Best Music: 1

Two recent releases, both directed by Christophe Rousset with Les Talens Lyriques:

Farinelli, Ann Hallenberg with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (Aparte, AP117).

This concert, recorded in Bergen in 2011, includes works the eighteenth century castrato Farinelli performed by Hasse, Leo, Giacomelli, and the singer’s brother, Riccardo Broschi. (Hallenberg makes Broschi’s Ombra fedele anch’io, from the 1730 opera Idaspe, with its long, lilting line, sound effortless.) There are also three works by Porpora, including the great Alto Giove, all sung with the same beauty you find in Phillippe Jaroussky’s Farinelli: Porpora Arias of 2013.  The bonus is two major works by Handel—Lascia ch’io pianga and Sta nell’Ircana—which Farinelli did not sing but who is criticising; here as elsewhere, Hallenberg and Rousset can do no wrong.

Uthal by Etienne-Nicolas Méhul, Christophe Rousset with the Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Les Talent Lyriques, (Palazzetto Bru Zane and Ediciones Singulares, ES1026).

Méhul’s one act opera of 1806 was inspired by Ossian (and poems David Hume had already picked as forgeries thirty years earlier), all dark and misty Scotland from an orchestra without violins. There’s splendid singing throughout in this work, including a beautiful Hymne au sommeil and Karine Deshayes, spectacularly dramatic as Malvina in Morceau d’ensemble No. 2, Le grand Fingal. With Malvina’s intercession, her husband Uthal is forgiven by her father for treason and all ends well—‘o joie, o bonheur, plus de larmes oublions les jours du mal’. It’s a fascinating reconstruction from the beginning of French Romanticism.