Wednesday 9 March 2016
Placido Domingo revisits a past glory
Dramatic intensity … Placido Domingo sings extracts from Don Rodrigo, in which he first starred in 1966.
The discs that have already appeared to mark the centenary of the birth of Alberto Ginastera, which falls next month, mostly focus on the Argentinian’s flashier, better known orchestral scores. But this vocal collection is much more enterprising: alongside an orchestral arrangement of the early and unashamedly nationalist Five Popular Argentinian Songs there are two scenes from Ginastera’s almost forgotten first opera, Don Rodrigo, as well as the equally neglected cantata Milena, which sets extracts from Franz Kafka’s Letters to Milena.
The opera was completed in 1964 and the cantata seven years later. They both belong to what Ginastera called his “neo-expressionist” period, in which he adopted a 12-note technique (though without ever really losing touch with tonality) and included aleatoric passages in his scores. The results are close to the world of Berg at times, and the highly wrought, anguished vocal writing of the opera – built around the character of Roderic, the last Visigoth king of Spain, who probably died at the hands of the invading Moors in the 8th century – certainly recalls parts of Wozzeck. Milena is, if anything, even more intriguing. From a collage of excerpts in Spanish translation from Kafka’s text, Ginastera created a patchwork of dreams and longings that he shaped into five movements and scored with amazing imagination, using his experience of electronic music to create a shimmering, enchanted orchestral sound world. It’s a strikingly beautiful piece – a real discovery – which fades away with echoes of the last song in Schubert’s Winterreise.
The performances have real authority. When Don Rodrigo received its US premiere at New York City Opera in 1966, the title role was sung by a young tenor then at the beginning of his international career. It’s a role that Placido Domingo was always keen to repeat, and though we only get him singing two sections of the opera here – the climactic rape scene from the second act, and the final scene of the third, when the despairing Rodrigo dies and all the bells of Spain spontaneously ring out – they are enough to show the dramatic intensity he must have brought to it 50 years ago. The demanding part of Florinda, Rodrigo’s lover, is taken by Virginia Tola, though she is even more impressive threading her silvery soprano through the textures of Milena.
Assembling this disc has clearly been a labour of love for conductor Gisele Ben-Dor. It has taken her 15 years with the Santa Barbara Symphony, and to judge from the recording details, it’s been a tortuous process. Ana María Martínez’s performance of the Popular Songs dates back to 2002, while Tola recorded Milena and her part in the Don Rodrigo excerpts in 2008, before Domingo added his contributions in 2011 and 2014.
You hardly notice the joins, though, and in any case much of the music is such a treat that it doesn’t matter at all.