Luigi Cherubini - Cantatas

Luigi CHERUBINI 

Cantatas

Clytemnestre 

La Mort de Mirabeau: Trois chœurs 

Circé

Amphion 

Maïlys de Villoutreys (soprano); Ursula Eittinger (alto); Andreas Karasiak (tenor); 

Nicolas Boulanger (speaker); François Eckert (speaker); 

Cologne Academy

Michael Alexander Willens

Beethoven considered him one of the greatest composers then living and he was undoubtedly the dominant personality and authority in early-nineteenth-century French musical life: Luigi Cherubini, born in Florence in 1760, enjoyed early success with his operas in Italy and won fame in France with his music dramas, eventually being made Surintendant de la musique du roi and redoubtable director of the Conservatoire. Like Meyerbeer, he specialized in opera. True, he wrote songs and cantatas too, but they were soon forgotten. We remember his French operas like Médée or maybe Le porteur d'eau, or his late Masses. The present CD, on the other hand, turns to largely unknown works in the form of four French cantatas and choral pieces, none of them in any way inferior to the better known repertoire. Whether inspired by Greek tradition and mythology or by the »revolutionary heroes« of his stage music for three choirs »La mort de Mirabeau«, Cherubini never fails to give the sorrow, rage and pain of his subjects a truly personal dimension

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Cherubini is so familiar to us as a composer of operas (and, lest we forget, a superb Requiem—the C-Minor—that Toscanini must be given credit for reviving in our lifetimes) that it may come as a bit of a shock to discover that he also wrote cantatas. Unlike his operas, some of which were trivial (like Ali Bana ) and some of which were groundbreaking (like Medée, Les deux journées, Lodoïska, and Gli Abencerragi ), his cantatas tend to be dramatic in the style of Gluck, much of whose work preceded his, allied to the cantata structure established by Handel and continued by Haydn. These multiple influences are especially notable in Clytemnestre, composed in 1794, whose text concerns Iphigenia's impending wedding to Achilles. The tempestuous moods of her mother are reflected well in the ever-shifting melodic structure of the music and “stabbing” strings of the orchestra as well as the eventually “broken” melodic line of the singer. A great deal of drama is expected and extracted from the singer. De Villoutreys, who possesses a light, bright soprano, achieves these effects by means of vocal coloration and accent, occasionally draining the voice of vibrato but chiefly using vibrato as an expressive device in order to emphasize the text. Considering the basic lightness of her instrument, de Villoutreys's performance is simply astonishing in its emotional and dramatic range, and the lean but expressive playing of the Cologne Academy orchestra makes for a tremendously interesting listening experience.

The composer's Three Choruses, written as incidental music for a play by Pujoulx (an author of whom I know nothing) titled La Mort de Mirabeau, are allied to the French Revolution. Mirabeau, one of the leading figures of the Revolution, became President of the National Assembly in 1791 but died in April of that year—a demise so sudden, the notes tell us, that many suspected murder. Pujoulx's play is as much a propaganda piece for the glorious revolutionaries of France as so many such works extolling Lenin were in the 20th century. The third chorus was, to me, the most fascinating musically and dramatically, particularly in its dramatic use of speakers who interrupt the musical flow, but they are all somewhat interesting. Once again Cherubini seems to be channeling Gluck in his musical construction, the music broken up stylistically between lyrical and strongly rhythmic passages, sometimes using portions of the chorus to play off one another. It is altogether remarkable.

Circé and Amphion were written for the Loge Olympique, Paris's leading concert society, which presented Circé in 1789. Amphion, though written three years earlier (1786), was for some reason never performed. Circé is slightly less Gluckian than Clytemnestre, and the extraordinarily unusual contralto voice of Eittinger, which fits the music like a glove, has not only depth of tone but also an almost masculine sound. In nearly all of her low passages, Eittinger sounds like a male tenor; the fact that she sings with the voice almost entirely drained of vibrato adds to its fascination. I simply could not get over this voice; in several passages, she reminded me strongly of Ruby Helder, the female tenor who recorded in the early years of the 20th century. (One of the more interesting aspects of this recording is that de Villoutreys and Eittinger are also listed as members of the chorus when they are not singing their solo roles!)

Amphion, the notes say, was composed by Cherubini to introduce himself to the Parisian musical world. Perhaps ironically, the text was written by the same Mirabeau for whom Cherubini later wrote the choruses, and dwells on “the uncertainty of human existence” and ways in which these conditions “might be changed,” and unusually combines a solo tenor voice with chorus. All things being equal, I found this to be the most musically conventional and least dramatic piece on the CD, nicely written but, to my ears, lacking inspiration except in the recitative “Tout est possible aux Dieux,” and parts of “Du monde et du temps,” which sound like the style he would later use in Medée. Karasiak, however, has an outstanding light tenor voice with a good tight focus and pleasant timbre, and sings his music as well as can be expected.

All in all, then, a fascinating disc, one which discloses hitherto lesser-known music of this sometimes enigmatic composer.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley