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Handel: Rinaldo (CD)
Gramophone “Editor's Choice” Award 2001
“…the casting of Gerald Finley was a stroke of genius.” Gramophone
“No less impressive [is] Gerald Finley, who manages to make the blustering Argante into a flesh-and-blood character.” Rough Guide to Opera
Composer: George Frideric Handel
Performers:
· Goffredo: Bernarda Fink
· Rinaldo: David Daniels
· Almirena: Cecilia Bartoli
· Argante: Gerald Finley
· Armida: Luba Orgonasova
· Chrsitian sorcerer: Bejun Mehta
· Eustazio: Daniel Taylor
· A herald: Mark Padmore
· A woman: Ana-María Rincón
· Two sirens: Catherine Bott, Ana-María Rincón
· Academy of Ancient Music
Conductor: Christopher Hogwood
Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London, 19-27 November 1999
Released: October 10, 2000
Number of Discs: 3
Label: Decca (467 087-2)
ASIN: B00006YYJ1
Photos from the recording session
(CD booklet)
What the critics say
From The Rough Guide to Opera, 3rd edition, Matthew Boyden, 2002
Of the three recordings of Rinaldo to appear in the last thirty years, this is the best by a wide margin. Christopher Hogwood is a veteran Handel conductor and, although he rarely ventures into opera, his unerring sense of pace and phrasing means that there is always a strong whiff of theatre to this performance. He is helped by a starry cast who really deliver the goods. Counter-tenor David Daniels, who takes the title role,
is a compelling presence - equally at home in the virtuosic arias as he is the lyrical ones. He is matched by Cecilia Bartoli who gives a hugely committed performance as Almirena, wringing every inch of pathos from "Lascia ch'io pianga". No less impressive are Gerald Finley, who manages to make the blustering Argante into a flesh-and-blood character, and Bernarda Fink who brings enormous dignity to Goffredo. The one slight reservation is the close miking of the singers which creates an artificial immediacy that undermines the sense of a real performance.
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Larger than life
Andrew Clements applauds Cecilia Bartoli's seductiveness and savagery. The Guardian,
24 November 2000
http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,401775,00.html
Premiered in 1711, Rinaldo was the first opera that Handel wrote specifically for the London stage, just a few months after his arrival from Hanover. Though typically he recycled some of the music from his earlier works, he clearly relished the extra dimension of grandeur and spectacle that he could exploit from the forces and stage machinery of the London theatre, and the music is more daring and varied orchestrally than he had written before. The libretto too, taken at one remove from a story by Tasso, requires all manner of supernumeraries - spirits, fairies and soldiers - for this tale of heroism and enchantment set among the forces camped outside Jerusalem during the crusades.
Before it went into the recording studio, Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music had taken their performance of Rinaldo around the concert halls of Europe. The cast changed during the tour, but Cecilia Bartoli was a constant ingredient, and predictably her contribution is one of the great assets of the discs too. She delights in the coloratura that Handel gives the character of Almirena, and invests her greatest aria, the ineffably moving "Lascio ch'io pianga", with the dignity and emotional profundity of a great tragic heroine. But David Daniels in the title role is her equal in his technical command and dramatic presence, while Bernarda Fink as Goffredo, the leader of the Crusaders, Luba Organosova as the Queen of Damascus, the enchantress Armida, and Gerald Finley as the infidel king Argante all produce stylish performances of wonderful presence and character.
The only shortcomings of this vocally outstanding set are the conducting and the orchestral playing. Hogwood is an inflexible, unresponsive partner for singers of this subtlety and intelligence. Though his brisk tempi keep the opera moving along, the recitative never goes with the conversational naturalness it really needs, and the Academy of Ancient Music still cultivates an undernourished period-instrument sound, which seems to hark back to the early days of the movement rather than the fuller textures that have become the norm.
Patrick Giles from Opera News
George Frideric Handel first won the attention of the London public in 1711, with the premiere of Rinaldo, an adaptation of Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, at the Queen's Theatre. Across the centuries, it's easy to understand why. The twenty-six-year old composer combined an already masterful technique with a rich, invigorating musical imagination. Rinaldo is a young composer's opera, more dazzling than moving, with characters who are attractive but less convincing than those of later Handel creations. Christopher Hogwood and the performers on this new Decca Rinaldo realize the opera by emphasizing its successes and not lingering over its shortcomings.
