Wednesday 8 December 2010 7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Cecilia Bartoli
sings Handel
Cecilia Bartoli mezzo-soprano
Franco Fagioli countertenor
Basel Chamber Orchestra
Uli Weber/Decca
Julia Schröder leader
tonight’s programme
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Rinaldo, HWV7 (1711) – Overture; Furie terribili!;
Dunque i lacci … Ah! crudel
George Frideric Handel
Lotario, HWV26 (1729) – Scherza in mar
Francesco Maria Veracini (1690–1768)
Ouverture No. 6 in G minor ( 1716) – Allegro
George Frideric Handel
Alcina, HWV34 (1735) – Ah! mio cor!
George Frideric Handel
Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV17 (1724) – excerpts
(with Franco Fagioli countertenor):
Ouverture
Va tacito e nascosto
Sinfonia ‘Il Parnasso’
V’adoro, pupille
Al lampo dell’armi
Che sento? o dio! … Se pietà
Dall’ondoso periglio … Aure, deh, per pietà
Da tempeste
Caro!/Bella! … Più amabile beltà
Nicola Porpora (1686–1768)
Il Gedeone (1737) – Overture;
Perdono, amata Nice (1746) – Overture
George Frideric Handel
Teseo, HWV9 (1713) – Ah, che sol per Teseo …
M’adora l’idol mio
George Frideric Handel
Amadigi di Gaula, HWV11 (1715) – Mi deride …
Desterò dall’empia Dite
INTERVAL
Porpora items edited by Martin Heimgartner
programme note
George Frideric Handel:
a composer without rival
The composers who came after Handel thought him to be
without rival as a musician. Mozart made his own
performing edition of Messiah, declaring, it is said, ‘Handel
understands effect better than any of us. When he chooses,
he strikes like a thunderbolt.’ Haydn’s choral masterpiece
The Creation bends a knee to Handel’s majestic oratorio
and the younger composer’s String Quartet in F minor,
Op. 20 No. 5, builds the chorus ‘And with his stripes’ from
the work into its fugue finale. For Beethoven, Handel was
quite simply ‘the greatest composer that ever lived. I would
uncover my head and kneel before his tomb’; and he so
admired Messiah that he wrote it out in order that he might
get a ‘feeling for its intricacies’ and ‘unravel its complexities’.
The English, as is perhaps their wont, celebrated Handel’s
greatness when he was gone, by interring his mortal remains
in that national necropolis, Westminster Abbey, thus
conferring an honorary English status on a German
composer who had dominated the London music scene for
so much of the first half of the 18th century and made Italian
opera a cultural cynosure in the capital before turning
oratorio into an English institution. Then there was the
Handel ‘Commemoration’ of 1784, organised by the Earl of
Sandwich in the Abbey to commemorate the 25th
anniversary of the composer’s death. The festival may have
set a fashion for large-scale performances of Handel’s
works that would culminate in elephantine Victorian
performances in the Crystal Palace, with casts of thousands,
but in the late 18th century it seems to have become a way of
appropriating the composer for cultural and political
purposes. A case, perhaps, of ‘nice traditional Handel’ for
the aristocracy rather than nasty modern composers who
were ingratiating themselves with the rising bourgeoisie in
London’s Hanover Square Rooms. The reality is more
complicated than that, of course, but the fact remains that by
the end of the 18th century Handel had become as British as
John Bull and roast beef! And within seven years that archmodernist Haydn would be the star attraction at the West
End’s most desirable concert hall, with symphonies newly
minted for England.
Yet even Handel had his rivals in the 18th century, and
nowhere more so than in the opera house in his London
glory days – the two decades that ended when the
composer retired from the stage in 1741 to devote himself to
writing oratorios. Not that these were always glory days at
the bank: it is a mark of this composer’s greatness that, while
beset by financial and administrative difficulties and caught
up in the maelstrom of London’s cultural politics, Handel
continued to produce an almost unbroken stream of
masterworks.
Handel’s rivals fed a newly acquired English appetite for
Italian opera and, in particular, the art and the vanity of
those stars of the 18th-century operatic stage, the castrati.
The Neapolitan composer Nicola Porpora was one such
‘rival’. He had taught both Farinelli – one of the most
3
programme note
glittering of the castrati – and his rival Caffarelli. In 1729 an
aristocratic clique who had taken against Handel and his
company invited Porpora to London. But success eluded the
so-called Opera of the Nobility and despite the presence of
Farinelli the 1734/5 season was a disaster, with the company
who performed in the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre filing for
bankruptcy.
