Presto Recording of the Week
9th May 2011

Joyce DiDonato (Ariodante), Karina Gauvin (Ginevra), Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Polinesso), Sabina Puértolas (Dalinda), Topi Lehtipuu (Lurcanio), Matthew Brook (King of Scotland), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (Odoardo)

Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis

In this complete recording of Ariodante, Alan Curtis, a supreme Handelian conductor and scholar, joins forces with glorious mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, who, with her Virgin Classics album of Handel arias, ‘Furore’, “scored a triumph … which not only shows her phenomenal technical talent, but verily crackles with dramatic fire” (BBC).

In 2010, Virgin Classics released Curtis’ recording of Handel’s opera Berenice. The US magazine Opera News welcomed it, saying: “At the helm of the superb period-instrument ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, with its smooth violin section and supple, energetic continuo, Alan Curtis paces a well-chosen cast with his customary precision and command ... Singers never seem musically constrained or theatrically hampered, and … the cast exhibits a welcome sureness with Handel's style and rhetorical presentation, both individually and as an ensemble.”

In Ariodante, DiDonato takes the title role of a young prince -- remaining in male mode throughout after her recent gender-swapping antics on the operatic recital CD ‘Diva, Divo’, The role was written for the star castrato Carestini and includes two contrasting showpieces -- ‘Dopo notte’ and ‘Scherza, infida’ – both among the most famous of all Handel’s opera arias.

When DiDonato sang Ariodante in Geneva in 2007, the Financial Times wrote: “How confidently she brings off trouser roles and what spine-tingling effect she puts into a bravura piece such as ‘Dopo notte’”, while the Neue Zürcher Zeitung felt that: “her bright, homogeneous mezzo soprano is wonderfully suited to the passionate lover who, just before his wedding, believes he has been deceived by his betrothed.” The supposedly unfaithful Princess Ginevra is sung here by the sensuous-toned Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin, praised in Handel by Opera News for her “tonal substance, even at pianissimo,” and her “real bel canto technique, all in one voice from top to bottom; the whole aria is carefully shaped without breaking the Baroque boundaries”. Joining DiDonato and Gauvin in the cast are another fine Canadian singer, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, the charming Spanish soprano Sabina Puertolas and the elegant Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu.

Gramophone has said that “Alan Curtis has done more than most to prove that many of Handel's 42 operas are first-rate music dramas”, while the BBC Music Magazine has praised him as “a seasoned Handelian who has contributed, perhaps more than anyone now, to the composer’s operas on disc.”