Customer Reviews

Handel Arias for Cuzzoni / Saffer · PBO · McGegan

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

George Frideric Handel (1685 -1759), Arias for Cuzzoni. Lisa Saffer, soprano; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, conducted from the harpsichord by Nicholas McGegan. Recorded November 1990 at Skywalker Sound, Nicasio, California. Released as Harmonia Mundi HMU 907036; also available on HMX 2907171.74. Total time: 72'19".

Francesca Cuzzoni (d. 1770) was one of two Italian soprano “prima donnas” that Handel kept busy at his opera houses in London during the 1720’s and 1730’s. As one can well imagine, the two of them were not on the best of terms, and it is said that it came to blows on stage, something that was made fun of a little later in Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera”. But despite the shortcomings in her character, Cuzzoni appears to have been a wonderful singer, eliciting from some bright spark the memorable phrase: “Damme, she has a nest of nightingales in her belly.” Handel penned a large number of his finest arias with Cuzzoni in mind, and the most difficult decision facing Lisa Saffer and Nic McGegan when they planned this CD of “Arias for Cuzzoni” must have been, which ones to leave out. In the end they made, I think, a fair choice, with two arias each from “Rodelinda” and “Ottone”, three of Cleopatra’s airs from “Giulio Cesare in Egitto”, and single numbers from “Ricardo Primo”, “Scipione”, “Tamerlano”, “Alessandro” and “Flavio.” A further great decision they made was to include the preceding recitative before each aria, thus creating a little bit of context: Handel’s da capo arias were not really intended for a 72 minute recital by a single singer, and the recitatives provide small breaks and introduce the listener at the same time to the situation and the emotions involved in the following aria.

As with David Thomas on his “Arias for Montagnana”, there have been differences of opinion concerning Lisa Saffer’s performance here; and as there, I think this is probably just a matter of taste: personally, I enjoyed Lisa Saffer’s singing greatly, although I did detect some hardness of timbre in exposed passages. Ms Saffer is technically brilliant, but her voice is relatively small, so that I felt she had to replace emotional intensity with brilliant modulation and ornamentation. I compared the “Giulio Cesare” arias on the disc with Roberta Alexander’s performance with the Concentus Wien under Harnoncourt, recorded a couple of years earlier, and came to the conclusion that Lisa Saffer could not match Ms Alexander’s emotional expressivity. On the other hand, Saffer’s voice seems to be more appropriate to the “early music” style – and the McGegan disc is, from the standpoint of both orchestra and engineering, at least head and shoulders better than the Harnoncourt.

Even those who are not enamoured of Ms Saffer’s voice tend to admit that the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra gives a marvellous performance on this CD. The music is full of Handelian esprit and is captured more or less perfectly, including solos by Stephen Schulz, transverse flute, and Judith Linsenberg, recorder, and not to forget Nic McGegan himself at the harpsichord providing great continuo and sometimes more. It is a measure of the quality of the disc that I have just listened to it three times in a row and found myself loving it more each time.