Delirio
Virgin Classics
Shepherds mooning over their beloved Chloris; shepherds getting turned into streams. These are not regular sights in modern Britain, not even in episodes of The Archers. Yet the old pastoral mythologies can still pack a punch, especially if set to great music by Handel and performed by Natalie Dessay and Emmanuelle Haïm — joined together with Le Concert d’Astrée on this Virgin disc of Italian cantatas.
The title derives from the programme’s biggest item, Delirio amoroso, performed in Rome in 1707, early in the young Handel’s Italian sojourn. Two of its four solo numbers have the girth and extravagance of the operas then forbidden in Rome by papal decree; and it’s here that Dessay’s coloratura soprano could easily produce a delirium of its own. Vibrant, steely, fiercely dramatic, she means business in every note — never more so than when lengthily navigating the phrase “un pensiero” before the first aria’s last repeat. Dessay may lack the southern warmth that Cecilia Bartoli applies in her own dazzling baroque arabesques, but her chillier, ringing, more northern tone and unshakeable pitch carries its own eloquence and power.
Dessay’s instrumental partners are equally top-notch. Four minutes before she opens her mouth, Le Concert d’Astrée, under Haïm’s direction, charm us to bits with Handel’s spirited opening sinfonia, burnished with the first of many dazzling solo turns. Oboe, violin, cello, recorder: each takes its stand in the sun, with Stéfanie-Marie Degand’s violin stealing the prize for finger wizardry in the first aria’s accompaniment.
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The disc’s only disappointments lie, eventually, in some of the music itself. The first half of Delirio amoroso is superbly dramatic and showy; then its weight and distinction lighten as Chloris and her beloved Thyrsis relocate to the Elysian Fields. The second cantata, Mi palpita il cor, charms in smaller ways itself, though in between Dessay flies high with the birds in the beguiling aria Qui l’augel from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. And with these superb musicians lesser Handel still brings delights quite beyond other composers.
GEOFF BROWN