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3.0 out of 5 stars
Fine but flawed, November 5, 2011
This review is from: Handel: Giulio Cesare (Audio CD)
This, the first HIP recording of one of Handel's finest operas, is now already twenty years old but is in no sense showing its age. I'm sometimes wary of HIP practice but admire Jacobs' direction here; nothing is rushed but neither does this performance drag: the recitatives are giving proper weight and expressiveness and the music is especially well served by the peculiarly plangent, reedy qualities of the Concerto Köln, a baroque specialist band. The grainy horns in the last triumphal scene are especially striking.
This has long been my favourite Handel opera since I saw Janet Baker, Valerie Masterson and Sarah Walker sing the three main female roles superbly in English at the ENO. I subsequently treasured a poor tape recording made from a radio broadcast of the same performance but was pleased to acquire the CD box set when it appeared. While rather different from the set under review here, it nonetheless does honour to Handel, being performed with such verve and beauty of tone by three star ENO singers. I bought this Harmonia Mundi set some years ago principally because I knew that two such fine singers as Jennifer Larmore and Bernarda Fink would rival their ENO equivalents and I wasn't disappointed. Both have rich lower registers; Larmore makes as convincing a job of a castrato breeches role as is possible for a modern mezzo, although her slightly odd "cupped" tone is sometimes a little disconcerting, while Fink's stately beauty of voice is ideally suited to portraying the afflicted Cornelia.
However, I have to say that I cannot apply the same superlatives to the rest of the cast: Barbara Schlick's Cleopatra is ordinary of voice, rather shallow and cloudy of tone compared to the bell-like purity of rivals such as Masterson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Beverley Sills and Kathleen Battle; her lack of distinction is particularly evident when she is duetting with Larmore. The supporting cast is weak, featuring two woolly basses and a Sesto who is simply dire: wavery, all over the place in intonation and sorely taxed by anything vaguely florid. Derek Lee Ragin is adequate as Tolomeo - perhaps his uningratiating whine is apt for such an unpleasant character - but James Bowman for Mackerras is so much interesting and characterful, both vocally and dramatically. Nireno is sung by distinctive counter tenor Dominique Visse, who is given an extra aria written for the 1725 revival here included as an appendix - though in truth it isn't Handel at his most inventive. This is a full, complete critical edition by Jacobs, so you are missing nothing and he manages to weld it all together into a coherent drama.
Despite its virtues, for me this recording is not the paragon that some previous reviewers claim. As much as I enjoy some of it, it has too many weaknesses to be an automatic recommendation.
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