Italian Cantatas

Scarlatti and Handel overlapped in their careers in Rome. They might well have become fierce competitors for audience and patronage, but Scarlatti moved off to Naples and Handel to England, and there's no evidence that they formed any bond or an rivalry. But think of it! The two greatest composers of the 18th Century outside Germany! It makes me yearn dyschronistically to be present at the musical Shoot-out at the OK Corral which never occurred.

At the end of the 17th Century, Pope Innocent XII prohibited stage opera in the Papal States, including Rome itself. In prompt response, composers developed the sacred oratorio, essentially stationary opera, and took it right to the steps of the altar in Romes's major churches. Wealthy music lovers also commissioned secular oratorios for salon performance. Boom times for the young Handel and the mature Scarlatti!

The cantatas on these two disks were all written on secular texts, the usual ardent love-drivel of late Renaissance madrigalists operatically updated to include recitativo and da capo arias. CD 1 features four short cantatas and a splendid instrumental sonata; the cantatas are virtuoso diplay pieces, calling on male alto Gerard Lesne to emote passionately in his recitativos and to soar gymnastically in his arias. Lesne is more than up to all demands. CD 2 is all Scarlatti, with a spectacularly operatic duet cantata dialogue between Marc Antonio and Cleopatra, sung by Lesne and soprano Sandrine Piau, and another gloriously languid duet between Hero and Leander. Love was cruel but captivating in the salons of Rome, with Scarlatti on the scene.

Sandrine Piau, Gerard Lesne, and as a bonus, violinist Fabio Biondi! The boys down by the Corral tell me "it don't get no better than that!"

This is a recording so rich in arts fabric that is woven into its music; it represents some of the best in the Golden Age of Baroque music, and it is impossible to speak of its merits without looking into its history and other underlying fundamentals.

The main interest of the first disk is Handel's cantata La Lucrezia. The subject, described by Livy, has been exciting imagination and inspiring artists since the time of the title heroine, the Roman noblewoman Lucrezia, wife of Tarquinius Collatius. Lucrezia was raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan king of Rome Tarquinius Superbus, who was destined to enter history as the last such king due to this act of violence:

Lucretia And Tarquin Giclee Print

This legendary event came to symbolize two ideas: the female personal tragedy and the suffering of Rome from the tyranny of crude force, which led to the uprising of Rome against her oppressors and the establishment of the Roman Republic that would last for seven centuries till Giulio Cesare, another figure much represented in music. It is interesting to note that rapes of females punctuate paramount events in Roman history - the Rape of Sabine women led to the creation of Roman race, and the rape of Lucrezia led to the creation of Roman Republic. Quite traditionally, these women did not avenge themselves, since it was almost always a male prerogative, and the proud Lucrezia had killed herself, as her preceding colleague in grief - the Carthage Queen Dido - the abandoned (not raped, but bewitched by the hero's mother Venus) lover of the founder of Rome Aeneas. That story is also well-celebrated by Purcell's opera and innumerable paintings of Dido's story.

8" x 6" Mounted Print Tiepolo Villa Valmarana Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido

Accordingly, in beaux arts there is hardly an "old" master" who did not create his own pictorial interpretation of Lucrezia. We have pictures of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rembrandt, Parmigianino, Durer, Cranach, and many more. The subject would give an artist an opportunity to depict a beautiful young aristocratic woman opulently and luxuriously clad in various degree in baring her body while invariably showing her breast; her emotional pain and apparent courage would spruce up eroticism with sadomasochistic "basso continuo", nicely accentuating her youth and splendor. The subject is utterly feminine and has a long lasting impact.

FRAMED oil paintings - Sebastiano Ricci - 24 x 26 inches - Lucretia

In music the fame of Lucrezia rolled into our days, and Benjamin Britten took a stab at trying to interpret the story with a modern eye. His idea was that Lucrezia had actually enjoyed her rape, and her despair was caused by losing her lover forever, while not at all because of her desecrated pride. And I think that Gerard Lesne on this recording is making a similar mistake to Britten - that is, interpreting the piece quite differently from what it was supposed to convey. If Britten's revisionistic interpretation might be due to his apparent disdain for feminine emotion, stemming from a popular male idea "how is it possible not to enjoy rough sex?", Lesne is so indifferent, nonchalant and remote in his expression of the cantata, while its music is written in extreme musical language, full of angular, disjunctive lines and harsh chromatic harmonies. Perhaps I would not notice Lesne's lack of expressiveness, but alas, the best is the worst enemy of the good, and I listened to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing the piece. THEN La Lucrezia bared her soul and spirit! Lorraine Hunt's singing simply rips you of your defenses, and there you are listening not just to a marvelous well-constructed piece of the Baroque music, but to a true human drama.

Handel Arias

I think it was a misjudgement for Lesne to sing this cantata due to his inability to express the emotion correctly; besides, his voice is too low for the score, and at times he sounds so distinctively male or as a witch, who as we know, in Baroque time were expressed with alto voices (precisely as in aforementioned "Dido" by Purcell) or sometimes male singers would sing witches. We can hear that tradition in Verdi's "Macbeth", where witches are sung by female chorus, but their voices are low. The cantata was written for a soprano (most probably Margherita Durastante), and Lesne's voice does not fit it at all. Shakespeare undoubtedly would agree with an alto singing a witch, but did he really imagined it for his "Lucrezia"? I believe not.

