Handel: Hercules : A-S. von Otter, G.Saks, R.Croft, D.Daniels, M.Pujol, Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens Du Louvre

Georg Friedrich Handel: Hercules

Anne-S0fie Von Otter, Gidon Saks, Richard Croft, Lynn Dawson, David Daniels, Marcos Pujol

Marc Minkowski - Les Musiciens Du Louvre

2002

Hercules, Musical Drama in Three Acts

Libretto : Thomas Broughton

Gidon Saks : Hercules

Anne-Sofie von Otter : Dejanira (his wife)

Richard Croft : Hyllus (his son)

Lynne Dawson : Iole (Princess of Oechalia)

David Daniels : Lichas ( a herald)

Marcos Pujol : Priest of Jupiter

Choeur Des Mucisiens du Louvre

Les Mucisiens du Louvre Grenoble (on authentic instruments)

Sebastian Rouland : Musical Aassistant and Chorus Master

Marc Minkowski : Conductor

Recorded live at Theatre de Poissy

Nominated for the 2002 Gramophone Award for Baroque Vocal

Nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Opera

Reviews :

Classics Today : Robert Levine

This is an untouchably great performance of one of Handel's most interesting oratorios: its examination of jealousy is on a par with what can be found in Otello and Pelleas. There's drama galore--in fact, during its first run it was referred to as a "musical drama" (rather than an oratorio), and Handel and his librettist, Thomas Broughton, always referred to its "acts" rather than "parts", as sections of oratorios were commonly known.

The role of Hercules, a bass, is taken by Gidon Saks, who has a voice of flexibility and power. An Israeli who studied in England and Canada, his English diction is superb, and he paints a picture of a leader who is trying to keep his kingdom intact while dealing with his unstable wife, Dejanira. As his son, Hyllus, Richard Croft's tenor is amazingly agile, and he easily executes all of the runs and fiorature in his many arias. He also paints the text well, and we believe him whether he is declaring love for Iole or feeling grief for Hercules. Iole, the captive brought back from the wars by Hercules and who is the object of Dejanira's jealousy, is sung by Lynne Dawson at her absolute best--tonally pure, angry, fluent. David Daniels is remarkable in the small(ish) role of the Herald, Lichas (talk about luxury casting!).

But the star is Anne Sofie von Otter as Dejanira: the role is juicy beyond belief, her unrelenting jealousy and manipulation being superbly expressed. The huge mad scene, "Where shall I fly?", after Hercules goes up in flames because of her, is epic; here and throughout, Otter is animated, sincere, vocally impeccable, and totally committed. Marc Minkowski and his musicians are first rate, with tempos quick but never blurred and dramatic points artfully underlined. This set easily replaces one from the 1980s under John Eliot Gardiner--a German-language version (called "Herakles") that's good but not easy to find and not in a class with this one. This is a Rolls Royce of a show. Don't miss it.

andante.com : David Vickers

A Mighty Hercules

One of Handel's rarely-performed "English Operas" gets the full Marc Minkowski treatment — with Anne Sofie von Otter, David Daniels, Richard Croft and Lynne Dawson.

Handel's secular dramatic oratorio Hercules was composed in the summer of 1744, and is roughly contemporary with Semele and Belshazzar. Ironically, all three of this magnificent cluster were failures at the box office. Yet the quality of Hercules was well recognized by more than one connoisseur at the time: the Earl of Shaftesbury wrote in a letter (recently rediscovered) that "The composition is as good as possible. Wadyman and Collet &c [members of Handel's orchestra] tell me he never wrote any-thing beyond it in his entire life. The musicians are charmed with Hercules."

Like the better-known oratorio Saul, Hercules is a powerful examination of the destruction wrought by needless jealousy. The mythological hero, having long since completed his labors and recently defeated the proud Oechalians, returns home to his wife and son. He also brings with him a captive, the Oechalian princess Iole, which invokes the jealous wrath of his wife Dejanira. It is actually their son Hyllus who loves Iole, but Dejanira refuses to listen to reason — and eventually brings about her husband's death amid tragic and unintentional circumstances. Dejanira discovers the truth too late, and her grief turns into insanity. Such dramatic situations and intense personalities could not fail to inspire Handel to impressive heights, and the scholar Donald Burrows rightly describes Dejanira's mad scene "Where shall I fly?" as "one of the high points in all of Handel's English works."

