|
Having for years divided his time between Berkeley (California), where he
taught at the celebrated University and Europe, where he plays and conducts
concerts and operas, Curtis now devotes full time to performing, principally
dramatic music from Monteverdi to Mozart. An article on him in "Orpheus"
(Berlin) was titled "The avant-gardist of early music". In fact, already as a
young student in the '50s, he was the first modern harpsichordist to confront
the problems of Louis Couperin's unmeasured preludes for harpsichord.
Shortly thereafter, he became a pioneer in the return to original instruments
and Baroque performance practises in early operas. In collaboration with
Shirley Wynne, he was the first to revive a Rameau opera with period
instruments and authentic choreography. His radically new "reconstruction" of
Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, first heard in Berkeley in the '60s,
marked the first time in three centuries that a late dramatic work of
Monteverdi was performed as intended by the composer, i.e. without the
modern orchestration still often mistakenly thought to be "necessary". He
commissioned both the first authentic chitarrone (Warnock) and the first
chromatic (split-key) harpsichord (Dowd) to be built in modern times, and
taught his singers to follow the tuning systems of the period (with pure major
thirds). Poppea was then mounted with great success in Amsterdam, Brussels,
Spoleto, Innsbruck and Venice (where it was nationally televised from La
Fenice, and recorded by Fonit Cetra). A landmark performance of Handel's
Admeto in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw (recorded by EMI and then, thirty
years later, reissued on CD by Virgin Classics), was hailed as the first
successful attempt to revive Handel's opera orchestra, including the now
widely-accepted but then unheard-of use of the archlute. Other prize-
winning recordings included Stradella's Susanna, Cavalli's L’Erismena, and
Bach's Goldberg variations (reissued on CD by EMI), French and English suites
(Teldec CD), and about thirty other harpsichord discs.
He has always been in the forefront of the movement to enlarge and revivify
the static operatic repertory. A lavishly authentic revival of Landi's Il
Sant'Alessio in Rome and Innsbruck in 1981 was an unexpected and stunning
success, as were three different productions of the first Jommelli revival in
modern times: La schiava liberata (Amsterdam, Naples, and Berkeley). Other
remarkably successful "reconstructions" have included Cesti's Il Tito, his
Semiramide, and Handel's Rodrigo, which Curtis conducted in Innsbruck,
Madeira and Lisbon in 1984 for the first time since Handel himself presented
it to the Medici in 1707. Francesco Sacrati's La finta pazza, was given its first
revival in three centuries in a specially-constructed Baroque theatre in
Campo Pisani, Venice in a production by La Fenice in July, 1987.
Among better-known but nonetheless unjustly neglected repertory, he has
been a particular champion of Gluck's Armide, of which he has led three very
different productions, including one with his own orchestra of period
instruments at the Theatre Musical de Paris (Chatelet). He was also
responsible for three different productions of Handel's Ariodante (La Scala '81
and '82 with Pier Luigi Pizzi, Innsbruck '82, and Wexford '85), and the first
modern revival of Vivaldi's Il Giustino, at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, later
taken to Versailles, Venice, Milan, Buenos Aires, Houston and Ludwigshafen.
With a different cast, he performed it again in Solothurn in 2000 and
Rotterdam, De Doelen in 2001, where it was recorded for Virgin.
He conducted the Portughese premieres, in Lisbon, of Handel’s Fernando
(the original version, set in Portugal, of Sosarme), Monteverdi's Il ritorno di
Ulisse and Mozart's Il re pastore, the latter staged and designed by Pier Luigi
Pizzi. His new performing edition of Monteverdi's Il ritorno di Ulisse, first
performed in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, then staged in Siena in '91 and
released the following year as a Nuova Era CD and revived in '93 for the
Festival of Dresden, has recently been published by Novello (2002) and staged
for the Oslo Chamber Music Festival in 2006. For La Fenice, shortly before it
burned, he conducted the first performances since the 18th century of Buovo
d'Antona (designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi), Goldoni's opera buffa set to music by
Traetta, later issued on CD by Opus 111.
His madrigal group was invited by Werner Herzog to be protagonists in his
1996 documentary film on Gesualdo. Their CDs of madrigals by Michelangelo
Rossi, Antonio Lotti, and the complete duets of Monteverdi on Virgin Classics
(Diapason d'or 1999) have been highly praised by the international press, as
have their subsequent recordings of two 17th-century dramatic oratorios: Il
Sansone by Benedetto Ferrari (Diapason d'or 2000) and Assalonne punito by
P.A. Ziani (Choc de la Musique).
In the summer of 2000, he conducted a new production of Radamisto for
the Halle Handel festival and, for the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Handel's
superb but practically unknown opera Arminio, which has appeared to
international acclaim on CD for Virgin. The Handel Society of London voted it
best Handel recording of the year 2001.
In 2002 he conducted Handel's Giulio Cesare in Monte Carlo, Deidamia in
Siena (recorded by Virgin and awarded both the Preis der deutschen
Schallplattenkritik as best opera CD of 2003 and the 2004 International
Handel recording Prize), and a program of Handel arias called "La Maga
Abbandonata" for the Resonanzen Festival in Vienna (Grosse Saal,
Konzerthaus), subsequently a best-selling CD for BMG Classics, who also
released the opera Lotario. More recently he and Il Complesso Barocco have
recorded Handel’s operatic duets (“Amor e gelosia”) with Patrizia Ciofi and
Joyce DiDonato, as well as his operas Radamisto and Fernando, and a
masterpiece by the Viennese court composer Francesco Conti, the oratorio
David (Virgin Classics). The list of highly-acclaimed Handel opera
performances and recordings continues with Rodelinda, Floridante, Tolomeo,
Ezio and Alcina (Deutsche Gramophon Archiv).
With the collaboration of Alessandro Ciccolini, who made a brilliant
reconstruction of the missing parts to Vivaldi’s newly rediscovered
Motezuma, Il Complesso Barocco also made the first recording (DGG Archiv)
as well as staged performances in Lisbon, Wiesbaden, and Italy (available in
DVD from Dynamic). In 2006 the same team produced the first modern
reprise of Vivaldi’s Ercole su’l Termodonte, designed and staged by John
Pascoe for the Spoleto Festival. For the 50th anniversary of this festival in
2007 Curtis was also invited to conduct a new production by Pascoe of
Handel’s Ariodante (both productions also available in DVD from Dynamic).
Other new recordings with Curtis conducting Il Complesso Barocco include
Haydn Operatic arias and Overtures with Anna Bonitatibus, Handel arias for
Carestini with Vesselina Kasarova, Porpora operatic arias and sinfonie with
Karina Gauvin, and Gluck’s Ezio with Sonia Prina, Ann Hallenberg, Max
Cencic, and Topi Lehtipuu.
|
