SCARLATTI: Sedecia, Re di Gerusalemme.(Review)

SCARLATTI: Sedecia, Re di Gerusalemme [] Perez, Capici, Frisani; Cecchetti, Vinco; Alessandro Stradella Consort, Velardi. Text and translations. Bongiovanni GB 2278/79-2 (Qualiton, dist.)

In the first years of eighteenth-century Rome it was a crime to produce opera; papal edict forbade it for its licentiousness. This despite the presence in Italy of some of what would become the century's finest opera composers: Bononcini, Handel and, musical father to them both, Alessandro Scarlatti. Enter a wily and determined patron, the cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. This literate prince bucked the system by building a theater and putting on oratorios and serenatas, which were identical in musical form to opera but kept one step to the side of papal censure.

Scarlatti dedicated his 1706 oratorio Sedecia, Re di Gerusalemme to Ottoboni. Taken from the Old Testament books of Kings and Jeremiah, it tells the story of the rebellious King Zedekiah's demise at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. Until the final scene of the oratorio, the action consists of an alternate wringing of hands of the three principals -- Zedekiah, his wife, Anna, and his son, Ishmael -- with sporadic interjections from Zedekiah's general Nadabbe, as they await Nebuchadnezzar's closing in for the kill. The plot is thin stuff. But Scarlatti uses the situation to create wonderful musical evocations of fear, hope, courage and pain. Pathetic music is his forte.

This recording by the period-instrument ensemble Alessandro Stradella Consort goes another step toward restoring the still undernourished presence of Scarlatti's dramatic music before the public. Conductor Estevan Velardi elicits superb dramatic playing from his orchestra. The invention and variation of the string players and oboe soloist had me on the edge of my seat in eager ...