Joyce DiDonato

Joyce DiDonato
Wednesday 6 February 2013 7.30pm, Hall
Antonio Cesti ‘Intorno all’idol mio’ from Orontea
Domenico Scarlatti Sinfonia from Tolomeo ed
Alessandro
Claudio Monteverdi ‘Disprezzata regina’ from
L’incoronazione di Poppea
Geminiano Giacomelli ‘Sposa, son disprezzata’
from Merope
Antonio Vivaldi Concerto for violin and strings, RV242,
‘Per Pisendel’
Giuseppe Maria Orlandini ‘Da torbida procella’
from Berenice
interval 20 minutes
Johann Adolf Hasse ‘Morte col fiero aspetto’ from
Antonio e Cleopatra
George Frideric Handel ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’
from Giulio Cesare
Giovanni Porta ‘Madre diletta, abbracciami’ from
Ifigenia in Aulide
Christoph Willibald Gluck Ballet music from Armide
George Frideric Handel ‘Brilla nell’alma’
from Alessandro
Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano
Il Complesso Barocco
Dmitry Sinkovsky violin/director
Alan Curtis artistic consultant
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Vertec
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1
Josef Fischnaller
George Frideric Handel Passacaglia from Radamisto
Drama Queens
The drama …
Why isn’t it over until the fat lady
dies? Though, to be fair, nowadays
it’s usually a rather more svelte
woman who shuffles off her mortal
coil as the curtain falls. But the
question remains, why do women
have to die in so many operatic last
acts, and why do they go raging
into that ungentle night, despised,
rejected or simply abandoned,
leaving their men to grieve or – in
so many Baroque operas – to live
on with a new and often younger
companion. Eighteenth-century
audiences literally loved their
suffering heroines to death.
Joyce DiDonato says that we
love the ‘Queens of the drama
[because] we yearn to open hidden
doors to the richest, most complex,
utterly human and profoundly
moving emotions that we may
not be able to access when left
to our own devices. The crazy
plots and extreme circumstances
of the operatic universe give
us permission to unleash our
often too-idle imaginations. We
willingly enter this world of high
drama, praying that we will find
a welcome release in Cleopatra’s
broken, haunted tears, or that
we will be allowed to weep
at Rossane’s unbridled joy or
perhaps learn to love a bit more
purely through Orontea’s heartfelt
plea to her sleeping lover.’
2
If the men turn over and go sleep
and generally get off lightly in
Baroque opera, then it’s probably
because it’s men who were
responsible for writing the music
and confecting the librettos. This
would seem to be a standard
feminist response; that opera
was created with men in mind
so why hack off the hand that
fed the whole enterprise and fill
the stage with heroes bleeding
to death when you can inflict an
unrelentingly male chauvinist
set of misfortunes on women?
Punishing women on stage – and
therefore in public – is simply
a way of reminding them who
is really in charge. To witness
women behaving badly and
paying the price is to be warned
about what might happen if they
should step outside the social
role allotted to their gender, a
reminder about that narrative of
their being the ‘weaker sex’ and
easily led astray. (Fast-forward to
the end of the 18th century and
that’s what makes Mozart’s Così
fan tutte such an uncomfortable
experience – men proving that
women are as fickle as they can
be, and then feeling angry at
their discovery.) Furthermore, if
women in the audience enjoyed
Berenice’s suffering, Cleopatra’s
humiliation or Alcina’s thwarted
sorcery as much as their fathers
and brothers, lovers and husbands,
here is proof positive that all too
readily women in the 17th and
18th centuries willingly conspired
in their own oppression.
Opera is an intensely political
form. Wagner and Verdi, whose
bicentenaries we are celebrating
this year, were steeped in the
politics of their age. Wagner took
part in the Dresden Uprising of
1848, making hand grenades and
acting as look-out at the top of the
Frauenkirche. Verdi, who in time
would be appointed a senator in
the new all-Italian parliament, lent
his name to a political acronym
cherished by those of his fellow
countrymen who were to unite
the country under the King of
Piedmont-Sardinia – Viva Vittorio
Emanuele Re d’Italia – while ‘Va,
pensiero’, the celebrated Chorus of
the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco,
became the anthem of all who
threw off the Austrian yoke and
reunited Italy. In the Baroque
period, even when an opera didn’t
carry a current political message
associated with a marriage, an
alliance or an accession to the
throne, the great theme was
always that carefully constructed
political conflict between love and
duty. A man’s life is all duty – or it
should be. It’s women who tempt
princes and kings away from
the public straight and narrow
with the promise of passion. So it
follows that if men lose their heads,
then so must women – literally!
A no less political reading of all
this pain and suffering unto death
might suggest that it grows from
masculine ignorance and perhaps
a deep-seated anxiety about the
opposite sex. Freud’s question
to his disciple Marie Bonaparte,
‘What does a woman want?’,
was well asked even if poorly
answered by the man whom
Vladimir Nabokov cruelly dubbed
the Viennese witch doctor. And
if men are ignorant of women,
now perhaps just as much as in
the Baroque period, ignorance
soon breeds fear. Are the drama
queens with whom we will be
keeping company tonight carefully
composed to alleviate male terrors
about the other gender and to
provide a reasonable masculine
answer to Freud’s question about
what women want? To be men
– but that is impossible. So they
shout and scream, weep and
decline, plot and plan revenge.
They prove themselves the very
opposite of that cardinal virtue
that defines the properly masculine
mind in the Age of Enlightenment:
they are completely irrational.
As William Congreve, a son of
the English Baroque, observed
in his play The Mourning Bride,
‘Heaven has no rage like love
programme note
Joyce DiDonato would disagree.
Where there is despair, her
heroines bring hope. ‘The Baroque
drama queen apologises for
nothing, hides nothing (unless it
serves her purpose, of course),
lays herself bare without
filter, and through glorious,
magisterial vocal music gives
us permission to dare to do the
same. Who needs therapy?’
Who indeed! But it’s the phrase
‘magisterial vocal music’ that
really repays attention. Not as a
comment on how the distressed
Baroque drama queen guides
us through our own emotional
landscape, nor as a comment
on the musical virtuosity of the
composers of the period, but
because of that single word ‘voice’.
If Baroque opera does give a
voice to women, it’s also about
what that voice can do on stage
in front of an audience of people
who have paid to hear vocal
pyrotechnics. This is an age that is
besotted with singers and belongs
to a European culture that adores
artifice. So the stars of the opera
stage are the castratos, usually
capricious and often very rich, but
giving them a run for their money
are the women who are not yet
precisely subdivided into sopranos
and mezzo-sopranos. Here are
artists who earn a generous keep
for themselves by ever more
brilliant displays of virtuosity.
If castratos such as Farinelli and
Senesino were the vocal peacocks,
women such as Antonia Merighi,
Faustina Bordoni and Caterina
Gabrielli were determined to
match the men, above all in
demonstrating their skill in the art
of vocal embellishment. As the
18th century strolled towards the
19th, audiences demanded ever
more from their favourite singers.
As Dr Burney – tireless chronicler
of all matters musical – observed,
the degree of virtuosity ‘which
excited such astonishment in
1734, would be hardly thought
sufficiently brilliant in 1788 for
a third-rate singer at the opera.
The dose of difficulties to produce
the same effects as 50 years ago
must be more than doubled.’
… and the queens
The audience who came to hear
these singers knew their ancient
history and their classical myths
and legends. Monteverdi could
safely assume that educated
Mantuans and Venetians would
know that Orpheus had attempted
to rescue Eurydice from the
Underworld, that Theseus had
abandoned Ariadne on the island
of Naxos and that Nero was the
least salubrious of the early Roman
emperors. In this sense, perhaps,
they had an advantage over us.
They could concentrate on how a
composer told the story rather than
just on what was happening, and
relish the characterisations rather
than trying to puzzle out who
the characters on stage actually
were. And how was character
explored by composers from
Monteverdi to Haydn? As always
in opera, through the weaving
together of words and music; but
in this period particularly, also by
the way the singer’s skills were
employed in embellishing the lines
written for him or her. Any singer
who tackles this repertoire knows
that it is the voice that must act
quite as much as the body, that
the drama queen in the midst of
an emotional crisis is often best
advised to stand still. ‘Stand and
deliver’ is still sound advice if
you are singing Handel! Beware
of producers who insist that
Cleopatra should wrestle with a
crocodile – or indeed a giraffe! Or
have Caesar brandishing a pistol
while swinging from a chandelier.
