On 26 November William Christie will be bringing his star Baroque ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, to the Barbican for a concert of Grand Motets by Campra, Desmarest, Lully and Rameau. It should be a great evening, and many more details are available at the Barbican website. There’s even a video introducing and the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants:

YouTube also includes a video, in two parts, of Christie conducting a performance of Rameau’s Grand Motet In convertendo:

Excitingly, the Rambler has two tickets for this concert to give away to the first correct answer the following question:

What subject did William Christie study for his degree at Harvard?

Answers in comments below, please – and don’t forget to include your email address.

A king-sized collection

Baroque royalty had big appetites, but there were none bigger than those of the four French Baroque kings, Louis XIII to Louis XVI. They indulged in feasts of all types, including musical ones. This 20-CD collection of music spanning 1600 to 1800 features the music these big-wig kings would have enjoyed at court, chapel and theater. This marvelous boxed set, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Centre de Musique de Versailles, certainly brings to mind Mel Brooks’ King Louis in History of the World: Part I, who declared, “It’s good to be the king!”

The superbly produced box divides the repertoire into four broad categories: The Secrets of Versailles at the Time of Louis XIII; The “Pleasures” of Versailles During the Reign of Louis XIV; Refinement at Versailles Under Louis XV; The Twilight of Versailles Under Louis XVI.

Louis XIII

Space doesn’t permit a detailed review of each disc, but there are plenty of treasures. I’m not a big fan of the air de cour, but the subtle beauties of music by Antoine Boesset and Robert Ballard receive sensitive and marvelously nuanced performances by soprano Monique Zanetti and lutenist Claire Antonini; they’re found on the CD devoted to music from the salons of the early French Baroque.

A big wig with Louis XIV underneath

For my taste, things really get rolling during the reign of Louis XIV. There’s a CD of music by Jean-Baptist Lully, including excerpts from his opera Amadis featuring the splendid soprano Véronique Gens. Another CD offers more Lully, plus excerpts from operas by André Cardinal Destouches, Marin Marais, Pascal Colasse and my favorite composer of the period, Marc-Antoine Charpentier. They feature the sensational young mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d’Oustrac.

Stéphanie d’Oustrac

Fans of instrumental music didn’t go hungry during the reign of Louis XIV (only the peasants did). There is a delightful CD that focuses on the chamber music of François Couperin, performed by Les Folies françoises, and sets of Symphonies pour les Soupers du Roi by Michel-Richard De Lalande and played by Musica Florea. While the performances don’t match the polished accounts by Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XX and Le Concert Des Nations recorded on Alia Vox, they are still plenty good.

There are three CDs dedicated to the sacred music that was heard at the court chapel and the parish churches. Grands motets by Lully, Henry Du Mont and Henry Desmarest sit alongside petit motets by Couperin and Charpentier. The performances are the best you will ever hear in this repertoire, and feature William Christie leading Les Arts Florissants (in a recording licensed from Warner France), Hervé Niquet directing Le Concert Spirituel (a recording licensed from Glossa) and stunning live performances by the Ricercar Consort. The mix of live recordings and carefully selected licensed performances are one of the many things that make this big box unique (although for seasoned collectors of this repertoire there might be some duplication).

William Christie, the king of the French Baroque

A more refined style took hold during the reign of Louis XV, and one of the chief masters of the new sound was Jean-Philippe Rameau. Rameau is well-represented on a CD of excerpts from his Hippolyte et Aricie (licensed from a Universal studio recording), with Gens singing and Marc Minkowski conducting Les Musiciens du Louvre, and live selections from Les Fêtes d’Hébé, Hippolyte (again) and Zoroastre with the ever-present Gens and Les Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset.

Véronique Gens, she sings like a goddess too!

It was good to be the king, indeed, and there are a few works that pay homage to His Majesty. Zélindor, roi des Sylpes, a one-act opera-ballet by François Rebel and François Francoeur in praise of Louis XV, is given a fetching performance by some fine vocalists and the ensemble Ausonia. The favors of Madame de Pompadour were also enjoyed by the king. She commissioned a number of works for her theater and even appeared in many of them. One of them is the delightful divertissement Ègine, by the little-known composer François Colin De Blamont, performed by vocalists and the instrumentalists of Les Nouveaux Caractères.

Louis XV

The sacred music of the time of Louis XV is represented with two CDs that feature such composers as Jean-Joseph De Mondonville and Rameau. Mondonville was a master of the concerted style (massed voices and orchestra), and the performance of his motet Dominus regnavit by Christie’s Les Arts Florissants is thrilling. The excitement Christie and company bring to the Mondonville is matched by the refined elegance that marks their performance of Rameau’s In convertendo.

Louis XVI with his head still attached

The music of Louis XVI’s illustrious predecessors is better known than the works from his reign. And yet, in some ways I think the music from the reign of Louis XVI is the most fascinating in the set. There’s an absolutely stunning CD of music by the Italian composers Antonio Sacchini and Niccolo Piccinni, performed by the glorious soprano Roberta Invernizzi accompanied by Antonio Florio’s Cappella della Pietà de’Turchini. Invernizzi is in splendid voice and is the model of elegant vocalism in the Mozartean “Je ne vous quitte point” from Sacchini’s Oedipe à Colone, and blows the roof off the joint with a virtuoso showcase in “Son regina e son amante” from Piccinni’s Didone abbandonata.

A singer I adore, Roberta Invernizzi

A CD of arias and orchestral music from French opera is another gem of the set. Here’s the dawn of Romanticism, with highly dramatic music by the rarely heard Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny and the slightly better-known François-Joseph Gossec and André Ernest Modeste Grétry. Remember the name Pierre-Yves Pruvot: he’s the muscular-voiced baritone who makes a huge impression in arias from operas by these composers. I want to hear this guy sing Don Giovanni some day!

The remaining CDs are also quite good if not life-changing. Symphonies by Gossec, Simon Leduc and Henri-Joseph Rigel receive performances by Le Cercle de l’Harmonie under the direction of Jérémie Rhorer that are better than the music deserves, and you can’t help but be delighted by the energy and drive of the ensemble. The always superb fortepianist Andreas Staier plays a recital featuring music by Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, Hyacinthe Jadin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There are some virtuoso turns here, especially in Mozart’s Variations on “Lison dormait.” I was bored with some too-precious chamber music by François Devienne, Pierre Vachon, Giuseppe Maria Cambini and Luigi Boccherini. Perhaps the best was saved for last—a CD devoted to sacred music by Gossec, François Giroust, and Rigel. Check out the Gossec motet for some superb vocal writing!

