CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Vivica Genaux
Members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra

Weill Recital Hall
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Vivica Genaux, Mezzo-Soprano
Members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra

VIVALDI Concerto in G Minor for Strings and Continuo, RV 152
VIVALDI "Sposa son disprezzata" from Il Tamerlano (Bajazet), RV 703
J.A. HASSE "Nelle cupe orrende grotte" from Senocrita
VIVALDI Concerto in D Major for Lute, Strings, and Continuo, RV 93
R. BROSCHI "Qual guerriero in campo armato" from Idaspe
VIVALDI Concerto in G Minor for Strings and Continuo, RV 156
HANDEL "Cara speme" from Giulio Cesare
VIVALDI Concerto in A Minor for Cello, Strings, and Continuo, RV 419
HANDEL "Dopo notte" from Ariodante

Encores:
HANDEL "Lascia la spina" from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno
HANDEL "Fammi combattere" from Orlando

Program Notes:

ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678–1741) Concerto in G Minor for Strings and Continuo, RV 152; “Sposa son disprezzata” from Il Tamerlano (Bajazet), RV 703; Concerto in D Major for Lute, Strings, and Continuo, RV 93; Concerto in G Minor for Strings and Continuo, RV 156; Concerto in A Minor for Cello, Strings, and Continuo, RV 419
JOHANN ADOLPH HASSE “Nelle cupe orrende grotte” from Senocrita
RICCARDO BROSCHI (1698–1756)“Qual guerriero in campo armato” from Idaspe
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685‧–1759)“Cara speme” from Giulio Cesare; “Dopo notte” from Ariodante (1735)
For the majority of his professional life, Don Antonio Vivaldi (he was an ordained priest) was employed by the Ospedale della Pietà, one of Venice’s four hospitals that cared for ill, abandoned, or indigent girls and young women. He began as a violin instructor and curator of the hospital’s instruments and progressed to music director and composer-in-residence. Musical studies and performances provided the girls of the Ospedali with an edifying skill and also served as a public relations and marketing boon for the institutions themselves. Music lovers from far and wide came to hear the “angels” play and sing; the renown of the institution’s music directors (including Vivaldi, Hasse, Galuppi, and Caldara) assured the excellence of the offerings.

Vivaldi wrote the majority of his concertos, motets, and oratorios for the orchestra of the Pietà hospital. His European reputation was assured through his many collections of concertos published in Amsterdam between 1711 and 1736 (the famous Four Seasons are part of the Opus 8 collection dedicated to the Austrian Count Morzin). No European composer of quality escaped the Venetian’s altogether vigorous and innovative approach to the concerto. As his star rose, Vivaldi took to the road, playing concerts, serving as visiting composer, and overseeing opera productions. His travels took him to Rome, Mantua, Dresden, Darmstadt, and Vienna, where he died penniless and out of fashion.

In spite of his travels, he fulfilled his obligations to the Pieta, providing the girls with two concertos per month. The two Concertos for Strings presented on this evening’s program possess the qualities that made Vivaldi famous: scintillating and at times harmonically surprising opening and closing movements and lyrical, “cantabile” middle movements for which the Italians in general and Vivaldi in particular were known.

Vivaldi’s most famous works are his concertos for a solo instrument and strings. In addition to the approximately 200 works he wrote for solo violin (he himself was a virtuoso almost without peer) Vivaldi wrote concertos for instruments ranging from the cello to the recorder. The well-known Concerto in D Major for Lute, Strings, and Continuo does away with the viola, leaving the more subtle tone of the lute, accompanied by two violins and the bass group.
Though not the first cello concertos ever composed, it is safe to say that Vivaldi’s are the first great ones. The Concerto in A Minor possesses Vivaldi’s infectiously energetic and surprising outer movements. The piece also offers the soloist wonderful opportunities for virtuosic and lyrical display.

Though by no means as famous as a composer of vocal music, Vivaldi wrote many cantatas, motets, and oratorios for the wonderfully skilled young women of the Pietà hospital. Italy was, after all, the land of opera; though Vivaldi made his name with instrumental music, he also pursued the theater, beginning in 1713. He enjoyed a fair amount of success in this genre both on the Italian mainland and in the theaters in the lagoon. One of Vivaldi’s last operas was Il Tamerlano (Bajazet), written for the 1735 carnival season in Verona, which tells the story of Tamerlane’s victory over the Ottoman sultan Bajazet. The opera is a pasticcio, a method frequently used in Baroque opera seria in which the composer pieces together arias of other composers as well as his own newly and previously written ones. While this might seem to be somewhat slip-shod, the results (as in Bajazet) were often musically and dramatically excellent. Interestingly, Vivaldi himself composed the arias for the morally upright characters, but gave the “borrowed” pieces to the more compromised characters. In the Act II aria “Sposa son disprezzata,” Irene, princess of Trebizond, sings of her anger at being betrayed while maintaining her steadfast love for him. The intensity of Irene’s emotion is conveyed by the dark key of C minor, the slow tempo, and the dissonances in the accompanying strings. Irene’s first act show-stopper “Qual guerriero in campo armato” comes from Riccardo Broschi’s opera Idaspe on the same subject. Riccardo Broschi has always been best known as the brother of legendary castrato Carlo Broschi, known as “Farinelli.” The rapid-fire passage work found in “Qual guerriero in campo armato” must have suited Farinelli perfectly.

