Tamerlano (review)

Recorded live during the fiftieth Handel Festival (2001) in Halle, this Tamerlano is a joint production of the Handel Festival, the Goethe Theater in nearby Bad Lauchstädt (where this performance was given), the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, and Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Happily, the old adage about too many cooks does not apply here. This is a fine performance of a wonderful opera, sensitively and sensibly produced in the theater and thoughtfully packaged for home viewing.

Written and first performed in London in 1724, Tamerlano may be somewhat overshadowed by the equally (but differently) wonderful operas that immediately preceded it (Giulio Cesare) and followed it (Rodelinda). Even though the opera is named for the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane (Timur Lenk), the dramatic focus is on the Turkish sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I), who was defeated and taken captive by Tamerlane in 1402. Everything in this unrelentingly dark opera builds steadily to the suicide of Bajazet. That includes considerable romantic complications among the other characters—Tamerlano, engaged to Irene, falls in love with Bajazet's daughter Asteria, who in turn loves Tamerlano's reluctant ally, the Greek prince Andronico—as well as Asteria's two unsuccessful attempts to kill Tamerlano, both mistaken by Bajazet as her desertion of her father and her capitulation to his hated captor. Bajazet's final appearances are especially powerful. Driven to a frenzy by his captor, he denounces Tamerlano in a furious aria in which he promises his spirit will return from the grave. Having taken poison, he returns and in a fluid succession of recitatives and arioso bids farewell to his daughter, regretting in music of the greatest tenderness that he cannot grant her wish and take her life, too. He repeats his threats to become an avenging fury, but his music grows quieter and quieter as his strength fails and he is led away by his daughter. Anyone doubtful about the direct emotional impact of opera written before Mozart need only see this sequence, especially when so persuasively performed as it is here. When the rightful order of things is restored after Bajazet's death, that predictable denouement seems less the conventional happy ending of an opera seria than the consequence of the shocking events Tamerlano and the others have just experienced. The final ensemble, in which the remaining characters announce that they will all live in peace, is surprisingly but aptly somber, cast in a minor key for four low voices (three in the alto register and a bass).

The performance under Trevor Pinnock is first rate, music and drama receiving equally scrupulous attention. The orchestral coloring of Tamerlano is more subdued than that of either of the operas that flank it (no horns or trumpets here), but the members of the English Concert play beautifully, with special praise due the continuo players for their flexible and inventive treatment of the recitatives. Written for the London debut of Francesco Borosini, Bajazet is Handel's first important role for tenor. Thomas Randle is powerful as the captive ruler, his wounded pride and suffering evident at his every appearance. If Randle occasionally pushes the recitative toward verismo style, there is never any sense of grandstanding, only a singer fully inhabiting his role. He sings the arias very well, too, using modest ornamentation always to dramatic effect. He is riveting in his final appearances. In his formal vengeance aria the da capo seems the spontaneous outpouring of rage that has been barely contained until then. Moments later, regal but faltering in purple and gold, he is heartbreaking as he bids his daughter farewell. Contrary to the indications in...