 The set comes with a thick booklet that, oh wonder of wonders, includes complete texts, translations and essays that are actually worth reading. One small complaint: the booklet provides a link to a website where there are supposed to be composer biographies, but alas, they are not to be found.

This is an essential set for anyone interested in the Baroque, and offers performances that are as state-of-the-art as anything currently out there. A magnificent achievement all around!

Versailles

Mr. Brooks has his say

Jean-Philippe Rameau and me: a love story.

Why is it, that I want to listen to the music of Rameau over and over again? To tell the truth, I think that in the past two years almost every day has begun or ended with Jean-Philippe Rameau. One of my colleagues even suggested he would reprogram my computer, so it would start playing Rameau by itself, saving me those few extra mouse clicks in the morning.

My addiction started with the operas Hippolyte et Aricie and Zoroastre as performed by Les Arts Florissants and William Christie. And at the moment I’m listening (again) to Tzimon Barto’s priceless A Basket of Wild Strawberries featuring Rameau’s exquisite Gigues, Allemandes and Sarabandes on a modern piano. Quite different from the recording of the same pieces by Christophe Rousset on harpsichord or even Alexandre Tharaud on a Steinway.

Tharaud is playing on his piano as if God actually would be Mr. Measurement himself. Which leaves us with the unfulfilled desire to the unexpectedly sweet strawberries of Tzimon Barto. I wouldn’t at all be suprised if he cried during the recording of his own cd. Actually, I do it all the time when I hear the seconds 21 to 25 of track 16 (Allemande in A Minor). The trill Barto plays there shocks me time and again.

Track 5 (Gigue en Rondeau) moves me so that I hold my breath, waiting for something to happen. And it does happen: this intense feeling of love, happiness, great loss and sadness, all at once. It all comes down timing, which is in a sense flirting with measurement. So, Tharaud was looking in the right direction, but he didn’t notice the subtly lifted eyebrow beckoning on the right and the delicate wink of the eye on the left. He had to catch his train, the poor boy. All of those heartbreaking moments… just missed because of awkward timing!

And there we are again: Les Tendres Plaintes, track 12… God, what is this music just divine. Rameau and me: it’s a never ending love story. Tzimon, when will you finally play your Rameau in Europe? We are waiting!

I’ve tried to like Lully.  I really, truly, have tried.  I worked/got to know a cast in Les Huguenots that included several Lully-ites in the William Christie entourage.  But it’s not doing it for me.

That’s not to say that in the month since I last logged into WordPress I’ve been casting withering looks at myTunes and trying to sweep JB under the rug.  I’ve been doing nothing but listening and writing everything but this blog.  So let’s knock a few Lulls out of the park before getting to the DVD of Phaëton.  And let’s combine my passion for writing with my passion for new media and sum each of these operas up in the span of a Tweet.

@Atys:  “Not the least of these was a sstned contrast btwn the drama’s violent passion…and Lully’s prvrsly sbdued and rstrained music.” – E. Said

@Isis: Lully’s greatest laments thus far, but Juno/Jupiter need an agent for the amt of times they’re repped in opera. Not seeing the tragedy here.

@Psyché: Blessed with a good recording for this; perhaps what I need to enjoy JBL. Dramatic influences of Moliere, Italy apparent. Holy finale, Bman!*

*And I do mean Baroque Man.  A superhero costume requiring a wig similar to that of JB Lully’s.

We have a casualty in the Opster Project!  And an important one at that.  Cavalli’s Giasone, or a Medea With a Happy End (and perhaps a happy ending or two).  Before I delve into this bad boy, I want to make a MCM PSA:

I’m working with the most recent–but nonetheless in need of an update–New Grove Dictionary of Opera.  Which is 85-90% accurate for operas before the 20th Century, however in the wake of new score discoveries and the likes of Rene Jacobs, Marc Minkowski, and William Christie, there are always new discoveries and I’m only so good.  So if on the Project Page you notice something missing, please give me a shout (oliviagiovetti AT gmail DOT com) or leave a comment.  Cheers, thanks a lot.

Back to Jason and the Argonauts…

In the preface to Giasone, librettist Giacinto Andrea Cicognini writes (quoting Ellen Rosand’s Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice) “I write out of mere whim; my whim has no other aim than to give pleasure. To bring pleasure to myself is nothing other than to accommodate the inclination and taste of those who listen or read.”  In Italian, “mere whim” translated into “mero capriccio,” and though Cicognini was not the first to coin this turn of phrase, it became associated with him due to his popularity.

This popularity carried over into Giasone.  Defining mid-17th Century opera, if not opera for the century on the whole, Giasone is the first opera to fully separate recit with aria.  Breaking more of the rules, it appealed to both the Venetian aristocracy and middle/lower classes with its mix of myth and humor, a mix that we would soon see in La Calisto.  As Alex Ross wrote in his review of Yale’s recent production of Giasone (from which I’ve nicked the artwork), “The line forward to Mozart’s ‘Figaro,’ ‘Don Giovanni,’ and ‘Così’ is straight and short”  (and to add on to that, it’s no surprise that the librettist to all three of those operas grew up in the Venetian tradition).  Rosand adds that the opera is “a moment of equilibrium in the cycle, a perfectly adjusted meeting of music and drama, the model of the genre to future generations.”  The praise heaped onto Giasone seems to indicate that Cavalli’s genius as a composer was doubtless, but perhaps Faustini was not his ideal librettist.

Cavalli’s hand in L’incoronazione di Poppea is more evident here, particularly in the parallels between Pur ti Miro and the duet between Medea and Jason (Dormi stanco Giasone), a lustful piece that exemplifies the male/female balance in opera (Medea sings of submission, “And for my heart, which your eyes have ravished,let your eyelids be the sweet prison”; Jason of power, “Today, because of you, Jason can boast that he has his soul in the shadows and the sun in his arms”).  Repetition is once again used here for both comic and boisterous effect, and the contrast of this and Hypsipyle’s minor laments, again growing so minor and set apart from the rest of the music that you know it must end well.   The combattimento shows another side of the coin, a rapid fire of pulsating staccato in the basso continuo.  Yet for all this musical range, the prologo still carries the same elements of Cavalli’s other prologues.  I’m coming to see this as a calling card; a means of identifying the composer–and his mark–in the first few measures.

Notes on Zerfiro Torna, the most stunning piece by Monteverdi

This post is dedicated to my Step-Mutterlein Sarahchen Davies, PhD-writer extraordinaire, who introduced me to Monteverdi and much more and deserves a gold star every minute.

