WILLIAM BERGER baritone NICHOLAS McGEGAN conductor SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 1 Franz Joseph Haydn l’isola disabitata, hob. 28/9 1. Chi nel cammin d’onore 3:50 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart le nozze di figaro, k. 492 2. Crudel! perché finora 2:36 3. Hai già vinta la causa!...Vedrò mentr’io sospiro 4:54 SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Franz Joseph Haydn l’anima del filosofo, hob. xxvii:13 WILLIAM BERGER baritone 4. Il pensier sta negli oggetti 4:12 NICHOLAS McGEGAN conductor armida, hob. xxviii/12 CAROLYN SAMPSON soprano 5. Teco lo guida al campo 4:03 orlando paladino, hob. 28/11 Recorded at Usher Hall, Edinburgh, UK 6. Quel tuo visetto amabile 3:32 from 23–27 July 2012 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Produced and recorded by Philip Hobbs don giovanni, k. 527 Assistant engineering by Robert Cammidge 7. Fin ch’han dal vino 1:30 Post-production by Julia Thomas 8. Deh vieni alla finestra 2:09 Haydn and Mozart scores published by Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel Franz Joseph Haydn la vera costanza, hob. 28/8 With thanks to Ton Koopman for use 9. Già la morte in manto nero 4:34 of his edition of the Cimorosa score 10. Non sparate…mi disdico… 2:44 Design by Gareth Jones (gazjonesdesign) Session photography by John McBride Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart così fan tutte, k. 588 Album photography by Paul Foster-Williams 11. Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo 5:48 Make-up by Cynthia de la Rosa die zauberflöte, k. 620 12. Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen 3:04 Couture by Jacques Azagury 13. Pa-Pa-Pa-Papagena! 2:38 Menswear by Oscar Milo Modelling by Kirsty Mather & Julien Bertherat Domenico Cimarosa Shot on location at The Angler Bar, il maestro di cappella South Place Hotel, London, UK 14. Sinfonia 2:42 www.southplacehotel.com 15. Se mi dànno il permesso 12:05 16. Ci sposeremo fra suoni e canti 6:38 2 What I enjoy most about being a singer is that no performance is created truly alone. There is always a need to collaborate, whether with one pianist or an entire opera company, and I am constantly influenced by the incredibly talented people who surround me. So too it was with this album. Hommage à Trois became the recording that it is as a result of my being fortunate to have so many inspiring friends. It seems only right and proper to thank them publicly, albeit probably too briefly, here: To Nic McGegan, my musical smiles, patience and ‘magical ears’. To champion and friend: you gave me my all the donors without whose support professional stage debut at twenty-one and encouragement this recording and I have learnt from you ever and many other performances would since. If it weren’t for you, I would never have seen the light of day. To never have discovered Il maestro di my teachers (past and present), vocal cappella. Making music with you coaches, musical colleagues and is pure pleasure. To the Scottish my first operatic home, the English Chamber Orchestra and Carolyn National Opera: a piece of every single Sampson: you made our first-time one of you is captured here. My biggest collaboration feel like a reunion with thanks undoubtedly go to FHH: your familiar musical friends. To Philip support, unwavering belief, guidance Hobbs at Linn: thank you for your and friendship mean the world to me. 3 This recording and much of what I happy time in my life that I currently have achieved in the past few years enjoy as expressed by the Lotharios, would not have been possible without hedonists, lovers and jokers portrayed you being a part of my life. by three of the Classical period’s most popular composers. I hope that you By way of atonement for an enjoy listening to it, even more than I album portraying so many musical enjoyed making it. misogynists, I would like to thank the important women in my life. I dedicate this recording to the To my mother, Arina: you are my memory of my great-aunt ‘Tannie rock and my guiding star and there Enna’, another formidable woman, will never be anyone like you. To who, shortly after her 92nd birthday, my ‘surrogate moms’: Carole Keep, left behind a unique and inspiring life. Jenny Arthur and Judy Donner: thank you for taking care of me when I © william berger, have been far away from home. To london, 2013 the rest of my family, Dad and Lu- Anne: even though you’re far away, your love is also encapsulated here. Whereas Insomnia: A Nocturnal Voyage in Song was a deeply personal and semi-biographical memoir of my own heartbreak, Hommage à Trois teasingly portrays the fun, jocular and 4 Hommage à Franz Joseph Haydn Opera played some part in Franz opera season. When the Italian Joseph Haydn’s life for much of his opera house burnt down in 1779, career, but during the years 1776–90 