Haydn: L'incontro improvisso

 Opera 10

Haydn: L'incontro improvisso

Soloists

Lausanne chamber orchestra

Antal Dorati

This is Haydn's version of the same text as set but Gluck in my previous post. Haydn's libretto expands the text as set by Gluck and in particular includes a number of ensemble.  It is a much longer work than Gluck's taking up 2 1/2  CDs.

Although I am great Haydn enthusiast his operas are virtually unknown territory as far as I am concerned. I did see La Fedeltà premiata years ago but I don't really remember much about it. Other than that I will probably have heard the odd aria or two but that is about it.

The biggest issue with Haydn's operas is that they are not Mozart! By that I meant that although the musical substance is very similar Mozart's mastery of the stage and of dramatic development is not something that Haydn can match. But of course that is an unfair comparison because Haydn wasn't really trying to do that. His conception of opera was much more of individual numbers in their own right rather than as part of a dramatic sequence. But taken in its own right there is some wonderful music here and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.  Yes there are some passages of rather stilted coloratura for the soprano and the tenor but these are more than outweighed by music of great humour and lyricism. The highlight was probably the extraordinary trio in Act 1 for three female voices. In purely dramatic terms it is probably overlong but in musical terms it is full of wonderful touches, with some remarkable moments of chromatic inflection.

Robbins Landon singles this trio out for special praise in what are otherwise a fairly perfunctory few pages about the opera in his masterful five volume biography of the composer. I get the sense that he didn't really engage with the operas and was far happier discussing the string quartets, symphonies and particular the late choral music. Perhaps he was right. I can't see Haydn's operas ever becoming part of the repertory  - they just aren't Mozartian enough - but now that I have heard this I am keen to explore more of Haydn't operatic output.