Haydn: Orlando Paladino

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Released on 20/06/2014 by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
Main artists: Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Genre: Classical

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Haydn's operas lag substantially behind the rest of his output in terms of popularity. It wasn't that he was disinclined to write for voices, as anyone who has heard his late choral masterpieces will testify. More likely, the problem is that the formally simple, melodically oriented language of serious opera in his time offered little scope for an essentially comic musical thinker who traded in the foiling of formal expectations. Orlando Paladino, one of his few comic vocal works, would seem to avoid this difficulty, but it has frustrated audiences with its bizarre plot, a mixture of comic and serious elements in which passion suddenly devolves into broad farce. The opera even bears the subtitle of "dramma eroicomico," or heroic-comic drama.
This recording by the veteran historical-instrument conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Wien sorts things out on several levels. The booklet makes clear that the libretto's roots are in Lodovico Ariosto's fanciful epic poem "Orlando furioso," a tale that audiences knew for centuries but now have almost forgotten. The booklet compares its level of familiarity to that of Grimm's Fairy Tales for modern hearers. A better comparison might be the Star Trek television series and the parodies that have surfaced since it was aired -- Haydn's opera is a comic take-off on an equally comic original. The singers have small-scale voices that would have been right at home in Haydn's little theater in Esterháza Castle. Patricia Petibon has a gentle, girlish sound that's just right for the heroine Angelica (she's supposed to be Chinese, for reasons that are never explained), whom two suitors pursue through a fantastical landscape. The baritone role goes to an inhabitant of this landscape, Rodomonte, whom the booklet describes aptly as a medieval version of the Terminator: he wants to kill anyone he sees, and his arias are about how angry he is. Baritone Christian Gerhaher catches the subtle exaggeration through which Haydn brings life to this character. Harnoncourt avoids the brittle quality of many of his performances, bringing a dry wit to the proceedings. Orlando Paladino isn't going to knock The Marriage of Figaro out of the Classical comic-operatic number-one spot, but this well-measured, informative recording is a good place to start with an obscure corner of Haydn's output.

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Haydn: Orlando Paladino

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

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Orlando Paladino - Dramma eroicomico, H. 28/11 (Joseph Haydn)

Act I: Sinfonia