Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 08/26/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
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Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment) was the first composition by the young Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759) of such scope and magnificence that it must be considered one of his indispensable masterpieces. Written in Rome by the twenty-two year old Saxon, conducted in its premiere by Corelli, the work was never to be forgotten by its creator. Handel lengthened and modified portions of it in 1737 in London, under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita, and reworked it with an English libretto as the final effort of his life, with the title The Triumph of Truth and Beauty. If you happen to have other recordings of any of the three versions, you might as well give them to your local library; after you hear this performance by `Concerto Italiano', it's unlikely that you'll listen to any other ever again.
Like the brilliant smaller cantatas Handel composed in his Roman years (there are three recent recordings of such works by `La Risonanza', of surpassing beauty), Il Trionfo is 100% in the Italian manner, bursting with vocal exuberance and athleticism, utterly passionate, yet underneath the pyrotechnics one finds the profound structural mastery of counterpoint that the Saxon brought with him from Germany. Handel was, dare I say, the greatest Italian composer of the 18th Century. He was obviously also the greatest English composer of the 18th Century. Listening to his Italian triumphs, however, I find myself wishing he'd stayed in Rome and never removed his art to stuffy Calvinist England. Superb as his English music would be, there was something in the air in Italy that might have pushed him to even greater artistic accomplishments.
Despite its title, the real triumph of the oratorio belongs to Beauty, sung with enthralling loveliness by Deborah York, whose arias soar above even the pyrotechnics of Pleasure, Time, and Disillusionment. Beauty has the last word, by the way, the final aria, which has to be one of the most surprising conclusions of any oratorio ever written, both musically and textually. The other singers - soprano Gemma Bertagnoli, alto Sara Mingardo, and tenor Nicholas Sears - are all equally flawless in technique, and all possess naturally beautiful voices, the chief prerequisite for Italian vocal music then and now.
No one ever utilized oboes more effectively than Handel. In the orchestra upon which the singers are borne aloft in triumph, it's the oboes that most often take the melodic lead and that perform the most breathtaking obbligatos. Kudos need to be awarded to the organ also, which emerges as an obbligato instrument in several arias; it's almost certain that Handel himself played the organ in the Roman premiere. And let's not forget the bassoon, played here by Paola Frezzato. It's a classic bassoon romp; I wish I'd played it myself.
There was no chorus in the first, Roman, edition of this Il Trionfo, and thus none in this performance. The biggest changes Handel would make in London would be to add choruses. To my ears, that was an error of taste occasioned by audience expectations. The cascades of vocal virtuosity that dominate this triumph don't need the gravity of choruses. If some of the arias sound awfully familiar, by the way, it's because Handel incorporated many of them in later operas and oratorios.
Conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini has done everything right this time. It's startling to me, as a veteran of the Early Music revival, how suddenly and undeniably Italian singers and instrumentalists such as Alessandrini have emerged as the most artful and exciting performers of Baroque music, stealing the Gold from the Northerners.
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Essential
St. Mym | London | 06/01/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"There is not a single duff piece in this early oratorio, and I cannot conceive of a better performance than it gets here. This is possibly the most glorious available recording of anything in the baroque repertoire. You can hear all the excitement that Handel must have felt on his exposure to the italian musical scene.
Buy it.
You will *not* regret it."
If I could take just one Handel recording to a desert island
WHM | Amsterdam | 08/03/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"..then this is the one! If I try to use words to describe the beauty and perfection of this oratorio, only superlatives pop into my mind. "Breathtakingly dramatic, ravishingly beautiful, deeply moving, wonderfully coloured, fresh, immediate, brilliant" to quote a British critic about this work. For more superlatives, see the previous reviews. This is spectacular Handel indeed, and the four singers and Alessandrini's Concerto Italiano perform it as spectacularly as anyone might want.
Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno ("The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment") is one of Handel's earliest masterpieces. Composed in 1707 for Cardinal Pamphili, Handel's patron and librettist in Rome, it's only recently that this work has attracted the interest and praise that it so much deserves. It's an allegorical drama about Belleza (Beauty), Piacere (Pleasure), Tempo (Time), and Disinganno (Disillusionment). Beauty undergoes a spiritual crisis in having to choose between carnal pleasure and godlike virtue. As one would predict, Beauty and Pleasure lose the battle to Time and Disillusionment..
The glorious sequence of arias and ensembles includes the famous 'Lascia la spina' (later recycled in Rinaldo as 'Lascia ch'io pianga'), played here at a brisk tempo to great effect, and Beauty's exquisite final `Tu del Ciel ministro eletto'. Handel borrowed various arias from Il Trionfo for later works, such as Agrippina, Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. This testifies to the pride which Handel must have felt for this oratorio. Soprano Deborah York (Beauty) and contralto Sarah Mingardo (Disillusionment) are the unsurpassed star singers here, but soprano Gemma Bertagnolli and tenor Nicolas Sears are a very good match (although Bertagnolli's voice sounds slightly strained here and there). Every aria is a marvel; but, if forced to choose, my absolute favorites are: 'Un pensiero' and 'Tu del Ciel' by Deborah York, 'Crede l'uom' by Sarah Mingardo and, above all, the breathtaking quartetto 'Voglio Tempo'.
I also listened to the recording by Emmanuelle Haïm, but Alessandrini's version is by far the superior performance. If you love Handel and don't own this recording yet, don't waste a second getting hold of it!"
Handel never got better than this -- he just kept the same q
Baroque and opera freak | Hong Kong | 06/03/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This recording has already received a super recommendation in the recent Gramophone special issue on Handel, so there is really no need for me to say anything more. But I am just amazed in listening to this recording - amazed at both the quality of the work and the quality of the performance. I have never heard better Handel than this, though a lot that can equal it. The first thing is the absolute etherial effortlessness of the soloists, under Alessandrini's masterful direction. The next is the incomparable way that the instruments are interwoven with the voices -- something to rival what Wagner accomplished later in the Romantic age. And finally is the incredibly sophisticated structure of the work itself. I have just listened again to most of the recordings of Alessandro Scarlatti's oratorios that I have, and these were the principal model for Handel when he was in Italy; in spite of all those fine performances, it seems to me that this work done when Handel was only 22 is even better. I admit that it is very hard to distinguish between the quality of good soloists and the quality of the work itself, but those Scarlatti recordings were all by top musicians on either Harmonia Mundi or Virgin Veritas, the two best labels for Baroque music, so I have to conclude that this work must be even better than those by Scarlatti. Now this has been said before, but I did not know whether to believe it or not. All I can say is that you won't find better recordings of Handel than this, and he is certainly the best of all Baroque composers for dramatic stage music (most of the equally great music of J.S. Bach being more inward and more "spiritual"). It is hard to believe, but Handel was such a genius that all he had to do was keep composing at this level through his London opera career, borrowing often from what he had composed in Italy, and then when Italian opera went out of favour, adapt his skill to the oratorio style, which he had also learned well during his time in Italy in his early twenties. Incredible! Fabio Bonizzoni, can you surpass it? All roads lead to Rome. Even the Reformation could not change that basic fact. Plug your wire into the source of it all, the Cardinals of the Roman church, who sponsored these great composers and even often supplied them with their own libretti. Opera Proibita? Then write an oratorio that sounds just like an opera, and perform it in a cardinal's residence instead of the theatre! Who could ever complain? Best wishes to the bold advocates of democracy in China who are trying similarly to broadcast their ideas through and around the watchful (and terrified) eye of the Chinese Communist Party! May our prayers be upon them! May they discover the incomparable joys of Handel's music, surely the best "food for democracy" ever composed!"
