Medea in Corinto. Giovanni Simone Mayr

I 6 O RE CO R D I N G S When the vocal going gets tough, though, she delivers; she is thrilling in the bonus aria, which is uncompromising in its closing fireworks. Soprano Eva Mei is an expressive singer, though the actual sound of her voice at full volume can be a little too hard and brittle for my taste. Nor is her agility limitless: In the act i duet with Tancredi, "L'aure die intorno spiri," when she must negotiate some awkward, widely spaced intervals at fast tempo, Mei hits all the notes, but at the cost of some squeezing and jabbing. (When Kasarova takes over the melody a moment later, one can't help but notice her smoother delivery.) Mei sings her extra aria attractively. Ram6n Vargas, perhaps the best Argirio on records, is undaunted by the awkward tessitura of a role that almost seems to call for a lyric baritone with excep- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/160/1381445 by guest on 27 September 2021 tional florid ability while also requiring sudden leaps into high-tenor territory. Vargas also meets the dramatic challenge of having to sound serious, indignant, or grief-stricken, as the plot dictates, while bouncing up and down the staff in one jolly, foot-tapping tune after another. Any bass who is cast as Orbazzano has my sympathy: The character is unpleasant, but in a nondescript way; his music is difficult, but he doesn't have an aria. Harry Peeters, possessor of a warm, sleek bass, manages well, without falling into the trap of overloading his lines with exaggeratedly melodramatic inflections. On a complete opera recording it is always good to hear promising young singers in the supporting roles. Melinda Paulsen (Isaura) and Veronica Cangemi (Roggiero) have fine voices and seem completely at home in this music. They will undoubtedly be heard from again. The recorded sound is excellent, probably the best of all Tancredis to date. The booklet's quadrilingual libretto is well laid-out, but the paper and type quality are rather poor. I still love the Naxos recording, but RCA's version is hard to resist. My recommendation is to be very, very good to yourself and acquire both. Roland Graeme Medea in Corinto. Giovanni Simone Mayr Medea: Jane Eaglen Tideo: PaulNilon Giasone: Brute Ford PhUharmonia Orchestra Creonte: Alastair Miles Geoffrey Mitchell Choir Egeo: Raul Gimenez David Parry, conductor Creusa: Yvonne Kenny Opera Rara (distributed by Video Artists Evandro: Neill Archer International) ORCn (3 CDs) Ismene: Anne Mason Although Giovanni Simone Mayr (1763-1845) is hardly a household name today, Italians of the early nineteenth century regarded him as "the immortal RECORDINGS l6l Mayr." A Bavarian by birth who adopted Bergamo as home, Mayr was once a serious rival to Rossini, the composer he most resembles stylistically. He is also remembered as the teacher of Gaetano Donizetti. Among Mayr's sixty-some operas, Medea in Corinto (first performed in 1813) was immediately regarded as his masterpiece. Yet, as Jeremy Collins's excellent program notes in the booklet accompanying this recording point out, the opera gradually came to be revived "regularly rather than frequently" (p. 22). Its eventual neglect may have been due to the horrifically tragic ending, to the vocal challenges of its leading roles, or to its use of accompanied recitative in an age that preferred recitative secco. Mayr's music, besides its resemblance to Rossini's, is also reminiscent of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/160/1381445 by guest on 27 September 2021 Mozart, Beethoven, and Cherubini, with infrequent passages looking ahead to early Verdi. Though Medea in Corinto was composed only a few years before Der Freischutz, the Romantic style of the Wolf's Glen scene is nowhere to be found in this score —not even in Medea's invocation of the infernal spirits in act 2, scene 5, which would not sound out of place in Don Giovanni. Mayr's world remains one in which images of the underworld are sooner associated with Mozart's trombones than witfi Berlioz's col legno strings. The remarkable thing is how Mayr is able to stretch Classical conventions to their outermost limits and make them fresh, creating stunning supernatural effects from little more than low string, vocal gymnastics, and some well-placed chromaticism. Even listeners weaned on Puccini and Wagner will find the Invocation Scene chilling in its own right. Indeed, those motivated to acquire Opera Rara's recording because of its historical interest should not be surprised if they end up listening to it for pleasure. Mayr's librettist was Felice Romani (1788-1865), mainly remembered today for his collaborations with Bellini. Romani knew his classical literature and assumed that his audience would be