1. L’ Olimpiade - Aria «Siam navi all’onde algenti» (Andrea Bernasconi)
2. Il Re Pastore - Aria «Sol puo dir» (Agenore) (Christoph Willibald Gluck)
3. Catone in Utica, Recitativo «che giurai? Che promisi?» (Arbace) (Alexandre Piccinni)
4. Catone in Utica, Aria «Che legge spietata» (Arbace) (Alexandre Piccinni)
5. Il Siroe - Aria «gelido in ogni vena» (Giovanni Battista Ferrandini)
6. L’Olimpiade, Recitativo «dove son? Che m’avvenne?» (Licida) (Tommaso Traetta)
7. L’Olimpiade, Aria «gemo in un punto e fremo» (Licida) (Tommaso Traetta)
8. La Clemenza di Tito. Aria «se mai senti spirati sul volto» (Sesto) (Giovanni Valentini)
9. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, I Allegro (orchestra only) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
10. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, II Andantino (orchestra only) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
11. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, III Presto (orchestra only) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
12. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, Recitativo «ma che vi fece o stelle!» (Timante) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
13. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, Aria «sperai vicino il lido» (Timante) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
14. Demofoonte - Sinfonia, Aria «misero pargoletto» (Timante) (Johann Adolf Hasse)
15. Artaserse - Aria «per quel paterno amplesso» (Arbace) (Johann Christian Bach)
16. Artaserse - Aria «Fran centi affanni e cento» (Arbace) (Niccolò Jommelli)

 

With Forgotten Arias countertenor Philippe Jaroussky pays tribute to composers of the late Baroque era and to the great librettist of the age, Pietro Metasasio. All ten arias on the album, written between 1748 and 1770 by nine composers, are heard in world premiere recordings.

In the course of his long life (he was born in Rome in 1698 and died in Vienna in 1782) Metasasio wrote some 28 heroic and serious librettos, along with the texts for numerous other vocal works. The librettos were set by multiple composers – Vivaldi, Handel, Gluck and Mozart among them – resulting in hundreds of operas. One of these is Artaserse by Leonardo Vinci, which Erato recorded with Jaroussky in the title role. Artaserse was also the name the French countertenor chose for the instrumental ensemble he established in 2002 and frequently conducts. On Forgotten Arias, however, he entrusts the conducting to Julien Chauvin, who takes charge of Le Concert de la Loge, the orchestra he founded in 2015.

As it happens, the programme includes two arias from settings of Artaserse – by Johann Christian Bach and Niccolò Jommelli.  They, along with Gluck, Hasse and Piccinni, are among the more familiar composers to feature on Forgotten Arias. Less well-known are Bernasconi, Ferrandini, Traetta and Valentini (composer of a version of La clemenza di Tito, written nearly 40 years before Mozart’s).

Philippe Jaroussky explains how Forgotten Arias came about. “When I first started studying to be a countertenor, I caught a ‘virus’ that is quite common among musicians who perform Baroque music: the compulsion to search for works that have been lying quietly dormant in libraries for centuries, waiting to be brought back to centre stage by a performer. Several years of research went into one of my first albums, which was devoted to the castrato Carestini [who in 1730 created the role of Arbace in Vinci’s Artaserse], but similar principles applied to my albums devoted to little-known operas by Johann Christian Bach, Porpora and Caldara.

“For this new album I concentrated on a period that I had not yet explored in depth, the late Baroque, and focused on grand arias setting texts by Metastasio … Some of his ‘dramas for music’ like L’Olimpiade and L’Artaserse were used by more than 90 different composers and became a rite of passage for anyone who wanted to prove themselves and to stand out from their predecessors through their originality.”

Forgotten Arias features two examples of a thrilling ‘storm aria’ with Bernasconi’s ‘Siam navi all’onde algenti’ from L’Olimpiade, and, from Jommelli’s Artaserse, ‘Fra cento affanni e cento’. By contrast, Jaroussky sees Gluck’s ‘Sol pur dir come si trova un amante’ from Il re pastore, dating from 1756, as a precursor of the composer’s unadorned ‘reform’ style, exemplified six years later by Orfeo. In the 1770s, Gluck’s style was pitted against Piccinni’s in the famous ‘querelle des bouffons’ in Paris. In an aria from Piccinni’s Catone in Utica, ‘Che legge spietata’, the orchestra plays virtuosically while the singer’s repetitive and declamatory lines make him appear, in Jaroussky’s words. “prisoner of his own emotions”.

The text of the chilling ‘Gelido in ogni vena’ (Siroe) is familiar from Vivaldi’s version of the aria, but the setting by Ferrandini makes its mark with “an implacable pulse in the bass, like the insistent beating of a heart, its highly contrasted dynamics … and the way the dissonances on the word ‘terror’ take several bars to resolve.” Similarly dramatic is Licida’s ‘mad scene’ from Traetta’s ‘L’Olimpiade’, while a gentler tone is struck with ‘Se mai senti spirarti sul volto’ from Valentini’s La clemenza di Tito.

Jaroussky once again evokes the spirit of Giovanni Carestini with two contrasting arias written for the castrato by Hasse – they come from Demofoonte. Another great castrato. Gaetano Guadagni (the originator of Gluck’s Orfeo) was the first to perform ‘Per quel paterno amplesso’ from Artaserse in the restrained setting by JC Bach, a composer who, as Jaroussky points out, exercised a considerable influence on the young Mozart.