Search - Vivica Genaux :: Arias for Farinelli

Elusively gorgeous

MK | Vancouver, Canada | 05/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording has fascinated me ever since I first heard the original release in 2002. The music is hauntingly beautiful of course, but there is more to its spell. I remember one sumptuous August night when this album prompted my husband, whose own feelings toward Baroque opera are, well, lukewarm on a generous day, stop in his tracks and remark: `It sounds different in twilight. This music belongs to twilight time.' So true! There is something wondrously indefinite, even aloof, about this selection and this interpretation. Many have commented on the masculine hue of Vivica Genaux' voice on this album. I am not so sure. Her approach is not masculine or feminine or queer or whatever one might pick from the contemporary lexicon blandly intent on labelling everything. It does not fit into any of these categories. Baroque music does not either. It predates modern understandings of sensuality. It was explicitly written for sensuous pleasure, but it was not molded into a regime of truth that emerged much later. This recording creates an emotional atmosphere that is deeply concerned with beauty and pleasure and fundamentally unconcerned with core essences. There are other ways of performing this music--Cecilia Bartoli's hyper-feminine spectacle and intense commitment in `Opera Proibita' is as astounding, albeit in a different way. The selection here is more understated and more tightly stylized, and it is perhaps more hypnotizing as a result.



This is an album to which to pause in your tracks and let the everyday deliquesce: to take pleasure in and learn from a different era.

"

Para aficionarse a lo clasico

Marta Font Merino | Shanghai | 08/15/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Como profana que soy (y cada vez mas mayor)...una se va acercando a lo clásico a estas alturas. Soy aficionada al cine y a sus bandas sonoras de ahi conocí a Vivica Genaux.

Esta selección de arias consigue tenerme tumbada en el sofá haciendo solamente.....Nada, disfrutando de la música, de las notas, de la voz, de la potencia de las arias, de transportarme a un estado casi onirico casi ausente. (supongo que es el principio de mi calma)



No os lo perdais



Marta"