-Here’s a beautiful version by the astounding William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants, but my favorite is by the early music ensemble Artek and is on their work “I Don’t Want to Love”. For more on Artek, click on their name.

-Zefiro Torna is based on  a sonnet that begins with “Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti l’aer fa grato” and is from a late XVI century poet, Ottavio Rinuccini, a member of the Camerata de’ Bardi. Here’s more on the madrigal from the All Music Guide:  This work is one of two madrigals composed by Monteverdi with the title Zefiro torna and is not to be confused with his five-voice a cappella setting of a sonnet by Petrarch published in his Sixth Book of Madrigals in 1614. This madrigal sets a text by Ottavio Rinuccini, the poet who authored the librettos for the first two surviving operas, Peri’s La Dafne and Euridice, as well as Monteverdi’s lost opera, Arianna. It was published in the collection Scherzi Musicali, and in the composer’s Ninth Book of Madrigals (1632). Scored for two tenors and continuo, most of the piece is in the form of a ciaccona or passacaglia, which uses a constantly recurring bass line, and it is the first known example of a vocal duet that uses a ciaccona accompaniment. Although it is sometimes performed in a “straight” manner, it is most frequently interpreted as a comic parody of madrigals as they had evolved by the early seventeenth century, particularly the mannered conventions of the seconda prattica, in which the musical setting is largely driven by the text, and dissonance is used with extreme freedom as an expressive tool.

The poem, a sonnet, is a rhapsodic pastoral ode to Zephyr, the west wind that brings Spring and its attendant opportunities for romance, or at least dalliance. Here, as in many of his madrigals, Monteverdi’s exceptionally fluid text-setting skillfully subverts the structure of the sonnet so that its poetic effusions seem spontaneously improvised rather than constructed according to strict formal standards. The catchy repeated figure of the ciaccona, the springy rhythms, and the graceful but florid vocal lines give the work an infectious exuberance. The composer’s playful tweaking of the seconda prattica is evident throughout in his exaggeratedly obvious text painting. “Mormorando,” (murmuring), for instance, is set to a wavery, murmuring figure that runs on for a little longer than is strictly necessary. Later, the first voice sings “e da monti” to a line that leaps upward to the extremes of the singer’s range, while the second voice’s “e da valli” precipitously tumbles down in the opposite direction. In the final tercet of the sonnet, the mood changes and the author gives in to despair because he has not found his beloved. The ciaccona figure halts, and these lines are set as a slow quasi-recitative. In the final line, “piango” (weep), is given a balefully pathetic treatment with a harmonic progression that droops almost irretrievably below the home key, before recovering on the final word, “canto” (sing), which brings a return of the ciaccona figure and the original mood of joy and optimism. These and many other examples give performers the opportunity to showcase the music’s humor, making Zefiro torna one of the composer’s most popular and frequently performed madrigals. ~ All Music Guide

-Sarahchen told me it was a Huge Hit in the 17th century. So this was the Brittney Spears of those times?!?

“ZEFIRO TORNA”
(The poem used by Claudio Monteverdi, first in Italian then translated into English.)

ORIGINAL ITALIAN VERSION:

Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti
l’aer fa grato e’il pié discioglie a l’onde
e, mormoranda tra le verdi fronde,
fa danzar al bel suon su’l prato i fiori.

Inghirlandato il crin Fillide e Clori
note temprando lor care e gioconde;
e da monti e da valli ime e profond
raddoppian l’armonia gli antri canori.
Sorge più vaga in ciel l’aurora, e’l sole,
sparge più luci d’or; più puro argento
fregia di Teti il bel ceruleo manto.

Sol io, per selve abbandonate e sole,
l’ardor di due begli occhi e’l mio tormento,
come vuol mia ventura, hor piango hor canto.

ENGLISH VERSION:
Return O Zephyr, and with gentle motion
Make pleasant the air and scatter the grasses in waves
And murmuring among the green branches
Make the flowers in the field dance to your sweet sound;
Crown with a garland the heads of Phylla and Chloris
With notes tempered by love and joy,
From mountains and valleys high and deep
And sonorous caves that echo in harmony.
The dawn rises eagerly into the heavens and the sun
Scatters rays of gold, and of the purest silver,
Like embroidery on the cerulean mantle of Thetis.
But I, in abandoned forests, am alone.
The ardour of two beautiful eyes is my torment;
As my Fate wills it, now I weep, now I sing.

I fell asleep during Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria last night; not because it was boring but because I was just exhausted.  The French/Italian/Syrian/Jew in me, who celebrates with food, thought it would be a nice way of marking the 1/4-way through point of the 1600s and the return to familiar territory with ol’Claudio by cooking an Italian/Greek-style dinner while listening to the William Christie/Les Arts Florissants seminal DVD production, carefully of course, and finishing with some white wine, kalamata olives, and baklava on the couch.  Game for anything, my boyfriend marinated baby octopus and calamari in lemon, white wine, and kalamata juice while I worked from the library.  We cooked the seafood in their juices, reducing the liquid into a nice light sauce that we tossed onto basic capellini.  Somehow that process took two hours instead of 20 minutes, and I could barely hear a thing over the vent fan and air conditioning unit, both essential for cooking in a New York City apartment in the summer.

So we re-started the opera over tiny squares of Astoria’s finest baklava, and I made it up to the reuinion of Ulysses and Telemachus before the week hit me and I passed out on the arm of my sofa.  I never thought active listening could be so exhausting…I’ve done standing room (on consecutive nights) for the Ring Cycle at both the Met and Vienna Staatsoper.  I’ve had weeks where I’ve been at a performance every night…hell, I used to usher at the NY State Theatre and would sit in on an opera every other night (and sometimes stay on nights when I was off just for fun).  That this project is taking more of a toll is making me wonder what I’ve missed when I’ve blissfully sat/stood through opera upon opera feeling wired rather than worn down afterward.  But part of this project is to make me a better listener and a better commenter on music, so I guess hard work isn’t really hard work without a bit of exhaustion.

So Ritorno…take three…this morning.

Land’s Il Sant’Alessio is regarded as the first opera about human characters, rather than gods and goddesses of Greek mythology.  Apotheosis could argue this, BUT I think that Ritorno d’Ulisse is the first opera about humans with such definitive emotional arcs and journies; humans that at the end reach a form of spiritual reassessment and moral reconciliation among their lives–however mythic these lives may seem from a 21st Century perspective.  This is also the first opera with what I believe are truly discernible (and multiple) arias!  Mein gott in himmel!  I forgot what those sounded like.  Characters had their own distinct sounds; which felt as close to leitmotif as you’re gonna get in Baroque opera.  And it moved–oh yes, it moved.  Whereas I felt stagnant with the recent fare from this week–Diana and Alessio and all that–this music propelled through a beginning, towards a climax, and reached the end.

