Al Ayre Espanol & Eduardo Lopez Banzo - Handel: Amadigi di Gaula (2008)

Amadigi di Gaula had its premiere in London in 1715. Its libretto, based on a medieval legend and encompassing such effects as a magically appearing sorceress, reflects the then-fashionable English taste for spectacle in operatic production. Musically, however, the opera is of chamber dimensions, involving just five soloists, and takes in some emotionally intimate moments. In this backward-looking piece -- it even ends with a brief ballet -- Handel doesn't attempt any structural innovations: the arias and duets are cast firmly in the tripartite da capo format. Still, he finds room for the occasional imaginative touch, as when he uses French-overture gestures in a few of the ritornelli to suggest tragic breadth, or has the two voices in a hitherto contrapuntal duet launch the "B" section in straight thirds.

Here more than in most "period" productions, the musical direction sets a strong overall tone. Eduardo López Banzo paces the show with bracing vigor and lively rhythmic address. He favors brisk, energetic tempos, some of which get the singers a bit flustered in the embellished repeats. But he's also attentive to melodic shape -- ensuring, for example, that all the "feminine" phrase-endings, musical and textual, are properly tapered -- and gives the singers time to color the more inward numbers. López Banzo encourages the strings to dig into the tone in the faster movements, eliciting some of the roughness once associated with early instruments. But the woodwinds are delicate or pungently expressive, as needed, and the principal oboe duets effectively with the one trumpet when asked. Save in the wheezy introduction to Amadigi's "T'amai," the orchestral sound is big, forward and full-bodied. This is no arid historical exhumation but a living, breathing piece of theater. . . -- Opera News, Stephen Francis Vasta, November 2008