Infinite Refrain, music of love’s refuge
Arias etc by Monteverdi, Merula, Melani, Cavalli, Girolamo, Castrovillari, Frescobaldi, Boretti, Strade et al
Randall Scotting (countertenor); Jorge Navarro Colorado; Academy of Ancient Music/Laurence Cummings
Signum Classics SIGCD769 66:52 mins
In the introduction to his programme of Baroque Venetian madrigals and arias Randall Scotting writes that it explores the ‘nuances of gay love in the 17th century.’ Be wary! The word ‘gay’ would have meant something else to Venetians four centuries ago, while the word ‘homosexuality’ belongs to the psychopathologies of the 19th century. If Monteverdi’s madrigals and Baroque opera arias speak of same-sex love, then it’s cast from the mould of ‘passionate friendship’.
This is not to say that real passion doesn’t run deep through much of this music. Countertenor Scotting borrows your heart in Monteverdi’s ‘Con che soavità’ when a lover asks how can one speak and kiss at the same time, while conductor Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music watch and play in wonder.
Neither is the tenor Jorge Navarro Colorado a wall flower when it comes to love. ‘Se pur destina e vole’, from Monteverdi’s Seventh Book of Madrigals is an extended lament for a lost lover, with Colorado creating a finely spun vocal line through lacerating heartbreak. If elsewhere his tone can be a little monochrome he’s vibrantly seductive in his duets with Scotting. ‘Perchè fuggi’ – Monteverdi again – finds both singers easing deliciously into the chest resister as a shepherd who didn’t want to be kissed flees through a willow tree.
Laurence Cummings, who plays keyboard solos through the recital, has an unerring sense of the lover’s psychology. Listen to the rising phase on the word ‘baci’ in ‘Tornate, o cari baci’ or the delicate modulation as the lover accuses his beloved of ‘bitter tenderness.’ Who can doubt the depth of feelings between two men? Christopher Cook