The music captures loss, lamentation, and an idea of diaspora without needing a word–particularly in the haunting lament sung by Penelope.  In the time between his last full (surviving) opera and Ulisse, he had lost his wife to childbirth, and in the time that he composed Ulisses, he was fighting illness.  In fact, he died three years after Ulisses had its premiere.  It’s hard to believe that Monteverdi wasn’t aware of his own mortality as he created musical arcs for characters so keenly aware of the fact that they, too, could die at any moment.

And yet that beautiful, tender, reconciliation at the end…the swell of brass instruments welcoming our title character home, gives us a sense of optimism–an optimism that we’ve earned after this operatic odyssey–that so many later operas lack.

As a side note, I was reluctant at first to include DVDs as an acceptable form of “listening” with each opera–a bad performance or production can sour a good opera and often the visuals prohibit the music from its full potential.  However, with so many operas on Netflix (and so few dollars in my bank account), I figured it was as good an option as any; and I could always put a blanket over the TV.  And when a production serves the music, it’s amazing how vital that viewing rather than listening becomes to an opera.  I think I was less excited about Sant’Alessio because of the production (though to me that opera had many problems, least of which was related to the visuals).  But this Ritorno was such an inspiration that I was reminded of what there is to love about Baroque opera–simple, honest music and that exhilirating feeling of breaking new ground with each recit and aria.

PS: Dear Cyril Auvity (aka, Telemachus in this production), I’m now looking up every other CD and DVD on which you’re featured.  I think you and your haute-contre have just stolen my heart.

CASI 400 AÑOS DESPUÉS DE SU ESTRENO, EL DIRECTOR MUSICAL WILLIAM CHRISTIE Y EL DIRECTOR DE ESCENA, PIER LUIGI PIZZI RECUPERAN ESTE SEGUNDO TÍTULO DE LA OBRA DE CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI BASADO EN LA “ODISEA” DE HOMERO Y CON LIBRETO DE GIOVANNI BADOERO. PARA ELLO CUENTAN CON EL BARITONO ALEMÁN DIETRICH HENSCHEL QUE ENCARNA A ULISES, JUNTO A OTROS NOMBRES COMO CHRISTINE RICE (PENÉLOPE), KOBIE VAN RENSBURG, UMBERTO CHIUNMMO O MARINA RODRÍGUEZ-CUSI. 

JOYCE DIDONATO.

PROGRAMA: FURORE!

Teatro Real, 3 de Diciembre 2008

GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759):
Teseo, HWV 9
“Dolce riposo, ed innocente pace”
“Ira, sdegni, e furore… O stringerò nel sen”
“Morirò, ma vendicata”Imeneo, HWV 41
Obertura
“Sorge nell’alma mia”Il pastor fido, HWV 8
Chacona

 Serse, HWV 40
“Crude Furie degl’orridi abissi”

——————————————————————-

GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759):

Ariodante, HWV 33
“Scherza infida”

Rodrigo ovvero Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, HWV 5
Pasacalle en Si Mayor para violín obligado, dos oboes y fagotes

Hercules, HWV 60
Obertura
“Cease, ruler of the day, to rise!”
“Where shall I fly?”

Bises:
Serse: “Ombra mai fu”
Ariodante: “Doppo notte”

Joyce DiDonato, mezzosoprano

Les Talens Lyriques
Christophe Rousset, director

Las óperas de Georg Friedrich Händel (Halle, Sajonia, 1685 – Londres, 1759) encierran la más perfecta y asombrosa lección de canto de la música barroca. No en vano la pasión por Händel actúa como nexo común entre los pioneros de la interpretacion con instrumentos de época y criterios historicistas -Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, Jordi Savall, René Jacobs, Christopher Hogwood, William Christie y John Eliot Gardiner- y la posterior generación de intérpretes que en las últimas tres décadas ha liderado la llamada revolución barroca. Músicos como Alan Curtis, Robert King, Trevor Pinnock, Marck Minkowski, Christophe Rousset y Emmanuelle Haïm, entre otros, que comparten una forma muy viva de hacer música, manteniendo la máxima fidelidad estilística sin que el rigor filológico disminuya la belleza expresiva de la música.

Händel utilizó el aria da capo, una forma musical cerrada, para llamar la atención del espectador, agitar sus senitmientos y llegar a emocionarle.
El aria tiene un papel decisivo en la música barroca y su función, como si de un remanso lírico se tratara, deja al cantante expresar sus sentimientos o comentar la acción, y al mismo tiempo le sirve en bandeja de plata una ocasión de lucimiento personal. En la escena europea, desde mediados del siglo XVII hasta mediados del XVIII se impone en la ópera la denominada aria da capo, en la que Händel fue el más asombroso e imaginativo maestro. En esta composición estructurada en forma ternaria (A-B-A), se impone un especial sentido del contraste en la expresión de atmósferas y sentimientos: la primera parte, más larga, contrasta con la segunda para, finalmente, volver a la primera, con diversas variaciones, ornamentaciones e improvisaciones, es decir, añadiendo dificultades a un sendero de virtuosismo extremo que permite al cantante el lucimiento pleno de sus recursos técnicos y expresivos.

Händel sintió la fascinación por el canto en plena juventud, especialmente durante su provechoso viaje a Venecia, Florencia, Nápoles y Roma, donde recibió la influencia de la música italiana. Dejó Hamburgo a finales de 1706, con apenas veintiún años, para trasladarse a Italia con un claro objetivo: empaparse de los gustos operísticos en boga. En Roma hizo representar en 1707 su primer oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e de Disinganno y al año siguiente La Resurrezione. Buscó después la gloria lírica en Nápoles, estrenando en 1708, por encargo del Duque de Alvito, la serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, antecedente de Acis and Galatea.

Maestro de capilla del príncipe elector de Hannover, cuando éste heredó el trono de Inglaterra (1714) con el nombre de George I, se convirtió en su protector en Londres, donde se había establecido tres años antes tras el éxito de Rinaldo. En la capital inglesa dirigió la Royal Academy of Music, compañía creada en 1719 para promocionar la ópera italiana, y forjó un catálogo lírico de más de cuarenta títulos. En sus primeros años londinenses se vio metido de lleno en la mayor controversia artística de su tiempo: escribir óperas italianas que suplantaban formas líricas nacionales inglesas, con la masque como modelo representativo del gusto autóctono. Ante el auge italianista, compositores y libretistas comprendieron que la única forma de sobrevivir era reformar la música teatral en lengua inglesa adaptándola a los nuevos gustos.