as familiar with it as he was. Indeed, Medea in Corinto is filled with allusions to Greek mythology that are essential to the plot. For instance, Medea conjures up the forces of darkness with the words "La bagni 1'istesso veleno di Nesso, e mora com'Ercole sull'Eta mori" [Let her be steeped in that same poison of Nessus, and let her die as Hercules died on Mount Oeta]. If one does not know who Nessus was, why his name became synonymous with poison, or how Hercules died, the impact of these lines is diminished. Above all, Romani assumes that his audience is acquainted with the history of Jason and Medea, both prior to and following the action of the opera. Be forewarned: Neither Romani's libretto nor Opera Rara's booklet pro- vides that information, so one may want to brush up on one's classical mythology before delving into the recording. It may help to know ihat Medea in Corinto is more faithful to its principal source, Euripides' tragedy, than the majority of contemporary operas on classical themes were to theirs. The liberties Romani takes with the plot are few and relatively insignificant. For instance, Medea is assigned a confidante, named Ismene;1 Creonte, unlike his Greek equivalent, is spared from suffer- I 6 2 RECORDINGS ing the same fate as his daughter; and Egeo is in Corinth not on his way home from a visit to the Delphic oracle, as in Euripides, but because he is engaged to Creonte's daughter, Creusa (thus Aegeus's long-standing marriage to Aethra, mother of the Athenian hero Theseus, is conveniently annulled to serve the opera's dramatic purposes). These changes are merely cosmetic, no more extreme than those any playwright might make in adapting a famous legend. Romani's two rather significant departures from the traditional story both involve the personalities of his central characters. First, Giasone is made to seem nobler than his Euripidean counterpart. He confesses that, since marrying Medea, he has come to realize her wickedness ("vissi colTempia donna") and is Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/14/2/160/1381445 by guest on 27 September 2021 now miserable; furthermore, in the opera the decision to sentence Medea into exile is imposed on Giasone amid the terms of a peace treaty, whereas in Euripi- des it is his own decision. Romani's other major change is to make Medea more malevolent than she is in Euripides' tragedy, thus preparing the audience for her act of infanticide. In contrast to Hannah Arendt's famous observation that twentieth-century evil is all too frequently banal (Arendt cites Adolf Eichmann as an example, though in the present context Susan Smith comes more readily to mind), the evil of Medea is on an altogether grander scale. Pushed to the limits of her endurance, she is a malicious plotter who brings about her husband's ruin, an exotic barbarian whose cruelty shocks the refined sensibility of the Greeks, a mother in conflict, a spurned lover, a witch. Combining elements of both Norma and Briinnhilde, she is nevertheless more apt to shove others onto the funeral pyre than to step into the flames herself. In this Opera Rara recording, there is not one aspect of the multisided heroine that Jane Eaglen fails to convey to perfection. A soprano who excels in both bel canto and Wagner (and the singer on the soundtrack of Sense and Sensibil- ity), Eaglen is an exceptional choice for the complex demands of the title role. In an Opera News interview Eaglen admits that she identifies with the anger of many of the characters she performs: "The strong woman, vengeance—I can feel all that. Fve been two-timed.... I am a strong character. Insipid, dreamy, love-interest roles don't work so well for me. I need something more assertive."2 Eaglen's Medea has a dark, sinister strength. Although her singing may be inconsistent at times—frequently more beautiful in its upper range than in the middle voice—it possesses a power that listeners will long remember. Collins's notes mention that the role of Medea "requires a soprano with a large, powerful and opulent voice but, perhaps even more importantly, the technical ability and the willingness to scale it down when necessary" (pp. 33 - 34). Eaglen meets this requirement admirably, handling Medea's gently touching sortita ("Sommi dei") as expertly as her subsequent bitter duet with Giasone. Bruce Ford's Giasone is the perfect foil to Eaglen's powerful heroine. The dark warmth of Ford's tenor complements Eaglen's aggressiveness extraordi- narily well. Ford brings a pleasing lyric quality to his act 2 aria "Grazie, nume RECORDINGS 163 d'amore," an all-toorbrief moment of calm before the storm, and his range and agility suit the Mozartean qualities of his Tito-like role.

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