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Handel: Alceste / Curnyn, Crowe, Hulett, Foster-Williams, Early Opera Company

Handel / Foster-williams / Early Opera Company
Release Date: 05/29/2012 
Label:  Chandos   Catalog #: 788   Spars Code: DDD 
Composer:  George Frideric Handel
Performer:  Lucy Crowe,  Benjamin Hulett,  Andrew Foster-Williams
Conductor:  Christian Curnyn
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Early Opera Company
Number of Discs: 1 
Recorded in: Stereo 
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Notes and Editorial Reviews

Alceste was planned as a lavish collaboration between the impresario John Rich, the celebrated set-designer Servandoni and the rambunctious author of Roderick Random, Tobias Smollett, but it never made it to the stage. Notes by the librettist Thomas Morell hint that the play may have been cancelled owing to Handel’s incidental music being too difficult for the cast. However, it seems that Rich may simply have decided that an adaptation of a drama by Euripides was too risky a venture. This was, after all, a period in which the tastes of the London audience were as volatile as the explosives that had destroyed Servandoni’s Temple of Peace during the Green Park performance of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Christian Read more Curnyn’s delicious recording of the surviving score is amplified with a sinfonia from Admeto and a passacaglia from Radamisto. These fizzy, sexily swung orchestral additions emphasise the parallels between Handel’s incidental music and Purcell’s music for King Arthur, The Fairy Queen and The Tempest.

Though Alceste was written in 1749-50 and features one aria that could only date from that time (the exquisite lullaby ‘Gentle Morpheus, son of night’), it observes the contours of a Restoration masque. Alcestis’s journey to the Underworld is enchanting, with Curnyn’s fleet strings, intimately proportioned chorus, and polished soloists, soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Benjamin Hulett and bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams. The choral writing marries the pastoral delicacy of Handel’s Acis and Galatea with stylings from Purcell’s Odes to St Cecilia, showing Handel’s feel for local tastes, and Curnyn’s perceptive approach to Handel.
Performance: 5 (out of 5); Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Anna Picard, BBC Music Magazine
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Works on This Recording

1. Alceste, HWV 45 by George Frideric Handel
Performer:  Lucy Crowe (Soprano), Benjamin Hulett (Tenor), Andrew Foster-Williams (Baritone)
Conductor:  Christian Curnyn
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Early Opera Company
Period: Baroque 
Written: 1749-1750; London, England 

Sound Samples

Alceste, HWV 45: Ouverture
Alceste, HWV 45: Grand entree
Alceste, HWV 45: Accompagnato: Ye happy people (Tenor)
Alceste, HWV 45: Triumph, Hymen, in the pair (Soprano, Chorus)
Alceste, HWV 45: Still caressing and caress'd (Soprano, Chorus)
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Ye swift minutes as ye fly (Tenor)
Alceste, HWV 45: O bless, ye pow'rs above (Chorus)
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Gentle Morpheus, son of night (Soprano) - That when bright Aurora's beams
Admeto, re di Tessaglia, HWV 22: Sinfonia
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Ye fleeting shades, I come (Bass)
Alceste, HWV 45: Thrice happy who in life excel (Chorus)
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Enjor the sweet Elysian grove (Tenor)
Radamisto, HWV 12a: Passacaille
Alceste, HWV 45: Si replica il Core precedente: Thrice happy
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Come, Fancy, empress of the brain (Soprano)
Alceste, HWV 45: Symphony and Accompagnato: He comes, he rises from below (Tenor)
Alceste, HWV 45: Al hail, thou mighty son of Jove! (Chorus)
Alceste, HWV 45: Symphony: Larghetto
Alceste, HWV 45: Recitative: From high Olympus' top, the seat of God (Tenor)
Alceste, HWV 45: Air: Tune your harps, all ye Nine (Tenor)
Alceste, HWV 45: Ballo primo: Un peu lentement
Alceste, HWV 45: L'ultimato ballo
Alceste, HWV 45: Triumph, thou son of Jove (Chorus)

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