Search - George Frideric Handel, William Christie, Les Arts Florissants :: Handel / Orlando

Okay, I suppose.

Steven Guy | Croydon, South Australia | 03/21/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"If the Christopher Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music recording of this work, featuring James Bowman in the title role, didn't exist, this would be clearly the best recording of this work available. However, it does and, try as I have, I simply cannot get into this recording. On every level, the Hogwood recording is superior. Take the role of Orlando, for instance. Christie has Patricia Bardon, who sings the role very nicely, to be sure, yet she is not a patch on James Bowman when it comes to communicating the drama. I have listened to Patricia Bardon's and James Bowman's interpretations in some detail, comparing them back to back and playing them to my friends. In every aria, James Bowman is preferable, hands down.



However, Christie's recording is very, very pretty and stylish. He has some fabulous singers, like Rosa Mannion and Rosemary Joshua, two of the most beautiful young women and beautiful voices in the field of Baroque music. Rosemary Joshua has recently revisited her role of Angelica in a production with David Daniels in the title role. I only hope that production makes it to DVD.



People who don't like countertenors will prefer Les Arts Florissants' very "pretty" recording of Orlando, but know that the Hogwood recording of this work with the great James Bowman in the title role is vastly superior, drama-wise. In the mad scene, Ms Bardon seems merely distracted, in contrast with Mr. Bowman, who seems genuinely out on the edge.



The orchestras, on period instruments in both recordings, are utterly fabulous and colourful."

LOVE IS ONE BIG IMBROGLIO

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 05/14/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It says that in Act III scene 5. In case the statement needs substantiation, the plot is as follows. Orlando is warned off love and advised to follow warlike pursuits by the wizard Zoroaster. His first entrance shows him pursuing a princess named Isabella, but to rescue her from something, not for amorous reasons, and she never sings a note from beginning to end. Meantime a Chinese queen called Angelica is shown in love with an African prince named Medoro, but Orlando seems to feel that he has some prior claim on Angelica. A bigger role than either that of Medoro or of Angelica is taken by a shepherdess Dorinda, the very type of the Deserted Shepherdess having been spurned by both Medoro and Orlando, apparently. Orlando is for some reason driven mad by finding out about Angelica and Medoro, and either visits or thinks he visits the infernal regions of Greek legend, returning in a state of continuing mental confusion in which he mistakes both Angelica and Dorinda for other women previously unmentioned. He tries to destroy both Medoro and Angelica, but they turn out to have been saved by the wizardry of Zoroaster, and everyone ends reconciled to situation that led to all the fuss in the first place. No wonder Gluck felt that opera was in need of reform.



Nonsensical though it may be, this kind of stagy drama with its story-book characters and its over-the-top situations has a kind of consistency and integrity of its own. It quite obviously lends itself to operatic treatment, this was the high watermark of the style, and the composer after all is Handel. A lot is lost from the lack of stage-effects (such as mountains being made to disappear at the wave of Zoroaster's wand), and listeners to it in sound alone need a clear idea of what style of interpretation they think most appropriate. Demureness in the performing style would be ridiculous, surely, the issue is more a matter of how much hyperbole one wants. Act II ends with Orlando's mad scene and his real or imaginary visions of the underworld, and some listeners will want more staginess than we find here. Myself, I like it well enough as Patricia Bardon and William Christie choose to do it. Handel whips up the frenzy towards the end, but the earlier sequence is largely quiet and bewildered, and the purely musical effects, such as the use of 5/8 metre (for the first time in musical history, I believe) do the job without any hamming it up by the performers. In general, I'd say, when we're in sound alone it's best to err on the side of the musical rather than on the side of the over-dramatic, and it's the sheer distinction of the musicianship that leads me to be as enthusiastic about this Orlando as I am. The singing is simply superb, both in technique and in the beauty of the vocal tone from all five participants. In particular I should draw attention to the trio that ends Act I, which to my ears is a thing worthy to stand with the trio in Rosenkavalier itself.



The direction and the casting get top marks from me as well. One of my reasons for choosing this set of Orlando in preference to its formidable rival in the catalogues is simply that I already own plenty of the latters' work. Rather than have all my meals prepared by the same chefs I decided to take a chance, and I don't feel I've gone wrong. On the face of it, this is not one of Handel's more spectacular scores, and there is no fancy orchestration. On the other hand William Christie has a superb ability to put across the adroitness, fluency and resourcefulness of the composer's style that overawed Haydn in the later phase of his own great career, and that had Beethoven pronouncing Handel the greatest composer who ever lived. There is a real magician at work here, and it is not Zoroaster. In respect of the casting, I myself tend to be more at home with women altos rather than countertenors however eminent, and so this issue suits me from that angle too. The four women's voices are beautifully contrasted, they combine superbly in the wonderful trio at the end of the first act, and Harry van der Kamp's magnificent bass sets the final seal on it for me.



The recorded quality seems just fine to me, the orchestral playing is a model of comprehension of the musical idiom, and even the secco recitatives are done with real grace, avoiding the impression that harpsichords so often give of being bird-cages played with toasting-forks. There is a multilingual liner, with the English version of the libretto interestingly provided by Samuel Humphreys, himself one of Handel's oratorio librettists. The background essay is quite good and helpful in addition.



As I have said, there is real magic here, even without any signs and wonders in the visible staging. A strong contender, whatever the competition."