When a character does pause to ruminate or declaim, Hogwood encourages the singer to lavish time and feeling on the moment. At its best -- as in the opera's most famous arias, Almirena's "Lascia ch'io pianga" and Rinaldo's "Cara sposa" -- Rinaldo reveals Handel's unmistakable ardor, an ardor as commanding as Wagner's or Verdi's. Hogwood also allows Rinaldo's kitschier moments to work their charm, as when the hero is accosted by sirens and an evil spirit in Act II. As in his finest Handel recordings -- an exquisite Messiah and the Athalia with Joan Sutherland (both on L'Oiseau Lyre) -- Hogwood forsakes his sometimes rigid musical approach to communicate the sensuous and aesthetic magic of Handel. The conductor even unbends enough to dub in actual birdsong during Almirena's Act I "Augelletti che cantate," in a charming bow to opera history. (Real sparrows were let loose during this aria at Rinaldo's premiere, causing much amazement; Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's tart "reviews" of those winged debutants are included in the CD booklet's notes.) There are still moments when this music could sound more startling, with less emphasis on precision; but on the whole Hogwood's is a stirring account of the opera, one that Baroque opera novices should find particularly enticing.
The first Rinaldo cast was a gallery of virtuosos: castrato stars Nicolo Grimaldi (Rinaldo) and Valentino Urbani (Eustazio), bass Giuseppe Boschi (Argante) and prima donnas Elisabetta Pilotti-Schiavonetti (Armida), Isabella Girardeau (Almirena) and Francesca Vanini-Boschi (Goffredo). Handel demands a broader range of vocal ability and emotional generosity than any other composer of his day, and the singers on this recording largely meet those challenges. In her first recording of a Handel opera, Cecilia Bartoli (Almirena) demonstrates that she could become an important singer of this repertory. Her big arias are beguilingly sung, although her "Lascia ch'io pianga" lacks the deep, cantabile melancholy that several earlier Handelians have brought to the aria, and her faster singing sounds more like a tour de force than a triumph, a sprint that is probably meant to suggest passion but occasionally sounds just rushed. Gerald Finley and Luba Orgonasova are witty and malicious as Argante and Armida, equally effective when sorcery fails to heal the ache in their hearts. (Orgonasova's singing after Rinaldo spurns Armida descends to just the right depth of despair.) Countertenors Daniel Taylor (Eustazio) and Bejun Mehta (Mago Cristiano) are very fine. The orchestral playing throughout is spirited, at times thrilling.
Since this performance was recorded, in November 1999, David Daniels has played Rinaldo onstage in two productions, to considerable praise. Despite his many virtues, quibbles over the relatively recent fashion for using countertenors to sing Handel's most dramatic roles will not be settled by this recording. Neither Daniels nor any other countertenor can match the depth of color female Handelians have brought to Rinaldo's martial "Or la tromba." (Only one high-voiced male part in this Rinaldo is sung by a woman, as it was at the opera's premiere: Bernarda Fink's Goffredo, which offers warmth and handsome tone, especially in her last-act aria.) But Daniels here demonstrates considerably greater power and authority than were evident in his performances even two or three seasons ago. His "Cara sposa" is meltingly voiced and tenderly expressed; his accomplished Act I finale, "Venti, turbini," begs for multiple replays. Daniels's growing ability to structure a role is audible, and he and Bartoli sing beautifully together.
It is encouraging to note that Decca, which forty years ago positioned its great new star Joan Sutherland as the centerpiece of several Baroque and bel canto rediscoveries, has now applied the same initiative and care to Cecilia Bartoli and Rinaldo. One hopes this will be the first of many Handel recordings that the label and its current diva present to a new generation of listeners.
Gramophone “Editor's Choice” Award 2001
(James Jolly)
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/awardstemplate.asp?id=501&award_year=2001
Handelians are living enchanted lives at the moment. The list of his operas still to be recorded is shrinking almost by the month, and the standard of performance of those works is comparably going up.
Why? The answer is simple, Handel was a master of his craft, a composer who knew not only how to write wonderfully for the voice but also how to write music that singers love to perform.
Decca’s recording of Rinaldo, in its original version from 1711, has been cast with a line-up that you’d usually only expect to encounter in one of those ‘dream cast’ competitions. In the title-role, David Daniels once again confirms his status as a countertenor of supreme style blessed with a voice of great beauty.
Cecilia Bartoli, too, demonstrates that this is not only her repertoire of choice but also of nature – what a luxury to hear ‘Lascio ch’io pianga’ sung by such a lovely voice but also to have it set in the context of the entire work.
Bernarda Fink, as Goffredo, sings superbly and the casting of Gerald Finley, too, was a stroke of genius. There may have been more dramatic gestures in this music from ‘the pit’. But there’s no doubting Christopher Hogwood’s innate feeling for this music. A triumph.