Translated material
Seduction by the new
Czech Magdalena Kozena is a phenomenal Mozart singer, and her Melisande from Debussy’s opera can today serve as a standard for insight into the foggy and magical essence of the image. Kozena knows how to see the other side of feelings and events, their otherworldly glittering haze, and she can rightfully be called the queen of trance. In a disc of Handel's arias Ah! mio cor (“Ah, my heart”; the first words from Alcina’s aria in the opera of the same name; Archiv Produktion) she collected mainly Italian arias from Handel’s most difficult works, but added to this some from English oratorios. She is accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Andrea Marcona. The ensemble's sound does not cause any complaints, but the conductor does not keep up with the singer's artistic search, and she goes her own way, not paying attention to the strange inconsistency. Kozena is a dramatic person; she also looks for direct manifestations in music of the very affects that lay at the basis of baroque opera. In the scene of Deianira from Hercules, she willfully goes beyond the boundaries of academic singing; her cries, when the singer seems to pierce the air with a sharp needle of her voice, paint a picture of a severe nervous breakdown. In general, I would like to say that Kozena imbues the intricate play of Handel’s music with such deep content as no one before her.
But her rival in this regard is the Englishman Ian Bostridge, whom Moscow has already managed to recognize and love. He is also one of those who today determines the direction of executive search. His approach is psychoanalytic, ruthless, tough, he picks his characters to such depths that they themselves are taken aback. Bostridge was the first to tell us that the voice of the Forest King in the Goethe-Schubert ballad is the inner voice of the child himself, in which pre-pubescent passions are seething. In Handel's arias (EMI Classics) he has a difficult time. In English oratorios, of course, his typically English tenor is completely in place, and here the scope for Bostridge’s ruthless psychoscalpel is unlimited. Tenors sang a lot in oratorios in Handel's time, and this is rightfully his music. But, in addition, Bostridge takes on Italian arias for castrati in a transposed form; he supposedly has historical grounds for this, because Handel, if necessary, rewrote the parts for other voices. But today it sounds unstylish, old-fashioned (that’s what they did in the 60s!), and the first impression of these experiments is negative. Despite the fact that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the direction of Harry Bickett sounds quite well.
French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky recorded a disc from the repertoire of the great 18th-century castrato Giovanni Carestini, a rival of the legendary Farinelli (Virgin Classics). The singer has a high mezzo-soprano with a clear, light, sonorous, boyish timbre; he imparts to each of his utterances some special lyrical coloring; in his singing there is such a measure of trust and sincerity that is not supposed to be offered in baroque singing. Jaroussky's disc is a festival of sparkling colors, a fireworks display of moods, a fountain of grace and good-naturedness. The singer exists in the same artistic field as Emmanuelle Haym, one of the few female conductors who, in record time, managed to prove her powerful, indestructible creativity.
All three discs contain one of Handel's most powerful arias - Ariodante's lament Scherza infida ("Treat with treason") from the opera of the same name. This is the spiritual crisis of a person who has seen with his own eyes the betrayal of his beloved; he is close to suicide. Comparing how our three stars interpret this aria is a special pleasure. Jaroussky sings a tender elegy, we see a teenager with unspent hopes, a young knight who, of course, complains about his unhappy fate, but is full of such spiritual strength that it seems that nothing can break him completely. Bostridge delves into his feelings in a masochistic frenzy; he proves to himself that life has no moral basis left. Throughout the aria, the hero goes towards suicide, and for such a clear and ruthless reading, we forgive Bostridge for his stylistic experimentation. Kozhena imbues the scene with high drama, she maintains composure, but in the last part it seems to us that she still cannot extricate herself from this terrible story. The voice falls down with such despair that nothing but sepulchral darkness can be found there.
I want to reassure those who began to worry about the fate of the unfortunate Ariodante: he will not commit suicide, the imaginary betrayal of his beloved is just the machinations of the villain, and everything will end quite happily. However, it is in vain to think that the achievements of the 2007 discs eclipse the achievements of the past. You need to take the complete recording of “Ariodante” from 1997 under the direction of Mark Minkowski (remember his “Pelléas et Melisande” in Moscow!) and listen to this aria performed by the Swedish singer Anne Sophie von Otter. From the first note to the last, two musicians breathe the same air; the beating of the heart, heard in the accompaniment, then rises with a pre-infarction surge, then thins out to a dying thread. There is drama, but we are told something else. It’s not betrayal, it’s not the infidelity of a friend that is being discussed here, we’re talking about an existential crisis when the whole world falls into tartar. Von Otter cannot be classified as a singer of feelings, Minkowski is also not distinguished by special lyricism, the principle of the subtlest understanding, spiritual penetration into the essence of the event, works here. Both musicians know what they are doing, create their masterpiece consciously, and there is a clear brilliance of intelligence in the light that von Otter's voice carries. But this does not make the achievement of a unique recording any less valuable: before us is a triumph of analytics, clothed in rare musical skill. The more you listen to this performance, the more clearly you understand the peak scale of what is happening.