Porpora composed cantatas as well as operas and oratorios
and dedicated a set of 12 for solo voice and continuo in 1735
to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who was an accomplished viol
player. Porpora reserves his most artful musical thoughts for
his singers (as might be expected of a great singing teacher)
but there are merits in his orchestral music too, such as the
overtures to two of his later cantatas, Il Gedeone (1737) and
Perdono, amata Nice (1746), written after the composer had
returned to the Continent. What they lack in drama is more
than compensated for by Porpora’s gifts for colourful
instrumentation, even if it’s music that sometimes seems to be
waiting for the human voice!
Francesco Maria Veracini first visited London in 1714, four
years after Handel had come to England. One of the most
celebrated violinists of his generation, he was hired by the
Queen’s Theatre to play between acts of operas. Nearly 20
years later, Veracini was back in the English capital, lured –
like Porpora – by the Opera of the Nobility to take on
Handel. While orchestral concerts had earned him his
4
livelihood, he was unable to resist the challenge to write
opera, and among other projects turned Shakespeare’s
As You Like It into Rosalinda and set Metastasio’s libretto
La clemenza di Tito, which Caterino Mazzolà would adapt
for Mozart in 1791.
Like Porpora, Veracini also wrote cantatas, although no
less a savant than Dr Burney observed that the music
he composed for his L’errore di Salomone was ‘wild,
awkward and unpleasant; manifestly produced by a man
unaccustomed to write for the voice’. The composer’s Sixth
Ouverture, though, is mercifully free of voices! It is the last of
a set written in the French style in 1716: symphonies in all but
name. This is perhaps the finest of the six, with a striking
opening Allegro, replete with swooping triplet arpeggios.
The woodwind writing demands particular virtuosity.
But, for all their skills, Handel had little to fear from his
rivals – at least those who were set up as such. From
Teseo, composed for the Queen’s Theatre in 1713, to Alcina,
written for Covent Garden 22 years later, the composer
demonstrated a rare and consistent mastery of the form
of opera. And if his sense of dramma per musica was
exemplary, so too was his musical imagination: he was
always in search of new orchestral colour, constantly
embroidering upon what he had done previously and never
in doubt about the expressive potential of the human voice.
In this respect, the solo aria stands at the summit of Handel’s
programme note
achievement in the theatre. To experience a programme of
arias such as tonight’s is every bit as wickedly pleasurable as
eating expensive chocolates in bed!
To remove a Baroque aria from its recitative would be to tear
it from its dramatic context. But on its own it does represent a
moment of repose within an opera, a time when the action is
paused and a character can take stock of his or her situation.
The rules are simple. The aria is usually in three sections
(ternary form), setting two verses of poetry. The opening
section is self-contained musically, and properly should end
in the tonic key. There is no reason why this first part should
not be sung on its own. Then comes a second section, which
contrasts with the first in key and mood and sometimes
tempo too. Then comes the final da capo section (which
literally translates as ‘from the head’), in which the performer
returns to the first section, but this time ornamenting the line.
This is where the singer’s skills come in to play. The greater
the singer, the more spectacular or emotionally affecting
these decorations become.
A case in point is ‘Ah, che sol per Teseo … M’adora l’idol
mio’, Agilea’s recitative and aria from Teseo. Agilea loves
Teseo, who has returned to Athens disguising his true identity
to fight for his father Egeo. (Teseo is of course Theseus, who
abandoned Ariadne on Naxos, having been helped to slay
the Cretan Minotaur.) Teseo wins the battle and Egeo
announces that he has decided to marry Agilea, who then
sings of her hopeless love for the hero. Handel’s aria runs
the gamut of emotions – from despair to proud disdain –
and where the heart leads, the vocal line follows in ever
more dizzying displays.
Teseo is Handel’s only five-act opera and it was written for
the Queen’s Theatre in London and given its first
performance in 1713. The composer was experimenting:
there’s a hint of the French as well as the Italian tradition,
particularly in the way that the opera – for all its rather
baggy plotting – rarely shows the seams between recitative
and aria.
