Royal Albert Hall
Christoph Graupner: Dido, Königin von Carthago: ‘Holdestes Lispeln der spielenden Fluthen’
Antonio Sartorio: Giulio Cesare in Egitto: ‘Non voglio amar’
Matthew Locke: The Tempest: ‘The Second Musick: Curtain Tune’
Sartorio: Giulio Cesare: ‘Quando voglio’
Graupner: Dido: ‘Der Himmel ist von Donner … Infido Cupido’, ‘Agitato da tempeste’
Handel: Concerto grosso in C minor, op.6 no.8
Handel: Giulio Cesare in egitto: ‘Che sento? Oh dio! … Se pietà di me non senti’
Dario Costello: Sonata no.15 in D minor
Cavalli: Didone: ‘Re de’ Getuli altero … Il mio marito’
Hasse: Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra: ‘Morte col fiero aspetto’
Purcell: The Fairy Queen: ‘Chaconne – Dance for Chinese Man and Woman’
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas: ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’, ‘Thy hand, Belinda … When I am laid in earth’
Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Il Giardino ArmonicoGiovanni Antonini (conductor)
In this, her Proms debut, Anna
Prohaska offered something akin to a cantata of two queens, complementary and
contrasted: Dido and Cleopatra. Returning in a sense to her ‘early music’ roots
– her career has always been far richer, more varied, but that world has always
played an important part – she collaborated with the Italian ‘period’ ensemble,
Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini. It made for a splendid late-night
concert, a fine mix of repertoire familiar and (to me, at any rate) unfamiliar,
any minor reservations I may have entertained relating entirely to the orchestra
and conductor. Prohaska, if I may be forgiven for saying so, crowned herself
queen of this repertoire, notwithstanding the frankly unpromising surroundings
of the Royal Albert Hall.
We began, as indeed we should end,
with Purcell, with Dido and Aeneas:
one of the very greatest of English operas and indeed of ‘Baroque’ operas, if
that problematical term may be held to mean anything at all. ‘Tristan und Isolde in a pint pot,’ that
legendary conductor of what was then not quite ‘early musicke’, Raymond
Leppard, called it. There was no question from the Overture that Antonini was
more at home with these, ‘his’ musicians than he had been with members of the
LSO Chamber Orchestra in a
concert last year at the Barbican. For one thing, the acoustic was kind to
the instruments, lessening intonational problems, which were in any case rarely
grave. Resplendent, regal in gold, our soprano walked onto the stage as the
Overture drew to a close, ready to give a rich-toned, clear, beautifully
ornamented account of Dido’s first number. Here, as elsewhere, what struck me
about her ornamentation, aside from the awe-inspiring ease with which it and
any other coloratura were despatched, was how it did not really register as ‘ornamentation’.
It was musical and indeed verbal expression, created seemingly on the spot.
(Whether that were actually the case is neither here nor there.) Her lightly
acted performance also proved just the ticket. In homage perhaps to Goldilocks,
another queen of sorts, it was neither too much nor too little.
Christoph Graupner’s Singspiel for Hamburg, Dido, Königin von Carthago (1707), was
quite new to me. It is one of those curious – to our ears, yet not necessarily
to those of the time – works written in German and Italian, standard Italian
arias doing their thing whilst the action was largely advanced in the
vernacular. I should certainly be keen to learn more. The Egyptian princess
Menalippe’s ‘Holdestes Lispeln der spielenden Fluthen’ proved vividly
pictorial. One could almost see – one could certainly hear – those rippling
waters through ravishing instrumental playing. This may be too early and the
wrong country too, but Poussin more than once came to my mind. When later
Prohaska turned to the Queen of Carthage herself, we heard first a German accompagnato (‘Der Himmel ist von Donner
Keylen schwer…’) followed by its Italian aria, ‘Infido Cupido’. This was very
much music written and communicated in the terms of early eighteenth-century opera seria. Hearing it in this
particular context, we understood both its roots in earlier opera and much of what
distinguished it from its predecessors too. Prohaska’s stylistic awareness is
never a sterile thing, ‘dogma’ in the slightly misleading popular understanding
of the term; it is and here was always put to expressive, dramatic use. Much
the same might be said of her performance of the tempest aria that ensued: of a
genre yet not over-determined by it.
In between the Graupner
excerpts, we heard music by Antonio Sartorio and Matthew Locke. The former’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto contains,
according to the programme note, no fewer than sixty-five arias. Prohaska gave
us two, ‘Non voglio amar’ and ‘Quando voglio’, the first furious – with foot-stamping
– and, that inescapable word, tempestuous. I could not help but wonder whether
the musicians might have been better off without a conductor in the first;
Antonini looked a little awkward and the results might have been a little
freer. No harm was done, though, and his provision of a recorder obbligato in
the latter aria offered winning counterpoint to the woman of desires revealed
by our queen of song. The Locke excerpt offered an ineffably ‘English’
contrast, much of it mysteriously veiled, harking back to the days – still current,
of course, yet somewhat old-fashioned – of the viol consort.
Handel was next on the menu.
Antonini’s way with the Concerto grosso, op.6 no.8, made me long for something
a little grander, a little more aware of harmonic motion. This is, after all,
orchestral music. Tastes being what they are today, that was never likely to be
the case, though. I liked the way the Siciliana,
its fifth movement, harked back in context to the seventeenth century. A
hard-driven account of its Allegro
successor proved less welcome. Handel’s own Giulio
Cesare followed, its libretto derived by Nicola Francesco Haym from that of
Giacomo Bussani for Sartorio. What a wonderful idea – obvious, one might think,
yet unusual – it was to offer excerpts from both operas. In Cleopatra’s ‘Che
sento? Oh dio! … Se pietà di me non senti’, Prohaska’s shading to dramatic ends
opened up a new creative, expressive world. I felt – and I suspect much of the audience
did likewise – a window into understanding of the queen’s character had been
opened wide, even just by this account of a single aria. More please!
Dario Castello’s D minor
Sonata, published in 1629, performed its bridging role well. It is perhaps not
especially thrilling music, but it has its moments of interest; it also
benefited, I think, from being given as chamber music, without a conductor.
Moving forward a few years, yet remaining in Venice, we heard from Cavalli’s
Dido, Prohaska adopting just the right – to my ears, at least – slightly post-Monteverdian
air. (Yes, the great man was still alive in 1641, but that is hardly the
point.) I can hardly offer greater praise than to say that her singing brought
Frederica von Stade to mind, both in command of line and in its generosity of
spirit. Hasse’s aria, from his Marc’Antonio
e Cleopatra, sounded very much again from the world of later opera seria. Prohaska’s coloratura
probably deserves another endorsement here: impeccable, both ‘musically’ and ‘dramatically’,
not that the distinction is especially meaningful.
And so, we returned to Purcell.
The Chaconne from The Fairy Queen had
me long for Britten’s more generous way with such music, yet unquestionably it
danced. A vivid narration from Dido and
Aeneas, the Second Woman’s ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’, was imbued
with quite the sense of drama, given brevity and (relative) lack of context.
Dido’s Lament was sung with expressive freedom that never approached licence, a
reminder of Leppard’s Tristan
designation, dignified without a hint of sentimentality. As an encore, we heard
‘Fear no danger to ensue’, the duet part taken by Antonini on recorder. A
lovely concert, then, but in the best sense an educative one too. Bildung, one might say, is an excellent thing indeed.
