FROM ROME: From December 2009 until March 2023, the late Giuseppe Pennisi sent us regular reports from the Italian opera and classical music scene.
Joseph Haydn: L'Incontro Improvviso
555 327-2 (cpo, CD, 2 discs)
DDD
FIRST RELEASE (7 July 2023)
Playing time: 56'42"/55'01" - TT 111'43"
Tracks: 20 + 20
Booklet pages: 92
℗ 2023 cpo
© 2023 cpo
Main country of recording: Austria
Country of manufacture: Germany
Reviewer: Gerald Fenech
Review of Joseph Haydn: L'Incontro Improvviso published on 23 July 2023
Bernhard Berchtold, tenor
Elisabeth Breuer, soprano
Anna Willerding, soprano
Annastina Malm, mezzo-soprano
Markus Miesenberger, tenor
Rafael Fingerlos, baritone
Michael Wagner, bass
L'Orfeo Barockorchester
Michi Gaigg, conductor
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809):
L'incontro improvviso
CD1
1 Sinfonia
2-20 Act I
CD2
1-12 Act II
13-20 Act III
Joseph Haydn's opera L'incontro improvviso, which belongs to the genre of Turkish opera, was successfully performed at the Donaufestwochen 2019 in Grein in the castle courtyard with the L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra conducted by Michi Gaigg and is now finally available on CD. Mostly, the 'Turkish opera' is about the liberation of previously kidnapped women from the seraglio, the palace of a sultan or other ruler. Mozart's Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail has become most famous. Haydn's opera is set in Ottoman-ruled Egyptian Cairo and has gone down in the annals of music history as another 'abduction' and, moreover, it keeps pace with the most outstanding sound creations of its time, sometimes even outstripping them by several lengths. A special feature of the score, which distinguishes it from those of Mozart's Abduction or the incidental music to Voltaire's Zaïre by the 'Salzburg Haydn' Johann Michael, is the noticeably less militarily connoted use of the so-called 'Turkish music'. The latter - due to a special type of instrumentation - sometimes bears clear traits of Ottoman festive or dance music, as it was used, among other things, in the ceremonies of Middle Eastern dervish orders.
Recorded 5-8 August 2019 and 17 September 2020 at Stift Waldhausen, Strudengau, Austria.