Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice

The Guardian 80

Jaroussky/Forsythe/Baráth/I Barocchisti/Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera/Fasolis (Erato label)

Gluck, Mozart opines in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, created characters “so lofty they sound as though they shit marble”. Shaffer’s imagined Mozart is not only potty-mouthed but also harsh on his esteemed predecessor – something the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky confirms on this new recording, singing a very human Orpheus whose story can end only in rejoicing, as Amor obligingly restores Euridice to life in the then-traditional happy ending.

Jaroussky is joined by conductor Diego Fasolis and his ensemble I Barocchisti – almost exactly the same forces as for La Storia d’Orfeo, a lovely disc released last year that spliced together bits of Orpheus operas by Monteverdi, Rossi and Sartorio. Here, again, they are doing something slightly different: this is not the familiar version of Gluck’s work heard in Vienna at the 1762 premiere, but the one performed in Naples 12 years later. For Naples, the opera was tweaked to accommodate a higher-voiced Orfeo and to appeal to a fashionable Italian audience, who expected more contrast and more in the way of florid, yet mellifluous, vocal display.