Giulio Cesare is the most recorded of Handel’s operas
and the greatest. In fact it’s probably, Mozart’s apart, the greatest
opera written before Fidelio. Ferdinand Leitner’s performance, in German,
with a stellar cast has recently appeared and dates from 1965; Mackerras’s
ENO recording with Janet Baker, in English, is also in the catalogue,
though heavily cut. Then Jean-Claude Malgoire has also contributed a
good performance on Auvidis E8558. But the leading performance on disc
is now this splendidly realised traversal by an excellent and vibrant
orchestra and outstanding young singers under René Jacobs.
Handel seems to have been galvanized by the textual
and dramatic possibilities of the work; breathtaking arias follow one
after the other. Characterization is intense and the scoring is superb
– divided bassoons, for instance, solo obbligatos for violin, oboe and
horn and the deployment of a double orchestra. The whole work is studded
with the possibilities of character development supported by virtuoso
ornamentations and runs. The first thing to say about this set is that
it presents a cohesive and unified view of this intensely moving and
dramatic work. Jacobs has employed singers of technical excellence and
sure instinct. Listen to the outstanding Cesare, Jennifer Larmore, in
her first aria, Presti omai, executing perfect runs with burnished low
notes – vibrant and alive. Her sense of dramatic intensity is everywhere
evident and this is a notably successful performance. As Cleopatra Barbara
Schlick deploys her voice to great effect. It hasn’t a huge range of
vocal colour but she uses it with tremendous insight. In her aria Tu
la mia stella, taken at a slightly slower than anticipated tempo she
shows her beautifully appointed skipping runs, supported by an intense
dramatic impulse. As Tolomeo Derek Lee Ragin, who was in the vanguard
of the contemporary American counter-tenor movement, uses his very individual
voice to complex effect, shading and colouring his tone not least in
his famous hunting aria Va tacito, again taken slower than usual and
featuring a rather outsize amount of ornamentation.
Bernarda Fink is Cornelia and her duet with Marianne
Rorholm’s Sesto is one of the highlights of the disc. All the parts,
in fact, are well taken and all respond directly and vibrantly to the
expressive and colouristic potential offered in the score. There are
some points of weakness and in a masterpiece of this kind it could hardly
be otherwise. I find the recitative after Cesare’s Almi del gran Pompeo
too slow. Jacobs was, I suspecting, relating it to the succeeding aria,
the rustic Non e sivago but it still seems to me to be a tempo-related
misjudgement. There are one or two rallentandos which tend to jar –
I’m thinking especially of Cesare’s aria Al lampo dell’ armi - which
nevertheless features such fabulously fearless singing from Larmore
that it’s tempting to withhold criticism.
Against that can be listed the very many virtues of
the set – vigorous and subtle orchestral contributions prominent amongst
them. Listen to the bassoon accompaniment in Che Sento? and the subsequent
stabbing accents - in fact listen to Schlick’s singing here closely
and hear her rolled "r" in "moriro" (to die) and
her intelligent varying and shadings of volume and colour. Elsewhere
instrumental and vocal textures are fully brought out and justice is
done to the score. This is a first choice for Giulio Cesare and high
praise is deserved by the soloists, orchestra, by Jacobs himself and
by Harmonia Mundi.
Jonathan Woolf
Concerto Köln/René
Jacobs director