There is a special tone to the music of Handel’s Italian years – a freshness, a boldness of invention, a novelty in the textures and the lines. It distinguishes his first Italian opera, Rodrigo, just as it does, say, the Dixit Dominus. Rodrigo, or to give it its original title, Vincer se stesso e la maggior vittoria (‘To conquer oneself is the greater victory’), was written in 1707 for the Medici court at Florence (the Medici had had a share in inviting Handel to Italy). The main part of Handel’s autograph score survives, but a number of items are missing, and there are doubts about Handel’s intentions as regards others. After 1707 it was not performed until, believe it or not, 1984, when, shortly after some of the missing material was rediscovered, Alan Curtis revived it at Innsbruck; for the bicentenary revival in London the following year, by Handel Opera, still more of the original was in place. You may nevertheless recognize bits of it: Handel quarried Rodrigo for several of his later, more familiar works. This recording restores all that survives of the lyrical music, with one item composed in a more-or-less Handelian manner by Curtis and other Handel music imported to fit the original text. Curiously, the dances (which have been recorded several times, by Barbirolli, Lewis and others) are not included here, and – presumably in the interest of keeping the set to two CDs – there are many large cuts in the recitative. This is a pity. I don’t really have more than vague in-principle objections to the omission of dry recitative, especially when it is as abundant as it is in Rodrigo, but here some quite important sections are omitted and the often very close succession of lyrical numbers gives a slightly misleading impression of what the opera really is.
Still, that is a relatively minor point, and the recording of this fine, often very moving and mostly inspiriting piece is to be warmly welcomed. Rodrigo is about dynastic doings in Visigothic Spain. Like most Italian operas of its time, it is essentially a succession of arias, mostly shorter ones than those of Handel’s mature operas, although there are several that are extended and fully developed – the two act finales, for example: Act 1 ends with a magnificent virtuoso piece for Esilena, the heroine and Rodrigo’s queen, with florid violin writing (here the da capo seems to be shortened, although Curtis disavows any such cuts). Already, as so often with Handel, much of the finest music comes in Act 2, with a pair of arias for Esilena (the second a furious outburst), and there are further purple patches towards the end of that act and at the beginning of the next where, with Rodrigo and Esilena apparently facing death, Handel finds that marvellous vein of pathos familiar in his later operas. Alan Curtis, a man of the theatre, keeps the score moving along at a good pace. He conducts, as it were, from a seventeenth-century standpoint, with a flexibility over accent and metre that allows the music to move unusually freely. Yet he is rather dully predictable in his use of cadential rallentandos (unlike McGegan, who tends to eschew them altogether in Handel), and there are points where the orchestral discipline is a shade loose. He gives the singers a good deal of time in some of the recitative, and lets them elaborate the da capo sections rather more fully, and with less concern for the original line, than one sometimes would wish.
Of the singers, the most appealing by far is the one who gets much of the best music. Sandrine Piau sings Esilena’s part beautifully, with much attention to detail, to timing and to phrasing, as well as with fluency and with a richness of tone I do not remember hearing from her before. She is deeply affecting in the pathetic music of Act 3. Gloria Banditelli makes a sturdy Rodrigo, direct and accurate (listen to the vigour of ‘Vanne in campo’, in Act 1), and very controlled in the fast semiquaver passages. She gives an elegant account of ‘Dolce amore’ at the end of Act 2, one of the arias that Handel later recycled. Elena Cecchi Fedi perhaps overdoes the characterization of Florinda as a shrew, singing shrilly at times and with rather more shouting and pouting than is consistent with musical enjoyment. Her first aria is really bashed out, which is not as it should be. But the singing is powerful and brilliant in its way. Roberta Invernizzi, as Evanco sings musically and expressively (try the little siciliano aria at the beginning of Act 3). I thought Caterina Calvi, who sings Rodrigo’s general, Fernando, capable but underpowered. Rufus Muller, whom I have often admired before, turns in a confident but rather ordinary performance as Florinda’s brother Giuliano. There is competent and spirited playing from Il Complesso Barocco, and there are excellent notes from Anthony Hicks and Curtis himself. I am delighted to have a recording at last of this attractive work.'