Arias for Benucci

Matthew Rose / Jonathan Cohen / Arcangelo

(CD - Hyperion #CDA 68078)

Review by James Manheim

The program on this release by baritone Matthew Rose is innovative and useful in a couple of different ways. First, although performers have sometimes tried to bring 18th century opera to life by programming arias written for specific singers, this has usually been applied to countertenors. They were generally the stars, it's true, but they weren't the only ones. The Italian comic baritone Francesco Benucci was one of the leads of Joseph II's Italian opera company, the original Figaro, and the original Leporello in Don Giovanni in the Vienna premiere (the second production). Mozart would have known him well and written music with his capabilities in mind. Better still, other composers wrote for Benucci as well, and by programming arias from these works, Rose gets unusually close to Mozart's cultural orbit. Mozart followed the aria types of these other composers and even quoted Vicente Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara in the supper scene of Don Giovanni. For the serious Mozart-ian, this album is undiscovered gold, and about the only complaint is that Rose, although he gets all the notes, is sometimes working hard enough to do so the comic spirit of the music is squeezed out. He's not helped by vague, spatially inappropriate church sound from Hyperion, which tends to swallow him up. Nevertheless, this release will take the confirmed fan of Mozart's operas to new depths.

Track Listing

Title/Composer Performer Time Stream
Il re Teodoro in Venezia
1 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 04:45 Amazon
La grotta di Trofonio
2 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 06:33 Amazon
Una cosa rara
3 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 03:38 Amazon
4 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 05:26 Amazon
Così fan tutte, K588
5 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 03:19 Amazon
Una cosa rara
6 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 04:12 Amazon
Don Giovanni, K527
7 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 06:01 Amazon
8 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 00:30 Amazon
9 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 05:41 Amazon
Axur, re d'Ormus
10 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 02:24 Amazon
I Contrattempi
11 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 03:06 Amazon
12 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 05:05 Amazon
Le nozze di Figaro, K492
13 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 04:13 Amazon
14 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 00:47 Amazon
15 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 02:37 Amazon
16 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 01:25 Amazon
17 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 02:41 Amazon
18 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 01:05 Amazon
19 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 03:48 Amazon
Così fan tutte, K588
20 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 04:46 Amazon
Restati quà! - Per queste tue manine K 540b
21 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 01:25 Amazon
22 Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen / Matthew Rose 03:28 Amazon
blue highlight denotes track pick