|
EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
Il Tronfo del Tempo e del Disinganno August 13, 2006
|
Time's Disillusion By Michael Zwiebach Handel's Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno ("The Triumph of Time and Disillusion," 1707) is music of youthful exuberance, the promise of its title notwithstanding. So it was especially appealing to hear a young, enthusiastic quartet sing it in an oxygen-burning performance on Sunday by City Concert Opera Orchestra at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco. Thomas Busse, the orchestra's founder and director, continues to make news as a passionate and intelligent musician. Il trionfo is billed as an oratorio, but like some of the contemporaneous Italian cantatas, it was thinly disguised opera for the Roman nobility and high-ranking churchmen, since opera was officially prohibited in the papal city. In the oratorio, Beauty allies with Pleasure; meanwhile Time and Disillusion exhort Beauty to repent her thoughtless ways and turn to a virtuous life of faith and good works. Such allegorical portrayals of virtue and vice go back to the Middle Ages. But in this libretto, by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, the visceral theatricality of the old sermon-as-theater is replaced with smooth linguistic artifice. If you think it all sounds rather dull, you've reckoned without Handel. His music displayed such a bounty of invention that he continued to revise this score throughout his life. (He turned it into his penultimate English oratorio half a century later.) It contains some of his flashiest music, with bold, high-speed passagework and violin writing that goes well beyond third position, the traditional upper limit of Italian violin music. Some of Handel's ideas are imaginative expressions of conventional ideas. Steady ticking in the violins announces Time's first aria, Urne voi ("O ye tombs"), along with syncopations and abrupt dynamic shifts for the horror imagery. Pleasure's final aria is a typical "rage aria," which interjects the voice into the orchestra's onrushing scales, and forecasts Handel's practice in his later operas. For pure sensuous beauty, there is Pleasure's Lascia la spina, which later became famous in the opera Rinaldo as Lascia, ch'io pianga, as well as Beauty's final aria of renunciation. There are even examples of Handel subtly linking arias together, as when Beauty sings of having conquered Time's "funereal wings" in coloratura roulades, which are immediately countered by a loping cello obbligato in Disillusion's lullabylike riposte, "Man believes that Time is asleep as he spreads his hidden wings." Part of the excitement of this oratorio is watching the musicians cope with its extravagant demands. The short rehearsal time precluded absolute technical perfection, so there were a few scattered missed notes, short-breathed phrases, and ensemble problems. Sometimes the rapid scales caused the strings to sound less cohesive than usual. But on the whole, the bravura passages came off with startling intensity and unity. Among the singers, mezzo Heidi Waterman (Disinganno) was particularly convincing, displaying a rich, lustrous tone and gorgeous legato. Diana Pray (Bellezza) maintained her composure during hair-raising coloratura that she sang remarkably well and with a feeling for the longer line. Tonia d'Amelio was an openly flirtatious Piacere with a clear soprano voice that nicely matched Pray's. Tenor Antoine Garth (Tempo) evoked a pleasing, open-throated quality, and he conveyed the imperiousness of his character despite lacking vocal gravitas. The orchestra, many of them Philharmonia Baroque and American Bach Soloists veterans, was given a workout that stretched even their estimable skills. Special kudos go to the string soloists, particularly Lisa Grodin, in the role of Arcangelo Corelli, and Paul Hale, whose obbligato cello graced more than one of Waterman's arias. Carol Panofsky handled some treacherous oboe solos and Gilbert Martinez (from MusicSources) played keyboard continuo as well as an organ solo in the sonata in the oratorio's first part. Busse has absorbed several of Nicholas McGegan's mannerisms from his post in the Philharmonia Chorale, but his feel for the music is quite mature. He never overconducted, his gestures were clear and communicative, and his tempi were well-judged, if sometimes a little fast for his forces to cope with. His use of dramatic pauses in the music of some of the arias was extremely effective and his coordination with the singers was exemplary. (Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.)©2006 Michael Zwiebach, all rights reserved |
Heidi Waterman
Diana Pray
Tonia d'Amelio
Antoine Garth