The earliest work in this evening’s
recital takes us to Rome and to a
century after the assassination of
Julius Caesar, when it was ruled
by Nero, the last of the JulioClaudian line, who is popularly
supposed to have burnt down
the city in order to advance his
own building plans. Claudio
Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di
Poppea, first performed in Venice
during the carnival season of
1643, is one the earliest operas to
fashion its libretto from recorded
history, mostly by Tacitus. In
Giovanni Francesco Busanello’s
version of Imperial Roman history,
Rome is spared but not Nero’s
empress Ottavia, whom the
emperor pulls down in favour
of the succulent and ambitious
Poppea. In ‘Disprezzata regina’
Ottavia alternates between pity
at her fate and rage against her
husband and his new love. With
consummate skill the composer
probes these violent mood swings,
never really allowing the empress
the luxury of a developed melody
that might offer her – and us –
a moment of consolation. But
the best comes last. As Ottavia
begs Jove to unleash a storm
of thunderbolts on her faithless
husband, the singer unlooses a
battery of tempestuous scales
that bring down the curtain on an
undeniably wronged woman.
Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, who,
together with Antonio Vivaldi, did
so much to set Italian opera on a
new course in the second half of
the 18th century, also turned Nero
into an opera (the eponymously
named Nerone) in 1721, again for
3
to hatred turned, Nor hell a
fury like a woman scorned.’
Venice. There’s history of a kind,
too, from the Acts of the Apostles
and the historian Josephus, behind
his opera Berenice. But what
excited Orlandini – and indeed
playwrights and composers from
Corneille to Mozart – about a
junior member of the Herodian
dynasty that ruled Judaea between
39 BCE and 92 CE, was less the
local politics of a small Roman
province in the Middle East than
the princess’s busy love life. And
above all her reputed affair with
the Roman Emperor Titus. In time
Titus announces that for the good
of the empire he cannot marry
Berenice, but before all vocal hell
breaks out the Judean princess is
allowed to luxuriate in her love
for the emperor. In ‘Da torbida
procella’ – ‘I am tossed like a
ship on stormy seas, but you,
beloved eyes, are my beautiful
pole star’ – amid a cascade of
coloratura, Berenice exalts in the
love that has guided her safely
home. It won’t last, of course:
this woman is too happy for her
own, or our, good. And isn’t there
something a touch demented
about the vocal decoration?
4
Orontea would seem to be an
invented queen of Egypt ruling a
land that time has passed by, if
not entirely forgotten, a fate that
also befell Antonio Cesti’s opera
for over two and a half centuries.
But in the 17th century Orontea
received at least 22 productions
in Italy and throughout Europe
after what is believed to have
been its premiere in Venice in
1649. Giacinto Andrea Cicognini’s
libretto has as many twists and
turns as the very public private life
of that other serpent of old Nile,
Cleopatra. And it begins badly,
with Orontea torn between a
royal duty to her people and love
for Alidoro, a young painter who
is not only lowly born but also
foreign. No prizes for guessing
what happens: the queen cannot
resist the commoner. All’s well
when the story ends with the
discovery that the handsome hero
is really a prince in disguise, but
not before Cesti has given Orontea
an Act 2 aria that captivated diva
devotees long after the opera itself
had disappeared from the stage.
Thanks to the indefatigable Dr
Burney, who printed it in A General
History of Music in 1789, ‘Intorno
all’idol mio’ lived on. It tells of how
Alidoro – as men are wont to do in
Baroque opera – has passed out
at the sight of Orontea’s beauty.
The queen is equally smitten,
admitting to her deepest feelings in
a heartfelt aria and recitative over
the young man’s insensible body.
Despite their emotional stamina,
even drama queens need to
take the weight off their voices
from time to time. At such
moments, Il Complesso Barocco
will move centre-stage, with
music that is no less demanding.
Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto, ‘per
Pisendel’ insists on exactly the
same degree of virtuosity from
the soloist as this composer
demanded from his singers.
Domenico Scarlatti’s Tolomeo
ed Alessandro is another slice of
ancient Egyptian history, suitably
embroidered by the librettist Carlos
Sigismondo Capece to satisfy early
18th-century interests, with Queen
Cleopatra III deposing her son
Ptolemy IX as joint ruler of Egypt
in favour of his brother Ptolemy X
in a tale adorned with the familiar
moral about power, duty and
personal feelings. The Sinfonia
follows the rules of Baroque opera
to the letter. The curtain rises
after a conventional three-part
overture, fast–slow–fast with the
composer raising the temperature
with the beat in the final section
to ready his audience for action.
