Cantone in Utica Malgoire

Catone in Utica (1737), written for the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, is one of Vivaldi’s last operatic masterpieces. Its splendid score, however, has come down to us incomplete: in fact the first of the three acts is missing. With infinite patience, Jean-Claude Malgoire has reconstructed the missing act, realising the recitative passages complying perfectly to Vivaldi’s stylistic idiom and integrating the missing arias with original arias taken from other operas written by the Red Priest. Thus Catone in Utica is at last available, in a world-première recording, in its complete form.

The world of early 18th century opera was very different to that of, say, Mozart. The story was the thing. Librettos were offered to musicians as a means of getting the poetic drama before the public. Thus the great librettists were set multiple times. So it was with Vienna's imperial poet Metastasio's Catone in Utica. This story, set in the ancient Numidian city of Utica - now a ruin in Tunisia - involves the Roman Cato the Younger and his conflict with Julius Caesar. The plot itself is the usual mixture of love and betrayal, but because it was by Metastasio there were at least two settings, by Vinci and Hasse, even before Vivaldi composed the present piece.

When in 2003 the 250th anniversary of the Residenz-Theater in Munich was to celebrated, it was decided to perform the same opera which was performed at the opening of the theatre in 1753: Catone in Utica by Giovanni Battista Ferrandini. That was a bold decision, as Ferrandini is not exactly a household name in our time. He isn't a completely unknown quantity, though; his lamento 'Pianto di Madonna' was once attributed to Handel. It is perhaps due to this misattribution that it was ever recorded.

Star countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic steps into new musical territory with the world premiere recording of Catone in Utica by Leonardo Vinci, a forgotten genius of Italian opera. The opera tells a powerful tale of Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Republican forces led by Marcus Porcius Cato in 46 BC, exploring the eternal themes of love, duty and honor. Featuring five countertenors along with conductor Riccardo Minasi who leads il pomo d’oro.

Jean-Claude Malgoire has been one of the more important French conductors of the latter twentieth and early twenty first centuries. He has focused heavily on Baroque music, though his repertory also includes operas by Mozart and Salieri. As music director of the La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy and l'Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, he has given many highly acclaimed concerts and opera productions, and made numerous recordings with major labels.

Serse is a light and elegant comedy. It opens with the most famous of all Handel's arias, the notorious “Ombre mai fu“ (or Largo), quite a different piece when heard in context. Its mock solemnity sets the tone for what follows. The opera moves swiftly and charmingly, the recitatives often interspersed with brief ariosos rather than full-fledged arias. Outstanding in the cast is Hendricks, her voice flexible and distinctive, clearer and purer than it would become (after the tone began to unknit). She sings with great charm. Watkinson is a fluent Serse but doesn't leave a lasting impression. Oddly enough, I enjoyed Esswood's work more.

The work is an extraordinary curiosity; a child of the heady days just before the French Revolution, Tarare is the famous French writer's only opera and one of the Italian composer's rare French scores. First and most strikingly a work of social and political commentary, Tarare is also an entertaining work of theatre. Salieri's music supports these aims admirably and offers a few memorable moments of its own. As an opera form, Tarare defies easy categorization; it may be best described as a comedic satire dressed in the clothes of a sprawling 5 act lyric tragedy, complete with Prologue and a grand divertissement with dance.

Agrippina was staged for the first time in late December 1709 - or possibly at the beginning of 1710 - at Venice’s Teatro San Grisostomo and met with enormous success, as testified by twenty-seven following performances, a record number even for 18th-century standards. Agrippina’s triumph sanctioned Handel’s definitive investiture as an operatic composer. After nearly 300 years this opera appears as a masterpiece of 18th-century music and an innovative work, considering that when Handel composed it he was just twenty-four years old. The composer’s melodic creativity and sense of theatre are quite remarkable. The cast, conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire, includes Véronique Gens in the title role.