Picture: Gabe Palacio
San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque twice visited the New York space to serve up two beneficiant helpings of Handel and to introduce its latest Music Director. First, on the ultimate Sunday in July, conductor Peter Whelan led his polished period-instrument orchestra and 5 singers in a semi-staged efficiency of the rarely-heard opera Tolomeo on the Caramoor Middle for Music and the Arts in Westchester County. Then final week the conductor, orchestra, and a trio of his Tolomeo singers delivered to Lincoln Middle’s Summer time for the Metropolis “Of Rivers and Roses,” a curated program juxtaposing a mixture of Handel with three songs by up to date American composer Caroline Shaw.
1728’s Tolomeo is the fifth and ultimate opera that Handel wrote in the course of the two-year interval when he invited the celebrated Faustina Bordoni to affix his star-combo of Francesca Cuzzoni and the castrato Senesino. Having each Bordoni and Cuzzoni in the identical opera offered a novel problem because the composer wanted to produce every with an equal variety of crowd-pleasing arias to show their much-admired abilities. Not one of the earlier 4 pairings—Alessandro, Admeto, Riccardo Primo and Siroe—might be counted amongst Handel’s strongest operas, but all of them comprise some nice music. Nonetheless, Tolomeo finds the composer at his least impressed, responding to Nicola Francesco Haym’s unusually dense libretto with a string of easily completed however hardly ever memorable arias.
That includes an unusually small solid of simply 5, Tolomeo affords its viewers a story of two exiled brothers, sons of scheming Cleopatra III, who tangle on the island of Cyprus in issues of affection and kingship. Fleeing King Tolomeo, disguised as a shepherd, has been displaced by his brother Alessandro and misplaced his spouse Seleuce in a boating accident. She, nonetheless alive however disguised as a shepherdess (naturally!), has to fend off the advances of Araspe, the king of Cyprus. His sister Elisa, pursued by Alessandro, in fact, falls in love with Tolomeo. Reversals and recognitions abound till the title character and his queen are reunited and restored, Elisa and Alessandro conveniently discover one another, and Araspe is left alone to rule his kingdom.
Carried out in entrance of Whelan’s orchestra in up to date costume, James Darrah Black’s largely apt manufacturing nimbly delineated the advanced plot for the primary two acts. Nonetheless, for the ultimate untangling, Black launched a set of enormous mirrored cubes into which his keen solid gazed intently whereas performing their arias and presumably gained perception into their fraught actions. Thus, the inevitably “completely happy” denouement proved puzzling if not downright foolish.
For the Cuzzoni-Bordoni roles, Black exaggerated their contrasting characters: Nicole Heaston embraced the intensely sexy Elisa with energetic verve, whereas Lauren Snouffer suffered Seleuce’s travails with blandly resigned acceptance. Heaston could typically have attacked her glowing music with less-than-ideal baroque élan, however each sopranos did their greatest to enliven their warring prima donna arias, regardless of missing the finer materials with which Handel endowed Alessandro’s Lisaura and Rossane or Admeto’s Alceste and Antigona.
Picture: by Gabe Palacio
Dashon Burton introduced a brusque however agile bass-baritone to Araspe’s cardboard villainy, whereas Kangmin Justin Kim’s countertenor sounded previous and wobbly within the recitatives however pleasantly firmer in his arias, although he typically struggled with Alessandro’s unrewarding low tessitura.
However the opera recently seems to be all about its title character: common countertenors Jakub Józef Orliński and Franco Fagioli each lately toured Europe with live performance variations. At Caramoor, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Tolomeo lastly acquired his likelihood to show to New York audiences that he’s absolutely arrived as one of many world’s best countertenors. In 2017, Cohen was a Grand Prize winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s Nationwide Council Auditions, and 5 years later, he made a briefish firm debut as Rosenkrantz within the North American premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet. Whereas he sang the secondary position of Unulfo within the English Live performance’s Rodelinda at Carnegie Corridor in 2023, the Brooklyn native has, till now, gathered enthusiastic responses largely exterior the New York space.