Utilizando efectivos modestos, supo hechizar al público con una fluidez elegancia y refinamiento sonoro que define su lenguaje orquestal. En cuanto a la variedad expresiva de las arias, nunca le falló la inspiración, desde la ternura al lamento conmovedor, desde la bravura y la ira al canto más sereno y sensual. Su fama ilustra una paradoja: siendo alemán y escribiendo para el público inglés, acabó siendo el más célebre autor de óperas italianas del siglo XVIII.

Händel tomó bien el pulso al gusto escénico inglés por lo espectacular y lo mágico, herencia del teatro isabelino, y probó muy pronto las mieles del éxito, con el estreno de Rinaldo en 1711, y el agrio sabor del fracaso: su pieza pastoril de estilo italiano, il pastor fido HWV 8, fue un absoluto fracaso, entre otras causas por su pobre presentación escénica. Con Teseo, HWV 9, el único de sus dramas dividido en cinco actos por influencia de la tragedia lírica francesa, la suerte cambió. Se estrenó en 1713, alcanzando las trece representaciones. Gustó, a juzgar por las crónicas, por varios motivos: el “lujoso vestuario”, el “despliegue de maquinaria escénica” y su tema, pues se trata de una ópera mágica, tan del gusto inglés.

En 1735 estrenó Ariodante, ópera de tres actos con argumento basado en Orlando furioso de Ariosto. En esta ópera se define perfectamente la conmovedora expresividad del universo händeliano. El aria “Scherza infida in grembo al drudo” (Acto II, Escena 3) es un inspiradísimo lamento que traduce los sentimientos y el dolor del protagonista. Los efectos orquestales rozan el prodigio, con esa atmósfera nocturna y la intervención de fagotes y violines con sordina. Los silencios que dan protagonismo a la orquesta cobran gran relieve dramático, mientras que el desasosiego y la aflicción reemplazan el furor que parecen indicar las palabras del amante que se siente traicionado.

Durante el invierno de 1737 compuso Serse, HWV 40, una de sus últimas óperas. Se trata de una curiosa obra con elementos cómicos y satíricos que ridiculizan las convenciones de la òpera seria. A pesar de su calidad, el creciente desinterés por el género italiano limitó su permanencia en cartel a sólo cinco representaciones. Después cayó en el olvido absoluto durante dos siglos, no sin compensar al autor con una gran contribución a su gloria, el celebérrimo arioso “Ombra mai fu”, cuya sublime melodía pasó al gran repertorio bajo el título de Largo de Händel.

El vanidoso, presuntuoso y autócrata personaje de Serse, rey de Persia, tiene a su cargo otras páginas de sorprendente fuerza y belleza. Una de ellas es la espléndida aria “Crude Furie degl’orridi abissi” (Acto III, Escena 11), todo un ciclón que exige al cantante aplomo y absoluto dominio estilístico para salir a flote.

Otro título prácticamente olvidado desde el estreno en 1738, en Imeneo HWV 41. El argumento narra en tres actos el dilema de Rosmene, una muchacha que se debate entre el amor de dos pretendientes: Tirinto, su prometido, e Imeneo, que le salvó la vida. La obertura es un magnífico ejemplo de la madurez del sajón y su maestría orquestal, con un admirable equilibrio y transparencia en el uso de unso recursos sencillos con los que consigue una atmósfera de gran frescura.

Drama intimista, concebido, como es rasgo común en sus últimas óperas, con una mirada irónica hacia las convenciones del género italiano, ya en su ocaso. El aria principal de Tirinto, “Sorge nell’anima mia” (Acto II, Escena 3) maravilla por su gran fuerza y puede codearse con sus mejores creaciones en el espectacular terreno de las arias de bravura. La agitación de las cuerdas y el vigor rítmico acompañan un canto brillante, rico en ornamentaciones y plagado de enormes dificultades.

Obra de madurez, Imeneo nos remite a un periodo díficil de su vida empresarial: la decadencia de la ópera cantada en  italiano y la progresiva implantacion del uso del inglés en el género lírico para responder a los nuevos gustos del público.

Harto de confrontaciones entre partidarios de la ópera italiana y la inglesa, y también entre los que consideraban intolerable escuchar oratorios sagrados en el teatro, votó por la suscripción como fórmulas menos arriesgada para sasegurar el estreno de dos obras nuevas. Hercules, HWV 60, estrenada en 1745, fue una de ellas. Sin embargo, no convenció ni a los aficionados a los oratorios ni a los defensores de la ópera. La posteridad no ha hecho demasiada justicia a la obra, y eso que contiene música de extraordinaria calidad y retratos líricos tan poderosos como el personaje de Dejanira, cuyos celos furiosos se mueven en una desbordante tesitura que culmina con la asombrosa esdena de la locura del Acto III, de colores vocales y sentido teatral fuera de serie.

JOYCE DIDONATO.

Después de graduarse en la Academy of Vocal Arts de Filadelfia, se hizo miembro de los programas para jóvenes artistasn en las compañías de ópera de San Francisco, Houston y Santa Fe.
Su carrera internacional tuvo un despegue meteórico con papeles en óperas de Rossini, Händel y Mozart.
Importantes debuts en su desarrollo profesional han tenido lugar en La Scala de Mlán (Angelina en La Cenerentola), en la Ópera de Ginebra (Sesto en La clemenza di Tito), el Metropolitan de Nueva York (Cherubino en Le nozze di Figaro) y en la Ópera de Amsterdam (Sesto en Giulo Cesare).
Ha actuado en los más prestigiosos coliseos líricos del mundo (Londres, Tokio, Múnich, Tel Aviv, San Francisco), así como en los festivales de Pésaro y Aix-en-Provence.

CHRISTOPHE ROUSSET.
Oriundo de Aix-en-Provence, estudió clave con Huguette Dreyfus en la Schola Cantorum de París y con Bob van Asperen en el conservatorio de La Haya. En 1983, a la edad de veintidós años, obtuvo el primer premio en la VII Edición de Competición en Clave en Brujas. Consolidado en la prensa internacional y los más importantes sellos musicales como solista de clave, hizo su debut como director con II Seminario Musical y Les Arts Florissants. En 1991 fundó su propio grupo, Les Talens Lyriques, que se ha convertido en una de las mejores orquestas barrocas de Francia. Al frente de la misma ha actuado en los más famosos festivales barrocos del mundo, incluyendo The Boston Early Music Festival, la Bachfest Leipzig, Haendelfestpiele, la Accademia Santa Cecilia, el Festival d’Ambronay y el Drottningholm Festival. Posee una importante cantidad de grabaciones como director del grupo y en solitario como clavecinista.

