MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


 REVIEW
 RECORDING OF THE MONTH


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: Crotchet AmazonUK AmazonUS


George Frideric HANDEL (1685–1759)
Alcina (1735) [203:00]
Joyce DiDonato (soprano) – Alcina
Maite Beaumont (soprano) – Ruggiero
Sonia Prina (mezzo) – Bradamante
Karina Gauvin (soprano) – Morgana
Kobie van Rensburg (tenor) – Oronte
Vito Priante (bass) - Melisso
Laura Cherici (soprano) – Oberto
Il Complesso Barocco/Alan Curtis
rec. Chiesa di Sant’Agostino, Viterbo, Italy, September 2007
ARCHIV PRODUKTION 477 7374 [3 CDs: 76:24 + 72:16 + 54:36]
Experience Classicsonline

The Handel anniversary year has brought us many new treats, but this, to my mind, is the best of them all so far. Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco have been gracing us with some fantastic Handel opera recordings since the 1970s. They started on EMI, but their more recent work on Archiv has been even more exciting than their early projects. Alcina, perhaps Handel’s greatest opera, is also perhaps their greatest recording.
 
I have not always been complimentary about Handel’s operatic style in these pages, but what marks this set out as something special is not just the fantastic singing: it is the way that this set sparkles with dramatic tension and real human emotions in a way that many other struggle to do. The sorceress Alcina stands for anyone who has felt - or who has feared - their powers of attractiveness fade away and Handel’s music traces her journey into despair and powerlessness, from her love-besotted opening aria to her abject sorrow in the final act when she realises that nothing is left for her except tears. Joyce DiDonato, who has made an extraordinary name for herself internationally, here gives an astonishing portrayal of the sorceress. You can take the beauty of her voice for granted: her entrance aria, Di’, cor mio is voluptuous and fulsome, a real depiction of the infatuation that comes with love, and to match it DiDonato sings with rich, creamy tone that is quite marvellous. There is more to her assumption than just beauty, though: the portrayal changes with the character. She captures venom and hysteria for the dramatic arias that accompany Alcina’s steady realisation that she is losing her powers, and her final aria, Mi restano le lagrime, drips with overwhelming poignancy without losing its beauty. Perhaps her greatest moment, however, is Ombre pallide, the aria that ends Act 2, when Alcina calls to the spirits who she can sense around her but are now refusing to listen. The first run of the aria carries a mood of quiet desperation, while the da capo is full of understated terror. DiDonato owns this territory and in this recording she has made herself the greatest Alcina on disc.
 
She, however, is not the only great vocal actor on this set: there is not a single weak link in the cast. Karina Gauvin’s Morgana is as alluring as her sister: Ama, sospira in the second act is seductive with an edge of malice which is entirely appropriate to the dramatic context, while the famous Tornami a vagheggiar is carried off with panache to match even Sutherland or Dessay: the da capo ornamentations are really astonishing! Ironically the Ruggiero of Maite Beaumont sounds much more feminine than the Bradamante of Sonia Prina. Beaumont has an alluring lovelorn quality to her voice which matches the enchantment of Act 1 and the wistful nostalgia of Verdi prati, but she is capable of the character’s more intense utterances, such as his self-reproach at the start of Act 2. By contrast, Prina sounds positively masculine in Acts 1 and 2, though I suppose that’s not entirely appropriate for a character who spends most of the opera disguised as a man. Her voice carries beauty, but her real triumph is in the dramatic arias: E gelosia in Act 1 and Vorrei vendicarmi in Act 2 are jaw dropping in their vocal acrobatics but without ever losing their innate musicality and dramatic purpose. Laura Cherici’s Oberto really sounds like a boy, plangent and vulnerable in his first aria but growing into the beginnings of a hero by the final act. Importantly in an opera like this, all the female voices are distinctively different so that the vocal texture never suffers. Vito Priante’s Oberto is suitably authoritative and if Kobie van Rensburg’s Oronte has the occasional unsteady moment they are very few and far between.
 
Anchoring the whole set, though, is the orchestra and continuo. Il Complesso Barocco give us lithe, transparent playing throughout and Curtis’s conducting is flexible and responsive at every turn. It is he more than anyone who understands the drama of the work. To see what I mean listen to Alcina’s Act 1 aria Si, non quella. This beautiful aria features Alcina trying for the first time to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer what she was: the singing is very beautiful, but there is a subtle reticence to the accompaniment which suggests that, in spite of her words, she is unable fully to convince herself that she really is as “true” as she claims to be.
 
There have been other great recordings of Alcina. In Richard Bonynge’s 1962 set there are some wonderful musical moments, though one can barely detect a single consonant in the whole of Joan Sutherland’s performance of the title role. Richard Hickox’s 1986 recording on EMI has some really remarkable singing with safe-pair-of-hands playing and conducting, while William Christie’s 1999 recording from the Paris Opéra features an outstanding - if somewhat inauthentic - cast including Renée Fleming, Susan Graham and Natalie Dessay. Interesting as Nigel Bolton’s Munich recording was it didn’t quite match Christie’s. Until now the Christie was the version that came closest to the ideal, but this new recording jumps straight to the top of the Alcina pile. In fact I would go even further and say that if you have never heard a Handel opera before or are a little nervous about where to start then this is the best introduction to that world that I can think of.
 
Simon Thompson
 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.