Keiser: Croesus

Opera no 109 

Keiser: Croesus

Soloists

Academie fur Alte Musik Berlin

René Jacobs

This was a really interesting work. Keiser was largely based in Hamburg and had an extensive career both as an opera composer and as a composer of sacred music. This opera was originally written in 1711 but substantially revised in 1730 and this recording is of that latter versions. Stylistically the opera clearly belongs to the same world as Handel but it doesn’t follow the typical Handelian pattern of a series of Da Capo arias with the occasional duet or ensemble. Instead it is much freer in form with a variety of aria types - long and short - and a good mixture of ensembles. The orchestral forces are larger than in the typical Handel opera and there are many attractive instrumental moments scattered throughout the work. At times I was reminded a little of Vivaldi in some of the orchestral writing.

None of this would matter if the music itself wasn’t worth listening to, but this was a score of the highest quality. It is a long peice but it held my interest throughout. Keiser was highly regarded in his day but until very recently his operatic music has fallen into near complete oblivion. On the evidence of this opera that certainly is to be regretted. But it has only been in the last generation that we have started to really appreciate the richness of Baroque opera and perhaps Keiser’s time will come. I hope so.

Benda: Ariadne auf Naxos

Opera no  108

Benda: Ariadne auf Naxos

Soloists

Prague Chamber Orchestra

Christian Benda

This only just makes it into this year’s project becuase it is not an opera in the traditional sense. There is no singing - the three characters are speaking roles. But this is not like a play with incidental music between scenes - the dialogue and the music are coordinated and the the actors speak over the music or interject spoken words between short musical sections. Benda’s melodramas make it into the music history books partly because of their curiosity value but also becuase Mozart saw performances of Benda’s works and expressed admiration for the idea. He did some experiments with melodrama in his unfinished Zaide but it was Beethoven and Weber among others who brought the idea into the mainstream.

I found this rather a curious work. The music itself was clearly in the tradition of Mozart and Haydn - some of it wouldn’t have been out of place in The Creation - and was consistently inventive and well crafted. But the melodrama form meant that nothing really got developed. It was all very bitty with too many short fragments leading nowhere. At times it felt that we were getting the introduction to an aria but then it all moved on again. I suppose that the form lends itself much more to accompanied recitative-type music than it does to full arias. 

So I am glad that I heard this after having read about Benda in my musical studies, but I can see why the melodrama as he conceived it was a dead end. The melodrama passages in Fidelio and elsewhere are effectively precisely because they come as a contrast to the prevailing style of the rest of the opera. Without that contrast the melodrama has nowhere to go.

Boismortier: Don Quichotte chez le Duchesse

Opera no 107

Boismortier: Don Quichotte chez la Duchess

Soloists

Le Concert Spirituel

Hervé Niquet

I was vaguely aware of Boismortier as a composer - I think I played some bassoon music of his once, but I don’t think that I have ever properly listened to any of this music. I was really impressed by the score, which is very much in the French tradition of Rameau. As to be expected the scoring was rich and sonorous, with some spectacular horn writing early on, and there was the usual variety of arias, ensembles, choral sections and dance music. The whole peice is actually described as a comic ballet although it is sung throughout - a good example of the way that French stage works of this period had much of their roots in the music of the dance. There really is something very special about late baroque French opera. Rameau has been one of my all time favourite composers since I discovered his music about 20 years ago (see this note in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/rameau-la-princess-de-navarre.html) and I am using the project to explore more of this repertoire. There is plenty to go at.

Kraus: Soliman II

Opera no 106

Krauss: Soliman II

Soloists

Royal Opera of Sweden

Philip Brunelle

This was great fun. Krauss was German born but moved to Sweden in his early 20s and build his musical career in Stockholm where he was a composer at the Royal Court and then directory of The Swedish Academy. He was an almost exact contemporary of Mozart and outlived him by only a year.

This is a ‘Turkish opera - ie one which has exotic Eastern tinges, such as the use of percussion and the piccolo. It is a cousin of Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung but only at a superficial level: Krauss uses every cliche in the book but rarely rises above the commonplace. There was one exception - towards the middle of the opera there was some striking music to the words’ “O Mahonet!’ when we are suddenly brought into the word of Sarastro and the priests from The Magic Flute. That is impressive music but the mood soon turns back to the frivolity of the rest of the piece.

This is an opera with spoken dialogue but that is omitted on this recording. While long passages of dialogue (especially in Swedish, a language I have absolutely no knowledge of) would be tiresome, without the dialogue to bring a sense off continuity you do get a series of disjointed musical numbers, some quite short.

A great curiosity. I can’t imagine it being staged, unless somebody was going to send it up completely - but as I said at the outset it was great fun to listen to.

Hasse: Marc’ Antonio e Cleopatra

Opera no 105

Hasse: Marc’ Antonio e Cleopatra

Soloists

Le Musiche Nove

Claudio Osele

This was a great find. I knew the name but I had never heard any of his music. Hasse was German but spent much of his earlier life in Italy. This is an early work and is a really good example of the Italian opera style.  Indeed I thought that it was of a quality which compared with Handel at his very best. There is great variety here in melodic invention and dramatic with some striking passages of accompanied recitative. Some of the arias were spectacular in particularly a long aria for Cleopatra near the beginning of Act 2. There wasn’t a weak moment in the score.

Hasse lived at a transitional period in operatic history. By the time of his death (1783) he was in the world of Gluck and Mozart and it seems that he felt that he was something of a fish out of water. I’d be interested to hear some of his later music to see how his style developed.  

Telemann: Pimpinone

Opera no 104

Telemann: Pimpinone

Baroque orchestra of St Lukes

Rudolph Palmer

This is a strange piece. It was written as a comic intermezzo between the acts of Telemann’s adaptation of Handel’s Tamerlano in Hamburg. As seems to have be the practice there for such pieces it has a libretto which is partly in German and partly in Italian. The musical material is fairly lightweight and though it is attractive there is little here which is memorable. Quite a lot of the peice seemed to involve the two characters using funny voices and nonsense words - that might be quite entertaining on stage but it becomes very tiresome on disc. I don’t think that I have heard any Telemann before (at least not consciously) and this opera didn’t really tempt me to explore any more of his vast output. 

Arne: Alfred

Opera no 103

Arne: Alfred 

Soloists

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Nicholas Kraemer

We cross the channel to England but in musical terms we are in Italy. Heard cold I think that most people, myself included, asked to identify the composer would say Handel. This opera is in English as opposed to the Italian of Handel\’s operas, but the idiom is the same. Much of this piece could have been dropped into one of Handel’s English pastorales like Semele or Acis and Galatea and it wouldn’t have seemed out of place. Ultimately it lacks Handel’s genius in making everything wholly memorable, but this was undoubtedly a high quality score. There are some issues about the exact make up of the score and there are various versions. This recording was described as being of extended excepts, but from what I can make out it contained most of the important music from the score.

Alfred’s main claim to fame is that it ends with Rule Britannia. It is rather ironic that such a patriotic piece is found in an Italianate musical context but it does work - heard like this it has charm and wit rather than bombast and it much the better for it.