Tolomeo ed Alessandro was given
its premiere in Rome at the Palazzo
Zuccari in 1711; the same year that
Handel conquered London with
Rinaldo. And, for many, Handel
has no equals when it comes to
thwarted princesses, grieving
queens and angry empresses. On
the other hand, his Cleopatra – like
those of Shakespeare and Shaw –
is blessed with a mischievous sense
of humour. Yet (not surprisingly,
perhaps) in the face of death,
having been taken prisoner by her
vicious brother Ptolemy and while
preparing herself for execution, it
all but deserts her. As she weeps a
farewell to her women in ‘Piangerò
la sorte mia’ she is also mourning
separation from the man who has
won her heart – and her kingdom
– Caesar. But there’s still iron in
her soul, as can be heard in the
central section of the aria when
she promises revenge on her
brother from beyond the grave.
For Alessandro, composed in 1726,
Handel assembled the kind of
cast that all of Europe would have
killed or died for, drama kings
every bit as much as their consorts.
The castrato Senesino took the
title-role as Alexander the Great
who, leading his Macedonian
armies into India, comes to believe
that he is directly descended
from the god Jupiter. Faustina
Bordini and Francesca Cuzzoni
were Rossane and Lisaura, the
women competing for his love.
Appropriate casting, as they were
jealous rivals off as well as on
stage. In ‘Brilla nell’alma’ Rossane
is certain that she has seen off
programme note
Nicola Francesco Haym stretched
recorded history to breaking
point in preparing the libretto
for Handel’s Radamisto (1720).
Radamisto and Zenobia were
undoubtedly involved in the tribal
wars that burned so fiercely in
Asia Minor in the first century CE,
and so the location close to Mount
Ararat on the Caspian Sea is
reasonably authentic. On the
plot and counterplot, action and
romance, history has rather less
to say. But then this is really an
opera about the early 18th century
with music to match, as we hear in
the spacious Act 2 Passacaglia.
What might be considered
plagiarism today was creative
opportunism in the Baroque
period. The tradition of the
pasticcio allowed a composer to
fashion a new work from successful
operatic numbers written by his
contemporaries. Geminiano
Giacomelli was one of the most
successful of early 18th-century
Italian opera composers, and
for Merope, written for Venice
in 1734, he came up with an
aria so captivating that Vivaldi
‘borrowed’ it for his pasticcio
Bajazet, given in Verona a year
later. And so a story with its roots
in Greek myth becomes a hit in a
reworked piece of history about
a Turkish emperor defeated by
Bajazet. The ‘borrowed’ aria is
‘Sposa, son disprezzata’ in which
Irene, who is betrothed to Bajazet,
contemplates suicide but fears that
she lacks the courage for such a
deed. This is perhaps a heroine in
despair ‘singing up’ her courage.
Indeed, the resilience of her vocal
line suggests that it is life and not
death that lies before her. The text
here is Vivaldi’s and not that set
by the original composer. But at
least Giacomelli has the last word
musically, for it’s his score we hear.
Aulide in 1738 and it was probably
the last work by this former
pupil of Corelli and colleague
of Vivaldi. In ‘Madre diletta,
abbracciami’ Ifigenia is resigned
to her fate, calm and collected
as Porta encloses her lament
in a siciliana. But it’s the liquid
melancholy of the lyrical central
section of this masterly aria that
lifts it out of the ordinary, without
a trace of self-pity anywhere.
The German-born composer
Johann Adolf Hasse was among
the most successful opera
composers of the 18th century.
And working with his favourite
librettist, Pietro Metastasio, Hasse
defined the genre of opera seria
for an entire generation. For Dr
Burney, Hasse was ‘superior to all
other lyric composers’. When he
was learning his operatic craft in
Naples in the 1720s, where he may
well have studied with Alessandro
Scarlatti, it was the history of
Antony and Cleopatra that took
his musical fancy. A simple story in
two acts with only the two lovers
on stage. In Antonio e Cleopatra
Cleopatra, written for the castrato
Farinelli, gets the show-off music.
In ‘Morte col fiero aspetto’ the
Egyptian queen, taken prisoner
by Octavian, stares death in the
face, hoping to conquer her fear
with the only weapon that is left
to her: her vocal brilliance.
Christoph Willibald Gluck wrote
not one opera about Iphigenia
but two. However it’s said that
his own favourite among his
works was Armide, written for
Paris in 1777 and containing
the obligatory ballet. Armide, a
sorcereress who seeks to use her
black arts to seduce Renaud, a
Christian knight in the Holy Land
on the First Crusade, made regular
appearances on the Baroque
stage and into the 19th century.