Icon of the Archangel Michael, Constantinople, twelfth century. Basilica di San Marco, Venice. Photo per gentile concessione della Procuratoria di San Marco/Cameraphoto Arte, Venice

Darkness falls before six in the evening now, closer to five on dull days. It’s that time of year when life increasing centres around deep sofas, books like this and this, dark chocolate, alongside astonishment at our culture’s inexplicable failure to embrace hibernation as a universal human right.

Nevertheless, nightfall last Friday found me making my way to the Chapel of King’s University, London, to hear a lecture on The Heavenly Liturgy: Byzantine Psalmody to 1453, organised in conjunction with the Royal Academy’s magnificent Byzantium exhibition, supported by the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange.

Now, persistent readers of these pages may reasonably object that while I know little enough about music in general — entirely true, by the way — my ignorance of Byzantine psalmody must surely be as perfect as ignorance ever can be. That, though, was precisely the point. For while it’s in the nature of an exhibition like Byzantium — a vast enterprise, in which more than 300 objects are made to represent a thousand years of history, played out on a stage that stretched from York to Moscow, Damascus to Belgrade, the deserts of North Africa to the shores of the Black Sea and beyond — to raise more questions than it could possibly answer, the questions it had raised regarding music were particularly insistent.

Why, though? Hurrying down through a crowded Covent Garden, enjoying one of those rambling inner ‘dialogues’, the prosecution of which give solitude amidst a multitude with such a large measure of its uniquely compelling charm, I tried to justify the whim that propelled me towards King’s College.

More than two decades earlier, back in those innocent undergraduate days when ignorance implied no barrier to interest, Prof. Grout’s A History of Western Music, an amiable survey text, had planted the seed of my curiosity, through the tantalising claim that Byzantine chant preserved in its traditions some faint yet audible echo of the otherwise vanished music of the classical world. Years later, a short but perfect visit to Athens — memories of dark unremarkable churches, smoke-blackened icons obscured by the gleam of their gold and silver frames, and most of all the old women who prayed, bowed and crossed themselves before emerging once again into the pitiless midday sunshine, their devotions an admixture of familiarity with formality unlike anything I’d seen before — only nurtured it. More than anything, though, the Byzantine world became real to me through time spent in Venice, Byzantium’s daughter and destroyer. In particular, the magnificent desolation of that church that matters so much to me, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta at Torcello — so silent, now, so much of the time, as neither the tourists nor the ghosts make quite enough noise to fill those numinous spaces — seemed to yearn, at the very least, for some late offering of imaginative sympathy I was ill-equipped to provide, no matter how much I should have liked to do so.

And then there was the Royal Academy’s Byzantium, which deserves an account of its own. Suffice to say that much of ‘the artifice of eternity’ on show here remains so formidably resistant to secularisation — shrugging off the bogus worship accorded to aestheticised ‘works of art’ as thoroughly as the shadowy death-in-life that is the lot of the historical artifact — as to leave a certain sort of visitor wondering whether the experience on offer in Burlington House is, in fact, less cultural than spiritual — whether the exhibition is, in other words, precisely that meeting of heaven and earth that Orthodox practice claims to offer, at once alert to the realities of human weakness and the immanence of the miraculous. In any event, I wanted to find the aural equivalent of these visual treasures. My ignorance was, at least, leavened with humility. What I didn’t anticipate, though, was how marvellous the evening would be.

King’s College Chapel, now largely restored to George Gilbert Scott’s original scheme, glowed like a golden casket of mid-Victorian piety, refulgently positive and practical, replete with glazed tiles, improving mottos and a medievalism robustly self-confident in its eclecticism.

The lecture was given by Dr Alexander Lingas, of City University, London. A serious historian of the Byzantine musical tradition, Dr Lingas is also founder and artistic director of the Cappella Romana — an ambitious attempt at accommodations between academic research and present-day singing, early medieval chant and contemporary classical music, ancient liturgies and modern spirituality, East and West, theory and practice generally — as well as an energetic and convincing exponent of music that clearly means so much to him, on many levels. And he also sings, more than competently.

For despite the erudition, good humour and fluent vitality of the lecture itself, it’s the accompanying music — performed by John Michael Boyer, Protopsaltis (Chief Cantor) of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco, Dr Lingas and two other singers — that still echoes in my head now, and indeed may quite possibly continue to do so for some time, long after the words themselves have faded away.

For having briefly sketched the early history of Byzantine liturgical singing — the differences between what went on in Constantinople and Jerusalem, the differences between cathedral and monastic traditions, the development from relatively simple responsive psalmody to highly ornamented, imaginative devotional hymns — these four men went on to illustrate what Dr Lingas had described. The economy of means could hardly have been extreme: unaccompanied voices, singing monophonically against the background of the unifying ison, or drone. Hardly less extreme, though, was the other-wordly quality of the sound this produced. Byzantine chant operates on tonal conventions entirely unlike those familiar from traditional Western music. These conventions result in intervals that sound, to Western ears, not so much ‘wrong’ as like nothing on this earth. At the same time, the ‘harmonies’ created by the relationship of the melodic line with the ison create strange resonances that seem to work directly not so much on the senses as on the whole being. Strangers to this chant may, indeed, feel that, rather than ‘listening’ to ‘music’, they are being swathed in a texture of sustained vibrations, absolutely as strange and terrible as the angels from whom these chants were — and, who knows, perhaps sometimes still are — believed to have been transmitted.

Unfortunately — and it’s my single substantive criticism of this magnificent event — the organisers failed to provide a simple handlist of the works discussed and performed, along with their dates and places of composition, let alone a bibliography or discography for those who wish to learn more. The omission is particularly odd, given Dr Lingas’ commitment to Byzantine psalmody less as a dry academic specialisation than as a living, enlivening practice.

Byzantine music is not, it seems, for everyone. Dr Lingas’ lecture included some hilarious dismissals of Byzantine psalmody on the part of initially indulgent, sympathetic Western observers. And perhaps they have a point. The music does, to Western ears, sound nasal, repetitive, lacking in constrast, colour or what we conventionally recognise as beauty. Worst of all, though, it sounds far too ‘Eastern’ — those alien tonalities and flatnesses redolent, especially for those who lack much knowledge of the subject, of Qur’anic chanting, with all the negative implications that invokes in the more historically unimaginative, theologically shallow class of Western listener. It isn’t, in other words, easy. And given natural human laziness coupled with the wealth of other sounds there for the hearing, for some this will mean that Byzantine psalmody isn’t worth pursuing at all.

