Handel, Heroes from the Shadows, Nathalie Stutzmann, Orfeo 55 (Erato)Nathalie Stutzmann's disc of Bach Cantatas is as gorgeous and essential as any I've heard. A few years ago, a friend said she had the CD cover but had lost the disc and second hand copies cost over a hundred pounds. I said that doesn't sound right, came home and checked and she was right, they did. But the reward for continued vigilance on the issue was that a while later the recording became available as a download for less than a tenner and so that's what we did and I was as glad of it as she was.
The premise for this disc of arias by minor characters in Handel operas is to 'bring to light the repertoire of secondary or even tertiary characters- those characters the audience forgets about at the end of the evening, but who, for a few minutes during the course of the opera, completely bowl them over with some stunning aria'.
One or two sound a bit familar. Track 4 is listed as Dardano's Pena tiranna from Amadigi di Gaula but Handel often recycled tunes from less successful works when casting round for inspiration a new one and I think something similar crops up in Rinaldo or Ariodante. That doesn't detract from it at all, it would have been a shame to see a good thing go to waste.
It is in the slower, more largo, time signatures that Nathalie is best but perhaps so is Handel. She is dextrous, if not almost acrobatic, when required in the quicker pieces that demand it but the contralto voice lends itself more naturally to the stately and imperious but she can be sensitive as well. And if nothing here is quite as breath-taking as the opening phrases of the Bach disc then that is neither Nathalie or Handel's fault because there are precious few discs that have anything to compare with that.
Irene's Par che mi nasca in seno from Tamerlano is another plaintive highlight in which a ray of light brings hope to her agitated heart and Handel does as much as Mozart often does with his delicate orchestration.
Nathalie directs the ensemble as well as singing, which must be something of a challenge and more than that undertaken by first violins who conduct with their eyes while playing. Perhaps it doesn't mean quite that but while I can see that it is an actor's ambition to direct plays or films, and there is no reason why a musician shouldn't want to take charge as well as perform, I just wonder if directing a Messiah, as she is shortly to do in London, isn't a bit like a football manager being better than the players he is trying to get to perform like he can.
Later on the disc are a couple of novelties, like the Senti, bell'idol mio, a straightforward expression of devotion, in which the accompaniment is by a plucked theorbo, and thus is of a quietness I've never heard in Handel before. And that isn't surprising because the notes say there is no evidence that the opera, Silla, was actually staged at all. And then one might hear something like Rule Britannia, written in 1740, in the aria from Partenope, from 1730, in the 'braying horns' and Nathalie's performance - in which she shares echoes with those horns- at the end of which one might imagine her unfurling a big union flag from the skirts of a voluminous frock.
This is a superb collection, a great idea, bringing to light some lesser known treasures from the seemingly endless vault of Handel's music, and showing Nathalie in a wide variety of roles that she clearly enjoyed enormously. I don't know if she danced to the little jig finale, but you imagine she might have.