Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1682-1732)
Il trionfo della Fama (1723)
Fama – Nicolò Balducci (countertenor)
Gloria – Sophie Rennert (mezzo-soprano)
Genio – Benedetta Mazzucato (alto)
Destino – Martin Vanberg (tenor)
Valore – Riccardo Novaro (baritone)
NovoCanto & La Stagione Armonica
Accademia Bizantina / Ottavio Dantone
Italian text with English translation
rec. live, 5-7 August 2024, Haus der Musik, Innsbruck, Austria
cpo 555 725-2 [2 CDs: 81]
Just as Mozart composed La clemenza di Tito for the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia, so Francesco Conti’s serenata Il trionfo della Fama was composed for a similar, earlier act of homage on the part of the Bohemian estates to that monarch’s grandfather, Charles VI, on his name day in 1723. Although he had been Emperor since 1711, he was now without a male heir, making the Habsburg dynasty’s position insecure, and so a tour of Bohemia was devised to shore up Charles’s power. Conti’s work was one of several similar serenatas and operas in which allegorical characters pay tribute to, and extol the virtues of, the monarch on that tour, standing in a tradition of such compositions which had been cultivated at the Habsburg court for some decades by composers such as Fux and Caldara.
Usually the panegyric came in the concluding licenza, where the monarch is finally named specifically. But in this serenata the five named characters or virtues expressly laud Charles throughout, observing how all the world’s continents acknowledge his greatness and make obeisance. No doubt if the court of Donald Trump were less philistine than it is and he knew anything about Baroque culture, the genre of the serenata would be recognised as ripe for revival.
It might be hard now, in our less obsequious age, to hear unironically such lines as “the great ruler, invincible and unique, of whose valour [Fame has] spread word throughout this vast universe”. But the performers here take Conti’s setting seriously, without exaggerating its variety of standard Baroque musical Affekts, of which the composer makes reasonably imaginative use, despite the libretto’s undramatic and limited eulogistic purpose. Even though Conti is sometimes given to predictable musical sequences in the arias, Ottavio Dantone and Accademia Bizantina invest the score with compelling vitality and spirit. They bring panache to the festive sections of the Overture – complete with trumpets and timpani – but inhabit soberly the more serious contrasts which are written into the score. A jocular, garrulous bassoon comes to the fore in Valour’s aria ‘L’Asia crolla, Africa teme’, setting off the more earnest part of the baritone voice and revealing the colour of Conti’s music. The massed choral forces of NovoCanto and La Stagione Armonica – not the mere five soloists in coro – add a note of resounding joy in the handful of numbers allotted to them.
Although the serenata’s moral is to advise the ruler of working in concert with the various allegories represented, Fame is given the last word among them, in the licenza, and is the virtue extolled in the final chorus as the work seeks to spread Charles’s reputation among the nations. Nicolò Balducci imparts that figure’s message with a bright facility and eloquence, his generous vibrato adding expressiveness to the admirable evenness of tone he evinces across fast volleys of notes, matched by the instrumental ensemble.
Sophie Rennert is decorous, even coy as Glory, observing the Emperor’s renown in her second aria with yearning thoughtfulness. She and Benedetta Mazzucato’s quite rarefied sounding Genius come together and open out for an exuberant, full-blooded account of the work’s only duet. Their florid sequences and suspensions interweave with playful strings and oboes in a movement of almost seductive erotic abandon that could be one of Handel’s Italian duets. Tenor Martin Vanberg is somewhat reserved and matter of fact in the two arias for Destiny, while Riccardo Novaro gives a warm, well-rounded performance in the pair for Valour, the first calling for some virtuosic wide leaps in the vocal line which Novaro enlivens with quite vivid vibrato.
Rarely can the dross of political sycophancy have been turned into such artistic gold.
Curtis Rogers
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