Yet for other listeners, the strangeness, the difficulty and lack of obvious ‘beauty’ may well be the point. Confronted with even the greatest examples European devotional music, a Western listener may well end up distracted by the puzzle entailed in trying to shoehorn whatever he’s hearing into all the usual narratives of secular historical development. Thus a mass setting by Dufay immediately conjures up not only a particular style of religiosity, but the architecture, painting and politics that accompanied it, as well as the music that preceded and followed it. Alternatively, and, worse still, the listener finds himself criticising the performance itself, so that whatever doctrinal messages Bach may have intended a particular sacred cantata to express, that meaning ends up dissolved into a preference for small ensembles over large ones, wonky old instruments for their glossy new counterparts, live performances over recordings, Harnoncourt instead of Rilling or Suzuki. Once lost, pre-lapsarian innocence cannot be recovered. If what familiarity breeds is, often, something rather warmer than contempt, it’s still a colder, more intellectualised sort of response than that first, uncritical, unmediated hearing.

All of which is relevant in this context only to a Western, parochial, rather unworldly listener. Self-evidently, someone who knew more about Byzantine chant would, faced with Dr Lingas’ lecture, quite possibly have encountered all these issues, the cavils and the quirks of individual preference, and perhaps even found in them a barrier to letting the work do what it was meant to do — in this case, I think, to draw the listener closer to God.

Still, on the evening in question, my ignorance protected me. When an intelligible word of Greek emerged from the flickering glow of sound, it came, lapidary and unarguable, with all the force of revelation. At other points, I might as well have been hearing angels conversing amongst themselves. Freed variously from the burdens of analysis, criticism and (however briefly) self-consciousness, I was free to lose myself in the magnificent noise vibrating through the bones in my head just as it echoed through everything else in the chapel around me — to exist in a space that was permeated by the sounds of Byzantium itself.

Or was it? Can such a thing really be possible? Now, after the fact, the question’s worth raising, less to challenge Dr Lingas’ interpretive strategies than to express some sort of delayed residual awareness that, even here, the headachey issues afflicting ‘historically informed performance’ — issues adumbrated, for anyone who’s interested, in Bernard Sherman’s stunning Inside Early Music — also arise. This isn’t just a question of whether the original performers would have chanted with the sheer professional skill, let alone the identical tone, pitch and tempo, of Dr Lingas’ ensemble — although, for what it’s worth, the performance of early music famously gravitates to a ‘best case scenario’, especially in recorded versions. Nor is it just a question about how linguistic, doctrinal and cultural familiarity shaped the way in which the original audiences — in the case of psalmody, of course, the ‘audiences’ might also be participants — received those original ‘performances’. Similarly, it is more than just a question of admitting that even real experts can’t, ultimately, do much more than make informed guesses at Byzantine music was like.

No, in the end, it comes down to a much deeper question about the purpose of this music, sung here, in London, in November 2008, in front of an audience largely unfamiliar with its conventions. What matters more — authenticity, aesthetic beauty, or integrity of purpose? And to what extent does emphasising one of these qualities require a sacrifice of the others?

Just to illustrate this clunkingly obvious point with what is perhaps the most extremely contrasting example possible, my other musical adventure last week consisted of hearing William Christie conduct Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes at the Barbican.

First performed in 1735, Les Indes Galantes was a truly revolutionary exercise in opéra-ballet, shocking critics and delighting audiences with its outrageous harmonics (storms rage, waves crash, volcanos erupt amidst much exertion by the overworked timpanist), abrupt shifts of mood, its fashion-conscious exoticism and, most of all, its resolute lack of high seriousness. And indeed, even now, it’s a spectacularly worldly piece of music. Not least, Rameau is hardly shy in drawing attention to the man-made cleverness of his musical inventions, his skill as a mimic, his jokes and sleights of hand. But there’s also an unabashed fascination with the things of this world — different countries, different customs, the sheer variety of human manners and mores. Religion features here, if at all, then as an emblem of cultural difference, useful to move the plot along, but largely irrelevant to the action itself, or to what we’re invited to feel about the characters.

Christie is brilliant at bringing out the humour, restlessness and frivolity inherent in this light-hearted masterpiece, but in a semi-staged performance it’s simply impossible do justice to the distracting quality of the sudden dances, the lightning-swift transpositions from one continent to the next, the gleeful shallowness of this essay in cultural tourism, complete with guaranteed happy endings. At the Barbican, perhaps to offset the resulting lack of pace, only three of the four original acts were performed. Authenticity was curtailed, in various ways, not only in the interests of practicality, but for the greater ease of present-day audiences. This was, I suspect, the correct decision, if only for the deference it demonstrated towards the overall purpose of the work.

For Les Indes Galantes is, above all else, a distraction. The surfaces are beautiful, the depth non-existent, the Hall of Mirrors enchantment complete as long as everything keeps moving, the lack of profundity absolute. Nor should any of this be read as criticism, at least in any purely negative sense. Les Indes Galantes was, after all, meant as an entertainment — sophisticated distraction was the point, not some sort of failure on the way to a different end.

If, today, that frenetic, kind-hearted, strangely innocent entertainment has acquired some tinge of sadness from our knowledge of the climacteric due to follow only half a century later — well, then, that is hardly Rameau’s fault, any more than it is our own. What it means, however, is that we cannot possibly hear Les Indes Galantes the way its first listeners heard it, any more than we can hear its more ‘advanced’ harmonics with ears entirely innocent of Mahler or Schoenberg, minds innocent of Law’s financial machinations or Said’s Orientalism, or without realising where Rameau and Christie stand in the current critical hierarchies of composers and conductors — or, indeed, without a wry, half-pitying smile cast in the direction of our younger selves, who, perhaps, once admired Rameau’s music with a particularly uncritical affection, buried now beneath the cumulative burden of knowledge that, for better or worse, has rained down on us ever since.

All of which brings us back, one way or the other, to Byzantine psalmody. As with Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, this is music skilfully calibrated to produce a particular effect. How, though, to describe it?

At the lecture, I ended up sitting next to a flock of wide-eyed, glossy-haired American exchange students, immaculate of dress and radiating earnestness, reduced eventually to slack-jawed astonishment — as indeed we all were — by the sounds so recently surrounding them. As we were gathering up our coats at the end, preparing to leave, one of the girls put into words what, I imagine, many of us were feeling: ‘God, like, how good would we all be if we heard that every day?’