In Amadigi di Gaula, first performed at the King’s Theatre
in 1715, Handel continues to experiment, once again
borrowing freely from France and Italy to adorn a plot that
is literally full of the kind of magic and spectacle and courtly
chivalry that seems to have held a particular appeal for
London audiences. Melissa is a sorceress determined to use
her black arts to win the hero Amadigi. At the end of Act 2
she is thwarted by her rival Oriana and her desire for
revenge knows few vocal limits. But her recitative and aria
‘Mi deride … Desterò dall’empia Dite’ is far more than just
an opportunity for dazzling singing, crammed full as it is with
all-too-human feeling, complete with virtuoso solos for
trumpet and oboe. As Jonathan Keates argues in Handel –
The Man and his Music, ‘Amadigi provides an excellent
illustration of the ideal functioning of the Baroque recitative-
5
programme note
and-aria form in the hands of a master … can it still be said
that nothing happens in a Handel aria? So far from
invalidating the form, its very artifice helps to convey the
atmosphere of those moments when civilised human beings
are driven out of their emotional reserve.’
opera. Nonetheless, ‘Dunque i lacci d’un volto … Ah! crudel’,
sung by the sorceress Armida after the crusader Rinaldo has
rejected her, moves from troubled strings in the recitative to a
duet for oboe and bassoon in the opening section of the aria
with the kind of originality and musical assurance that are the
hallmarks of a great Handel aria. Then come the raging runs
It was Rinaldo that made Handel’s reputation as an opera
as Armida cries for revenge, invoking her Furies to devise
composer in London. First performed at the Queen’s Theatre
new and even more terrible punishments for Rinaldo, whose
in February 1711, this tale of Christians against Saracens
only crime against humanity is to love another, rather simpler,
during the First Crusade was probably reworked by Handel
woman. We’ve already met Armida’s Furies at the start of the
and his librettist as the contemporary story of the Duke of
opera, in her opening aria ‘Furie terribili!’. And what a vocal
Marlborough’s Protestant armies crusading against the
calling card. Cascading runs and demonic decorations make
Catholic ‘infidels’ at a time when England was contemplating
it abundantly clear that this is the bad girl of the opera.
peace with France. Whatever the politics of the piece, the
Thrilling but dangerous as she promises to help defeat the
singers – who included two of the most admired castrati of
crusaders.
the era, Nicolo Grimaldi and Valentino Urbani – thrilled the
Even Handel, though, had off days. Lotario, written to
first-night audience. The special effects were pretty special
launch a new Italian opera company at the King’s Theatre
too. The Spectator couldn’t resist teasing the show. ‘The
opera of Rinaldo’, the magazine announced, ‘is filled with
in December1729, cannot be counted one of his most
Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations and Fireworks; which
successful works, with a lumbering plot that trundles down
the audience may look upon without catching cold, and
a well-trodden operatic path, complete with terrible tyrants
indeed without much Danger of being burnt; for there are
and fair maidens in distress. Set in Italy at the time of the
several engines filled with water, and ready to play at a
Lombard invasions, it’s the devil or rather the villains,
Minute’s warning, in case any such accident should happen.’ Berengario and Matilda, who get the best tunes as they try to
marry off their son to Adelaide, the widowed Queen of Italy.
It is said that Handel composed Rinaldo in just two weeks.
Nevertheless Adelaide is given her moment in the vocal sun,
Though he was always a fast worker it undoubtedly helped
with the aria that ends Act 1, ‘Scherza in mar’, in which she
that he recycled material from earlier works for the new
refuses to surrender to the schemers.
6
programme note
Alcina, written for Covent Garden in 1735, is, on the other
hand, a complete triumph – a feast for the eye, a vocal
banquet or food for thought, depending on your mood and
inclination. Beyond the artifice of the piece, the wonder of
Alcina’s enchantments on her magic island, the clash
between Charlemagne’s knights and Islam, there is the
simple story of a sorceress whose power is undone by human
love. The fact that she is also an artist might suggest that
Handel is musing here on the price that artists pay for their
art. And all of this is there in the arias he writes for Alcina
herself. ‘Ah! mio cor’ from Act 2 of the opera finds the
sorceress distraught that her captive Ruggiero, whom she
longs for, has escaped. As Alcina’s powers begin to fade,
Handel has the orchestral accompaniment appear to
dissolve before our very ears. With its extended legato and
drops through the register this is an aria that demands a
special kind of vocal magic from the singer who would be
Handel’s sorceress.
