Oratorio

Neapolitan Nicola Porpora ( 1686-1768) wrote at least 53 operas as well as reams of instrumental music. One of the most international of composers, he held lucrative posts in Italy, Austria, and Germany, and in 1729 moved to London to establish an opera company in competition with Handel. The Oxford Dictionary of Music declares that he failed there because he was "no match" for England's favorite adopted son; the truth is that Handel's opera company was failing also in the neo-puritanical London of the 1730s. In any case, Porpora returned to Vienna, where he was briefly the teacher of Joseph Haydn.

Il Gedeone is, historically speaking, an Italian oratorio rather than an opera, though I can easily imagined it on stage, perhaps in a modern setting on the model of the Christie/Sellars staging of Handel's Theodora, with the Midianite Prince Oreb looking suspiciously like Sadam Husein. The plot is the Biblical story of Gideon, another youngest son blessed by Y_w_h with preternatural confidence and craft. Most of the action, of course, takes place off stage, as was typical of Baroque opera, and is narrated through the extended recitativos. Porpora's recitativos are faultlessly conventional; aside from some interesting instrumental accompaniment, in other words, they cry out for visual support. Otherwise, you might find yourself fast-forwarding to the next aria. But then you'll be rewarded; some of the arias are truly eloquent. My favorites are Gedeone's first, Oreb's lament at defeat, that of Gedeone's father Ioas in solemn celebration of victory, and Gedeone's final aria 'cogliete amici' with a brilliant trumpet obbligato. The polyphonic choruses at the end of each act are also quite grand and dramatic.

Porpora's music is remarkably similar to Handel's. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that they gleefully plagiarized each other. If you're a Baroque addict who just can't get enough of 'Il Sassone', Porpora will answer your needs.

But, as I said above, Il Gedeone was written as an oratorio, in the Roman tradition of opera-like works to be performed at the altar. Porpora wrote it in Vienna, the second great center of counter-reformation oratorio composition, supported by the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I, himself a composer. One of the attractions of this 2-CD performance of Il Gedeone is the brief but lucid history of the Hapsburg oratorios in the notes, written by Jürg Stenzel. The libretto, by the great Pietro Metastasio, is included in Italian and English.

Martin Haselböck conducts the Wiener Akademie in a spirited, stylistically flawless performance. Countertenor Kai Wessel sings Gedeone, countertenor Henning Voss sings his retainer Fara, and both reach their technical apogee at the critical moments of the libretto. The same can be said of bass Ulf Bästelein. All three get better and better along with the music, sounding thin in their recitativos but glorious in their major arias. Male soprano Jörg Waschinski follows the same pattern; his first act singing seems strained -- a falsetto that rings a little too false -- but his final aria, noted above, redeems him. All in all, this is a forceful performance, possibly the best example of the art of Nicola Porpora available.

This is a definitely not an old style oratorio. The arias are all very much operatic with full orchestral accompaniment. Many of the recitatives are accompanied by the orchestra. There is a nice mixture of minor and major arias and they run the gamut from the sentimental to the furious and there is even one where the male high voice vies with the trumpet!
There are about three cori which sound very much like sacred music. They are definitely in a more antiquated style and two of them feature quite complex fugues, but they are still quite light in terms of their musical effect on the listener. They provided some nice relief too as they varied in style from the rest of music on the cd.

The oratorio itself is quite good, as is almost everything Porpora wrote. The singers, unfortunately, do not measure up to the quality of the music they are performing. So, five star oratorio, two star cast... Good orchestra and direction.

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