Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice. (Opera and Oratorio).

GLUCK: Orfeo ed Euridice

[] Fink, Cangemi, Kiehr; RIAS-Kammerchor; Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Jacobs. Text and translations. Harmonia Mundi 901742.43 (2)

Rene Jacobs began making waves as a conductor with his sharp, dramatic presentations of seventeenth-century opera (much of which he had sung, to considerable acclaim, as a countertenor) with large chunks of "reconstructions" (or compositions) by Jacobs himself. These added atmosphere but often hindered the singers from relating openly to the text. (For example, much of Jacobs's version of Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria turns recitative into rather stiff, accompanied ariosos.) With the eighteenth-century works he has been approaching lately, Jacobs is forced to dig the emotions and effects directly from the music, notably in his luscious 1999 account of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte (HM 951663/5). After resurrecting Keiser's 1710 Croesus and dusting off Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Jacobs returns to challenge the opera mainstream with Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, with magnificent results.

The entire cast (of three) is Argentinian, led by mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink. Except to connoisseurs, Fink may be unknown in the U.S., but she has a huge, well-earned following in Europe. In the castrato role of Orfeo, Fink combines the vocal stature and aristocratic musicality of Janet Baker (from Glyndebourne with Raymond Leppard; Erato UM 45864) with the affecting warmth and passion of Giulietta Simionato (from Salzburg with Herbert yon Karajan; DG 439101). From Orfeo's first anguished cries of "Euridice" over the choral lament, we identify with his grief, and we willingly submit to the hellish journey he undertakes. Fink's singing throughout is exceptional; the Act II arias, pleading with the Furies ("DEN placatevi con me") and later marvelling at the delights of the Elysian Fields ("Che puro ciel"), are exquisitely sung and deeply moving. Here is a singer aware of the precise effect of each appoggiatura, and it is always in service of the music-drama.