The composer was at the height of his powers when he
wrote Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Its champions would argue that
this is not only Handel’s greatest achievement as an opera
composer but conceivably the most satisfying of all Baroque
opera seria. It was hugely successful at its first performances
for the Royal Academy of Music at the King’s Theatre in
London in 1724, and for many in the audience that success
must have been earned in large measure by the star singers
who took the principal roles of Caesar and Cleopatra, the
castrato Senesino and the celebrated soprano Francesca
Cuzzoni. Giulio Cesare became one of the most admired
and most frequently performed Italian operas of the period,
with revivals in London in 1725, 1730 and 1732, as well as
performances in Paris, Hamburg and Brunswick.
History as it really happened takes something of a back
seat in Nicola Haym’s libretto, brewed as it is from Plutarch,
Corneille and an original Venetian libretto. Above all, this is
Roman history with a distinctly Baroque message, that when
it comes to the conflict between love and duty, the good ruler
has no choice but to lay aside his personal happiness in the
best interests of serving his people. Here was a text much
preached in the period, but rarely followed: Baroque vice
was nice, Roman virtue rather chilly! What makes Handel’s
opera so effective is that in the end Caesar gets his cake and
succeeds in eating it too, when Cleopatra is crowned Queen
of Egypt after her brother Ptolemy’s death and declares
herself a ‘tributary queen to the Emperor of Rome’. Men
and Emperors rule.
What also makes Cleopatra such a winning heroine, and
indeed the opera so original, is the way in which Handel
and his librettist blend the serious with the comic. Theirs is a
Cleopatra who really could ‘Hop 40 paces through the
public street’, as Shakespeare had it. Playful, funny, teasing
and an unscrupulous operator. If Caesar is properly noble,
he does seem to unbend in the Egyptian queen’s presence.
7
programme note
And his seduction by Cleopatra disguised as Lydia is tinged
with a languorous eroticism. You can feel the old serpent of
the Nile rising in the music! Let no one say that Handel knew
nothing of sexual feelings.
Cecilia Bartoli takes the part of the Egyptian ‘serpent’ and
her noble Roman tonight is the countertenor Franco Fagioli.
So he is is Caesar near the end of Act 1 in ‘Va tacito e
nascosto’, alone and reflecting on Tolomeo’s murder of his
old rival Pompey, whose head has been delivered to the
Roman general as evidence of the Egyptian’s loyalty. The
wise hunter is the hunter who hunts on his own, Caesar
muses. Egyptian politics are a jungle, with the siblings
Tolomeo and Cleopatra – joint sovereigns – fighting for
power. And fighting for Caesar’s favours too.
Then in Act 2, after a suitably grave orchestral sinfonia
(Handel’s orchestration is sumptuous throughout the opera,
and his instrumentation highly original), we find a seductive
Cleopatra in ‘V’adoro, pupille’, appearing as Virtue with the
nine Muses for her attendants in a scene that perhaps owes
as much to a Soho burlesque at The Windmill as it does to
ancient Parnassus. ‘Al lampo dell’armi’ finds Caesar flexing
his military muscles when the Egyptians stage an uprising
against the Romans. He is determined to disregard
Cleopatra’s advice to cut and run, while she, left on her own
with her protector at risk, implores the gods to aid them in
‘Che sento? o dio! … Se pietà’.
At the start of Act 3 Tolomeo defeats his sister and takes her
prisoner. Caesar has survived an attempted drowning and in
‘Dall’ondoso periglio … Aure, deh per pietà’, alone at the
water’s edge in Alexandria harbour, he considers his options.
All is about to come out right, though. Caesar is rescued by
his fellow Romans and hurries off, together with Pompey’s
widow Cornelia, whose husband’s death he has promised to
avenge, to save Cleopatra from Tolomeo’s clutches. In ‘Da
tempeste’ Cleopatra rejoices at the way the tables have been
turned on her hated brother, who is soon dispatched by
Pompey’s son Sextus. All is ready for Caesar to crown
Cleopatra Queen in ‘Caro! … Bella! … Più amabile beltà’ and
the curtain can fall on Handel’s Roman masterpiece.
And as you leave the hall, you can only wonder at how well
Handel understands his characters in the arias that he writes
for them, how expressivity is just as important as musicality in
these solos, yet how the music tells just as much of their story
as the words. Possibly it was the smartest move this unrivalled
composer ever made, coming to London and writing Italian
operas for an audience who for the most part didn't speak or
understand Italian. A genuine case of ‘Prima la musica e poi
le parole’.