Johann Adolf Hasse was a true international superstar. Born in Hamburg, Hasse was quickly discovered to possess remarkable musical talents. While in his late teens, he became a member of the Hamburg Opera House, where he sang tenor roles for two years. Hasse, like many northern European composers, then traveled to Italy to “drink at the source.” His settled in Naples, where he composed, mixed in musical circles, and studied with Alessandro Scarlatti. It was in Naples that he composed the first of his 50-plus works for the stage. In 1730 he was appointed kapellmeister at the Saxon court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden. Augustus was himself an opera lover and a patron of the arts, and allowed Hasse, his star music director, to pursue his international career while simultaneously building the Dresden Orchestra into the finest in Europe. His 1737 opera Senocrita, from which comes tonight’s aria “Nelle cupe orrende grotte,” was the first to be written for Dresden after Hasse’s two-year sojourn to Italy. Though a northern European, Hasse was a Neapolitan at heart and in spirit. He was known by all who knew and respected him as “il caro sassone” (“our dear saxon”).

George Frederic Handel was another great composer of Italian opera. He also spent several formative years in Italy before heading back over the Alps to ply his trade. After a one-year stint as kapellmeister in Hanover, Handel settled in London, where he remained almost continuously until his death. Giulio Cesare, arguable one of Handel’s best efforts, was written in 1724. The work is one of the few baroque operas to have been performed regularly well before the Baroque revival of the 1970s and 1980s. The Act I aria “Cara speme” was written for Margherita Durastanti, a mezzo-soprano with whom Handel worked in his early Italian days. Handel captures the opera’s intimate moment through both lyrical lines for the soloist and soloist parts accompanied various strings. Ariodante, from 1735, though also considered one of Handel’s masterpieces, did not enjoy revivals until the 1970s. The title character’s final aria of redemption and triumph, “Dopo notte,” is a brilliant vehicle for virtuosic and dramatic display.


—Charles Brink
Charles Brink has performed as a flutist with many of the leading period instrument ensembles in Europe and the US. In 2006 he founded The Grand Tour Orchestra.

© 2008 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Vivica Genaux, Mezzo-Soprano
Charismatic and captivating Alaska-born mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux is consistently praised for her extraordinary performances on the world’s great musical stages, not only for the technical command and beauty of her distinctive voice, but also for her compelling character portrayals. She is repeatedly hailed as one of the foremost interpreters of Baroque and bel canto music.

Ms. Genaux continues to balance her appearances in the US and abroad with operatic engagements, concerts, and recitals in new venues and countries, as well as returns to sites of previous audience and critical triumphs. She adds three additional characters to her pantheon, by Handel, Hasse and Haydn. She also completes a recording and performs that same Vivaldi character, Antiope in the composer’s Ercole, on stage for the first time. Her roles now total 41, of which 25 are trouser-parts.

The 2008–2009 season commences with one of three New York area performances, at Tannery Pond Concerts in the Berkshires, in a recital paired with longtime confrere Craig Rutenberg. This is followed by a debut appearance, at the Festival de Fénétrange, for a Baroque bill with Concerto Köln. For her initial engagement at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, Ms. Genaux switches male attire and roles from her more usual eponymous hero to the villain, Polinesso, in Ariodante, with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques. In a return to Madrid’s Teatro Real she performs in a staged version of the Handel oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, conducted by Paul McCreesh, their premier collaboration. She makes another role and festival debut at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele in a Hasse rarity, Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena, coupled with the composer’s Miserere in D Minor, with Michael Hofstetter at the helm. Rejoining Concerto Köln, she cperforms in Cologne, Lyon, and Saarbrücken before embarking on another recording project for Virgin Classics, her seventh for the label.

Ms. Genaux makes her home in Motta di Livenza and studies with Claudia Pinza, continuing her longtime association with EPCASO (Ezio Pinza Council of American Singers of Opera).

Members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra