NANCY, France-It is an event not soon to be forgotten: a demanding opera from the early 18th century performed by countertenors in five of its six roles, a remarkable demonstration of the surge in prominence of this voice type.
Not so long ago there might not have been five countertenors in the world who could sing this kind of music credibly. Now at the Opéra National de Lorraine five are assembled under one roof.
Yet that's really not what made the event so special. The critical thing is that they were singing in an opera by Leonardo Vinci, one of the great forgotten masters in opera history (and one not to be confused with another Leonardo). Not much is known about the personal life of the Naples-trained composer, although that he was reputed to have been poisoned by the family of a noblewoman with whom he had an affair soon after the 1730 triumph in Rome of his last opera, ‘‘Artaserse.'' He was probably 36.
But the quality of his operas ea rned him an enormous reputation, and Vinci had the further good fortune to set several librettos by the Italian poet Metastasio just as he was coming into vogue. Whether you respond to Vinci depends on whether you buy into the idea that a succession of da capo arias - one after the other interspersed with secco recitative - can add up to a convincing opera, a leap that, despite the popularity of Handel operas, some still can't quite bring themselves to make.
The audience witnessing ‘‘Artaserse'' here didn't seem to have any trouble. One sequence in particular demonstrated that in an effective opera of this type arias aren't just randomly strung together. At the end of Act 1, Arbace - falsely accused of murdering the Persian king Serse but widely believed guilty - is condemned in three successive exit arias by his father Artabano (who is the real culprit attempting a coup d'état), his sister Semira, and even his lover, Serse's daughter Mandane, who feel s compelled to hate Arbace but acknowledges to herself she cannot do so.
Left alone, Arbace sings a superb aria, ‘‘Vo solcando in mar crudele,'' in which he likens himself to one on a storm-tossed sea. The audience couldn't wait for the close of the orchestral postlude before bursting into applause at what was in fact the end of the act. It wasn't just that the aria was brilliantly sung but also that it was so effective as an endpoint bringing the release of tension that had steadily built up.
A share of the credit goes to Metastasio, ever resourceful in contriving emotional situations for characters to express themselves in his elegant poetic diction. Yet besides knowing what he was doing dramatically, Vinci was hailed by 18th-century commentators for pioneering a new musical style that moved away from Baroque intricacy to cultivate melodic grace and freshness. This is immediately recognizable in ‘‘Artaserse'' and presumably was a big factor in h is popularity. He took some of the first steps in the direction of musical Classicism.
Happily, the singers brought off the bold experiment of a nearly all-countertenor cast with panache, but I wouldn't recommend that others emulate it. The idea comes from the contemporaneous practice in Rome - where church influence was strong - of performing operas with all-male casts. Apparently it was thought morally important to keep women away from the sinful theatrical profession, even at the expense of using sexually neutered replacements.
But castratos and countertenors are not the same thing, so it can't be claimed we were given a ‘‘period instrument'' performance, as it were. Moreover, actual women in the roles of Semira and Mandane would have supplied welcome tonal variety. In part because I wanted these women to sound like women, I found the performances by Valer Barna Sabadus and Max Emanuel Cencic less satisfactory than those of their brethren taki ng male roles.
Franco Fagioli, in pure, resonant voice, gives an outstanding performance as Arbace, a role written for the great Carestini, famous for his Handel roles. Philippe Jaroussky's bright voice serves handsomely for the music of Artaserse, a son of Serse and the king's ultimate successor. I was also impressed by Yuriy Mynenko's firm singing as Megabise, a general and cohort of Artabano in the attempted coup. The one non-countertenor was Daniel Behle, a tenor, who gave a fervent portrayal of the villainous Artabano.
The conductor Diego Fasolis shows real enthusiasm for the score and has the measure of every aria, drawing brilliant playing from the period-instrument Concerto Köln, not least when trumpets and drums enter the picture. Recitative accompaniments are less idiosyncratic than on the companion recording on Virgin Classics, which sometimes oddly include bassoon. But in some arias the inappropriate baroque guitar supplants theorbo.
It did not bode well for the production by Silviu Purcarete when, upon entering the auditorium, one saw on the open-curtain stage a drawing by the other Leonardo: It spells trouble when a play on the composer's name is necessary for inspiration. And disappointing it turned out to be. Mr. Purcarete seemed to have the idea, reinforced by Helmut Stürmer's sets, that a movie was being made by a crew that controlled the action of the singers; fortunately the idea intruded far less often than it might have. Mr. Stürmer's costumes, although bizarre, are lavish, yet frequent costume changes make it hard to keep the characters straight.
The opera runs through Nov. 10 in Nancy. The performance on Nov. 10 will be streamed on Mezzo Live HD. After that it travels to Vienna, Lausanne, Paris and Cologne, where, with no great loss, it will be performed in concert form.
Theater an der Wien, Vienna: Nov. 20; Opéra de Lausanne: Nov. 23 and 25; Théâtre des Champs-Élysà ©es, Paris: Dec. 11 and 13; Oper Köln, Cologne: Dec. 17, 19 and 29
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