Librettos carved out of Torquato
Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata
(‘Jerusalem liberated’) fascinated
some 50 different composers
from Handel to Rossini. Was
it the sorcery that appealed to
composers or the notion that it is
love that defeats the magician? For
when Armide raises her dagger
to kill Renaud, she discovers that
she has fallen in love with her
intended victim. At the end of
the opera Armide dies, or so it
seems, in the ruins of her castle
destroyed by the Furies, though
the libretto announces that she
‘departs in a flying car’. Whether
she perished or was banished,
the message is much the same.
Women may be a threat to men
and masculinity. Better then that it
isn’t over until the svelte lady dies
in a final blaze of coloratura.
No ancient Greek myth tugged so
persistently at the 18th century’s
heartstrings than the story of
Iphigenia, sacrificed to the goddess
Artemis by her father Agamemnon,
who is desperate for a favourable
wind to carry the Greek fleet on
to Troy. Giovanni Porta, who
worked in opera houses across
most of Europe (including London
in 1720), composed Ifigenia in
Programme note © Christopher Cook
5
her rival – in the theatre anyway.
Alexander is hers and Handel
gives her a triumphant aria that
glitters and sparkles in the newly
fashionable Neapolitan manner
with a pounding bass-line below
a richly harmonised sequence of
chords. And the counterpoint is
as skittish as Rossane’s mood as
she thinks of what’s to come.
Antonio Cesti (1623–69)
Orontea – Intorno all’idol mio
Orontea
Intorno all’idol mio
spirate pur, spirate
aure soavi, e grate,
e nelle guancie elette
baciatelo per me, cortesi aurette.
Hover around my beloved
whispering softly,
you gentle, kindly breezes,
and kiss the cheeks I love
on my behalf, sweet zephyrs.
Al mio ben, che riposa
su l’ali della quiete,
grati sogni assistete,
e ’l mio racchiuso ardore
svelategli per me, larve d’Amore.
To my darling, who rests
upon the wings of peace,
bear sweet dreams,
and reveal my secret passion
to him for me, spirits of Love.
Ohimè, non son più mia!
Se mi sprezza Alidoro,
sarà la vita mia preda di morte.
Questo diadema d’oro
ch’io ti pongo sul crine,
questo scettro real nacque per te,
tu sei l’anima mia, tu sei mio re.
Oh dio, chi vide mai
più bella maestà, più bel regnante?
Divino è quel sembiante,
innamorano il Ciel quei chiusi rai,
più bella maestà, chi vide mai?
Alas, I am distraught!
If Alidoro scorns me
my life will be forfeit to death.
This golden diadem
that I place on your brow,
this royal sceptre, both were made for you.
You are my very soul, you are my king.
Oh God, who ever beheld
a more handsome king, a fairer monarch?
That face is divine,
the heavens are enthralled by those closed lids;
was more gracious majesty ever seen?
Ma nel mio cor sepolto
non vo’ tener lo stral che mi ferì;
una regina amante
non vuol penar, non vuol morir così.
Leggi, leggi, o mio caro,
in negre note i miei sinceri amori,
in brevi accenti immensità d’ardori.
Yet I do not want to keep
the dart that struck me buried in my heart.
A queen in love
does not choose to suffer and die like this.
Read, read, my darling,
of my true love in inky characters,
the immensity of my passion in brief words.
Dormi, dormi, ben mio,
per te veglia Orontea, mia vita, addio.
Sleep, sleep, my treasure,
Orontea watches over you, my life, farewell.
Giacinto Andrea Cicognini (1606–c50)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
6
L’incoronazione di Poppea – Disprezzata
regina
Ottavia
Disprezzata regina,
del monarca romano afflitta moglie,
che fo, ove son, che penso?
O delle donne miserabil sesso:
se la natura e ’l Cielo
libere ci produce,
il matrimonio c’incatena serve.
Despised queen,
wretched consort of the Roman emperor,
where am I, what shall I do?
O unhappy female sex:
born free by nature
and the will of the gods,
marriage fetters us like slaves.
texts
Se concepiamo l’uomo,
o delle donne miserabil sesso,
al nostr’empio tiran formiam le membra,
allattiamo il carnefice crudele
che ci scarna e ci svena,
e siam forzate per indegna sorte
a noi medesme partorir la morte.
If we conceive a man-child,
O unhappy female sex,
we shape the limbs of our own wicked tyrant,
we suckle the cruel torturer
who will flay us and bleed us to death,
and are constrained by a shameful fate
to be the mothers of our own destruction!
