Search - Alessandro Scarlatti, Estevan Velardi, Mario Nuvoli, Rosita Frisani Marco Lazzara :: Alessandro Scarlatti - La Giuditta / Marco Lazzara · Mario Nuvoli · Rosita Frisani - Alessandro Stradella Consort - Estevan Velardi

A Love Letter to Alessandro Scarlatti

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 09/26/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Caro Alessandro! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! Shall I compare thee to a Bach or Monteverdi? Yes, by gosh, I think I shall. From Monteverdi thou hast the mantel of sublimity. Not a measure of thy recitativo fails of its expressiveness. Not a melisma of thy longest aria fall short of necessity in the flow of melody. No composer of operas after Monteverdi - secular or at the altar, like this Giuditta - could match thee for high seriousness and integration of music with drama. Thou strivest little for effect, yet achieve unparalled intensity.



And Bach, your younger contemporary? Well aware he was of your fellow Italians, Vivaldi and Marcello, but even Bach might have learned from your structural mastery, your economy. No one in all the Baroque was more masterful at blending the three Graces - the voices, the obbligato instruments, and the basso continuo - into such elegant sisterhood. You were kinder to your singers, surely, than Bach, who made them all skip about frantically like so many flutes or fiddles; your vocal lines enhance the loveliness of the singers' voices. It's true that you wrote far fewer bravura gallops from us bassoonists and oboists, but your instrumental writing is never mere display. It's always sublimated to the musical whole. If any example could have helped old Bach refine his genius, yours it would have been.



Yours with adulation, and credit card in hand,

Giordano Bruno



[The Stradella Consort unquestionably deserves a share of my admiration for this oratorio. The performance is as sublime as the music. Soprano Rosita Frisani "sings the pants off" the role of La Giuditta - Judith - and that metaphor has particular meaning since the role should 'authentically' be sung by a castrato. Marco Lazzara and Mario Nuvoli use their remarkably high contralto/tenor registers to deliver their supporting roles as the Nurse and as Holofernes with dramatic as well as musical authority.]



The story of Judith and Holofernes was an extremely popular subject for painters and composers in the baroque era. It's one of the most morally ambiguous narratives in the whole Judeo-Christian canon. Judith, a beautiful Jewess of the city of Betulia, enters the camp of the Assyrian general Holofernes, deliberately seduces him and gets him drunk. While he is sleeping on her bosom, she takes his own sword and whacks off his head, thereby disrupting the Assyrian army. I can imagine an effective modernized staging of this oratorio, in the clothes of 1990s Washington; a zaftig maiden intern at the White House brings the Commander in Chief to his knees - or is it the other way? - with her charms, and thus disrupts the mighty State.



Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) moved in elevated circles in Roman society. Not only was he the protege of Queen Christina of Sweden, but also he was the friend and collaborator of the artistically-inclined nephews of the Pope - the Ottobonis - and of Cardinals too numerous to recall. Prince Antonio Ottoboni was in fact teh author of the libretto for this oratorio, though his identity was concealed by a pseudonym. It's a good piece of writing, too, if you don't mind a little ghastliness.



There are several other outstanding performances of Scarlatti available these days, some of which I've reviewed previously:

"Humanita e Lucifero" - Europa Galante

"La Santissima Trinita" - Europa Galante

"Motets" - Gerard Lesne with Il Seminario Musicale

"Sedecia" - Il Seminario Musicale

"Inferno" - Elisabeth Scholl with Modo Antiquo



Buy them all. You'll love me for it."