it was rebuilt in two years. it dominated his existence as an employee of the aristocratic Esterházy At Esterháza during the 1780s, family. Esterháza, the family’s seventy-three different operas received wonderful summer palace situated a total of more than one thousand in the Hungarian countryside about performances. Haydn was responsible fifty miles south-east of Vienna, soon for most rehearsals and performances became known as the Hungarian and he composed ten operas himself, Versailles. Haydn was employed by about half of his total output, for the family from 1761 until his death Esterháza. However, he never made in 1809, although his position became a significant impact as an operatic merely nominal after the death of Prince composer and even 100 years after his Nikolaus II in 1790. death this area of his music remained almost unknown. Even now that Prince Nikolaus II’s great love of Haydn’s stage works are rather more music inspired the building of two widely-known, the received opinion opera houses, one for Italian opera of their shortcomings – most libretti and the other a German marionette undistinguished, lack of dramatic pace, theatre. The Esterháza opera house under-developed characterisation when was completed in 1768, however compared with Mozart’s, etc. – it was eight years later that Prince is stubbornly entrenched. While Nikolaus II established a regular these criticisms are not completely 5 unjustified, they are too general to be writing. Silvia, a child of nature and helpful. One obvious advantage of deeply suspicious of men, sees him recordings is that they minimise any only from a distance, but immediately dramatic shortcomings which would falls in love. normally be obvious in the theatre. Apart from theatrical considerations, Haydn’s very last opera, L’anima del the purely musical merits of Haydn’s filosofo (The Spirit of the Philosopher, operatic works shine through, with subtitled Orfeo ed Eurydice), dates from particular arias, scenes and the the time of his first triumphantly occasional ensemble achieving an successful visit to England. Its premiere outstanding quality. Many arias in was scheduled for the King’s Theatre, later operas are enhanced by the Haymarket, London in May 1791, but masterly deployment of sonata-form intense rivalry between the Prince of elements more usually associated with Wales (who supported the King’s Haydn the symphonist. Theatre) and George III (who favoured the Pantheon) led to the invasion of an L’isola disabitata (The Uninhabited early rehearsal by royal emissaries! The Island), one of Haydn’s two eventual premiere – with Maria Callas predominantly serious operas, was and Boris Christoff, conducted by premiered in December 1779. Due to Erich Kleiber – was given in Florence the fire at Esterháza, the marionette in 1951. ‘Il pensier sta negli oggetti’ theatre had to be used. A desert island (Act One), in which King Creonte is the setting in which Enrico, who has gives royal approval to the marriage returned after his escape from pirates, between Orfeo and Eurydice, includes sings ‘Chi nel cammin d’onore’, a a delightful flute obligato. heroic aria with some colourful horn- 6 Armida, first produced in February works, but then suffered total neglect 1784, was the last opera Haydn until a 1982 revival in Vienna. composed for Esterháza and his only Derived from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, full-length opera seria. The plot is this ‘dramma eroicomico’ parodies derived from Tasso’s Crusade epic operatic conventions. ‘Quel tuo visetto Gerusalemme liberata, a subject which amabile’, which became the opera’s inspired well over a hundred operas in most celebrated number, is a comic the Baroque and Classical periods, later love-duet for the tongue-tied Pasquale, works by Dvořák and Brahms, and Orlando’s squire, and Eurilla, his more recently, an opera by Judith Weir. shepherdess girlfriend. This story of the Saracen princess/ sorceress Armida and her lover, the La vera costanza (True Constancy) was Christian knight Rinaldo, highlights premiered at Esterháza in April 1779. the archetypal conflict between love In Act Two the mentally unbalanced and duty. The other, equally timeless Count Errico orders the cowardly theme is East versus West. In Act Two, buffoon Villotto to kill Rosina. His Ubaldo has demanded the release of all own life threatened by this madman, crusaders, but in the aria ‘Teco lo guida Villotto evokes the prospect of death al campo’ (scored with trumpets), in ‘Già la morte in manto nero’ before King Idreno insists that Rinaldo is not finally escaping. ‘Non sparate…mi captive, but is staying at the castle of disdico…’ comes from Act One, this his own free will. scene being the previous occasion on which Villotto finds his life threatened Orlando paladino was premiered in by Errico’s pistol.