In the Mozartfest's penultimate concert, Wolfgang Amadeus ceded to Italian operatic arias, apparently unseen and perhaps unsung for nearly 300 years.
The archive at Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire, had been the unlikely hiding place for a collection of 50 Italian arias, probably assembled by a tourist on a visit to carnival Venice in 1717. While the collection's discovery in 2002 excited a flurry of scholarly research, this first public airing in modern times of pieces by Vivaldi and Giovanni Porta was received with well-mannered rather than wild enthusiasm by the Bath audience, prompting wry smiles from conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini. His smiles recognised, too, that they were slightly flummoxed by the appearance of contralto Sara Mingardo in full male evening attire. Had her arias been confined to castrato roles, the sartorial gesture might have been more appropriate, but it was confusing when she sang resolutely female heroines. Moreover, she was clearly constrained by the garb and that, together with her being on the same level as the audience, meant some of her velvet tone was lost.
It was largely Alessandrini - only partly deferring to Mingardo in lounge suit and Beau Brummel blue satin tie - whose direction of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in lively but profoundly sensitive style, ensured performances by turn exuberant and affecting.
The opening sinfonia and three arias by Porta, from his opera La Costanza Combattuta in Amore stood up well. Porta, fellow Venetian and slightly older colleague of Vivaldi at the Ospedale della Pietà, openly emulated the very contemporary Vivaldian style with its rhythmic verve and flowing melody. In the aria, Sangue, Strage, Morte e Guerra, the radiant Susan Gritton showed that Porta could inject fire into the music, too. Arias from Vivaldi's opera La Costanza Trionfante Degli Amori e de gl'Odii, also from the Berkeley folios, had the edge over Porta, now as then, while the Handel duet from Giulio Cesare showed a true master's hand. A fascinating if not particularly revelatory evening.
