(ESZTERHAZA OPERA CYCLE ''HAYDN'') L'Incontro Improvviso

ESZTERHÁZA OPERA CYCLE HAYDN
"L'INCONTRO IMPROVVISO"
Hob: XXVIII no.6

Zoghby / Jones / H. Ahnsjö
Trimarchi / LuxonPrescott / Scarpinati
Baldin / Devlin / Marshall

Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne
ANTAL DORATI

Notes & Reviews

There is a lot of very funny comedy in this delightful opera, with delectable performances by Trimarchi and Luxon. Haydn also lavishes some wonderful music on the serious characters, including a spectacular martial aria showing Ahnsjö is at his finest.

   L'incontro improvviso (on a plot previously used by Gluck) is a comic abduction opera exotically set in Turkey, though unlike Mozart's Entführung six years later it is the lady who is the chief engineer of her escape. There is a lot of very funny comedy—a gibberish begging scene and a patter-song in praise of the dervish life (Trimarchi on boisterous form, as he is in all the comedy parts he takes in these operas, though Luxon here, as his foil, is equally good)—but Haydn also lavishes some wonderful music on the serious characters. The heroine has a big bravura showpiece in Act 2 that became famous in the eighteenth century (Zoghby is impressive in this, but not so exact in her intonation in a florid Act 1 aria); as her lover, Ahnsjö has a number of plums, the most spectacular of which is a martial aria with trumpets and drums in which he negotiates huge leaps and a heroic top D; Della Jones also shows great agility; and Marshall's clean fioriture in two exacting arias are delicious. But for me the gem of the work is the women's trio (with two cors anglais adding colour to the orchestra) in Act 1, touching heights of Mozartian sublimity. A virtuoso aria for Devlin from Acide e Galatea is included in a supplement to this disc, and Haydn's comic male trio for Cimarosa's Circe is another delight, though goodness knows what it has to do with the Circe story as we know it.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone [6/1993]

    
   In eighteenth-century Vienna the abduction opera involving Moorish enslavement and torture because quite a cult. The greatest instance is Mozart's Entführung, but his example of the genre from Haydn is worthy of comparison, with its very similar story; the result is musically delightful... Benjamin Luxon and Domenico Trimarchi are delectable... Claes Ahnsjö is at his finest...

-- The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs [2003/4 edition]