Haydn: Armida

Haydn: Armida

Thanks to his omnivorous curiosity, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has revived an authentic masterpiece. Several opera composers--Lully, Handel, and Gluck--had already availed themselves of the amorous and stormy adventures of the knight Rinaldo and the enchantress Armida, drawn from Tasso's <I>Jerusalem Liberated</I>. Composed in 1784, Haydn's <I>Armida</I> was his the final opera he wrote for his patron Prince Esterházy, but it was also the composer's debut <I>opera seria</I>. Even so--and just like Mozart--Haydn knew how to free himself from the rigid and monotonous alternation of aria and recitative that customarily governed this genre. Thus the final act, which unfolds in an enchanted forest, offers us a half-hour of nearly uninterrupted music, even prefiguring the romantic shape of things to come in the 19th century. This recording was made from a concert performance in June 2000 in Vienna's sumptuous Musikverein under the blazing baton of Harnoncourt. The cast is impeccable--including Christoph Prégardien and Patricia Petibon and dominated by the stunning Cecilia Bartoli, who can swerve within a few bars from boiling anger to the most overwhelming amorous pleading. <I>--Franck Erikson</I>