Search - Christoph Willibald Gluck, Peter Maag, Ewa Podles :: Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice / Podles · Rodrigo · Merced · Maag

Another Jewel for Ewa Podles' Crown

Joseph A. Newsome | Burlington, NC United States | 04/21/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This live recording of Gluck's ground-breaking opera, made at performances at Spain's La Coruna Mozart Festival, features Polish mezzo-soprano Ewa Podles as Orfeo. Although a live performance, the sound quality is rarely intrusive on the pleasure that this set gives. Podles approaches the role of Orfeo with much the same gusto that she applies to her Rossini heroes--dedication, sound technical accomplishment, and genuine gusto. Podles' Orfeo is not the wimpish creature of other interpretations. The listener understands the dangerous nature of Orfeo's luring song. Podles ends the first act with the coloratura "Addio, addio o miei sospiri." In this virtuoso offering, Podles displays her awesome voice to wonderul advantage: the plummy lower extension and clarion top (reminding one of a young Marilyn Horne) make the aria exciting, although the extended cadenza does threaten becoming unmusical. The other soloists sing adequately, and the orchestra and chorus under Peter Maag play with committment. The listener will find himself joining in the tumultuous ovation following Act I in spite of himself. A wonderful release...why do the "big" record companies continue to ignore the talents of Madama Podles? You will wonder, too!"

Good live performance with a first-rate Orfeo

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 12/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"SOURCE:

Live performance from La Coruna, Spain, June 19, 1998.



SOUND:

Pretty good digital stereo. Considering the number of problems a recording team must face in capturing a live performance in front of an audience, this is about as good as anyone might reasonably expect. I have come across some cavils about the balance of the orchestral sound, but it sounds fine to me. The audience hardly makes its presence known except at the ends of each act, when it bursts into well-deserved applause.



CAST:

Orfeo, the singer of all singers, whose wife has just died - Ewa Podles (Contralto)

Eurdice, the departed wife - Ana Rodrigo (soprano)

Amore, the god of love - Elena de la Merced (soprano)



CONDUCTOR:

Peter Maag with the Orquestra Sinfonica de Galicia and the Coro del Comunidad de Madrid.



PRODUCER:

Gian Andrea Ludovici.



DOCUMENTATION:

Libretto in Italian and English. Short history of the creation of the opera. Brief summary of the plot. Photographs of the three singers. Track list that identifies main singers and provides timings.



FORMAT:

Disk 1 - Act I, Overture, track 1; Scene One, tracks 2-12; Scene Two, tracks 13-18, 34:29.

Disk 2 - Act II, Scene One, tracks 1-11; Scene Two, tracks 12-17; Act III, Scene One, tracks 18-23; Scene Two, tracks 24-25; Scene Three, track 26; 69:14.



TEXT:

Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice"premiered in Vienna on October 5, 1762. It was written to carry the banner of Operatic Reform. Its very name and theme are emblematic, harking directly back to the first successful opera, an "Orfeo" written by Monteverdi a century and a half before. Gluck's specific reforms had to do with ending the rigid segregation of aria and recitative, then prevailing in the opera seria of the day, and putting a modicum of dramatic commonsense back on the operatic stage. Gluck's commitment to reform was so great that, like another reformer two or three generations later, he could not bear to call his new creation an opera. He named it an "Azione teatrale per musica" (a musical theatrical exploit.) His reformist leanings did not lead Gluck completely beyond the pale, of course, and so he had no qualms about presenting his new exploit to a German-speaking Viennese audience with a castrated male contralto singing the part of Orpheus in Italian.



Reform-minded composers are all very well, but real power in the operatic world was then held by impresarios--and they maintained that power by knowing what their audiences wanted to see and hear. By the time that a production was mounted in Parma in 1769 (if not sooner), it was clear that the audience wanted to hear a traditional showpiece aria. Gluck plucked "Addio, addio, o miei sospiri" from another work and gave it to Orfeo to finish off Act I in a suitably high-flying popular style.



In 1774 (not 1778 as the booklet that accompanies this set would have it), Gluck hit the opera composer's jackpot, a big-money production in Paris. The French impresario would have made it perfectly clear to Herr Gluck that the sophisticated audience in Paris demanded certain things. There must be ballets that offered ample opportunities for the shapely ballerinas to enliven an otherwise dull evening of music. The language of the opera must be French, not unseemly, over-emotional Italian. And Orphee must now be a tenor, for the French, naturally, had always regarded castrati with revulsion.



There were other productions and other changes. Orpheus even became a baritone for a while in some German productions. Dance music came and went. In assembling a performing text, Peter Maag has followed the more or less traditional path of combining parts of the Eighteenth Century productions of Vienna, Parma and Paris. The Italian-speaking Orfeo is again a contralto, but now sung by a woman. "Addio, addio, o miei sospiri" finished off Act I--and with a full-blown cadenza tossed in, too! (Ignore that sound, it's only poor Gluck groaning from his grave.) "The Dance of the Furies," taken from Gluck's ballet on Don Juan, now ends Act II. On the other hand, ballet has pretty much been expunged from Act III.



PERFORMANCE:

If pressed, I could probably name a couple of mezzos who might have been able to match Ewa Podles in the role of Orfeo in 1998 (or today, for that matter), but I can't think of anyone at all who would have been better. Podles seems to have an understanding of the part. Her voice is sound from top to bottom. She has the ringing high notes when she needs them. I do not find her as warm as Janet Baker, whom I saw in a concert version most of forty years ago, but if I had seen Podles first, I might regard Baker differently today.



Ana Rodrigo and Elena de la Merced are apparently Spanish singers. I know nothing about them except what I hear on this recording. They are both admirably fine in their respective roles.



Conductor Peter Maag seems to have had no intention of extracting a period performance from his dramaturges, singers, chorus or orchestra. Feel free to join me in regarding that fact as a blessed relief or to find it a fatal and unforgivable flaw.



Five stars for the Orfeo of the shamefully under-recorded Podles--and for Christoph Wilibald Gluck who manfully set out to reform the inherently unreformable."

Maag and La Podles do Gluck proud

Ralph Moore | Bishop's Stortford, UK | 04/01/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had been meaning to acquire this set for years,and now that I have, I wonder why I delayed. It goes to the top of my favourite Italian versions of "Orfeo ed Euridice" alongside the classic Fasano set with Shirley Verrett. The combination of a favourite conductor with a favourite singer in a favourite opera augured well, but you never know until you listen and I am delighted to report that this a winner.



Mr Cantrell on Amazon.com has already provided a splendidly informative review which says most of what I want to say, so I'll add just a few comments. Podles is a phenomenon and her fans should not hesitate to buy this performance as it encapsulates almost everything which is beautiful and impressive about her art in a recording made when she was in her prime. The spectacular range, from the low F in her booming lower register, to a clarion top B, is deployed in the most affecting and tasteful manner; she never resorts to circus tricks but makes her bridging of wide intervals the servants of the emotion behind the music. The husky, masculine tone and colour of her voice helps her to portray a much tougher and more credible Orfeo (despite her endearing little lisp) than is too often the case, yet she still makes us believe in his suffering, unlike equally vocally accomplished but less theatrically convincing singers such as the lovely Jennifer Larmore in her Berlioz version. Podles has all the trenchancy required for the plaintive sections of the score but also the Rossinian agility to go for broke in the kind of coloratura display which Gluck was obliged by his impresarios and audience to insert, despite his determination to adhere to a new, more naturalistic idiom.



The sound of this live performance is excellent; just a slight halo around it to suggest the ambience of the theatre. The audience could not be more unobtrusive, and only the loud and wholly deserved "Bravo" which greets the end of Podles' bravura aria "Addio, addio o miei sospiri" at the end of Act 1 gives their presence away. The two relatively obscure Spanish singers who undertake Amor and Euridice are fine: sweet and musical.



Maag displays all his habitual gifts: an unforced, unfailingly sensitive sense of pacing which permits consideration for his singers but ratchets up the tension for instrumental showpieces such as the electrifying Dance of the Furies, but then gives us a meltingly beautiful Dance of the Blessed Spirits. The solo instrumental playing is particularly satisfying; I would single out the principal horns, the oboist and especially the flautist, whose extended contriibution is a delight of pure, warm, plangent tone. The Galician orchestra is clearly no scratch band and Maag has again achieved a trick perhaps forcibly acquired over the years by not always having the finest orchestras at his disposal, of making a good one sound even better. These are modern instruments but the style is earthy and direct; by no means too romanticised in approach.



There is nothing about this set which is not first class unless you have an aversion to Podles' voice - in which case, you have my sympathy."