For at some level — and certainly giving more theological weight to that casual profanity than was originally intended — this sums up the most surprising and mysterious quality of Byzantine chant. Oh, it’s hard to write about this sort of thing without dabbling up to the elbow in the dangerous, dull, mephitic shallows of New Age pseudo-belief. And I’m fully alert, I hope, to the dangers of trying to pass off aesthetic admiration as some sort of surrogate for true religious experience. At the same time, though, there really was something about the sustained vibrations, the repetitions and the low drone of this music that somehow silenced, at least briefly, the inconsequential nonsense that normally occupies my mind — that made me feel different, for a little while, and in a good sort of way. I can only assume that this had something to do with the concentration these notes demanded, unless perhaps the sounds really have some sort of mechanical effect on the senses, some sort of weird, calming, clarifying force.

This is all starting to sound a bit mad, though, isn’t it? And yet, were I to delete this paragraph, to backtrack and pretend the effect this music had on me was purely ‘aesthetically compelling’ or ‘historically resonant’, what would I deny in doing so — and to what end?

In the spirit of prophylactic caution, however, let me spell out what I don’t mean by what’s written above. For one thing, it’s perfectly clear that listening to lots of Orthodox chant doesn’t immediately translate into the realisation of saintly forebearance and turning the other cheek — one can only hope that God saw the funny side of all this. Similarly, there’s a tendency to conflate miscellaneous brands of vaguely soothing, life-affirming spiritualism with regular exercise, clean living, alternative medicine, crystals and the psychotherapeutic equivalent of Blu-Tac, all of which, although possibly harmless in itself, should be kept at some safe distance from actual, theologically-sustainable religion — if only because at best, the result is (as it were) a cheap holiday in other people’s liturgy, while at worst — absolutely, ultimately worst — there’s the possibility of turning into, well, Madonna.

So it’s important, I think, to avoid treating Byzantine psalmody like an Alexander Technique for the soul, just as it’s important to be honest about the fact that it did something more to me, or at least something different, than music usually does, or seems to do.

In any event, as I walked back home through Covent Garden — the crowds had mostly dispersed, which seemed odd to me, as a pale, vaguely ovoid moon still hung low in the sky, and the clocks were just striking eight — it didn’t occur to me to wonder whether I’d actually heard, a mere hour before, the last reverberating timbres of ancient Rome, or whether my understanding of icons was much improved, or whether my mental picture of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello now included some sort of rudimentary sound. Everything, however, seemed remarkably clear, calm, and stable. It was enough for me to observe that this was the case, and to feel pleased that it was so. All of which is more than sofas, chocolates and books — even rather good ones — reliably do for me.

A few days later, extensive research at, ahem, the Oxford Street branch of HMV indicated that Byzantine chant has some distance to go before it’s likely to encroach on the hegemony of the Latin rite, at least within the limited universe of classical CD sales. (Forgive a quick aside. On this rainy Monday morning, who should I spy browsing at a table of bargain books on the ground floor of HMV, but Charles Saatchi himself? As I passed, he scanned me with the sort of split-second, super-intense, forensic visual appraisal I’ve experienced only a handful of times in my life, before returning swiftly to his field of remaindered treasures. He looks at the world, in other words, in a way not entirely unlike that in which some artists do. And for what it’s worth, despite the fact that I’m no great fan of the Saatchi project, I thought better of him for this small encounter.)

So my innocence — or ignorance, or however today’s whim parses it — of Byzantine psalmody may remain largely intact, at least for the immediate future. Fresh in my mind, though, is the realisation of another, more general truth. Unremarkably — for, surely, this is the very essence of the human condition — it turns out that there is a great deal that I do not know about this world, past or passing or to come. And yet, these past few days have reminded me that at least some of this is marvellous indeed — like flakes of old gold sandwiched in old glass tesserae, luminous yet tough — impervious to barbarians, decay and every other stupid indignity time inflicts upon us — gleaming, as if lit from somewhere far beyond this world, against the surface of winter’s encroaching darkness.

Bon, vous allez dire que je radote parce que j’en parle tout le temps ( Adam et Eve me tapent sur le système) mais j’ai effectivement un problème avec la Chute ; vous savez, celle de la pomme et du serpent… J’appartiens au monde d’avant ! Et c’est justement ce que j’adore dans la Création de Haydn ; je peux l’écouter en paix parce que d’abord elle traite de tout ce que j’aime dans la vie et ensuite que tout se passe AVANT la Chute. La première partie correspond aux quatre premiers jours : création de la lumière, du ciel et de la terre, de la terre et de la mer, du soleil, de la lune et des étoiles (je vous l’ai dit, exactement tout ce que j’aime !). La deuxième partie concerne les cinquième et sixième jours (création des animaux et de l’Homme). La dernière dépeint Adam et Eve dans le jardin d’Eden, juste avant la Chute… Je ne vous raconte pas le bonheur que ça s’arrête AVANT la cata ! La suite vous l’avez tous les jours à la radio ou dans les journaux : des drames et des abominations sans fin, une vraie catastrophe qui donne envie de se tirer (ailleurs ou une balle). C’est pour ça que je me réfugie dans la Création de Haydn. C’est ma patrie ! Clair que j’appartiens au monde d’avant la pomme !
———-
Onze petites minutes d’extraits sur YouTube sous la direction de William Christie

Pour le duo d’Eve et d’Adam placez le curseur à 6:17 (c’est à la fin de la vidéo). Il est magnifique de fraîcheur et de beauté :

- Adam : Der tauende Morgen, o wie ermuntert er !
- Eve : Die Kühle des Abends, o wie erquicket sie !
- Adam : Wie labent ist der runden Früchte Saft !
- Eve : Wie reizend ist der Blumen süsser Saft !
- Eve et Adam : Doch ohne dich, was wäre mir
- Adam : der Morgentau
- Eve : der Abendhauch…
La rosée du matin, la fraîcheur du soir, les fruits ronds, le parfum des fleurs… que voulez-vous, je suis peut-être un peu fleur bleue mais plus ça va et plus je me dis qu’il n’y a rien de mieux dans ce monde de cinglés dans lequel nous vivons. Comme le dit Uriel dans le dernier récitatif, “les hommes seraient heureux à tous jamais si de fausses chimères ne les incitaient pas à désirer davantage que ce qu’ils ont”.
Je n’ai strictement rien à ajouter !
—-
Adam et Eve me tapent sur le système et j’en parle en effet souvent