Nerone, empio Nerone,
marito, oh dio! marito
bestemmiato pur sempre,
e maledetto dai cordogli miei,
dove, ohimè, dove sei?
Nero, evil Nero,
my husband, oh god!
reviled forever
and cursed by my grief,
where, alas, where are you?
In braccio di Poppea
tu dimori felice e godi, e intanto
il frequente cader de’ pianti miei
pur va quasi formando
un diluvio di specchi, in cui tu miri
dentro alle tue delizie, i miei martiri.
In Poppea’s arms
you take your pleasure, and meanwhile
the unceasing flow of my tears
creates what I might liken
to a stream of liquid mirrors in which you see
your delights and my distress reflected.
Destin, se stai lassù,
Giove ascoltami tu,
se per punir Nerone
fulmini tu non hai,
d’impotenza t’accuso,
d’ingiustizia t’incolpo;
ahi, trapasso tropp’oltre e me ne pento,
supprimo e seppellisco
in taciturne angoscie il mio tormento.
Fate, if you are up above,
and Jove, now hear me!
If you have no thunderbolts
with which to punish Nero,
I declare you impotent,
accuse you of injustice!
But I have overstepped the mark and do repent:
I shall suppress and bury
my torments in silent anguish.
Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598–1659)
Geminiano Giacomelli (1692–1740)
Merope – Sposa, son disprezzata
Irene
Sposa, son disprezzata,
fida, son oltraggiata:
Cieli, che feci mai?
E pure egli è il mio cor,
il mio sposo, il mio amor,
la mia speranza.
As a wife I am despised,
though faithful, I am abused.
Ye gods, whatever have I done?
And yet he is my heart of hearts,
my husband, my beloved,
in him I rest my hopes.
L’amo, ma egli è infedel,
spero, ma egli è crudel:
morir mi lascerai?
Oh dio! manca il valor.
I love him, but he is unfaithful,
I hope, but he is cruel.
Will you let me die?
Alas, my courage now fails me.
7
Anon., after Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750)
Giuseppe Maria Orlandini
(1676–1760)
Berenice – Da torbida procella
Berenice
Da torbida procella,
scossa, qual navicella,
belle mie cinosure,
voi, sì, pupille amate,
in porto me guidate,
e in lieta calma.
I am tossed like a ship
on stormy seas
but you, beloved eyes,
are my beautiful pole star,
that will guide me into harbour
and joyful calm.
Di naufragar giammai,
scorta dai fidi rai,
non pave l’alma.
Escorted by those faithful lights
my soul will never
fear shipwreck.
Benedetto Pasqualigo (fl. 1706–34), after Racine (1639–99)
interval
Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783)
Antonio e Cleopatra –
Morte col fiero aspetto
Cleopatra
Morte col fiero aspetto
orror per me non ha,
s’io possa in libertà
morir sul trono mio,
dove regnai.
Death’s grisly aspect
holds no horror for me,
provided I can die
in freedom on the throne
from which I reigned.
L’anima uscir dal petto
libera spera ognor,
sin dalle fasce ancor
sì nobile desio
meco portai.
All hope to be free to choose
the manner of their death;
since earliest childhood
I have cherished
that noble aspiration.
Francesco Ricardi
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Giulio Cesare – E pur così in un giorno …
Piangerò la sorte mia
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Cleopatra
E pur così in un giorno
perdo fasti e grandezze? Ahi fato rio!
Cesare, il mio bel nume, è forse estinto;
Cornelia e Sesto inermi son, né sanno
darmi soccorso. Oh dio!
Non resta alcuna speme al viver mio.
And shall I in a single day
lose my privileges and titles? Ah, cruel fate!
My beloved Caesar may be dead;
Cornelia and Sextus are unarmed, nor have they
the means to help me. Oh god!
All hope is lost.
texts
Piangerò la sorte mia,
sì crudele e tanto ria,
finché vita in petto avrò.
I shall mourn my fate,
so cruel and unjust,
while I yet live.
Ma poi morta d’ogn’intorno
il tiranno e notte e giorno
fatta spettro agiterò.
But when I am dead, wherever
the tyrant is, by night and day
my ghost will haunt him.
Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729),
after Giacomo Francesco Bussani (fl 1673–80)
Giovanni Porta (c1675–1755)
Ifigenia in Aulide – Madre diletta,
abbracciami
Ifigenia
Madre diletta, abbracciami:
più non ti rivedrò.
