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Fanfare Magazine - Vol. 26:2 (Nov./Dec. 2002)

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When I phoned Savall at his Barcelona office, the first question I put to him was to ask what had drawn him to Farnace in particular. “The Farnace project arose because I was asked by the Spanish government’s cultural consortium set up to celebrate the third millennium to conduct an opera based on this libretto by Luccini. It was a libretto that had been set by many composers, some 40 different versions in all. I decided to do the Vivaldi with the version by Corselli because it combined an international setting with something that had local connections with Madrid. I had studied a number of the scores of Farnace operas and also found that the Corselli was the one that fitted in best with Vivaldi. I have not conducted Vivaldi before partly because so many other people do Vivaldi, and also because I’m a viola da gamba player, so Vivaldi doesn’t normally play a major part in my life! But nobody has previously done this piece, and after studying the score I thought it well worth performing.”

I tell Savall that one of the things that struck me forcibly was how strong the opera is dramatically. “Yes, it is very well and carefully constructed, both as to the vocal and the orchestral writing, which displays a rich variety of harmony. The libretto is typical of the Baroque in the way its sets up powerful dramatic situations—in this case a father who feels he must have his son killed. In this way, a composer was given the means to express strong emotions. But the ending is not very convincing, because there you have a woman (Berenice) who has spent the entire opera breathing vengeance suddenly becoming understanding.” “That surely,” I suggest, “is also part of typical Baroque convention, the demand for the lieto fine, or happy ending that today frequently appears contrived.” “Yes, indeed. It represents a return to normality after all the high drama of tragedy and strong emotions.”

No stronger emotions are released than those of Farnace in his act II aria “Gelido in ogni vena,” the point at which he believes his young son to be dead. Savall had an interesting point to make about such highly emotive arias. “I find that the written ornaments in such an aria are like weeping—their purpose is much more than purely decorative. They have a very strong and clear function. I discovered this during our work on the opera, where in the context of the emotional situation this kind of interpretation makes sense of the music.” Just how much sense can be heard in Furio Zanassi’s highly effective singing of the aria in question (disc 2, tr. 10), about which more in the review that follows.

One thing that is not clear from the lavish documentation Alia Vox provides with the set is whether the excerpts from Francesco Corselli’s setting of Farnace represent extant fragments, or whether they are extracted from a complete score. I raised this point with Savall. “Yes, the whole score exists. The problem with the Corselli is that it is uneven. Not everything in it is of the same quality, and you don’t find the same harmonic richness that you have in the Vivaldi. So, for me it wasn’t a viable option to undertake a project like the entire Corselli opera. On the other hand, I found it fascinating to combine a study of these two operas composed to the same libretto. So we included excerpts from the Corselli at the start of each disc in order to give some idea of the flavor of his setting. Stylistically, not only are the arias in the Corselli more virtuosic, but they also show how strong the Italian influence had become in Madrid by the third decade of the 18th century.” It had also occurred to me that there is clear evidence of Corselli’s French background (his real name was François Courcelle) in the orchestration of Farnace’s act II aria, “S’arma il cielo” (text not included in the Vivaldi). “Yes,” agreed Savall, “and I think you can also hear it in the March from act I that we have included.”

Jordi Savall’s incursions into the opera house are rare, his only previous recording of an opera I can recall being Martín y Soler’s comic opera Una cosa rara (Astrée 8760). In both that and the present instance, the recordings are taken from live stage performances, suggesting that Savall finds positive benefits in recording in the opera house. I asked him to explain what particular advantages he feels there are to recording opera in this way. “Yes, there are very positive reasons for doing so, and this is the second time recently we have taken advantage of them, because we have also recorded a live production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo (basically a television recording for the BBC, it will be issued on disc next year on the bargain Arte Nova label). So far as Farnace was concerned, we recorded the last two stage performances, but afterwards we had the time to record the end of each act again so we could conclude them in silence, which is much better. We also recorded the act III Quartetto again, because with the different placing of the singers for the stage production, we found the balance on the recording was not good. So we did make a few changes to improve the performance for the recording. But for me the biggest gain in live performances is that you can attain an emotional continuity that is not possible with studio recording. In my view that is far more important than exact vocal precision. You may get little flaws in the intonation and that kind of thing, but perfection is worth sacrificing when you end up with a far more spontaneous and natural performance reflecting the emotional ebb and flow of the piece. You can record oratorio and orchestral music satisfactorily in the studio, but not, I believe, opera. With Orfeo, which had to be recorded in a single day, we did not have quite the same flexibility, and you cannot have ideal conditions every time. But for Farnace we were able to place our microphones wherever we wanted to, and we used some 40 in all. This means that you have an excellent sense of movement around the stage, and that there are many vocal perspectives, which sounds very nice.

“I would like to say something about the edition of the Vivaldi we used. The original 1726 manuscript, which used only castrato and women’s voices, is lost. We therefore used the revised 1731 version (the score of which is housed in Pavia)—in which Vivaldi allotted the part of Farnace to a tenor—as the principal source, while also incorporating the beautiful accompanied recitative (“Figlio, non vi è più scampo,” act I) for Tamiri that belongs to a further revision dating from 1738. I used a baritone, Furio Zanasi, for Farnace because I particularly wanted an Italian singer for the role and, in my view, he was the only singer today capable of encompassing the wide range of emotional expression the role requires. Also at 415 pitch, he is quite capable of singing the role.” “So there was no transposition needed?” I interpose. “Only in the case of a single high G, which we transposed down an octave.”

It is a measure of Savall’s musicality and thoughtfulness that he has taken such care over the preparation of the performances of Farnace, bringing to the whole project a rare integrity and a thoroughness, which he told me, also included looking at a number of other settings of Luccini’s libretto. Our conversation comes to a close with my reminding Jordi Savall of my interview with him for Fanfare in 1999 (23:1), an occasion on which we discussed, among other topics, the William Lawes Consort Setts. I tell him how delighted I am that he has finally felt ready to record them (a review appears elsewhere in this issue). “It was,” he replies simply, “a pleasure.”

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