Programme note © Christopher Cook
8
text and translation
Rinaldo – Furie terribili
Furie terribili!
Circondatemi,
Sequidatemi
Con faci orribili!
Fearful furies,
encircle me,
trail flames of terror
behind me.
Rinaldo – Dunque i lacci … Ah, crudele
Dunque i lacci d’un volto,
Tante gioie promesse,
Li spaventi d’inferno,
Forza n’avran per arrestar quel crudo?
E tu il segui, o mio core!
Fatto trofeo d’un infelice amore!
No! si svegli ’l furore,
Si raggiunga l’ingrato,
Cada a’ miei piè svenato!
Ohimè! Che fia?
Uccier l’alma mia?
Ah! Debole mio petto,
A un traditor anco puoi dar ricetto?
Su, su, furie, ritrovate
Nova sorte di pena e di flagello;
S’uccida, sì… ah!, ch’è troppo bello!
So are the snare of a face,
the promise of so much joy,
and the terrors of hell
not strong enough to hold that cruel man?
My heart, you go with him!
You are the trophy of an unhappy love!
No: let my anger arise,
and find the ungrateful man,
let him fall lifeless at my feet.
Alas! How can it be?
Can I kill the man I love?
Ah, my feeble heart,
can you shelter a traitor still?
Arise, furies, and discover
new types of pain and punishment;
let him die. Ah, no, for he is too handsome.
Ah! crudel,
Il pianto mio
Deh! Ti mova per pietà!
O infedel,
Al mio desio
Proverai la crudeltà.
Ah, cruel man,
for pity’s sake,
be moved by my tears.
Or you will feel my cruelty
for having spurned
my desire.
Ah! crudel, etc.
Ah, cruel man, etc.
Translation by Kenneth Chalmers, reproduced with kind permission
from Decca.
Lotario – Scherza in mar
Scherza in mar la navicella
Mentre ride aura seconda:
Ma se poi fiera procella
Turba il Ciel, sconvolge l’onda,
Va perduta a naufragar.
The little boat plays upon the ocean
while a favourable breeze blows:
but if a fierce tempest then
darkens the sky and whips up the waves,
it is doomed to founder.
9
text and translation
Non così questo mio core
Cederà d’un empia sorte
Allo sdegno ed al furore,
Che per anco in faccia a morte
Sa da grande trionfar.
This heart of mine will not
yield likewise to the scorn and fury
of malevolent fate,
for though faced with death
it will emerge triumphant.
Scherza in mar, etc.
The little boat plays, etc.
Translation by Susannah Howe
Alcina – Ah! mio cor!
Ah! mio cor! schernito sei!
Stelle! Dei! Nume d’amore!
Traditore! T’amo tanto;
Puoi lasciarmi sola in pianto,
Oh Dei! Perchè?
Oh, my heart, you are scorned!
Oh, you stars! Oh, ye gods! Deity of love!
Betrayer! I love you so;
how can you leave me alone, in tears?
Oh gods! Why?
Ma, che fa gemendo Alcina?
Son reina, è tempo ancora:
Resti o mora,
Peni sempre, o torni a me.
But what is Alcina doing, complaining?
I am queen, and there is yet time:
he shall stay or die,
suffer eternally, or return to me.
Ah! mio cor! schernito sei, etc.
Oh, my heart, you are scorned, etc.
Based on a translation by Peggy Cochrane, reproduced with kind
permission from Deutsche Grammophon.
Teseo – Ah, che sol per Teseo … M’adora
l’idol mio
Ah, che sol per Teseo arde quest’alma;
Del Talamo Real, non cura il petto,
E non sente altro ardore,
Ch’il primo che fu acceso entro del core.
Scaccerò dal mio seno, ogn’altro affetto;
Ed avrà del mio amor solo la palma
Teseo, l’amato bene;
E dolci anche per lui saran le pene.
Ah, my soul yearns for Theseus alone;
my heart cares naught for the royal bed,
and feels no other passion
than the first love that set it ablaze.
I shall drive from my breast all other affections;
only my dearest, my Theseus
will bear the palm of my love,
and sweet will he find its torments.
M’adora l’idol mio
Gode il mio core
Fedel gli sono anch’io;
Vivo contenta.
My beloved adores me,
my heart rejoices,
and I am faithful to him;
I live in happiness.
