La Dolce Fiamma Forgotten Cas

... how good the famed castrati of 18th C music (Farinelli, Guadagni, Manzuoli, inter alia) really were -- whether they were as expressive, their voices as powerful, their breath control so vast that they could stretch an ornamented phrase across dozens of measures, beyond the lung capacity of any woman singer, as reported by contemporary listeners -- but if they were 'better' than our own male soprano Philippe Jaroussky, then I'm inflamed with envy at being born in the wrong age. But I'm willing to venture the opinion that no one ever has sung this repertoire, the arias and cantatas written for castrato superstars, more beautifully than Jaroussky. He transcends the usual limits of countertenor voices, not only in range but in flexibility of dynamics, with exactly the ability to sing expressively piano to forte, just the talent ascribed to the castrati for whom JC Bach composed many of his operatic roles. Jaroussky never sounds effortful or unnatural. His agility and suppleness in ornamental passages makes the most flamboyant excesses sound graceful and intrinsic to the affect of the music. His previous recital CD with Le Concert D'Astree -- "Carestini: the story of a castrato" -- cemented my opinion of him as the most virtuosic male soprano performing today, but this recording of arias all by the same composer, Johann Christian Bach, is ineluctably better. Part of its superiority comes from the tasteful instrumental support of the ensemble "Le Cercle de l'Harmonie", conducted by the very young Jérémie Rhorer. I have a suspicion that Jaroussky and Rhorer share interpretive instincts more closely than Jaroussky and Emmanuelle Haim, the director of Le Concert Astrée.

But then, it could be that the music itself is superior. The 'Carestini' CD includes arias by seven magnificent composers -- Porpora, Capelli, Handel, Leo, Hasse, Gluck, and Graun -- while this CD features only compositions of the next generation, by Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. So I have to venture another radical opinion: that JC Bach was a far finer composer than modern audiences have discovered. The arias recorded here are worthy of the voice.

JC Bach (born in 1735) was exactly half a century younger than GF Handel, but he followed much the same career path, from Germany to Italy, where his early operatic successes in Turin marked him as the new prodigy. In 1762, he followed Handel's tracks to London. Both composers spent the rest of their lives in England, though Bach made important excursions to Germany and Austria. Bach can be credited with reviving English enthusiasm for Italian opera, at least for a few decades. Of all the musical Bachs - his father and his three brothers - JC was the only composer of operas. In fact, his operas were his chief efforts; though his chamber and orchestral compositions have received most of the attention of modern performers, JC Bach's true stature can only be recognized in his theatrical works. The sad fact is that his operas remain hideously neglected. Modern stagings are non-existant, and even studio recordings of complete operas are limited to two, one rare and one unavailable. The arias sung by Jaroussky on this CD come from Bach's operas La Clemenza di Scipione, Artaserse, Orfeo ed Euridice, Adriano in Siria, Carattaco, and Temistocle. The titles alone should reveal that Bach's interests were in opera seria, putting him in the class of the older Gluck and the younger Mozart. It's well documented that Mozart was patronized by Bach when the Austrian child prodigy visited London, and that Mozart regarded Bach as one of his prime models, from whom he could and did learn much.

Purely on musical grounds, the arias recorded here suggest that reviving Bach's operas might be a major priority. In other words, the music is really, really good, better in many ways than any in Mozart's before Le Nozze di Figaro. How well Bach's operas would play on stage, I can't predict. Surely they couldn't be any more theatrically unpromising than many of Handel's, which have been revived. If a case for JC Bach needs to be made, I hope this spectacular performance, La Dolce Fiamma, by Philippe Jaroussky will open the proper ears.

