Philippe Jaroussky

Passion Jaroussky marks 20 years since Philippe Jaroussky made his professional debut and commenced his rapid ascent to stardom. As the French countertenor says, “Even after all these years, my passion for music is undimmed.” Ranging musically from the 16th to the 21st century, the triple album comprises both new recordings and highlights from recent albums, and it also showcases Jaroussky’s collaborations with a host of major singers – from the worlds of both classical music and pop – instrumentalists, conductors and orchestras.

With this CD of arias by Johann Christian Bach, male soprano Philippe Jaroussky edges further afield from the Baroque repertoire in which he has made his reputation, moving into the Classical period. A 2007 album, Carestini, was devoted to arias sung by the legendary castrato, including music by Gluck (from early in his career), Handel, Graun, and Hasse, and offered some excursions slightly beyond the Baroque, but J.C. Bach wrote the solidly Classical operas seria and concert arias represented here after Carestini's death, between 1760 and 1779.

When Philippe Jaroussky - whose angelic voice seems almost timeless - sings works by Telemann and Bach, it becomes abundantly clear that the sheer emotional force and the purifying power of their music have not diminished one bit over the centuries.

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, whose honey-sweet voice perhaps remains the best introduction to the countertenor voice for the skeptical, attempts something new with the collection of gorgeous and generally underrated Vivaldi works. It might, therefore, not be perfectly appropriate as an introduction to Jaroussky, but it's a daring and altogether engrossing project. The collection is accurately billed as a group of sacred works for alto, which makes it a surprising attempt for : his voice corresponds most closely to a mezzo-soprano range, and he has in the past taken on full-scale operatic arias where his voice blooms into a colorful and attractive top. Here he deliberately forbids himself that part of his vocal repertoire, even in faster, more athletic pieces that would seem to permit it.

Is it possible that a recorded performance could be too much of a good thing? Well, such an assessment probably would be unfair to a singer as gifted and in command of such astonishing technical skills as countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, so impressively exhibited on this surprising and thoroughly mesmerizing CD. While you may not have heard of this French singer, he's part of a relatively new group of performers–calling themselves Ensemble Artaserse–who have recently joined to explore their mutual interests in "early 17th-century Italian music". These songs by Benedetto Ferrari provide the perfect medium for Jaroussky's art–and it's quite formidable in both purity of tone and subtlety of expression as well as the near-inhuman technical feats he brandishes as naturally as breathing.

In his program notes for this CD, Philippe Jaroussky persuasively argues that, particularly because the traditional repertoire for counter tenors is so small (and much of the Baroque material was in fact written for castrati, an entirely different voice type), there is no reason counter tenors should not explore a broader variety of vocal material. His performance of French mélodies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries makes an even more compelling case for his argument.

This album of Baroque cantatas and chamber duets grew out of a 2007 performance of Stefano Landi's 1631 opera Il Sant'Alessio starring Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cencic (among the eight countertenors in the cast) with William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants. Christie was so impressed with the blend of Jaroussky and Cencic's voices that he brought them together to explore the vast and rarely performed repertoire of late 17th and early 18th century Italian duets for equal voices.

Italian composer Nicola Porpora is mainly a footnote in the history books these days, noted as Haydn's teacher, but in his day he was a rival to Handel and wrote a good deal of music for the celebrated castrato Carlo Broschi, aka, Farinelli. That music is sampled here by the startlingly soprano-like French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, and listeners are likely to feel that it's been unjustly neglected. Jaroussky sounds great, his creamy voice sailing through the mostly tuneful pieces. There are also a few big showpieces of the sort that Renée Fleming and others have recorded on their Baroque aria albums.

With Philippe Jaroussky’s new album, Storia di Orfeo, the French countertenor realises a long-held dream: to portray the mythic Orpheus – divine musician who ventures into the underworld to retrieve his beloved wife Eurydice from the clutches of death – in his many guises, an inspiration for the very first opera and beyond.

Philippe Jaroussky brings his musical and dramatic powers to a programme of music from Italian oratorios of the baroque era, including five arias in world premiere recordings. La vanità del mondo, takes it's name from an oratorio by Pietro Torri and among the other composers are Händel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Hasse, Fago and Caldara. "I think composers of this period often give of their best when setting the great stories of the Old Testament," says Jaroussky. "And if oratorio stories are more static than opera, they allow for deeper reflection on the place of mankind in the universe. I think that resonates with particular intensity in 2020, a year of pandemic."