Handel’s 1738 Serse (Xerxes) is a wonderful work, an opera seria that the composer imbued with a new, genuinely comic slant, filled with the gamut of emotions from pretended love to genuine love, from amazing tenderness to furious outrage. The famous opening aria, “Ombra mai fu”, sung by the title character, actually is a love song to a tree in his garden. Moments later he hears a woman’s voice and immediately falls in love with her. Sadly, Serse’s own brother, Arsamene, also is in love with the owner of the voice, Romilda, whose sister, Atalanta, is in love with Arsamene. Amastre, who is engaged to Serse, shows up but disguises herself as a soldier, the better to listen in and try to make sense of the situation. And so it begins, with Baroque mix-ups, vengeance arias (mostly in da capo form), and minor characters, some out of Italian opera buffa, but all serving to complicate the circumstances and make Serse, a supposed great soldier, look foolish yet somewhat sympathetic.
Much of the music is top-drawer Handel and this recording makes a good case for it, though there are problems. Taped live on stage in Munich in 1997, we get a really good idea of the work’s theatrical validity, with lots of stomping and moving and rushing to and fro; we also get a cast that refuses to adhere to what is now accepted as valid Baroque opera performance practice: They lean on their voices, using vibrato, and dramatic verisimilitude takes the place of vocal purity pretty often. The listener will decide within a half-hour if this performance is his or her cup of tea. I’ve grown to like it for its style and substance, and when I want to hear purer singing, I’ll go to Nicholas McGegan’s BMG/Conifer recording. Ann Murray’s Serse is filled with changing emotions, wonderfully colored and vibrantly, if occasionally rawly, sung. The same can be said for Christopher Robson’s Arsamene, but it is easy to tell why Serse falls in love with Romilda’s voice in the person of Yvonne Kenny. Julie Kaufmann impresses as Atalanta, as does Patricia Bardon as Amastre, Serse’s confused fiancée. The two lower men’s voices, belonging to Umberto Chiummo as Ariodate, Serse’s general and the father of Romilda and Atalanta, and Jan Zinkler as Elviro, Arsamene’s servant, exhibit a bit too much mugging, which, rather than being cute and entertaining, actually gets in the way of the notes they have to sing. Ivor Bolton, as hinted, leads a politically incorrect performance, with big emphases and lots of leeway for the singers to thrill, but I got totally caught up in it. And so, I suspect, will you.
