CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd - Chandos

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CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 6 12 13 Time from Così fan tutte Guglielmo and Dorabella’s Duet (Il core vi dono) ‘My heart here I give you’ 4:39 [p. 47] with Alan Opie baritone Richard Heuberger (1850–1914) from The Opera Ball Henri and Hortense’s Duet (Gehen wir ins Chambre séparée) ‘This is the clock’ – ‘In a cosy chambre séparée’ 5:46 [p. 48] with Helen Williams soprano Page 16 17 Time Charles Gounod (1818–1893) from Faust Siébel’s Romance (Si le bonheur à sourire t’invite) ‘When happy days’ 2:49 [p. 51] Philharmonia Orchestra • David Parry from The Merry Widow Valencienne and Camille’s Duet (Wie eine Rosenknospe) ‘Calm down, my friend!’ – ‘Just as the sun awakens’ 6:55 [p. 52] with Bruce Ford tenor Page 14 Alexander Borodin (1833–1887) from Prince Igor Song of the Polovtsian Maiden ‘Tender flower, starved of water’ 5:57 [p. 50] with Geoffrey Mitchell Choir 18 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749) (formerly attrib. J.S. Bach) (Bist du bei mir) ‘If you are near’ 2:54 [p. 53] Alastair Young harpsichord • Susanne Beer cello TT 75:01 15 Johann Strauss II (1825–1899) from Die Fledermaus (The Bat) Orlofsky’s Aria (Chacun à son goût) ‘Three score and ten’ 2:46 [p. 51] Diana Montague mezzo-soprano Geoffrey Mitchell Choir London Philharmonic Orchestra Peter Schoeman leader Walter Weller 6 7
CHAN 3093 BOOK.qxd 11/4/07 3:30 pm Page 8 The term Zwischenfach (between types) is used in Germany and elsewhere graphically to describe the kind of voice possessed by Diana Montague. For voices such as hers the possibilities are almost limitless as this varied and eclectic recital confirms. She possesses a high mezzo able, as was that of a distant nineteenth-century predecessor, Pauline Viardot, and others since, to encompass roles intended for a normal mezzo, but also many others usually the province of sopranos. These possibilities extend right from roles in Baroque opera to those in operetta – as this disc vividly and satisfactorily illustrates, as does the progress of her career. As was the case in the first volume of arias she recorded for Chandos (CHAN 3010), Montague is also a most convincing advocate of opera in English. She deploys her trim, appealing voice to make the most of a text in the vernacular, inflecting every word and phrase with a specific meaning. She also has the inestimable advantage of being born with and developed a timbre that palpitates with the music in hand. That gives everything she sings a peculiarly eloquent or, where appropriate, witty accent. Great Operatic Arias For much of this recital she displays her exceptional gifts as an interpreter of Handel, Gluck and Mozart. Their operas cover the period when at first the castrato was in the ascendant, taking many of the leading male roles in Handel’s operas. Later when that artificially created breed was being phased out it became common for the roles of young men to be taken by women, again with voices of Montague’s type. It is a tradition that carried on into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, eg Octavian and the Composer in respectively Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne on Naxos, and is demonstrated in this recital by Orlofsky in the other Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and by Siébel in Faust. The earliest among the choices here are two well-known and affecting arias from Handel’s operas, both originally sung by castratos. ‘Verdant pastures’ (track 5 ) is sung in Alcina, by Ruggiero, originally taken by the castrato Carestini. He has been enchanted by the sorceress Alcina and fallen in love with her. The spell is removed in Act II, but Ruggiero is rather reluctant to leave the glorious pastures which he hymns in this justly famous aria. Its seemingly simple melody clothes his ambivalent feelings. It was often Handel’s custom to open an opera with a reflective arioso (vide ‘Ombra mai fu’ in Xerxes). The same happens in Atalanta, where the hero Meleagro sings the simple, elegiac ‘Noble forests’ (track 6 ), in which he greets the beauties of nature. As a pendant to these Handel pieces, we have the simple, sincere song ‘If you are near’ (track 18 ), once thought to be by J.S. Bach, now assigned to his contemporary Stölzel. Whoever may be the composer, the piece is a delight. Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris is perhaps the most telling and dramatically consistent operas of his mature period, the last and greatest of the serious works he wrote for Paris. Its eponymous heroine is a truly tragic figure whose fate is expressed – such is Gluck’s genius – at once with classical restraint and emotional depth. Diana Montague has already recorded the opera complete in French under John Eliot Gardiner. Here, singing in her native tongue, she is, if possible, even more moving and urgent in her portrayal of the daughter of Agamemnon, now a Priestess of Diana on the island of Tauris. Her Act II lament, ‘No hope remains in my affliction’ (track 3 ), is an outpouring of despair and loneliness with a melodic cut and harmonic progression unique to Gluck. In the later ‘I implore thee and tremble’ (track 4 ) from Act IV she deplores her fate at being forced to make a blood sacrifice in tones that capture in a peculiarly Gluckian way the horror of her situation. In both pieces Gluck evinces deep compassion for his heroine, an emotion reflected in Montague’s singing of them. In Mozart’s time, the castrato was (mercifully) a dying breed, although the composer still cast roles in his opera seria for that voice (see below). In any case, it would have seemed odd to cast the priapic youth Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro) with such a singer. Instead, Mozart chose a soprano, but the lighter singers in that category can sound too girlish. Montague’s high mezzo, on the other hand, is entirely appropriate for the palpitating youth, whose realisation of his burgeoning manhood is perfectly encapsulated in his Act I aria, ‘Is it pain, is it pleasure that fills me’ (track 1 ). Mozart here exploits the ability of the middle range of the voice to project the warmth and immediacy of Cherubino’s feelings. This was one of Montague’s earliest roles in her successful career at Covent Garden. She looked and sang the role to near-perfection, so this souvenir of that performance is most welcome. 8 9
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