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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating!,
By Izolda (North Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gluck: Armide (Audio CD)
This is MY second Gluck's opera (after the French "Orphee et Euridice") and this set was a revelation to me. Minkowski, whose conducting was a major snag in his recording of Handel's "Ariodante", here appears to me as a real star of this magical show. It was a fascinating experience to me, a great Berlioz admirer, to finally find out why he was so fond of Gluck and to see how much Gluck's influence there is in Berlioz's music, especially in his early cantatas. Maybe it is Mireille Delunsch's wonderful voice which I know from a recording of Berlioz's cantata "Herminie" (with Herreweghe) that brings these comparisons to my mind. But it is first of all Minkowski's conducting, so colorfull and exciting that gives a "Berliozian" touch to this music. And what music it is! Throughout the set the singing is consistently delightful, with clear French pronuciation (from mostly native speakers). Mireille Delunsch as Armida is splendid and - contrary to what Stanley Sadie from "Gramophone" had to say about her performance (review in June 1999 p. 113) - she does make much use of her words as well as her impressive voice. As I said, I am a newcomer to Gluck and I have a long way to go before I can say that I know something about his operas, but this set certainly contaminated me with a "Gluckian" virus which I will not try to cure. And there is more Gluck to come from Minkowski...
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gluck's Armide,
By Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Gluck: Armide (Audio CD)
To modern music lovers, Gluck is best-known for his Orpheus and Euridice and, to a lesser extent, for Alceste. But he was also the composer of other operas which deserve to be remembered. Among these operas is Armide, which Gluck composed in 1777 for the Paris Opera. (By that time, he had revised his earlier versions of Orpheus and Alceste for staging in Paris.) In setting Armide, Gluck took the liberetto written by Phillipe Quinault which had been used by the great French composer Lully in his opera, Armide, presented in 1686. Thus, Gluck was deliberately setting himself in competition with the earlier master. After Gluck's opera, other composers have set the Armide story, including Haydn in an opera and Brahms in a cantata, Renaldo.
This CD of Armide features the musicians of the Louvre conducted by Marc Minkowski and a distinguished cast of singers. Mr. Minkowski specializes in early music with an emphasis on scores and composers that have not received the attention they deserve. We are fortunate to have CD's readily accessible to explore Gluck's Armide. The work comes through in this release with intensity and passion. Armide is a story of the power of love and of the war between love and hate. The heroine, Armide, is a sorceress who has just defeated an army of Christian crusaders. She values her freedom and declines to marry unless to a man who can defeat the crusader's hero, Renauld. In the course of the story, Armide casts a spell on Renauld to make him, for a time, love her. But, unfortunately for Armide, she falls in love with Renauld totally and unconditionally. Renauld is ultimately rescued and abandons Armide who bewails her loss mightily and destroys the magic palace she had built for herself and Renaud. Gluck was known for attempting to integrate text and music into an artistic whole rather than for indulging in lengthy musical flourishes for their own sake. In Armide, he carries out his artistic programme in part. But there are long sections of dances, musical interludes, and scenes that have little dramatic intensity and which run counter to Gluck's austure style of composition. This is probably due in part to Gluck's decision to use, without editing, the early liberetto by Quinault which had been adopted to the different compositional style of Lully. (In the years between Lully and Gluck, some composers had tried to eliminate various portions of Quinault's text to speed-up the action. But Gluck took the original liberetto.) Gluck's Armide is not often performed today, but it is a treasure. The heroine, Armide, is a great multi-faceted role with arias expressing the extremes of passionate love and deep hatred. The role is beautifully performed on this CD by Mirelle Dellunsch. There is a character in the opera titled "hate", -- hate personified with lengthy arias worthy of the Queen of the Night -- performed guttily and intensely by Ewa Poodles. Charles Workman is an effective Renauld, but this music belongs to the women leads. The first and fifth acts of Gluck's Armide move with swift intensity while some of the more relaxed material is in act two and, particularly, in act four. For me, the most powerful musical moment of this score comes at the end of the opera in Armide's aria "La Perfide Renaud" which shows her fury at her abandonment by Renaud. Also in Act 5 is a beautiful duet between Armide and Renauld and an "Air Sicilien" featuring the solo flute. The scenes with Hate are stunning. Gluck's Armide is a grand opera by a great composer. It will delight listeners willing to be adventurous as well as lovers of opera, early classical music, and passionate music. It is a joy to have this work available.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent performance of a neglected masterpiece,
By madamemusico "madamemusico" (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gluck: Armide (Audio CD)
Having long admired Gluck, the one opera that was missing from my collection was "Armide," but I was not certain if this recording would bring out the dramatic side of his music. (So many modern, "historically-informed" performances of his music don't.) Upon listening, however, I felt that although the singers presented herein are mostly smaller-scale Handelians and Mozartians, they do indeed bring out some of the flavor of this fascinating work.
Unlike Gluck's "Alceste" or "Iphigenie en Tauride," "Armide" is less stark, less strophic, more melodic. One might almost describe it as "radical Mozart." Gluck seemed to be purposely striving here for an opera that was both inherently (which is to say, musically) dramatic and yet tuneful. The result is a delightful work in which recitatives, arias, ensembles and choruses slip seamlessly one into the other, much like the works of his Italian successor, Spontini. Mark Minkowski drives this performance with incredible intensity from first note to last, and his singers are for the most part able and up to the task. Mirielle Delunsch and Charles Workman were particularly delightful, though the female supporting singers were likewise superb. Their voices are not only pretty and well-supported, but they understand the French style and have the characteristic "French vibrato" which adds to the color of the work. I was particularly struck by Renaud's lyrical, entrancing aria by the side of the stream, with its sparse yet piquant orchestration. In 1909 Toscanini revived this opera at the Met with Olive Fremstad and Enrico Caruso, two singers known for having cannon-sized voices. I wonder how good it really was, though of course Fremstad was a real artist and capable of almost anything. Nevertheless, the opera did poorly at the box office, not because audiences thought it was tuneless but because it didn't have any held high notes for either principal. A pity; they definitely missed the point of this opera. Nevertheless, I only give this recording four stars instead of five because I would have liked a more dramatic and fully-delineated character out of Delunsch, and because some of the male supporting singers range from just acceptable to dreadful.
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