10
text and translation
Né vuò che de’ miei danni
E dei sofferti affanni
Il cor si penta.
Nor would I have my heart regret
my sorrows
or the suffering I have endured.
M’adora l’idol mio, etc.
My beloved adores me, etc.
Translation by Susannah Howe
Amadigi di Gaula – Mi deride … Desterò
dall’empia Dite
Mi deride l’amante, la rivale mi sprezza,
Ed io soffro, oh stelle.
No, non sarà giammai ch’io perda il mio vigor
Fra pene e guai.
My lover mocks me, my rival scorns me:
will I suffer this, O stars?
No, it can never come to pass that I lose my strength
to grief and woe.
Desterò dall’empia Dite
Ogni furia a farvi guerra,
Crudi, perfidi, sì, sì!
I will raise every fury from vilest hell
to wage war on you,
cruel traitors, yes, yes!
Ombre tetre, omai sortite
Dall’avello che vi serra,
A dar pene
A colui che mi schernì!
Ye dark shades, emerge now
from the tombs that enclose you,
to torment
the man who has scorned me,
Desterò dall’empia Dite, etc.
I will raise every fury, etc.
Translation by Charles Johnston, reproduced with kind permission
from Ambroisie.
INTERVAL
Giulio Cesare in Egitto – excerpts
Va tacito e nascosto
Va tacito e nascosto,
Quand’avido è di preda,
L’astuto cacciator.
E chi è a mal far disposto,
Non brama che si veda
L’inganno del suo cor.
Silently and stealthily
the cunning hunter moves
when he is eager for prey.
And he who is disposed to evil
does not wish the deceitfulness
of his heart to be seen.
Va tacito, etc.
Silently, etc.
11
text and translation
V’adoro, pupille
V’adoro, pupille,
Saette d’amore,
Le vostre faville
Son grate nel sen.
Pietose vi brama
Il mesto mio core,
Che ogn’ora vi chiama
L’amato suo ben.
I adore you, oh eyes,
the darts of love,
your sparks
sweetly pierce my breast.
My mournful heart
beseeches your pity,
since it ceaselessly calls you
its dearly beloved.
Al lampo dell’armi
Al lampo dell’armi
Quest’alma guerriera
Vendetta farà.
Non fia che disarmi
La destra guerriera
Chi forza le dà.
In the shimmering of arms
this my warring soul
will take revenge.
Let not that which
gives this warrior’s hand strength
now disarm it.
Al lampo, etc.
In the shimmering, etc.
Che sento? o dio! … Se pietà
Che sento? o dio! Morrà Cleopatra ancora.
Anima vil, che parli mai? Deh, taci!
Avrò, per vendicarmi
In bellicosa parte,
Di Bellona in sembianza un cor di Marte.
Intanto, o numi, voi, che il ciel reggete,
Difendete il mio bene,
Ch’egli è del seno mio conforto e speme.
What do I hear, oh gods! Cleopatra will die too.
Abject soul, what are you saying? Ah, be silent!
To avenge myself
in warlike combat
I shall have the countenance of Bellona, the heart of Mars.
Meanwhile, oh gods, you who rule the heavens,
protect my beloved!
For he is the comfort and the hope of my heart.
Se pietà di me non senti,
Giusto ciel, io morirò.
Tu da’ pace a’ miei tormenti,
O quest’alma spirerò.
If you feel no pity for me,
just heaven, I shall die.
Grant relief to my torments,
or this soul will expire.
Se pietà, etc.
If you feel, etc.
Dall’ondoso periglio … Aure, deh, per pietà
Dall’ondoso periglio
Salvo mi porta al lido
Il mio propizio fato.
Qui la celeste Parca
Non tronca ancor lo stame alla mia vita!
Ma dove andrò? E chi mi porge aita?
Saving me from the perilous depths,
my propitious destiny
bore me to the shore.
Here celestial Fate
has not yet cut the thread of my life!
But where shall I go? And who will bring me help?
12
text and translation
Ove son le mie schiere?
Ove son le legioni,
Che a tante mie vittorie il varco apriro?
Solo in quest’erme arene
Al monarca del mondo errar conviene?
Where are my troops?
Where are the legions
that paved my way to so many victories?
Does it befit the ruler of the world
to roam alone upon these desert sands?
Aure, deh, per pietà
Spirate al petto mio,
Per dar conforto, oh Dio!
Al mio dolor.
Dite, dov’è, che fa
L’idolo del mio sen,
L’amato e dolce ben
Di questo cor.
Ah, you breezes, pray
fill my breast
and bring comfort, o gods!
to my woe.
Tell me, tell me where
the idol of my heart,
the beloved and sweet treasure
of my life is now and what she is doing.
Ma d’ogni intorno i’ veggio
Sparse d’arme e d’estinti
L’infortunate arene:
Segno d’infausto annunzio alfin sarà.
But everywhere I see
the dismal sands
bestrewn with arms and corpses.
This must be the inauspicious sign of disaster.
Aure, deh, etc.
Ah, you, etc.
Da tempeste
Da tempeste il legno infranto,
Se poi salvo giunge in porto,
Non sa più che desiar.
Così il cor tra pene e pianto,
Or che trova il suo conforto,
Torna l’anima a bear.
When the ship, broken by the storms,
succeeds at last in making it to port,
it no longer knows what it desires.
Thus the heart, after torments and woes,
once it has recovered its solace,
is beside itself with bliss.
Da tempeste, etc.
When the ship, etc.
Caro!/Bella! … Più amabile beltà
Caro! più amabile beltà/Bella! più amabile beltà
Mai non si troverà
Del tuo bel volto.
In me non splenderà,/In te non splenderà,
Né amor né fedeltà,
Disciolto da te./Disciolto da me.
My love! a more amiable beauty/My fair one! a more
amiable beauty
will never be found
than your fair face.
In me nothing shines,/In you nothing shines,
neither love, nor fidelity,
apart from you./Apart from me.
Caro, etc.
My love, etc.
Translation by James O. Wootton, reproduced with kind
permission from Harmonia Mundi.
13
about the performers
Uli Weber/Decca
About the performers
Cecilia Bartoli mezzo-soprano
For more than two decades Cecilia
Bartoli has been a leading classical
artist, via performances in opera
houses and concert halls around the
world and through her best-selling and
critically acclaimed recordings, which
in recent years have centred around
the rediscovery of neglected repertoire.
Herbert von Karajan, Daniel
Barenboim and Nikolaus Harnoncourt
were among the first conductors with
whom Cecilia Bartoli worked. Since
then, she has developed regular
partnerships with renowned
conductors, pianists and orchestras,
14
most recently period-instrument
ensembles including the Les Arts
Florissants, Concentus Musicus Wien,
Il Giardino Armonico, Basel Chamber
Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre,
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
and Orchestra La Scintilla.
Increasingly, she is involved with
orchestral projects for which she
assumes overall artistic responsibility,
including recent programmes with the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Cecilia Bartoli’s stage appearances
include the Metropolitan Opera, New
York, Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, La Scala, Milan, Bavarian
State Opera and the Zurich Opera
House. Most recently, her roles have
included Handel’s Cleopatra and
Semele, Rossini’s Cenerentola and
Halévy’s Clari.
Recently, she focused on the 19th
century, the era of Italian Romanticism
and bel canto, and in particular the
legendary singer Maria Malibran. Her
Malibran album, Maria, received two
Grammy nominations. In June she
made her role-debut in Norma, in
historically informed concert
performances in Dortmund conducted
by Thomas Hengelbrock. However,
most of 2009/10 was dedicated to
18th-century Naples and its castrato
stars, a programme she performed
at the Barbican a year ago, also
releasing an accompanying album
and DVD, Sacrificium. Other highlights
have included Giulio Cesare with
William Christie at the Salle Pleyel in
Paris.
Among Cecilia Bartoli’s many awards
are an Italian knighthood and the
Italian Bellini d’Oro prize. She is an
Honorary Member of the Royal
Academy of Music and was recently
given an honorary doctorate by
University College, Dublin. She is an
exclusive artist of the Decca Music
Group.
From 2012 onwards, Cecilia Bartoli will
be Artistic Director of the Salzburg
Whitsun Festival.
about the performers
Marco Borggreve
He gave his first solo recital in Europe
last year at the Staatsoper Stuttgart,
which was enthusiastically received.
Other highlights of last season include
Ainadamar by Osvaldo Golijov at the
Teatro Argentino in La Plata, the titleroles in Ariodante and Cavalli’s
Giasone and Bertarido (Rodelinda).
