Recorded back in 1986, and reissued several times in different
forms, including a new reissue, Hasse’s Cleofide
is a very odd bird. At nearly four hours, this opera features
only high voices: sopranos and counter-tenors. This gives a
strange tone to the work; one is used to hearing a variety of
voices in Handel’s operas, which are contemporary with
Cleofide. But in Cleofide it seems as though something
is missing.
Robert Hugill reviewed a single disc of excerpts of this opera
in 2009 (review).
I agree with Robert’s comments about the quality of the
cast, and the variety of the singers. But with nearly four hours
of music, this opera is certainly taxing. While it contains
much fine music, and many attractive arias, the recitatives
are even more uninteresting than usual. When watching an opera
on DVD, the recitatives are important, but for recordings, I
find them to be relatively useless and distracting. In addition,
some of them are overly long, making for a tough listen.
So, the solution is to simply not listen to them. After ripping
the CDs, I removed the recitatives from the recording’s
playlist, and was down to a mere 2 hours and 46 minutes, a nice
amount of time to listen to this music. There are 33 recitatives
for a total of 1 hour and 4 minutes. With this approach, what
was a marathon becomes an evening’s listen, and an inviting
one indeed.
One can easily appreciate this early William Christie recording
with Capella Coloniensis, a group originally formed in 1954
(!) to perform baroque works in historically informed performances.
Christie masters this orchestra well, and the playing is impeccable.
The casting is excellent, including some of the great singers
of the time: Emma Kirkby, in her prime, Agnes Mellon, Dominique
Visse and David Cordier, among others. There is even a male
soprano, Randall K. Wong, a rare type of singer indeed.
The music is delightful. And some of the arias are as long as
nine minutes, with some of the longer arias near the end of
the work. The singers perform very well, as do the orchestra,
and the recording itself is very clean and precise. The only
odd thing about it is the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that
only sopranos and counter-tenors sing in this work. After a
while, I longed to hear a tenor or bass, just for variety.
One can compare this opera to Handel’s oratorios and operas;
Cleofide is from 1731, and Handel, around that time,
had already written such great operas as Rinaldo, Agrippina,
Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. So this type of music
was well known, and Hasse was clearly influenced by it. Hasse
wrote several dozen operas, and very few are available on disc
today. This is a shame, because Cleofide shows that Hasse
was a composer to reckon with; not quite up to Handel, but not
far away.
If you like Handel’s operas, and want to discover an unjustly
forgotten composer, Cleofide is worth checking out. It
is an entertaining opera - though long; just ignore the recitatives
- full of delightful, happy music, performed by excellent musicians
and soloists.
Kirk McElhearn
Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just music on his blog
Kirkville
Cleofide - Emma Kirkby (soprano) 