The second disk is significant because of the overall rarity of the performed pieces; listening to I could find only one cantata in a different interpretation - Clori e Mirtillo, sung by Henri Ledroit. I find Gerard Lesne and Sandrine Piau superior in singing and overall delivery to Ledroit's ensemble. It is an amazing feeling overall to listen to the music that was enjoyed greatly by patrons of Alessandro Scarlatti - illustrious personalities included Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinals Colonna and Ottoboni, Marquis Ruspoli - we have a whole series of Handel's Cantatas written on the texts of some of these Arcadians; and above all, by Prince Ferdinando di Medici, perhaps the most musical of them all - Principe Ferdinando had been composing music himself, including several operas of his own; he corresponded with Alessandro Scarlatti on music, discussing musical matters and scores! Those letters reveal Scarlatti's scrupulous care in composing his arias, adapting each one to the capacities of the soloist who was to sing it, while the precision of his markings in the score helped the performer to find the right expression and thus move the public of Florence. Stendhal calls Ferdinando de Medici a "degenerate" - indeed these decadent aristocrats were such an opposite in every way to Napoleon and the advancing reign of bourgeoisie, resulting in music by Gounod likes only a century and a half later.

We are happy to be in this Golden Age on this recording, in such an appreciating audience! The aforementioned prelates, such as Cardinals Ottoboni, Barberini and Grimani, even Pope Clement himself, felt inspired to write libretti for oratorios, cantatas and serenades, in which they extolled military prowess, marriages between dynasties and the just reconquering of usurped kingdoms. The idea was to re-enact as models the authors of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Anacreon, Pindare, Sophocles, Horace, etc.) , with civic and moral values being extolled, tragedy expurgated, and the pride of place given to the classical themes of Nature and Love.

It was against this heroico-pastorale background that Alessandro Scarlatti (like his Sassone counterpart Handel who was touring Italy at almost the same period in 1707-1710 ) pursued his career, tossed from one fraction to another: Rome (1672-1683 and 1704-1708), Naples (1684-1702 and 1708-1725), Florence (1702), Venice and Urbino (1707).

Thus we have six exceptional cantatas on the second CD, I especially like Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra and Clori et Mirtillo. In both of them the composer demonstrates that very care of constructing the operatic piece, distributing the "di grazia" and "di forza" arias among the two characters. It is a pity that there is no text in the booklet for any of the cantatas, but it is still possible to hear that Marc Antonio and Cleopatra are speaking of love, and then the trouble grows and a bravura piece depicts the battle of Actium. It is an marvelously dense piece of music - compare it to whole oratorio by Johann Adolf Hasse "MarcAntonio e Cleopatra":

Hasse: Marc Antonio e Cleopatra

I love the exquisite skill with which Scarlatti is creating an accompaniment, the alternating pulsation of dolci and forte in the instrumentation produces a tonal chiaroscuro.

The subject of "Clori et Mirtillo" is the ecstasy of love in communion. The musical content is haloed by an aura of suggested pathos, from which it draws its dramatic and expressive effects. This subject was also interpreted by many composers, including Handel, who also made his own version on the text by Marchese Ruspoli, with Clori and Fileno - a slightly different story but close, since it's all about the idealized love:

Cor fedele (Clori, Tirsi e Fileno), HWV 96: Part I: Aria: Conosco che mi piaci (Clori)

Consequently, Ero e Leandro, on the text of Cardinal Ottoboni which is sung on this recording, can be enjoyed in Handel's interpretation; one can notice by ear that the text is different from that used in the Scarlatti's version:

Le Cantate per il Cardinal Ottoboni (Le cantate italiane di Handel, 3) (look for this title on Amazon)

My preference is with the above Handel's recording of "Ero e Leandro" due to the soprano singing Hero; I am not sure why again Gerard Lesne took to the female part of Hero - I think it would be much more delightful if Sandrine Piau had sung it, especially that the part is again for the soprano. Apart from these incongruities of the album discussed, listening to these Handel's cantatas, one can clearly hear how much he is indebted to Alessandro Scarlatti, whose fame is less today due to the extinction of aristocratic lines of his patrons, while Handel's patrons are well and alive in London. An artist without a patron is a ghost of himself, alas. A personality like Cardinal Ottoboni who was a great patron of all arts, patronizing Alessandro Scarlatti especially, but also Antonio Vivaldi, Antonio Caldara, George Frederick Handel in music and in art Sebastiano Ricci, Francesco Trevisani and many others is now extinct. I could never find any reference to Alessandro Scarlatti's house in Palermo, there is no Casa Scarlatti there, while in Catania Casa Bellini is proudly shown and preserved in the most beautiful Baroque center of the volcanic city...

Sicily is indeed a land of magic, a rich fertile soil on which imagination and inspiration grow in full sun! These mythological subjects were still quite surviving into the 19th century, and in a typical bourgeois fashion to desecrate all the sublime and exquisite, the "Clori" story is inserted sarcastically in Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" in a madrigal scene to mock the whole idea of the true love - something unaffordable by such a beautiful Olympia as Manon and her old, rich and vicious client playing an ardent lover:

Olympia Artist Edouard Manet Art Print Print - 11 x 17 Inch Poster

One can hide from such atrocities in this splendid recording; I found Gerard Lesne and Sandrine Piau perfect in the Alessandro Scarlatti's part of it, especially in the duet cantatas, they truly transport a listener in magical Arcadian gardens, away from this profane earth up to the celestial highs. I highly recommend the ascent for those not in fear of musical vertigo.

8" x 6" Mounted Print Tiepolo Palazzo Labia The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars