Christiane Karg - Scene! (2015)

Moving moments,desperation in the face of destruction and perfidy,farewells that break one's heart - concert arias are great dramas reduced to a few minutes and a single individual.It would be ridiculous for amateurs to try to interpret them,since producing anything like stage illusion or real life by means of the voice alone without supporting scenery demands special qualities.Composers mostly conceived such arias for particular singers whom they knew and admired.The chosen singers were not always the dedicatees of the works.We are not certain for whom Ludwig van Beethoven intended Ah,perfido!.There is much that suggests the Prague star soprano and friend of Mozart,Josepha Duschek.At all events,it was she who sang the freshly composed work at a concert in Leipzig in November 1796.Beethoven dedicated it however to Countess Clari,who was a talented mandolin player but would hardly have been suitable as the singer.The first performance of the work in Vienna took place twelve years later and ended in failure at the public début of the young singer who had stood in for the famous soprano and first Leonore Anna Milder-Hauptmann,who had quit after a quarrel with the composer.The source of the text is not known.The introductory recitative clearly points to Pietro Metastasio's Achille in Sciro,yet the following aria verses are not to be found in the libretto.The words and music depict emotions at breaking point.Abandoned by her lover,Deidamia gives vent to a torrent of accusations and vengeful thoughts before sinking into morbid longings.