As ever, Cavalli’s women are particularly strong: I feel compelled to note that both Medea and Hypsipyle are queens in their own right. Jove (Alejandro Meerapfel) and Aeolus (Dominique Visse), Cavalli’s operas have little time for heroes. The Yankees signed Cervelli as an international free agent in 2003. Francisco Cervelli (born March 6, 1986) is a Venezuelan former professional baseball catcher.He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves, and Miami Marlins from 2008 through 2020.. The most lavish and vast villa of the ancient Rome, the Domus Aurea. Stellar CD, as you can probably tell; an essential for any CT aficionado’s collection. Her recordings include Cavalli (La Calisto - extracts), Handel (Messiah; Water Music suites 1-3), Haydn (Symphonies 80, 87, 89, 101, 102, 103, 104; 'Harmoniemesse' and 'Schöpfungsmesse', Mozart (Symphonies 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41; Divertimenti K. 136-K. 138 & Serenade K. 525, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"; Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments K361; Requiem K.626), Mendelssohn (Violin Concerto Op. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. In addition to my wife Amy Dubinsky, many dear friends and collegues helped me proofreading my writing: Diana Russo, Mary Ella Savarino, Kathryne Fenton, Heather Foote, Stevie Gaza, Katheryn Lawson, et al. Dr Glover has published a 1978 biography of Francesco Cavalli, and included material derived from her doctoral thesis. But if you also remembered a 340-year-old opera by Francesco Cavalli, called Hercules in Love, go to the head of the class. (Her two children by Jason remain unslaughtered here: this is Venetian froth, not Greek tragedy.). It must have been rather like a reunion for them all. II. In 1990, after a sizeable donation, the Glover Music School[1] was opened at Monmouth School by Jane Glover, in memory of her father. In 2018, her Handel in London: The Making of a Genius, was published, which charts the composer's work as "immigrant musical genius, composer, performer and impresario", placed in the social and political context of London of the time.[9]. After having killed his first wife, he had to perform twelve tasks. For her part, she scolds him for womanising his way around her kingdom, teasingly claims that her elderly maid Delpha (Dominique Visse) is his beloved, and then finally outs herself. The male singers weren’t quite as strong as the women. If any regular readers still think that Baroque opera is highbrow, serious stuff, I invite you to listen to Giasone’s first major aria. I should say that I agonised about the rating for this. He came from a prestigious family; his grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955 and his father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher who worked with some renowned authors, such as Italo Calvino and Primo Levi. Ludovico Einaudi was born on 23 November 1955, in Turin, Italy. The performances are taking place in an outdoor courtyard of an old box factory, now home to an art gallery in what is billed as “Brooklyn’s Venice,” by the Gowanus Canal, and is produced by Vertical Player Repertory. . Cavalli is not the most musical composer, to my ears (I still think his operas are more like sung dramas than proper opera), but he’s one of the most deliciously silly, dramatic and irreverent. As you’ve probably guessed, I went for Sabadus and enjoyed his performance, noting as ever his great gift for comedy and his willingness to make himself look ridiculous. She was music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1981 to 1985. He might be thoroughly enjoying himself but, as his fellow Argonaut Hercules tells him, it’s time to move on. Here is him singing Massanet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adqyQ9AEBms. [7], Glover was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2003 New Year Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to music. In a neat touch, the orchestra were Cappella Mediterranea and the conductor was Leonardo Garcia Alarcón, who were behind the recording of Elena that did so much to get Sabadus established as a leading man back in the day. The third portion of the limelight went to Flores’s Alinda, the classic cheeky maid who sings about how wonderful it is to be able to pick up men and drop them as you please (this Alinda, in a comic touch, was heavily pregnant). It’s always great to have an excuse to go to Versailles and spend a few hours in this jewel of an opera house, and it was also wonderful to tick off one more Cavalli opera. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. He has a very good voice, but the style just seemed completely inappropriate. Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Here and There Classical Music News: Opera appointments, Anthony Tommasini,"A Rollicking Treat Infused With Grace and Gravitas,", Music of the Baroque – biography on Jane Glover, Music Director, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jane_Glover&oldid=999401256, People educated at Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls, Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 10 January 2021, at 00:14. My latest adventure is as Giove, King of the Gods, in Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto.. Meanwhile, on the banks of the river Iberus, Hypsipyle (Francesca Aspromonte) pauses with her band of excitable maids and her loyal servant Oreste (Alejandro Meerapfel). She is splendid as she calls upon the fiends of hell, wreathed in smoke and wielding a sorcerer’s staff; ferocious as she encounters her rival; she only feels unconvincing at the end, when the laws of opera require her to forgive and make peace. I’ll be eagerly keeping my eye on Versailles’s programming in the seasons to come, hoping we might have some more Baroque to look forward to. The things we do for art. The setting was vaguely 1930s with modern commando uniforms for the Argonauts, while the gods were resplendent in proper Baroque costumes to differentiate their reality from the mess of adultery and cowardice all around them. Francesco Cavalli's Baroque opera is staged with a cheeky sensibility in Highland Park. As ever, Cavalli’s women are particularly strong: I feel compelled to note that both Medea and Hypsipyle are queens in their own right. He was the son of Giovanni Battista Caletti, organist and maestro di capellaat the cathedral at Crema.As a boy Francesco apparently excelled as a singer in the local choir; Venetian nobleman and governor Federico Cavalli noticed the boy and in 1616 persuaded the elder Caletti to let Francesco accompany him to Venice, where he would see to his musical studies. Vocally, however, Sabadus was very slightly off colour when we saw him. Cavalli's La Calisto at NEC is presented as part of the Pratt Residency and Performance Series for Early Music, established through the generosity of Life Trustee Harold I. Pratt and his wife, Frances. So please read this as a high 3.5. ( Log Out /  The early baroque period opera, La Calisto by Francesco Cavalli, was based on the myth of Callisto from Ovid's Metamorphoses.The opera premiered on Nov. 28, 1651, at the Teatro Sant 'Apollinare Public Opera House in Venice, Italy. He believes that … I was also pleasantly surprised by Meerapfel’s Oreste, who was heartsick without losing his dignity, and who provided a sober rallying point amid Hypsipyle’s fluttering handmaidens. Just when things look as if they can’t get any more complicated, the gods get involved. Jason is a figure of mockery: a man ‘effeminate’ in the Baroque sense of the word, whose manly qualities have been diluted through excessive sex with women. Naturally, this translated at Versailles into Valer Sabadus lying blindfolded on a rock with his shirt open and his trousers undone. She did not return to Italy until her husband's death in 1689. Russell exemplifies the “can do” spirit of Haymarket Opera Company. Was it Cavalli? Well, my appetite is well and truly whetted. Album Description. Buy CDs,DVDs online at hbdirect.com: Francisco Cavalli: Ercole Amante / Bolton/Concerto Koln, Netherlands Opera Chorus [2 DVD] Composers: Francesco Cavalli (1602 - 1676) Performers: Anna Bonitatibus Veronica Cangemi Marlin Miller Jeremy Ovenden Anna Panzarella Luca Pisaroni Label: BBC Opus Arte Conductors: Ivor Bolton Ensembles: Concerto Koln Netherlands Opera Chorus - BOA 1020 During the 1980s, Glover regularly broadcast on BBC Television including hosting the television series Orchestra with Jane Glover in 1983 and Mozart – His Life with Music in 1985. Eliogabalo was the last surviving work of Cavalli, “the pre-eminent theatre musician of the mid-century” (Carter), the scores of whose almost 30 Venetian operas “shift flexibly between recitative and aria styles, sometimes within only a few bars”.. Giasone is no exception. The dauntless Argonauts came to the shores of Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, but their heroism has been put on hold. Sit back and marvel. Perhaps I should mention Dominique Visse’s Delpha here, as an honorary woman. Her hand is also 4Readying Cavalli's Operas for the Stage: Manuscript, Edition, Production. Dame Jane Alison Glover DBE (born 13 May 1949) is a British-born conductor and musicologist. And so divine meddling brings a great storm, that blows the Argo off-course, Golden Fleece and all, and washes the Argonauts up on the shores of the Iberus. Cavalli was born in 1602, not long after the earliest operas were written. His Delizie contenti was predictably gorgeous, but I’d like to hear him record it one day when he’s firing on all cylinders. ... in La Calisto by Francesco Cavalli. The Venetian reception and transformation of ancient texts—by Ovid, Virgil, Tacitus, and Diodorus Siculus—form the background for her penetrating analyses of the musical and dramatic representation of five extraordinary women as presented in operas by Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, and their successors in Venice: Dido, queen of Carthage (Cavalli); Octavia, wife of Nero (Monteverdi); the nymph … Elena was penned in 1659, and was never performed since. His Ercole in Amante shows Hercules as a