Period performance pioneer William Christie and Les Arts Florissants launch their new in-house record label with a spectacular recording of George Frideric Handel’s 1745 oratorio Belshazzar, released in a fancy 3-CD box.
This grand English oratorio, brimming with gorgeous arias and goosebump-inducing choruses, also has a strange resonance in Toronto this fall, starting with the very first scene, in which the dissolute Belshazzar sings, “Let order vanish: liberty alone, unbounded liberty the night shall crown,” and his mother Nitocris replies: “Who can endure the unbridled license … where nought prevails but riotous excess, the noisy idiot laugh, the jest obscene, the scurril taunt, and drunken midnight brawl.”
Gosh, sounds a lot like Toronto’s modern-day mayor.
Like our own story, we know Belshazzar’s is not going to end well when Mom sings: “Alas! Then must I see my son headlong to sure destruction run?”
Well, yes.
Handel concludes the oratorio with order being restored after Belshazzar is slain, and the powerfully evocative music, so hyperactive and percussive a few minutes earlier, turns to a beautiful, tuneful calm before bursting into musical fireworks of celebration.
All five of the main soloists are wonderful, from Allan Clayton’s Belshazzar to Jonathan Lemalu’s Gobrias. Rosemary Joshua is perfect as Nitocris and countertenor Iestyn Davies is remarkable as the prophet Daniel.
The intelligently produced box includes a comprehensive booklet with full libretto, as well as a companion booklet with an essay by Jean Schenoz that provides historical context for Handel’s Babylonian odyssey.
When Les Arts Florissants turned 30 three years ago, Christie & co. launched a huge multimedia project to collect everything the organization has done — new editions of baroque works, CDs, videos and opera production archives — in one online reference, Arts Flo Media.
This site contains an amazing amount of information as well as listening, a powerful tribute to Christie, who has probably done more for the period performance of baroque opera than anyone else in living memory. Unfortunately, the site is also poorly designed — more clever than useful. The fancy-looking Arts Florissants website is no better; I couldn’t find Belshazzar on either site.
Instead, click here for more information and audio samples.
This is the French promo video for Belshazzar:
John Terauds