Who knows if we'll ever learn what projects the late Alan Curtis, the out specialist in 17th- and 18th-century music, had underway when he died suddenly in July? But it's hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to him than the two nearly simultaneously released recent recordings of Agostino Steffani's Niobe, Regina di Tebe, an opera that had its premiere in Munich in 1688. These are not Curtis'; as far as I can tell, the only Steffani Curtis left behind is a fine recording of some of the vocal duets. But a major thrust of his career was the exploration of the rich vein of vocal music by the composers who came between Monteverdi (and his Venetian colleagues) and Handel. Steffani, most of whose operas were composed in and for Germany, is a key figure leading to the German apprenticeship of Handel a decade later. Cecilia Bartoli, in Mission, exhumed Steffani, but these new recordings bring him back to life.
The complete recording of Niobe by the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) Orchestra (Erato), under lutenists Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, has Curtis written all over it, only beginning with Karina Gauvin, a singer whose career he was instrumental in launching and with whom he worked extensively, magisterial in the title role. All the musicians on this Niobe, the directors in particular, evidence the movement Curtis spearheaded, even when they disagree with him. They share Curtis' drive not just to unearth this overlooked music, but to set it free from the square conducting of other early early-opera exponents such as Raymond Leppard, and the sometimes fantastical re-workings of the scores by the likes of Rene Jacobs in his early years as a leader. No one picks up a baton, yet the music moves and breathes.
The BEMF Niobe is that choice product of today's music-business dynamic: a studio recording (Bremen, 2013) based on a previously staged production, with only minor changes of cast. Steffani's uncommonly rich score �" with its array of exquisitely deployed wind instruments, including brass, in addition to the customary string and continuo complements �" is realized with subtlety to match its splendors, and the Ovid-derived story, motivated by one magical event after another (including an earthquake), plays out with plausibility and psychological depth.
Although the brilliance of Niobe is not all about the voices, the singing on this set could carry it if it were. As Niobe moves from one form of illusion or disillusion to another, only finally to appear fully human and vulnerable, so Gauvin's portrayal moves from element to alloy, vocally, until sound and word are fused in lines so simple they prepare you for the moment at which they are broken, stopped, by Niobe's death.
But in Steffani's musically variegated handling of Luigi Orlandi's libretto, it's her once and future king Anfione who takes and holds musical center stage, in ironic defiance of the fact that it is he who, in weariness and political disillusion, steps down from the throne. It's a role that openly gay countertenor Philippe Jarrousky seizes and makes his most important role creation on disc. In this complex role, he excels in every vocal task assigned to a singer of his voice type, including vaulting, crisp coloratura. This being a 17th-century opera, not all of his 10 big numbers are fully developed da capo arias, as in Handel, but encompass music from the arioso to the through-composed solo scene. The clear standout among them is his first-act musing about the "music of the spheres," which Anfione takes to contemplating in early retirement from the throne. It's as magical a scene as there is to be found in music of this era, with pungent strings coursing their way through soft dissonances as they sound out the music of the stars and planets and their intersecting, overlapping meanings. Jarrousky's firm but nimble treble hovers over and threads its way through this music in strains of the sheerest transport. When, in the aria, he sings, "Friendly spheres [Sfere amice], now give my lips the harmony of your rotation," the melding of word and note is complete.
Some of the most exquisite vocal music in Niobe is of just such aching simplicity. The singers in the lower ranges also deliver. Aaron Sheehan, as Clearte, Jesse Blumberg, as Poliferno, and Colin Balzer, as Tiberino fill out, round out, the musical spheres of the score.
Amada Forsythe, the resourceful and sweet-voice Manto, sings the same role in the "other" Niobe, a live recording (Opus Arte) from the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, from 2010. While that puts the performance date slightly ahead of BEMF's, and the CD box is not shy in calling it the "world premiere live recording," it comes in second not just by release date but by the fact that, although also on three CDs, it cuts a full hour of the music. It's a peculiar distrust of a score that wouldn't likely happen with musicians, and a house, where this were more typical fare. The lesson is: the least successful way to make an opera feel shorter is to cut it.
There's considerably less vocal magic when Jacek Laszczkowski contemplates the music of spheres, but the enterprise as a whole, supported by the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble under Thomas Henglebrock, is serious and conscientious. If BEMF's recording had not against all odds come out first, we'd be glad to have it. The always insightful Veronique Gens, more of the Christophe Rousset "school," is a compelling Niobe, and the straight, recently married, wonderful countertenor Iestyn Davies shines as Creonte. But the theater acoustics lack resonance (except for stage noise).
As several commentators have pointed out, Steffani's Niobe is an opera "about" the power of music. Thanks to generations of musician-scholars from Curtis to the folks at BEMF, we can feel that power, immediately and across the centuries.