There is already a remarkably good recording of Hercules (also on DG Archiv but no longer widely available) by John Eliot Gardiner, featuring some fine, if idiosyncratic, performances by John Tomlinson, Jennifer Smith and Sarah Walker. Although Gardiner's version was one of the greatest Handel recordings of the prolific 1980s, the singing was perhaps not to everyone's taste and the performance suffered slightly from a few cuts to the score. Marc Minkowski's new recording features an impressive cast of Handel specialists and purports to be entirely complete — and it is a triumph, an achievement that can hold its head up proudly among the finest Handel recordings yet made.

Minkowski's Hercules appears not long after his controversial Messiah, which was a compelling experiment that, to these ears, went drastically wrong somewhere along the way. There are no such problems here: the performance possesses a vivid sense of theater, yet it does not fall into the unfortunate traps of poorly chosen tempos or misinterpreted communication of the text. Such flaws have marred Minkowski's exuberance and vitality in the past, yet this Hercules is a perfect match of the conductor's strengths and Handel's.

There are a couple of flaws, namely the patchy and unattractive singing of the choir and the prominent use of organ prominently in many of the secco recitatives. (Handel is known to have generally confined the organ to doubling the choir and occasionally supporting the bass line.) Gardiner's 20-year-old recording remains unchallenged in those aspects, and the sheer brilliance and intelligence of his orchestra, The English Baroque Soloists, still compare favorably with the gutsy attack of Les Musiciens du Louvre. If that leaves things more or less even between the old and new versions, Minkowski's trump cards are his soloists. The cast looks tantalizing on paper, and they all turn out to be ideal for their roles. (You know you are in for a treat when David Daniels is cast as a seemingly "minor" character.) Gidon Saks brings brawn to the muscular hero's arias, but his recitatives are especially superb. As his character dies in poisoned agony, the bitterness with which he sings "Was it for this unnumbered toils I bore?" is tangible. Richard Croft is also in fine voice as Hyllus, and a smoldering Lynne Dawson gives yet another superb performance as Iole.

Yet the real star is Anne Sofie von Otter as Dejanira, whose mistaken jealousy brings about Hercules' death. The mezzo proves once again her supreme worth as a Handel singer (her contributions to Trevor Pinnock's Messiah, John Eliot Gardiner's Jephthaand Minkowski's Ariodante have already demonstrated this). Her diction, musical intelligence and command of the libretto's subtleties are overwhelming. In the aria "Resign thy club" von Otter unleashes sarcastic scorn on her innocent husband; her aria "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise" evokes her belief that her husband does not love her with heartbreaking effect; her rendition of Dejamira's descent into insanity in "Where shall I fly?" is quite possibly the greatest performance of a major Handel scene we have heard for years.

Despite a few small faults, this recording is of major importance and an essential purchase for Handelians. If the powers-that-be at DG have any sense at all, they will hire exactly the same cast to tour and record a complete period-instrument Semele. Handel composed Hercules and Semele for similar groups of singers, and it is high time Handel's most charming, wittiest, and wisest "English opera" was given such five-star treatment.

