Handel: Teseo, highlights (CD review)

Dominique Labelle, Amanda Forsythe, Amy Freston, Drew Minter, Robin Blaze, Celine Ricci; Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Philharmonia Baroque Productions PBP-07.

There are probably a few things you should know before considering this recording of Handel's opera seria Teseo by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Maestro Nicholas McGegan, and a sterling cast. First, there is a reason why some music seldom gets recorded; Teseo isn't exactly a barnburner, and you'll find very few recorded performances of it. It didn't do too well in Handel's time, either, and until now it hasn't done all that well in our own time.

Second, there are a couple of technical issues one needs to address. Namely, Philharmonia Baroque Productions made the recording live, with all its attendant shortcomings in audience and stage noise. In addition, as it is a highlights disc, there are some frankly odd editing quirks involved. More on this later.

Finally, if one is truly to enjoy the performance, one has to erase memories of Abe Vigoda's role of Sal Tessio in The Godfather. Absolutely no relationship, but I had trouble thinking of Handel anytime I heard the name Teseo.

Fortunately, none of this makes a lot of difference because the cast, the orchestra, the conducting, and the performances are so good.

German composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) wrote Teseo as his third opera after settling permanently in England. Following the opera's première in 1713, it received about a dozen more performances and then basically dropped off the map. The story, set in ancient Greece, involves all kinds of romances, several pairs of lovers, treacheries, sorcery, and a few lighthearted exchanges. A few interesting characteristics of the opera are that Handel composed it in five acts rather than his usual three, possibly a reflection of the libretto's French origins (Lully); unlike much of his compositional work, he used almost no borrowings from his own previous music; and he scored most of the roles for high voices.

Soprano Dominique Labelle plays Medea; soprano Amanda Forsythe plays Teseo; soprano Amy Freston is Agilea; countertenors Drew Minter and Robin Blaze are Egeo and Arcane; soprano Celine Ricci is Clizia; baritone Jeffrey Fields plays a priest of Minerva; and tenor Jonathan Smucker plays the Chorus.

Anyway, the important thing is how it comes off, which is very well, indeed. As usual, the Philharmonia Baroque play exquisitely, with a healthy appetite for Handel's rhythms. In other words, they play with a lively bounce and are always a pleasure to hear. Equally important, the singers are splendid, especially Ms. Labelle and Ms. Forsythe. They bring a drama and warmth to the roles that seem unbeatable, and their art is letter perfect.

Let me put it another way: While there is little in Handel's opera that one might say is truly memorable (I doubt you will find yourself humming any passages after hearing it), the PBO and singers make it all highly enjoyable as you're listening to it. The performance sounds continuously joyful, and one cannot fault any part it.

Now, about those couple of drawbacks: Because of the live recording, we get all of the associated problems such an occasion offers. We are always aware of the audience presence, their breathing, their coughing, their reactions, and their occasional shuffling of feet. Moreover, there is a small amount of stage noise to contend with, as well as applause. Yes, that applause. As is their wont, opera fans tend to break out into applause at every other note a singer utters. Thankfully, the engineer edited out a good deal of that applause but much of it still remains. Don't get me wrong; I love live performances...when I'm there myself, live and present. But a recording cannot fool me into believing there's a live audience in my living room, where I expect an entirely different experience, noise-free.

Then there's the matter of the editing. The disc offers a collection of highlights from the complete opera performance, so, of course, we expect to find the selections edited. However, many of the edits at the end of tracks seem downright awkward to me, cutting off notes, cutting off or fading out on applause, and making sometimes ungainly transitions.

David v.R. Bowles produced, engineered, edited, and mastered the recording, which he made at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA in April 2013. The live sound he obtained is pretty much as I remember it from my many visits to First Congregational over the years. There's a pleasantly light, reverberant bloom to the sound, all of the instruments come through with solidity and clarity, and voices are reasonably natural throughout. Perhaps because of the live recording, there is a slight degree of brightness to the sound, but if anything it adds to the orchestral transparency. Still, I think the overall sound quality could have been better without a live audience present and maybe if the engineer had made it in one of the PBO's other recording venues. My guess is that cost constraints play a big part in live vs. studio recording.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa