Shirley Suarez/Manreich Artist Managementchris

For the conclusion of “Under-appreciated soprano” month, Chris’s Cache choses Johann Gottlieb Naumann’s Cora och Alonso, a little-known late German (really Swedish) baroque opera whose title lovers are sung by a pair probably too little heard in many households: soprano Inga Kalna and mezzo soprano Bernarda Fink.

Born in Germany in 1741, Naumann became one of many itinerant opera composers active in the 18th century. His career began in Venice where he, like many others, set several Metastasio texts. He then ventured to Scandinavia where he composed operas for Sweden—Cora opened the new Stockholm opera house in 1782—and then Denmark. He ended his career in Dresden near his birthplace, Blasewitz. He composed what came to be known as “The Dresden Amen” which was later used by many later composers including Wagner in Parsifal. Today’s concert follows other baroque operas revived by René Jacobs by German composers like Georg Philipp Telemann and Reinhard Keiser.

I confess my interest in this Naumann rework was originally sparked by the wonderful Argentine-born mezzo Fink who, though she recorded a good many operas, rarely performed them in staged productions. I did manage to catch her in opera but in concert: as Mozart’s Sesto in Paris in 2005 conducted by Jacobs, a long-time champion. Indeed, it was Jacobs-conducted Handel recordings that introduced me to Fink, first as Teodata in Flavio followed by her immensely moving Cornelia in Giulio Cesare. Back when Lincoln Center did in-depth classical programming, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra brought me and Fink together for the first time at Alice Tully Hall on Handel’s birthday in 2003 in a marvelous program that included vocal music by Ferrandini, Bach, and Vivaldi—but no Handel!

Kalna’s baroque credits are many including recordings of Handel’s Rinaldo as Armida under Jacobs and as Romilda in the much more recent Serse starring Franco Fagioli. I’ve only managed to hear the Latvian soprano in person once: in Jacobs’s glorious revival of Telemann’s Der geduldige Sokrates at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2007. A Paris broadcast with the same cast was posted on this site eight years ago.

Naumann: Cora och Alonso (in German)

Cora: Inga Kalna
Zulma: Sandra Moon
Alonso: Bernarda Fink
Ataliba: Johannes Chum
Rocca: Markus Marquardt
Hohepriester: Raimond Nolte

Kammerchor Dresden
Concerto Köln
Conductor: René Jacobs
Semper Oper, Dresden
18 August 2001
Broadcast

Cora can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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