Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Henry VIII (Complete, original version, 1883)
Henry: Michael Chioldi (baritone)
Catherine d’Aragon: Ellie Dean (soprano)
Anne Boleyn: Hilary Ginther (mezzo-soprano)
Don Gomez de Feria: Yeghishe Manucharyan (tenor)
Le duc de Norfolk: David Kravitz (baritone)
Cardinal Campeggio, the Legate: Kevin Deas (bass-baritone)
Odyssey Opera Orchestra & Chorus/Gil Rose
rec. live, 21 September 2019, Jordan Hall, Boston, USA
French libretto with English translation
First recording of this version
ODYSSEY OPERA 1005 [4 CDs: 224]
Apart from Samson et Dalila, which is still deservedly in the mainstream operatic repertoire (see my survey), very few of Saint-Saëns’ dozen or so operas are heard these days, but Henry VIII was very popular during the composer’s lifetime and there has been a recent revival of interest in it, along with a couple more of his stage works. My acquaintance with it stems from my first encounter with the king’s lovely aria “Qui donc commande quand il aime?” on a 1975 recital album sung by Sherrill Milnes, for whom it was revived by the San Diego Opera in a 1983 production - its American premiere - of which there is a live recording on LP, and from a 1989 live recording in Montpellier with Lyon forces conducted by Sir John Pritchard and starring two fine singers in Alain Fondary and Michelle Command, and a 2002 performance from the Liceo, Barcelona, starring Simon Estes and Montserrat Caballé, both available only from the private record label Premiere Opera. Otherwise, a couple more live recordings are listed, one of which, conducted by Alain Guingal in Compiègne and again starring Michèle Command with Philippe Rouillon as Henry, was also made into a film, but there is no studio-made account. While this issue under review is only a live concert performance, it is nonetheless the first commercial recording of the full version lasting three and three-quarter hours – and thus a work of Wagnerian proportions, whereas the Montpellier production was cut to a mere two and a half hours. It includes, in the words of Hugh MacDonald, the author of the notes and editor of the score used here, “certain passages and scenes that had not been heard since 1883, and in some cases had probably never been heard at all.” Restored passages of particular interest are a so-called Septet (actually eight voices) in Act II and in the first scene of Act III featuring the intervention of the Papal Legate.
Keen to evoke the flavour of the period in Henry VIII, while fulfilling conducting engagements in London, Saint-Saëns researched Tudor and Jacobean music in the royal collection and incorporated into his score airs by Byrd, tunes for the virginal and English, Scottish, and Irish folk melodies. This is immediately evident from the deliberately faux-archaic overture. His libretto was devised by journalist Léonce Détroyat and poet Armand Silvestre from a 17C play by Spanish playwright Calderón in combination with some characters and a scene – the finale to Act I - derived from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. Being commissioned by the Paris Opéra, the work was subject to the same frustrations and humiliations experienced by Verdi when he submitted Les vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos for performance; during rehearsals, a series of cuts, changes and demands for extra music were made such that Saint-Saëns swore he would never again submit himself or his work to such indignities. The sets and costumes had been as scrupulously researched as the music for authenticity, however, and the cast was the best available, so the opera was a great success and frequently revived through to 1917, when Saint-Saëns was eighty-two - to his great satisfaction.
This is all background. What matters above all in opera is the singing. I started my audition with a direct comparison of Henry’s Act I aria I mention above, as sung by Milnes, Fondary and Chioldi respectively - and was immediately deflated at the discrepancy between the sheer lack of allure in Chioldi’s forced, unattractive baritone compared with the gleam and virility of Milnes and Fondary’s very Gallic passion and elegance. There is always an incipient wobble or beat in Chioldi’s vocal production when a note is sustained and his tone is grey, with little pharyngeal resonance.
I then returned to the opening of the opera to hear two cloudy, grainy voices duetting, each with a pronounced and unattractive pulse. What is happening in the conservatories these days that such a noise is tolerated – indeed, encouraged? Ellie Dean is a competent soprano of no special distinction, with somewhat acidic top notes. Hilary Ginther has a nice, dark, warm mezzo of considerable power and a pleasing element of lower register but again, of no great character; one wonders what a singer such as Jennifer Larmore might have made of her role as Anne. Nonetheless, she is the singer here who gives me the most pleasure. Kevin Deas displays a pleasing degree of resonant authority as the Legate although the same problem of an over-emphatic vibrato obtains there, too. The comprimario voices are indifferent. I have been listening to opera for close on fifty years now and I know when a voice makes me sit up. Nobody here does that. I come away from listening to this undertaking newly admiring of the music and frustrated by the vocal execution of it. Yet reading the encomia for the singers here in their biographies you would think that I must be deaf, stupid or malicious not to hear what the quoted critics hear.
Gil Rose’s conducting is fine, although I occasionally feel that I could do with more drive and pace in what is already a long opera. The sung French is very good apart from that of Yeghishe Manucharyan, which is mostly incomprehensible; all the vowels are distorted and he is not the least idiomatic in language or style. The chorus is excellent, if slightly distant in the aural picture. The recorded sound I find a little odd; it is superior to the previous live recordings but there is still a lot of reverberance and a certain cloudiness about it.
The packaging is exemplary: a cardboard slipcase housing the four CDs, a beautifully produced booklet with the famous Holbein portrait on the cover which slips inside, full colour photographs of the concert, Hugh MacDonald’s programme notes, a synopsis, track listings and timings, the full French text with English translation, biographies and colour photo portraits of the artists.
Sometimes I really dislike reviewing when I feel compelled to voice reservations about a recording I genuinely wanted to welcome and endorse. This issue offers everything the purchaser wants to encounter – except the essential: fine singing. In gauging which recording I would choose when wanting to listen to this opera, only its completeness recommends this latest issue above previous recordings.
Ralph Moore
Other cast
Le comte de Surrey: Matthew DiBattista (tenor)
Archbishop of Canterbury: David Cushing (bass-baritone)
Lady Clarence: Erin Merceruio Nelson (soprano)
The Garter King of Arms: Jeremy Ayres Fisher (tenor)
