L’Olimpiade ‘The Opera’ – Venice Baroque Orchestra – Queen Elizabeth Hall, 28 May 2012.
L’Olimpiade, A. Vivaldi – La Serenissima – St. John’s Smith Square, 19 May 2012.
The hook of the London Olympics has produced three versions of this libretto for UK audiences this summer. Two recreate Vivaldi’s complete score – that heard recently by La Serenissima for the Lufthansa Baroque Festival at St. John’s Smith Square, and the current Garsington Festival production. That of Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon promotes their current recording of a pasticcio version of L’Olimpiade comprising arias, but not recitatives, of sixteen composers who set this very eighteenth century opera seria take on the ancient games. In the age of compilations, playlists and mp3 downloads, you might think that the pasticcio opera, stringing together the ‘best’ bits from every composer who set the text from Caldara in the 1730s to Paisiello in the 1780s, would suit contemporary tastes. But apart from a musicological perspective, the project fails on several levels. In this regard comparison with the complete Vivaldi version at the Lufthansa Festival is instructive.
Vivaldi’s operas are enjoying a deserved revival in the UK, after a neglect matched only by those of Handel’s operas in modern Italy (Rodelinda received its Italian première only in 2010). To modern audiences, Handel’s synthesis of styles and stronger intuition for human emotion, created a greater harmonic and rhythmic variety, intensity of drama and acuteness of characterisation than any of his contemporaries, and Vivaldi’s operas certainly suffer by comparison. Acres of indigestible recitativo secco (without surtitles at the Lufthansa Festival) is a test even for a Baroque anorak, but remove all recitative, as in the pasticcio version, and you’re left without any sense of plot or motivation. This may not have troubled contemporary audiences to whom the music was little more than one reason among many to attend the theatre, and to whom the genre and story would be familiar. But in a procession of mostly less-than-inspired musical settings, the enterprise lost all sense of purpose.
Vivaldi’s operas may not attain the overall unity of Handel’s, but they still contain numerous show-stoppers, both of fast coloratura, anguished laments and sublime moments of tranquillity. And it is his Mentre Dormi among the third category, which survives into the pasticcio L’Olimpiade, and totally outshines all his rival composers. Lower down the podium, Pergolesi and Hasse compete for the lesser honours.
Suffering from the notoriously dry acoustic of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, although Andrea Marcon’s ensemble was spirited, it failed to inject the music with more drama than was already there, and one longed for lighter, more lucid playing, as was given by La Serenissima under Adrian Chandler in the Vivaldi version.
The vocal soloists for the Venice Baroque performance, a suitably Olympian contest of nations, were unfortunately uneven. The French Delphine Galou, as Licida, whose deceitful charm might be explained by his unfortunate abandonment as a baby, was exceptionally elegant and poised, with a creamy even tone which held the audience spellbound during Mentre Dormi. English tenor Jeremy Ovenden was suitably regal, despite the indignities of the plot. Spanish soprano Ruth Rosique, taking the prima donna role of Aristea, had a winsome charm and command of some treacherous coloratura, if a little strained at the top. The second soprano, Brazilian Luanda Siqueira, though a touch stiff in manner, has a small but perfect instrument, and showed real intensity of purpose in Pergolesi’s dazzling Fiamma Ignota. Italian Romina Basso, as the hero Megacle, whatever her vocal qualities, employs a dramatic posture on the concert platform currently in evidence among other mezzos taking trouser roles, notably Vesselina Kassarova, seen in London as Ruggerio in Handel’s Alcina at the Barbican in 2011. They should stop. Wild hand gestures, tortured facial expressions and exaggerated postures might suit a staged production of particularly hammy quality or a recording studio without an audience. But on a concert platform, and without surtitles to help interpret her bizarre behaviour, a total lack of eye contact with the audience robbed her performance of any sympathy. Who is encouraging singers to perform in this way?
It is always unfortunate for a live audience when a recording of a concert forces singers to glue themselves to their scores for fear of a mistake being broadcast, as was the case with Romina Basso. But Ms Galou demonstrated that it is not necessary to forget all sense of drama or communication with the audience.
With La Serenissima’s convincing semi-staging of Vivaldi, the soloists included Mhairi Lawson, who negotiated both extremes of Vivaldi’s writing with total assurance and beauty of tone. Louise Poole and Marie Elliot were the equally convincing heroes, with Elliot as Licida also delivering Mentre Dormi with effortless grace and a rich contralto colour, enabling Vivaldi and La Serenissima to take home the crown of laurels.