Dearest mother, embrace me:
I shall never see you again.
Perdona al genitore,
conservami il tuo amore,
consolati, non piangere,
e in pace io morirò.
Forgive my father,
preserve your love for me,
be comforted, do not weep,
and I shall die in peace.
Apostolo Zeno
George Frideric Handel
Alessandro – Brilla nell’alma
Rossane
Brilla nell’alma
un non inteso ancor dolce contento
e d’alta gioia il cor soave inonda.
My soul is trembling
with a sweet contentment I do not understand,
and my heart is bathed in a virtuous joy.
Sì nella calma
azzurro brilla il mar, se splende il sole,
e i rai fan tremolar tranquilla l’onda.
Thus in calm weather
the blue sea sparkles in the sun,
and in its beams the tranquil water shimmers.
9
Paolo Antonio Rolli (1687–1765), after Ortensio Mauro
(1632/3–1725)
About tonight’s
performers
the title-role in Donizetti’s Maria
Stuarda for Houston Grand Opera.
Josef Fischnaller
She began the current season with
her first recital tour to South America.
Plans include the title-roles in Maria
Stuarda with the Metropolitan
Opera and La donna del lago at
the Royal Opera House and at
the Santa Fe Opera Festival.
Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano
Winner of the 2012 Grammy
Award for Best Classical Vocal
Solo, Joyce DiDonato has been
acclaimed by audiences and critics
alike across the globe. Born in
Kansas and a graduate of Wichita
State University and the Academy
of Vocal Arts, she trained on the
young artist programmes of the
San Francisco, Houston and Santa
Fe opera companies. She has since
come to international prominence
in operas by Rossini, Handel and
Mozart, as well as through her
wide-ranging discography.
10
Recent highlights include her
debut at the Deutsche Oper as
Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia);
her first European Octavian (Der
Rosenkavalier) at Madrid’s Teatro
Real; Sister Helen (Jake Heggie’s
Dead Man Walking) at Houston
Grand Opera; Isolier (Le comte Ory)
and the Composer (Ariadne auf
Naxos) at the Metropolitan Opera;
a European tour in the title-role in
Ariodante with Il Complesso Barocco
(which she has also recorded); and
the title-role in Massenet’s Cendrillon
at the Royal Opera House.
Highlights of the 2011/12 season
included back-to-back title-roles at
La Scala, Milan (Der Rosenkavalier
and La donna del lago), the world
premiere of the Baroque pastiche
The Enchanted Island at the
Metropolitan Opera, concerts with
the New York Philharmonic and
Joyce DiDonato is an exclusive
recording artist with EMI/Virgin
Classics and among recent
highlights is her Grammy Awardwinning solo CD, Diva Divo, which
comprises arias by male and female
characters that tell the same story
from their different perspectives.
Other honours include
Gramophone’s Artist of the Year
and Recital of the Year awards,
and a German ECHO Klassik
Award as Female Singer of the
Year. In 2011 she also received
the prestigious Franco Abbiati
Award for Best Singer.
For both the album and the
worldwide tour Joyce DiDonato
chose a Vivienne Westwood couture
corseted gown especially designed
for the performance. The scarlet silk
gown was designed specifically
to adapt to the mood changes
throughout the programme – from
sensitive and feminine to dramatic
and powerful. The sculpted corset
was designed with a slimline skirt with
bustle titled the ‘cul de Londre’ and is
transformed with a large ruched ballgown skirt and traditional pannier for
the finale.
Vivienne Westwood Couture is
available from: Vivienne Westwood,
6 Davies Street, London W1K 3DN
Tel: 0207 629 3757
www.viviennewestwood.com
Dmitry Sinkovsky violin/director
Born in Moscow, Dmitry Sinkovsky
attended the city’s Tchaikovsky
Conservatory, studying with
Alexander Kirov from 2001 to
2005. Combining his studies with
tours to Europe, he also undertook
Baroque violin lessons with earlymusic pioneer Maria Leonhardt.
Since graduating, he has regularly
led from the violin and performed
as a soloist with orchestras and
ensembles such as Il Pomod`oro,
Il Complesso Barocco, Concerto
Köln, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, La
Claudiana, Armonia Atenea, Musica
Petropolitana, Pratum Integrum,
Munich Baroque Soloists, Collegium
Marianum, Bizzarrie Armoniche,
Le Concert Lorrain, Cordia, Musica
Antiqua Roma, Capriola di Gioia
and the Harmony of Nations.
