Back in 2015 I reviewed a 2006 recording from the Royal Opera House of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro directed by David McVicar. It’s very good and has a super starry cast; Finley, Persson, Röschmann, Schrott, Shaham. There’s even a cameo by Philip Langridge as Basilio. So, when I saw that a new recording of the same production, made in 2022 with a young and less obviously starry cast, had been released I was in two minds whether to bother. I’m glad I did.
This new CD recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas sets out to produce a version that might have been heard at court in the early 1680s. This is, of course, one of several theories about the work’s genesis and it’s the one I find most credible. Taking this as a starting point allows music director David Bates a framework in which to consider issues of style and casting.
He posits significant French influence, which I would take as pretty much a given, but also some Italian flavour, which is a new idea to me and I think, too, that it’s clear that the Anglican choral tradition influences the choruses. So what does he do with these premises? First, and perhaps most importantly, he casts a rather dramatic mezzo, Fleur Barron, as Dido and encourages/allows her to present the role as if it were perhaps la grande tragédienne from one of Lully’s tragédies lyriques. Paired with the light, lyric soprano Giulia Semenzato as Belinda it produces an effect that strongly reminded me of Meghan Lindsay and Mireille Asselin in the recent Opera Atelier production though Semenzato ornaments more than most Belindas (and does it very well).
Handel’s Saul gets another “fully staged” treatment in this recording of a Claus Guth production at the Theater an der Wien in 2021. Inevitably it invites comparison with Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne version.. They are quite different though each is very enjoyable n its own way. Those not familiar with the piece might find the introduction to the earlier production helpful as I’m not going to repeat the outline of plot etc here.
I just got my hands on the La Scala recording of Mozart’s Lucio Silla. It’s the Marshall Pynkoski production that was done at Salzburg, then La Scala, then in somewhat modified form at Opera Atelier in Toronto, which I saw. It has provoked lots of thoughts about the work itself, how well the OA aesthetic transfers to another house and how seeing a production on video differs from seeing it live.
operaramblings 