The final concert of this year’s Toronto Bach Festival took place at Eastminster United Church yesterday afternoon. It offered two of the cantatas Bach wrote in Leipzig in 1723; Die Elenden sollen essen and Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes Each is written in two parts which, originally would have bookended a sermon (mercifully absent yesterday). Each begins with a choral setting of a biblical verse and proceeds via recits on arias on related texts. The second half of each starts with a Sinfonia and finishes with a chorale based on a Lutheran hymn.
Leipzig cantatas
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Last night saw the first of two performances of Haydn’s rarely performed 1791 work Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. I know how much effort and indeed passion went into creating this production and the singing is pretty good. I wish I could say I enjoyed it but I can’t. There were just too many issues.
June is fast approaching and, as ever, it’s one of the odder months in the performance calendar. Here’s what has caught my eye (so far).
Spontini’s 1807 work La Vestale is the latest French opera to get the Palazzetto Bru Zane treatment. Ir’s extremely interesting as this work has a performance history not unlike the more famous Médée of Charpentier. It’s very much a tragédie lyrique in the same basic style as the works of Gluck, though with some compositional innovations that did not endear the composer to the Paris musical establishment. Indeed, but for the determined patronage of the Empress Josephine it likely would never have made it to the stage. Like Médée it was initially very successful before disappearing from the repertoire in the later 19th century. Also like Médée it was the subject of a mid 20th century revival, notably a 1954 La Scala production (in Italian) by Visconti featuring Maria Callas. Inevitably given the time and place it was given in a style that owed more to verismo than French classicism with a large modern orchestra, conventional (by 1950s standards) tempi and a rather more overblown singing style than was ever heard in early 19th century Paris. If it were revived again for major houses one imagines it would still get essentially the same treatment. Perhaps it will be the next international diva vehicle for Sondra Radvanovsky? 
operaramblings 