His competition successes include the
Telemann International Competition,
Musica Antiqua Bruges and the
International Biber Competition.
He is also a gifted countertenor and
studied singing with Michael Chance,
Marie Daveluy and Jana Ivanilova.
After finishing his postgraduate
studies, he completed a chamber
music course with Alexei Lubimov. In
2011 he established a new group,
La voce strumentale, in which he
performs as a conductor and singer.
Last year Dmitry Sinkovsky released
recordings of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas
and Vivaldi violin concertos.
about the performers
Founded in Amsterdam in 1979
by Alan Curtis, Il Complesso
Barocco has become a renowned
international Baroque orchestra with
a focus on Italian Baroque opera
and oratorio. It has appeared at
leading concert venues and festivals
throughout Europe and America.
Its award-winning discography
ranges from the late madrigal
repertoire to Baroque opera
via oratorios such as Stradella’s
Susanna, Ferrari’s Il Sansone, Ziani’s
Assalonne punito and Conti’s David.
Together with the group, Alan
Curtis has also played a key role
in the modern revival of Baroque
operas, especially those of
Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Handel. He
directed Admeto, the first Handel
opera to be revived with original
instruments including theorbo, in
the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in
1979. In the present century, their
Handel recordings have included
Rodrigo, Arminio, Deidamia,
Lotario, Rodelinda, Radamisto,
Fernando re di Castiglia, Floridante,
Tolomeo, Ezio, Berenice, Alcina,
and Ariodante, the latter two with
Joyce DiDonato in the title-roles.
Other highlights have included the
first revival of Vivaldi’s Giustino,
the world-premiere recording
Barbican Classical Music Podcasts
Joyce chats to Warwick Thompson about the
extreme emotions on display in her new album
Drama Queens, the delights and challenges of
singing to the Barbican audience, as well as ‘the most inventive,
gorgeous, stunning, dramatic gown’ she has ever seen – which she
wears this evening.
Subscribe to our podcast now for more exclusive interviews with the
world’s greatest classical artists.
Available on iTunes, Soundcloud and the Barbican website
of the same composer’s recently
rediscovered Motezuma, the world
premiere of Alessandro Ciccolini’s
reconstruction of Vivaldi’s Ercole
su’l Termodonte, in a reconstruction
by Alessandro Ciccolini and
performances of Domenico
Scarlatti’s Tolomeo e Alessandro to
coincide with the 250th anniversary
of the composer’s death in 2007.
Other recent recordings featuring
Alan Curtis conducting Il Complesso
Barocco include Haydn opera arias
and overtures with Anna Bonitatibus,
Porpora opera arias and sinfonias
with Karina Gauvin, Handel arias
with Vesselina Kasarova and Hidden
Handel, a collection of little-known
arias with Ann Hallenberg. An
unusual recent project was Handel’s
Bestiary in collaboration with the
celebrated novelist Donna Leon.
Plans include Handel’s Giulio
Cesare, Orlando, Amadigi and
Arianna in Creta, Vivaldi’s Catone
in Utica and Bononcini’s Astianatte,
the opera in which there was an
infamous clash between the fans
of London’s two greatest prima
donnas: Faustina and Cuzzoni.
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Il Complesso Barocco
Il Complesso Barocco
Violin 1
Dmitry Sinkovsky
leader
Ana Liz Ojeda
Daniela Nuzzoli
Violin 2
Boris Begelman
Laura Corolla
Isabella Bison
Viola
Stefano Marcocchi
Giulio D’Alessio
Cello
Mauro Valli
Ludovico Minasi
Double Bass
Davide Nava
Archlute
Tiziano Bagnati
Flute
Marco Brolli
Oboe
Aviad Gershoni
Bassoon
Carles Valles
Harpsichord
continuo
Alexandra Koreneva
Intermusica
Artists
Management Ltd
Managing
Director
Stephen Lumsden
Director,
Tours & Projects
Peter Ansell
Manager,
Tours & Projects
Elizabeth Hayllar
Associate
Manager,
Tours & Projects
Kate Caro
Coming up….
21–27 Apr
Juan Diego Flórez
Artist Spotlight
The great tenor performs with
Joyce DiDonato and in solo recital
as well as giving a masterclass to some
of today’s young singers
Wed 8 May
Magdalena Kozˇ ená
Music by Haydn and Ravel
Wed 29 May
Handel Imeneo
Countertenor David Daniels
features alongside the Academy
of Ancient Music
barbican.org.uk