The first surprise is the music itself and this rather not very well known composer, one of Johann Sebastian Bach's sons. Surprising because it is nothing but opera arias and not religious music at all. This son followed a road that his father hardly followed and his brothers not very much. The reason must be complex and must have to do with the change in that century that is taking Germany away from feudalism and its strict religious ideology to some more modern society that considers music more as an entertainment than as a spiritual enlightening religious elevation. The father had done some vocal composition on non-religious subjects but it was within the religious fundamentalism of his time: a cantata against coffee or against tobacco. Maybe there are some more that are not yet known and are buried in some library or archives somewhere in Leipzig or in the vast world. It is good to show this one of the Bach children dedicated his art to secular operas and it opened a door to a particular voice that was not very present, if ever in its male version, in the father's music, the castrato, the alto, that voice of angels that Bach did not use for his angels, when he had angels on his stage, sorry in his choir. The second surprise comes from the musical style. Brilliant in its finesse, brightness and expert virtuoso complexity but not in the austere line of the father's music or in the line of some religious compositions of his brothers and the very didactic Passions of that second Bach generation. It is as complex as a lot of Mozart's operatic music in the use of instruments, in the use of a modern syntax and harmony. But we could also think of Handel and the numerous operas of his we are also rediscovering today. How can we turn some numerous lines of notes that some will say to be too numerous into dramatic elements? How can we give depth to what is nothing but superficial luminous shine? That is where Johann Christian Bach uses the melody of these strings of notes, and even plays on a minor variation on one or two notes in a major sentence creating a pang of pleasure in our ears, a pang of conscience too that corresponds to the dramatic content of the opera. The use of an alto, and obviously a castrato in his time, by Johann Christian Bach gets him into a vocal field that is necessarily tragic, dramatic, deep and can become bleak, sad, poignant even when used properly. We reach here the dilemma of Goethe's Faust at the end of his second part when God himself is confronted with that dilemma. The alto is the voice of heroes that Handel will use so much for his biblical or secular heroes, and the composer here does not reduce these heroes to their conquering power but tries to evoke, bring out their deeper and more human side: suffering souls confronted to a world they have to change in order to make it better and that mission is beyond any human imagination because it requires the possibility to see human history in its vast perspective. A hero becomes poignant when he knows that the victory he is bringing to the world is also the defeat of some older order that has to disappear for his victory to be in any way effective. If Hannibal had not considered that three victories meant the complete defeat of Rome as it was stated in the rules of war at the time, he would have taken Rome and destroyed the city and then he would have been victorious instead of being in the long run defeated. In every single aria of this selection we feel that dual and contradictory dimension between pleasure and suffering, an enlightened vision of the future that is coming and a just as much enlightened vision of the past that has to go. The sixth track of this CD, "Cara, la dolce flamma", is just the demonstration in 13 minutes of that beautiful ambiguous torn apart suffering pleasure or pleasurable suffering. Just perfect. But it is not the only piece that has that beauty, far from it. But we are also surprised, oh no, kidnapped and tortured into the most exquisite pleasure by the voice of Philippe Jaroussky. That boy has a secret and no one will ever try to find it out, because that's a loss of time. Let's enjoy the result and enjoy it again and again. Don't in any way think this male voice is not male, even in some little corners of this CD. Jaroussky has a man's voice but he is able to play on the perfect clarity of his register and with enough width from a mezza di voce to the highest and clearest high pitched or should I say high perched notes. Jaroussky is able to express any kind of feeling and sentiment and particularly those that require a play on the ambiguity of the soul divided and tyrannized by the call of blood, of evil in a world that can only survive and bloom if the call of love and good is the winner of this heart tearing battle. Jaroussky is not the voice of God, and if he is the voice of some angels he knows that some of these angels have been dropped down from Heaven onto Earth and have become dark sombre devils. He knows a seraph is nothing but a variation of the bronze serpent of Moses, a saraph. Jaroussky is a permanent battle between seraphim and saraphim and that makes us feel so strong in our resolve to love pleasure, the pleasure we get from these arias emerging from beyond the oblivion of three centuries.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID Boulogne Billancourt

I had the honour of meeting Mr. Jaroussky last night in London's Barbican, where he performed and signed cd's. I listened to this new release today several times and found it to be gloriously beautiful and shows (yet again) how talented this young man is. He seems to effortlessly reach notes with the perfect pitch, intonation and timbre. He is shining light once again upon the largely ignored Baroque masterpieces of the Baroque repertoire. I highly recommend this and all his previous recordings.

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