but a must-have for all early music lovers.

Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn HANDEL Flavio

Premiered at the King’s Theatre in May 1723, Flavio is one of those Handel operas – Serse and Partenope are others – that takes a wryly amused view of the power struggles, bulging egos and heroic posturing endemic to opera seria. With its pungent mix of comedy, ironic detachment and near-tragedy, it now seems one the composer’s most endearing stage works. Handel’s aristocratic audiences, though, evidently preferred operas of a loftier cast. Despite the presence of the two biggest stars of the day, Cuzzoni and Senesino, Flavio ran for just eight performances (Giulio Cesare, its immediate successor, netted 13), and was revived just once in Handel’s lifetime.

Set in a legendary Dark Ages when Britain was supposedly ruled by Lombardy, the plot hinges on the whims of the oversexed, cynically manipulative King Flavio, whose lust for the beautiful – and far from innocent – Teodata threatens to wreak havoc on everyone around him. Opening with a delectable nocturnal love duet for Teodata and her secret lover Vitige, Act 1 is light in tone, with a succession of arias in graceful and/or jaunty dance rhythms. Then, as the plot takes a darker, potentially tragic turn, Handel responds with some of his most piercing arias, above all for the heroine Emilia (the Cuzzoni role), whose father Lotario has been killed in a duel by her fiancé Guido. Lotario’s death apart, all ends well, of course, with Emilia and Guido reconciled and reunited after she has feared him dead, and the ever-capricious Flavio “punishing” Vitige by granting him the hand of Teodata.

Christian Curnyn and his spruce period band finely catch the tone and tinta of this delectable opera. Tempi – mobile but never frenetic – are aptly chosen, rhythms buoyant. Yet Curnyn gives due weight to the opera’s graver moments, whether in Emilia’s haunting siciliano aria that closes Act 2, cleaving mournfully to the minor key virtually throughout, or Guido’s desolate final aria, in the rare, “extreme” key of B flat minor. The singers, many of them Curnyn regulars, dispatch their arias with fine Handelian style and spirit, and, crucially, bring real theatrical vitality to their recitative exchanges. Handel curiously cast the part of Teodata (written for the deep contralto Anastasia Robinson) for a lower voice than that of her lover Vitige. But while her timbre more naturally suggests gravity than levity, Hilary Summers catches Teodata’s teasing, flirtatious nature through inflection and phrasing. As her lover Vitige, Croatian mezzo Renata Pokupic´ sings with grace, verve and (not least in Vitige’s jealous outburst in Act 3) an exciting flame in the tone; and Thomas Walker and the sonorous bass Andrew Foster-Williams excel in the blustering, mock-heroic coloratura arias for the squabbling councillors Ugone and Lotario.

As Flavio, Tim Mead sings smoothly and mellifluously without always catching to the full the mingled charm, absurdity and menace of the king’s character. Iestyn Davies, in the Senesino role of Guido, has slightly more “bite” to his countertenor, and rises impressively both to the anguished fury of his Act 2 aria “Rompo i lacci” and the profound pathos of his final aria. Always a lovely Handel singer, Rosemary Joshua brings to Emilia’s glorious music a pure, lucent tone and a vivid sense of character, growing from initial blitheness, through her aching farewell to Guido – one of those ravishing, timeless Handelian moments – to the grieving intensity of her siciliano lament for her father. The sole rival Flavio, directed by René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 7/90), has been rightly praised. But on balance I’d recommend this beautifully recorded new version of Handel’s flavoursome tragicomedy, for its (on the whole) superior cast and orchestral playing and for Curnyn’s direction, stylish, lively and unaffected where Jacobs can be irritatingly interventionist. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)