Classical to Romantic: new opera and oratorio releases

Abstract

Handling the handsome box-set CDs of these five operas and oratorios is a curiously Nineties and Noughts nostalgic pleasure, akin to a music lover in the 1930s picking up a wax cylinder. They seem elaborate objects now—the gate-fold sleeves, the lengthy liner notes; one is even a little hardback book. Was the font size always so small? The memories roar back of trips to now-shuttered classical CD shops, conversations with the informed person behind the counter, browsing the shelves and finding hidden gems which then became a firm favourite. The world premiere recording of Vicente Martín y Soler: L’arbore di Diana (Dynamic cds 651, issued 2013, 143′), here elegantly conducted by Harry Bicket and recorded live at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2013, could well become such a beloved resident of my shelves. Not to be confused with his older countryman and fellow composer Antonio Soler, the Spanish-born Vicente Martín y Soler is a relatively obscure figure now, but in his day was a beloved composer of opera buffa, on a footing with Salieri and Mozart. Indeed, at the time of L’arbore (1787), Martín y Soler was sharing his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte with both. Da Ponte recounts in his memoirs that, fuelled by wine, tobacco and caffeine, he wrote L’arbore di Diana in the morning, Tarar for Salieri in the afternoon and then Don Giovanni in the evening. A crazy day, indeed. Da Ponte and Mozart tip their hats to their peer, quoting a tune from Martín y Soler’s previous hit Una cosa rara in Don Giovanni’s dinner scene. For this listener wearing his opera director’s hat, the libretto is a fascinating artefact, and it is a fun game to spot Da Ponte’s tics and repetitions from Don Giovanni (the use of ‘Bagatelle!’, ‘Non c’e altro?’ and even ‘Madamina’) and his stylistic defaults such as Le nozze di Figaro’s stichomythic ‘Chi? Chi? Chi?’, while admiring as always Da Ponte’s seemingly effortless flow of brilliantly written recitative into number and back into recitative, that ease of movement undoubtedly subconsciously guiding the compositional process.