Agrippina, from Cyrano to Handel and Jaroussky

HANDEL’S AGRIPPINA MODERN INTERPRETATIONS AND THE ROLE OF COUNTERTENORS [Format Kindle]

Jacques COULARDEAU (Auteur), Ivan EVE (Auteur), Annunzio COULARDEAU (Illustrations)

Handel’s Agrippina was composed for the Carnival of Venice in 1709. It counts three male voices in the countertenor pitch and range in those days most often held by castratos. Centering on Jean-Claude Malgoire’s 2004 production first to come out on DVD, comparing it with two other productions on DVD that came out in the following years, but also with the recent production of Handel’s Faramondo, we study the four different dramatic values of countertenors in Handel’s operas. This leads us to an in-depth study of the re-emergence of countertenors after at least two centuries of quasi-silence. Is it a transient fad, a freaky sham or a long-running phenomenon? We will meet with two opposed opinions: Russell Oberlin’s in 2004 and Laura E. DeMarco’s in 2002. I will more or less follow Russell Oberlin who considers they allow the production of Handel’s operas and oratorios that had disappeared for two hundred and fifty years. Why can we witness now this epiphanic resurrection? We are far from having all the answers to that simple question.