swaggering, lustful idiot; in Elena, the future king Menelaus spends most of his time in a dress. Her father, Robert Finlay Glover, MA (TCD), was headmaster of Monmouth School and it was through this connection that she was able to meet Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears aged only 16. Glover was the Music Director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991. Save me. Once Jason (Sabadus) has been recalled to his duty, he goes to solicit the help of Queen Medea (Kristina Hammarström), little realising that he knows her much better than he thinks. I thought it was “the bassist”. Thursday April 9, 2020: New England Conservatory Opera presents La Calisto, Francesco Cavalli's early Baroque opera. He and his wife Paula have two wonderful children and one glorious granddaughter. Change ). He doesn’t seem to take himself anywhere near as seriously as many other countertenors do, and that’s refreshing, because he’s quite happy to play the buffoon if that’s what it takes. There’s a stark contrast between his weakness of spirit and Medea’s magnificent grandeur. Although, I’ve just gotten to them singing “My Way”. Dr Glover has published a 1978 biography of Francesco Cavalli, and included material derived from her doctoral thesis. David Lim met his Irish wife Joyce Davis, a nurse, while studying at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin in the 1950s and 60s. Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Songs for Nancy: A concert to celebrate Nancy Storace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adqyQ9AEBms. I’m also having trouble with Cavalli beyond the (very) amusing nature of his stories. When this recording was made in 2006, recordings and even performances of the operas of Francesco Cavalli were rare. The eponymous Jason sprawls in a love-fuelled stupor and sings for five minutes about how glorious sex is, but he just can’t manage any more just at the moment and longs only to ‘die’ (ahem) in the lap of his mistress. The set itself was simple but very effective: a great boulder splits open in answer to Medea’s dark command, revealing the glint of the Golden Fleece within, and the final act took place among billboard trees and bushes, as the characters stumbled through the inevitable last-minute confusions. Did I mention that Jason has also given each woman twin sons? Based on a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, Cavalli’s opera was first performed on 5 January 1649 in Venice. This research greatly increased his interest in Gregorian chant. After the birth of their third son, relations between Colonna and his wife deteriorated for multiple reasons, including his infidelities and her fears of further childbirth. Of course, Oreste returns with the unfortunate news that Jason has impregnated another woman and scarpered with her. It was unfortunate that Giménez sang the whole thing as though it were Puccini, with a pronounced bel canto delivery that feels completely foreign in the context of Cavalli’s more austere music. (Identical to the VE52 text, except for ‘empier’) Christine Jeanneret, in her essay ‘Maria Cavalli: In the Shadow of Francesco’4 identifies the handwriting of this addition as that of Maria Cavalli, Francesco’s wife. And that was something that came across: the sheer fun being had by all. Ercole Amante was commissioned by Cardinal Mazarin for the wedding of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660. As in Ol’ Blue Eyes. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Good use was made of the stage, too, although I tired rather quickly of watching lustful old Delpha despoiling yet more young soldiers. Sit back and marvel. Raum Klang CD RK 3601. Funnily enough, he was much, much better in the second half and we had plenty more of his characteristic bell-like long high notes, much to my delight. Cavalli - The Requiem is the composer's last sacred work, … Many are difficult to stage, but those who persist, find works that have a good deal of power and were critical to the development of opera as it is known today. Vocally, I thought most of the cast were very good. Huge applause must go to the enterprising Feminear, who as Cupid spent the entire opera in an oversized baby-shaped fat-suit. Delpha (Dominique Visse, in fatsuit) approaches one of her victims. Performances are July 8, 10, 14 and 16, all at 8PM. But Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) was right there with the Master in time and place. Italian composer and singer. Ercole amante (Hercules in Love, French: Hercule amoureux) is an opera in a prologue and five acts by Francesco Cavalli.Its Italian libretto is by Francesco Buti [], based on Sophocles' The Trachiniae and on the ninth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses.The first performance took place on 7 February 1662 in the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries in Paris. at the Academy. Oh goodness, they’ve just started “O sole mio”. They returned to Penang after marrying. [4] She conducted the world premiere of Il Giardino by Stephen Oliver at the Batignano Festival in 1977.