Reviewed: Gramophone 2002/7

Otter heads a very fine cast in a vividly characterised performance by Minkowski

Hercules has never quite occupied the place it merits in the Handel canon. Right from the start it fared badly: Handel put on two classical musical dramas in 1744 45, this work and Semele, evidently supposing that his London audiences acceptance of the genre would be on a par with that of the successful biblical oratorios. But he seems to have miscalculated, presumably because of the English public's commitment to works of a "religious character" partly because of the 'awkward hinterland they inhabited between' oratorio and opera. He revived Hercules only twice, and each time heavily cut. That it is less amenable to staging than Semele has told against its popularity in modern times; and it is nearly 20 years since it was last recorded. But Hercules includes some of the most powerfully dramatic of all Handel's music. This is certainly understood by Marc Minkowski 'the conductor here' and his intentions towards the work are made clear in the opening bars of the Overture, where he strikes 'a rhetorical tone of a kind I have not heard in' his other Handel interpretations. This persists. The orchestral playing throughout the set has a strong dramatic content. Listen for example to the intensity in Iole's C minor air "My father!", or the ferocity he brings to much of the music of the last act, where Hercules undergoes such agonies and Dejanira such depth of remorse, the contrasts in her great scene, "Where shall I fly?" are all but overdone. Minkowski leaves you in no doubt of the intensity of the passions that the work explores. But he is also intent on maintaining its dramatic pace and emphasising its range of feeling. Listen to the dancy rhythms of the chorus ending Act 1, or the fleet, almost weightless (and almost perfunctory) celebration by Dejanira and Iole of their reconciliation in their duet near the end of Act 2. These quick tempos, so often favoured by Minkowski, don't always work too well, the Andante Larghetto asked for by Handel in Hyllus's first air is interpreted as meaning something like Molto allegro, which can't be right, although I am inclined to think it works almost acceptably in the dramatic context. In Hyllus's final air, too, (marked Andante) he is somewhat pushed. But Minkowski's sharply pointed accompaniments in Dejanira's taunting "Resign thy club", and the swagger he imparts to much of Hercules's own music, indicate his grasp of the dramatic content. You may however think that his direction of the great "Jealousy" chorus, although appropriately impassioned, is too rhetorically contrived and artificial sounding. He has a cast well able to share his dramatic vision of the work. Anne Sofie von Otter excels in her reading of Dejanira's music. This, rather than that of Hercules himself, is the central role, carrying the work's chief expressive weight. There is some beautifully shaped singing as in her opening air she mourns Hercules 'absence' and she copes well with Minkowski's demanding tempo in "Begone, my fears", I wish he had allowed her a little more time here. (Her air between those 'curiously' is transposed down a minor third here.) In the jealousy music of Act 2 she gives a superbly pointed, commanding account of "Resign thy club" (meaning not that she wants him to relinquish the Athenaeum but yield up his weapons), and catches the scornful sneers of the middle section to great effect. Then she gives a moving account of "Cease" ruler of the day, a marvellous G minor air that Handel abandoned here and then re used in Theodora, although Minkowski's use of solo strings introduces a tone colour, that of a string quartet, that is surely alien to the music. Von Otter rises splendidly to the tortured lines Dejanira sings in the knowledge that her jealousy has killed her husband in the final act with a wide range of 'timbre but never an unmusical sound. Lynne Dawson makes a delightful Iole, crystalline, airy, rhythmic, but able to call on more intensity where needed (as when mourning her slaughtered father). "My breast with tender pity swells" is truly lovely. Lichas' music is done with refinement but also vigour by David Daniels (though I do question the sense of using a countertenor for a role conceived for a contralto). Richard Croft, though often hurried by Minkowski, sings much of Hyllus' music with elegance, and his delicate sustained pianissimo in the da capo of "From celestial seats descending", one of the most inspired pieces in the score, is remarkable. As the rather self regarding hero, Gidon Saks sings with plenty of swagger and ample resonance, and he rises to the more demanding music of the last scenes. The choral singing is strong, secure, responsive, though I should add that I find the French choir less euphonious than the best English ones. The orchestral playing is duly alert. I would have liked more prominence to be given to the continuo accompaniments: often little, can be heard between the top line and the bass. The work is given in fairly full form: one air omitted, another shifted 'some smaller cuts in' da capos or of middle sections. The work's textual history makes it inappropriate to fuss about an 'authentic' text. The Gardiner version noted above (the review date is of the original LP issue) has held the field for a long time. Gardiner's judgment of tempo seems to me surer than Minkowski's, and the Monteverdi Choir are peerless; but the new version benefits from fewer cuts and on balance superior solo singing, and the drama of the work is more forcefully expressed. It doesn't much matter which you have, but it's not a work to be without.

Posted by Ice