In excellent voice as each Tolomeo and in his contributions to the “Of Rivers and Roses” live performance, Cohen strongly confirmed off his bronzed, securely seamless countertenor with by no means a hole hoot to be heard. Some listeners routinely swear off your entire species for sounding vaguely synthetic, however Cohen proves to be that uncommon creature: a countertenor for individuals who hate countertenors! Like Anthony Roth Costanzo, one other American countertenor, Cohen lengthy embraced Tolomeo’s ultimate scena “Stille amare” (the rating’s brightest gem) as his surefire audition numbers, and in Caramoor’s fantastically nuanced rendition one positively heard why. However Cohen and Whelan admirably eschewed the chance for an extended ovation by as a substitute pushing ahead because the character succumbed to the (pretend) poison he ingested.
Handel’s duets for top voices are practically all the time highlights, and the 2 for Seleuce and Tolomeo proved to be best autos for Snouffer and Cohen, who gloriously bemoaned their doomed destiny on the finish of the second act after which ecstatically celebrated their completely happy reunion on the opera’s conclusion. “Of Rivers and Roses” provided three additional alternatives for the pair to show their heavenly mix and safe stylistic command. Each the haunting “Who calls my parting soul” from Esther and the wrenching “To thee thou superb son of price” from Theodora ravished the ear, however better of all was certainly one of my favorites: Radamisto’s hardly ever carried out however deliciously entrancing “Se teco vive il cor” enhanced by Whelan’s excellent tempi. Snouffer and Cohen had beforehand collaborated on Music of the Baroque’s Jephtha, once more demonstrating {that a} Philharmonia Baroque Handel duet CD with these forces is a no brainer!
Picture: Lawrence Sumulong
The mix of Handel and Shaw acquired off to a rocky begin when Burton, after a rollicking conflict with Snouffer in excerpts from Handel’s secular cantata Apollo e Dafne, transitioned to Shaw’s “The Edge” to a textual content by Jacob Polley. After securely voicing Apollo’s romantic harassment of Dafne, Burton misplaced his bearings, his intonation erratic in a chunk initially commissioned by Philhamonia Baroque for Anne-Sofie von Otter. Issues modified markedly within the second half which Cohen opened spectacularly with “And so,” Shaw’s lushly hovering tune to her personal textual content providing a spin on Shakespeare’s “A rose by every other identify would odor as candy.” Snouffer ended this system with Shaw’s affecting “Pink, purple Rose” to Robert Burns’s well-known poem after which the soprano delicately transitioned to Bellezza’s rueful ultimate aria from Il Trionfo del Tempe e del Disinganno. To not finish on such a quiet observe, the three singers reappeared for an surprising encore: “The flocks shall go away the mountain,” the dazzling trio through which the livid Polyphemus threatens the fearful Acis and Galatea.
After thirty-four years as its chief. Nicholas McGegan left Philharmonia Baroque in 2020. Richard Egarr too departed after an embarrassingly transient tenure as his successor. Based mostly on its pair of native appearances. Whelan and PB are off to a splendid begin. His orchestra (for his Lincoln Middle look, the group was dotted with acquainted New York faces like Gonzalo X. Ruiz, whose excellent oboe shone all through) performed with invigorating power and trendy vigor. Scattered all through “Of Rivers and Roses” had been actions from the primary Water Music suite that danced with unforced brio and featured the bravely forthright horns of Sara Cyrus and Alexandra Cook dinner. Though Tolomeo wasn’t the undiscovered gem that Teseo and Atalanta proved to be when within the current previous McGegan and PB introduced them to the realm, one hopes that Whelan and his plucky band will go to once more—quickly!
Cohen’s subsequent huge U.S. mission will once more deliver him in putting distance of NYC when in April he’s Ulisse in Deidamia, a part of R.B. Schlather’s Hudson Corridor collection. Handel’s ultimate opera is advisable as an opportunity to catch one more episode that Christopher Nolan omitted from his startlingly sexless Odyssey movie.
Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin started writing for parterre field in 2011 beneath the pen identify “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has additionally appeared in , The New York Occasions, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he got here to opera through the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he started listening to at age 11. His specific enthusiasm is seventeenth and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre field presenting dwell recordings.