[3]. [2] She made her professional debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975 with the first modern performance of Eritrea[3] and joined Glyndebourne in 1979. Approximate Run Time: Cavalli's La Calisto plays in 2 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission. Yes, my dear CTs, you certainly are doing it your way and my jaw is aching from the silly smile I have on my face. [8], In September 2005, Macmillan published Glover's book Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music. She has been both principal conductor and principal guest conductor of the Huddersfield Choral Society and continues to work with the choir on a semi-regular basis. ( Log Out /  Here he made a very good job of making a hero unsympathetic, of stripping away the glamour of Jason of Thessaly and letting us see the silly little man beneath. She later described the meeting: "I was beside myself with the prospect of hearing them perform. As Medea’s rival, Aspromonte was a loyal innocent, the purity of her voice backing up her character. It seems that Visse is now the pantomime dame of Baroque operas: if you need a comedy nurse, he’s your man. (Opéra Royal de Versailles, 9 March 2018). Of course, much of that may have been deliberate, to underscore the innate comedy of a man playing a woman… and I think part of it is that I just don’t warm to him. ( Log Out /  (Remarkably, one of the tamer interpretations.) Her brother, Richard Glover, served as Master Haberdasher (2015–16). I do my best to locate the creators of all artwork used on this site, but sometimes the images have become divorced from their artist information by the time I find them. I believe H is; I’m not, as am just this minute arriving back in town from a family funeral and need some downtime after a couple of crazy weeks. Canning, Hugh. La Didone was premiered in 1641, a year after Monteverdi's Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria and a year before L'Incoronazione di Poppea. And Cavalli was a central figure in the evolution of opera, easily the best known and most popular composer of such works in his age. When faced with the two women he has dishonoured, in an unholy duo, his reaction is to try to run away. On the afternoon of the concert, the doorbell rang at the headmaster's house, and I went to answer it. Unless of course you subscribe to the theory that Cavalli wrote Pur ti miro, in which case the best of Monteverdi *is* Cavalli? 64; "A Midsummer Night's Dream" incidental music), Britten (Les Illuminations; Nocturne; Sinfonietta). La Didone was premiered in 1641, a year after Monteverdi's Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria and a year before L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Glover was a BBC governor from 1990 to 1995. She has conducted opera at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, Berlin Staatsoper, Royal Danish Opera, Opéra National du Rhin, Opéra National de Bordeaux, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, and Teatro La Fenice. Apollo (Francesca Aspromonte) and Cupid (Mary Feminear) have already had a spat in the prologue about whom Jason should marry: Apollo champions Medea, who is his descendant; Cupid has already made plans for Hypsipyle. On 29 May 1672, fearing that her husband would kill her, Mancini left Rome accompanied by her sister Hortense Mancini. ( Log Out /  She holds a number of honorary degrees from several universities, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music and has been the artistic director of opera at the Royal Academy of Music since 2009. Jason (Valer Sabadus) and Aegeus (Raul Gimenez). [6] On 18 March 2011, she conducted the world première of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's opera Kommilitonen! Sick with love of Jason, she sends Oreste off to find out the latest news, while her maids – led by the spirited Alinda (Mariana Flores) try to jolly her along. It was so very nearly four stars, but I just felt there were too many issues for me to give it that rating with a clear conscience. (English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, 14 October 2016) On Friday night it was time for the second opera in ETO’s autumn Baroque trilogy (the first was their Battle of Britain Xerxes).This time we were going back to the mid-17th century for Cavalli’s Calisto, which on the surface is an exuberant pantomime in song about gods behaving badly in the forests of Arcadia. Career But Jason’s romantic adventures prove harder to shake off than he anticipates, when it transpires that his secret lover is none other than Medea, Queen of Colchis. Forgot to say: are either of you coming to Rinaldo tomorrow? To make matters worse, his fiancee Hypsipyle, Queen of Lemnos, has grown tired of waiting for him and is coming to fetch him home. I’m fine, thank you – just tired and in need of a few evenings cuddled up at home with a good book! He’s a weak, vacillating, dreamy creature who only lifts a weapon once in the entire opera, and that’s to threaten a woman. 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