Il Combatimento [Import]

Today one finds an abundance of editions of both "Il Lamento d'Arianna" (Ariadne's Lamentation) and "Il combatimento di Tancrede et Clorinda" (The Combat Between Tancredi And Clorinda) on the market. Therfore I consider it appropriate - before giving a brief historical presentation (2) - to explain the reason why (1) this very CD deserves to be lifted out of the anonymous grey mass and given special attention for its quality.

CRITICAL JUDGEMENT:
1) Only occasionally opera arias by Monteverdi require the varied ornamentation and vocal acrobatics typical of later Baroque composers like Händel and especially Vivaldi. Here, on the other hand, the major challenge is represented by how one approaches the early Baroque concept "recitar cantando", or the criteria according to which one should do the recital of the text by singing it. Surviving documents from Monteverdi clarify that good dramatic music follows - that is: FOLLOWS CLOSELY, INTIMATELY. NOT ONLY APPROXIMATELY - the continuing changes in contents and emotions of the dramatic text, from hope to desperation, hate, passion, piety, anger, regret and so on. And on the current CD this authentic requirement is generally respected. Several other CDs mainly reveal one of the two following defects: Either one does not seem to have understood what one is singing about, so that the work is reduced to a harmonical, but still aesthetically unengaging vocal exercise without concern for the subject matter to be represented, or one reduces the diversified and multidimensional emotionality to a one-dimensional expression of the dominating feeling only.
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Insight in the concept mentioned adds considerably to the listener's experience of the external movements (horses, weapons, arms, feet) and internal emotions during the bloody fight between the Christian Tancredi and the Muslim Clorinda until the characters - too late - recognize behind the suit of armour the person they have fallen in love with earlier.
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If an inadequate "recitar cantando" is unfortunate in the "Combatimento", where a lot of external action is going on as well, it is disastrous in the "Lamento", which remains static and actionless on the outer level and limits itself totally to depicting the emotional states of the individual in an existencial cry: The mythical Ariadne is abandoned psycologically as well as geographically on the island Naxos by Theseus without any hope neither of rediscovering happiness in the past, nor in the future. Interpreter Guillemette Laurent here succeds in a chromatic depiction of Ariadne's emotions because below the aria's main current of desperation she manages to guide us through its countless undercurrents of hope, hopelessness, passion, hate, isolation, fear, regret and dear memories in various phases of the text. Throughout all this, she is esquisitely accompanied by the quality in (rather than, as is also historically correct, the quantity of) the instrumental music.
In many other editions either there is hardly anything beneath the local colour of simple desperation, or the performance is only remotely attached to the libretto text's subject matter. And when deprived of variation, the listening experience becomes boring. Editions that simplify by shortening the original text and therefore the interconnected musical expression mercilessly, should also be neglected.

HISTORY:
2) Although only three of Claudio Monteverdi's full-scale operas ("Orfeo" (1607), "Ulisse" (1641), "Poppea" (1643)) survive in complete form, the earlier (except "Orfeo") "Lamento" and "Combatimento" both belong to this genre of drama. Ariadne's Lamentation was the most successful aria within Monteverdi's second opera "Arianna" (1608). The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini survives, but from the composer's score only the "Lamento d'Arianna" part remains, as Monteverdi published it in his sixth madrigal book in 1623 for one soprano voice accompanied musically by a basso continuo, like in the opera version, which this CD by Skip Sempé contains. Already in the fourth madrigal book from 1614, however, Monteverdi had reinterpreted himself with a five-voice chorus version (Less fortunate in my opinion, because a song basically about Baroque existencial loneliness is more convincingly performed by one individual than a group of people). Finally, in 1641, the composer published the same music with a new, Latin text as the "Pianto della Madonna, travestimento spirituale" (Mary's Lamentation (of Christ), in spiritual disguise (of the worldly, mythological original)). Here Rinuccini's text has been replaced by its parallell in the Gospel to make it appropriate for church performances.
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With regards to the "Combattimento", one enjoys a complete piece of opera, or rather operetta, since only 20-25 minutes are required for a performance. It was staged in "Palazzo Mocenigo" in Venice in the 1620s, and survives because Monteverdi included this one-act drama in his eight and last book of madrigals (1638). In this case he used the near-contemporary epic poem "Gerusalemme Liberata" by Torquato Tasso, a friend of his earliest patron Vincenzo Gonzaga in the late sixteenth century. The combat-sequence adapted to the new medium of musical theatre is the Song XII of the long poem.
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Finally, the CD also contains several shorter "capriccio stravagante", where Monteverdi made acute and creative musical interpretations of animals or of one instrument by means of another.
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My conclusion is that this CD should become among the definitive standard points of reference for the works it includes.
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Stian VF

I agree with Stian VF's very thorough review here - this is an excellent disc. You may like to know that it is included in a simply fantastic 50-CD box set of many of DHM's finest recordings, issued for their 50th anniversary. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 50th Anniversary Box For a little extra you get this CD, and 49 other excellent recordings, too. Well worth checking out.