Franco Fagioli countertenor
Franco Fagioli was born in Argentina
in 1981 and first came to international
attention when he won the 2003
Bertelsmann Foundation singing
competition in Germany. He went on to
perform at the Teatro Colón in Buenos
Aires, Bonn Opera, Essen Opera,
Zurich Opera, the Théâtre des
Champs-Élysées in Paris and at the
Innsbruck and Ludwigsburg festivals
and the Handel festivals in Halle and
Karlsruhe.
Highlights this season include the role
of Nerone (The Coronation of
Poppea) for Cologne Opera and at
the Staatsoper Dresden.
Conductors with whom he has
collaborated include Rinaldo
Alessandrini, Alan Curtis, Diego
Fasolis, Gabriel Garrido, Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, Michael Hofstetter, René
Jacobs, Konrad Junghänel, José
Manuel Quintana, Marc Minkowski,
Riccardo Muti and Christophe Rousset.
Franco Fagioli’s discography includes
Gluck’s Ezio, and Handel’s Teseo and
Berenice. His first solo CD was
released last month.
Basel Chamber Orchestra
Founded in 1984 by graduates of
various Swiss conservatoires, the
Basel Chamber Orchestra now
ranks among Europe’s leading
chamber orchestras. It is committed
to the chamber orchestra tradition
created by Paul Sacher; central to
this is music-making of the very
highest standard and the
development of a repertoire that
combines music both ancient and
modern.
The orchestra gives between 60 and
90 concerts a year, most of them in
Europe and Switzerland, its own
concert series in Basel being an
important part of its calendar. It also
appears at major concert halls in
London, Amsterdam, Cologne,
Berlin, Zurich, Munich, Vienna,
Valencia and Paris.
The Basel Chamber Orchestra was
recently awarded the Ernst von
15
about the performers
Basel Chamber
Orchestra
Siemens Musikstiftung (2006) and the
first prize by Junge Ohren (‘Young
Ears’) for its project designed to
introduce young people to music. In
2008 it also received an ECHOKlassik prize for its recording of
Beethoven’s Third and Fourth
Symphonies under Giovanni
Antonini.
As well as Antonini, the orchestra
regularly works with the conductors
Paul Goodwin, Kristjan Järvi, Paul
McCreesh and David Stern, and has
also appeared with Renaud
Capuçon, Julia Fischer, Matthias
Goerne, Philippe Herreweghe,
Daniel Hope, Emma Kirkby,
Angelika Kirchschlager, Jennifer
Larmore, Bobby McFerrin, Sabine
Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud, Christian
Tetzlaff, Pieter Wispelwey, Thomas
Zehetmair and Tabea Zimmermann.
It has developed its profile as a
Baroque ensemble through a
number of highly acclaimed tours,
with artists such as Cecilia Bartoli,
Giuliano Carmignola, David
Daniels, Magdalena Kožená and
Andreas Scholl, and through its
recordings. These include Handel’s
opera Riccardo primo and Concerti
grossi, Op. 3, and discs with
Angelika Kirchschlager, Marijana
Mijanović, Nuria Rial and Lawrence
Zazzo, and its ongoing Beethoven
symphony cycle.
Credit Suisse has been the main
sponsor and partner of Basel
Chamber Orchestra since 2007.
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Aldridge Print Group; advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance. In
accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking
is not permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises. No eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras,
tape recorders or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall.
If anything limits your enjoyment please let us know during your visit. Additional feedback can be given online, as well as
via feedback forms or pods around the centre foyers.
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available from sales points situated in the foyers.
16
Violin I
Julia Schröder
Matthias Müller
Regine Schröder
Elisabeth Kohler
Regula Keller
Noëlle-Anne
Darbellay
Double Bass
Stefan Preyer
Violin II
Yukiko Tezuka
Valentina Giusti
Daniela Fischer
Nina Candik
Heinrich Kubitschek
Horn
Glen Borling
Viola
Bodo Friedrich
Mariana Doughty
Oboe
Kerstin Kramp
Astrid Koechlein
Bassoon
Yves Bertin
Trumpet
Simon Lilly
Harpsichord
Riccardo Doni
Theorbo
Rosario Conte
Anna Pfister
Cello
Christoph Dangel
Hristo Kouzmanov
Georg Dettweiler
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Administration 020 7638 4141
Box Office 020 7638 8891
Great Performers Last-Minute Concert
Information Hotline 0845 120 7505
www.barbican.org.uk