Falk von Traubenberg
Although not every presenter has announced their season, so far it seems that more time will pass before Polish countertenor sensation Jakub Józef Orliński returns to New York City, his home while he was attending Juilliard. So, Chris’s Cache offers him in a broadcast of Tolomeo, one of his specialties.
When most people think of a Handel Tolomeo, they likely recall Cleopatra’s evil brother, the villain of Giulio Cesare, but in today’s opera, he’s the hero of one of the five operas the composer presented between 1726 and 1728 when his company had under contract the two most famous prima donnas of the day: the equivalent of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi starring in the same opera!
Orliński’s role was created by Senesino, a leading castrato and long-time Handel collaborator. For years he and soprano Francesca Cuzzoni premiered many of the composer’s best works including the incredible trio of Cesare, Rodelinda, and Tamerlano.
To create an even bigger sensation, Handel secured for several seasons Faustina Bordoni, whose voice we’d probably term a mezzo soprano today. After Bordoni (wife of rival composer Johann Adolph Hasse) joined, London audiences heard Alessandro, Admeto, Riccardo Primo, Siroe, and finally Tolomeo, all works in which the two leading female roles were painstakingly accorded equal prominence.
The Cuzzoni-Bordoni operas are often seen as weaker than those that came immediately before, but each of the five features strong writing nonetheless to sometimes weakish libretti—Admeto (a lighter spin on the Alceste myth than Gluck produced) remains my favorite of the five.
“Stille amare,” the hero’s best-known aria, has been embraced by two American countertenors who sang it often at competitions, namely Anthony Roth Costanzo
and Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen.
Perhaps having three names foretells a Tolomeo affinity, so it’s then no surprise that the opera is one that Orliński has performed not only on this 2023 concert tour with Il Pomo d’Oro, but also in a staging at the Karlsruhe Handel Festival.
A year after the Pomo d’Oro tour, rival Franco Fagioli also performed Tolomeo across Europe. Long one of the world’s most celebrated countertenors, Fagioli is only finally made his NYC debut last month at L’Alliance.
Orliński tours widely giving many concerts and recitals. However, he last gave a solo concert locally at tiny Weill Recital Hall in early 2019. His most recent New York appearance was in 2021: his (not particularly successful) debut in Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice. However, he did give a brief U.S. tour with Pomo d’Oro just last year.
Next season, he’ll be again appearing as Athamas in Amsterdam in the Claus Guth production of Semele which premiered in Munich and is apparently still scheduled to come to the Met in a future season. He’ll also be taking on for the first time the title role in Giulio Cesare for an extensive European concert tour with Sabine Devieilhe as his Cleopatra. It’s a project likely to end up on Erato CDs as both singers are Warner/Erato artists.
Notable in today’s Tolomeo are two rising French singers, soprano Melissa Petit, who has become a favorite of Cecilia Bartoli with whom she frequently appears, and countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian whose marvelous new Purcell CD is one of my favorites of 2025.
Handel: Tolomeo
Elisa: Giuseppina Bridelli
Seleuce: Melissa Petit
Tolomeo: Jakub Józef Orliński
Alessandro: Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian
Araspe: Andrea Mastroni
Il Pomo d’Oro
Conductor: Francesco Corti
Katowice
11 May 2023
Broadcast
Tolomeo 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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