Mayr - Medea in Corinto (1994)

Disc 1
1 	Act 1. Overture	8:45 	
2 	Act 1. Introduzione. Perchè temi?...Dolci amiche	9:31 	
3 	Act 1. Introduzione. Cede Acasto, o Creusa	2:30 	
4 	Act 1. Aria. Fosti grande allor che apristi	1:28 	
5 	Act 1. Aria. Di gloria all'invito	2:06 	
6 	Act 1. Aria. Ah! se amante, se guerriero	1:33 	
7 	Act 1. Aria. Ogni periglio alfine	4:06 	
8 	Act 1. Aria. Come!...sen riede	3:26 	
9 	Act 1. Aria. Sommi Dei	6:42 	
10 	Act 1. Aria. Sventurata Medea...Fermati!	6:20 	
11 	Act 1. Duet. Cedi al destin, Medea	10:06 	
12 	Act 1. Aria. Alfine io ti riveggo	3:05 	
13 	Act 1. Aria. Io ti lasciai, piangendo	4:08 	
14 	Act 1. Aria. M'inganno...o ciel	1:46 	

Disc 2
1 	Act 1. Finale Primo. Dolce figliuol d'Urania	3:22 	
2 	Act 1. Finale Primo. Cara figlia! prence amato!	7:45 	
3 	Act 1. Finale Primo. Scendi Imene... Vanne a terra...	5:31 	
4 	Act 2. Aria. Amiche, cingete	3:23 	
5 	Act 2. Aria. Caro albergo	7:40 	
6 	Act 2. Aria. Dio d'amor, che il sen m'accendi	3:11 	
7 	Act 2. Aria. Eccoti, o figlia, a' lari tuoi	2:27 	
8 	Act 2. Aria. Dove mi guidi?	4:46 	
9 	Act 2. Aria. Ogni piacer è spento...Antica notte	7:15 	
10 	Act 2. Duet. Amico, a te soltanto	3:10 	
11 	Act 2. Duet. Sembra che alfine secondi	2:38 	
12 	Act 2. Duet. Non palpitar, mia vita	4:51 	
13 	Act 2. Duet. Ah! sì caro accento	2:56 	
14 	Act 2. Aria. Avverse, inique stelle	2:38 	
15 	Act 2. Aria. I dolci contenti	4:23 	
16 	Act 2. Duet. Ma qual fioco rumor?	2:48 	
17 	Act 2. Duet. Se il sangue, la vita	5:03 	

Disc 3
1 	Act 3. Aria. Grazie, nume d'amore!	2:34 	
2 	Act 3. Aria. Amor, per te penai	5:33 	
3 	Act 3. Aria. Ebbene, Evandro?	0:55 	
4 	Act 3. Aria. Ismene... o caro Ismene!	3:56 	
5 	Act 3. Aria. Ah! che tento?		2:30 	
6 	Act 3. Aria. Miseri pargoletti	5:34 	
7 	Act 3. Aria. Quale orror mi circonda!	0:37 	
8 	Act 3. Finale Secondo. Era tua sposa	6:21 	
9 	Appendix. Aria. Di gloria all'invitto	7:16 	
10 	Appendix. Cabaletta. Ma forse eccedono	3:29 	
11 	Appendix. Duet. Ah! d'un alma generosa... Dove un soave	8:42 	
12 	Appendix. Aria. Ismene... o cara Ismene	3:03 	
13 	Appendix. Aria. Ah, che tento?	2:26 	
14 	Appendix. Aria. Miseri pargoletti	5:29 	

Jane Eaglen (Soprano) - Medea
Yvonne Kenny (Soprano) - Creusa
Bruce Ford (Tenor) - Giasone
Raúl Giménez (Tenor) - Egeo
Alastair Miles (Bass) - Creonte
Neill Archer (Tenor) - Evandro
Anne Mason (Soprano) - Ismene
Paul Nilon (Tenor) - Tideo

Geoffrey Mitchell Choir 
Philharmonia Orchestra
David Parry - conductor

Giovanni Simon Mayr was a notable figure in his time. Born in Bavaria, he created an Italian equivalent of his original name (Johann Simon) when as a young man he settled at Bergamo. His operas made their mark and in the first quarter of the nineteenth century he was regarded as Rossini’s rival, his works performed across Europe. His influence extended in other directions besides, since he became the teacher of Gaetano Donizetti.

Medea in Corinto has a libretto by the great Felice Romani, and is constructed on an indulgent time-scale of more than two and half hours (plus intervals). Moreover there is more music than we hear in this performance, as reflected in the recording for Opera Rara with the excellent Jane Eaglen in the title role, and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by David Parry. ---musicweb-international.com

As Henry II’s mistress in these highlights from Donizetti’s Plantagenet fantasy, Renée Fleming gives an object lesson in bel canto singing, dazzling in the coloratura pyrotechnics and shaping the cavatinas with exquisite grace and tenderness. Her lover, Bruce Ford, is hardly less fine, and there are notable brief contributions from Alastair Miles and from Nelly Miricioiu as the vengeful Queen Eleanor. The music has its routine patches, but is always dramatically effective, sometimes, as in the increasingly desperate duet between Henry and Rosamond, rather more than that. Vivid playing from the Philharmonia under David Parry. Ford and Miles are also welcome presences in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, where Jane Eaglen makes a mightily imposing – if slightly too regal – heroine. The high point of the score is Medea’s baleful Invocation Scene; elsewhere, though, Mayr’s invention – somewhere between Mozart and Rossini, without the genius of either – can be almost comically tame for the harrowing subject matter. Again, David Parry directs a polished, keenly paced performance. ---classical-music.com

The Bavarian-born Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) trained and made his career in Italy and thus ended up calling himself Giovanni Simone Mayr, or simply G. S. Mayr. He is best known for having been composition teacher to Giuseppe Donizetti. Medea in Corinto (Medea in Corinth, 1813 and much revised over the course of the next ten years) was Mayr’s best-known opera and remained a repertory staple for a time even after his death. It has been revived frequently in our own day, especially in Italy, where audiences can of course follow the plot and shifting emotions without recourse to supertitles.

Mayr’s opera tells basically the same story that opera lovers know from Cherubini’s Médée (a work often performed in a much-altered later version and in Italian, under the title Medea). But the treatment of the Medea legend by Mayr and his librettist, the immensely gifted Felice Romani, is different enough from Cherubini’s that the work has its own identity and appeal. In this opera, the princess of Corinth (here called Creusa) was promised to King Aegeus (Egeo) of Athens, before she shifted her affections to the heroic Giasone. Egeo has a big and dramatically varied role. Medea is given a powerful scene with the spirits of hell (reminiscent of a scene in Cavalli’s Giasone, composed a century and a half earlier).

Romani and Mayr give the chorus multiple occasions to rejoice, reassure, worry, and be solemn or horrified. (In this new recording they sound fine, mostly, except for some reason in the scene with Creusa at the beginning of Act 2.) The orchestra frequently offers colorful interjections: we get several arias in which a solo instrument (e.g., violin, English horn, even harp) performs in duet texture with the voice or in alternation with it.

As in many of Rossini’s serious operas, recitatives are accompanied by orchestra rather than keyboard. The Medea/Giasone duet in Act 1 is a large four-movement structure of a type that scholars and critics normally call “Rossinian” and would become normative for Rossini’s successors: Donizetti, Bellini, and the young Verdi. Vocal lines are quite florid (not least for Egeo) but often also tuneful or even dance-like, sometimes reminding me of Donizetti (to come) or of phrases from Mozart’s Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute (some twenty years earlier). ---Ralph P. Locke, operatoday.com

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