Re: Handel's Semele, recommendations?
Christopher Webber
>Any [HIP] recommendations for Handel's Semele? Thank you.
Alas, for me there isn't one single really first-rate recording of
"Semele" in the catalogue. They're either cut to smithereens, stymied by
dull performances, or both.
Personally, I still cling to the *very* old and un-HIP Anthony Lewis
version on Oiseau-Lyre LP with Jennifer Vyvyan in the title role (nobody
else gets anywhere near the quality of her interpretation).
Gardiner's is the best of the bad bunch of HIP performances, despite an
unusually off-colour (and off-pitch) Norma Burrowes in the lead. This
wonderful singer was about to experience major vocal problems, and it
shows here, alas. Rolfe Johnson is however the best Jupiter on disc.
The newish version on Chandos is anodyne to a remarkable degree.
"Semele" is a really major hole in the Handel discography, in my
opinion.
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Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.
http://www.zarzuela.net
wagnerfan
wrote:
The DGG under Nelson, while not having the wild enthusiasm of the live
Carnegie Hall performance with almost the same cast which preceded it,
is still by far the best. The only cut is one aria for Cupid in the
second Act. The cast is all top drawer (Battle, Ramey, Horne, Aler,
Chance, McNair) and the conducting is exciting and dramatic.
I like the old Lewis for Vyvyan but the recoridng as a whole is
hopelessly old-fashioned and stodgy.
Wagner fan
Christopher Webber
>The DGG under Nelson, while not having the wild enthusiasm of the live
>Carnegie Hall performance with almost the same cast which preceded it,
>is still by far the best. The only cut is one aria for Cupid in the
>second Act. The cast is all top drawer (Battle, Ramey, Horne, Aler,
>Chance, McNair) and the conducting is exciting and dramatic.
... but it is not a HIP performance, by any manner of means. The cut is
significant; the vocal and conducting style are about pyrotechnics
rather than drama. Tempi seem rushed, with air after air hustled off its
feet; the voices are too big and (some of them) plain unwieldy.
There's a different I think between "dramatic" conducting and mere
hyperactivity: Semele needs a degree of calm reflection (most of the
airs do precisely that) which Nelson does not try to capture.
I'm sure it was an "occasion", but my personal reaction was to find the
off-air Carnegie Hall incarnation even more tasteless than the more
tactful studio remake with which I was already familiar. For me the
Handelian spirit is conspicuously lacking in this gleaming, metallic
artefact.
Christopher Webber
> I like the old Lewis for Vyvyan but the recoridng as a whole is
>hopelessly old-fashioned and stodgy.
I can't disagree, though of course it was ground-breaking in its time
for the modest orchestral and choral forces Lewis chose to use. What I
would say, is that other members of the cast besides the incomparable
Vyvyan know how to use the text; and that Lewis knows how to balance and
vary speeds. It was, of course, a revolutionary recording in its time.
One of the interesting trends in Handel performance has been the recent
reaction against skittling tempi (which mar many John Eliot Gardiner and
William Christie recordings, for instance) towards a more relaxed view
of the composer's "largo" or "andante" markings. This bring the most
recent readings (c.f. the Dunedin "Messiah" and "Acis") back much closer
to Lewis's speeds - though without the stodge.
The 2008 Chandos version (with Rosemary Joshua in the title role)
follows the Nelson recording in not including the telling Cupid number:
although to be fair, Handel himself removed this, to include it in
"Hercules" (only Gardiner, I think, includes Cupid - but he cuts about
40 minutes of music elsewhere.) Unlike Battle, Joshua doesn't lay the
sex on with a trowel - indeed she's so bland that you wonder whether "O
sleep, why dost thou leave me?" doesn't overstate her general level of
consciousness. Richard Croft is no Rolfe-Johnson when it comes to use of
the text, but he sings sweetly enough. The spruce playing is lightweight
to a fault, and doesn't convey the power of Handel's writing: but I
suppose that it's probably the least un-recommendable "complete" HIP
version available at present.
wagnerfan
wrote:
All I can say is that one mans hyperactivity is anothers dramatic
excitement - the Carnegie Hall performance is one of the most
thrilling items in my collection - the audience and artists reacted to
each other in a way that is all too rare for this Handels birthday
celebration and the result may not have been "correct" but it was
funny, dramatic and for me tremedously exciting to hear. The DGG
recording from later on naturally loses some of that frisson but much
remains (it is a bit "calmer" than the live performance)but you have
many of the best Handel singers of that period in that recording
including Battle (the sexiness in the voice doesn't bother me a bit in
this role). The cut of Cupids aria, which you admit yourself Handel
himself cut for some reason, doesn't bother me - all a matter of
taste and how a person sees this work and for me "calm reflection" is
not an adjective I would use for a work filled with coquettry, envy,
ambition, humor and jealousy. But thats just me. Wagner fan
Christopher Webber
>the Carnegie Hall performance is one of the most thrilling items in my
>collection - the audience and artists reacted to each other in a way
>that is all too rare for this Handels birthday celebration and the
>result may not have been "correct" but it was funny, dramatic and for
>me tremedously exciting to hear.
Correct it isn't! But of course you are right: I wouldn't have wanted to
diminish the pleasure that this Battle performance has brought to so
many listeners (live more than that more studied studio version).