The soprano Jeanine De Bique confessed to this newspaper that, returning from her summer in Salzburg, she felt the need to perform at a festival with less media pressure and where people "really went to listen to the music and appreciate the artists". And that's what he found yesterday in Torroella de Montgrí, where the audience seemed to have come with heart and soul - and their long applause - for a very special date with baroque music.
The singer from Trinidad and Tobago was making her Spanish debut in recital with a curious program with which it was supposed to be possible to distinguish - according to an effortful Spanish - between the different coloratura techniques used by Handel and his colleagues in the period baroque
He had already performed in Spain: it was at the Liceu a couple of years ago with the mythological opera Platée, by Jean-Philippe Rameau, in a concert version. And she will be seen in Carmen de Bieito next season. But yesterday was his momentum, the occasion to present a program based on his first recorded work, Mirrors, in which he explores the arias that both Handel and other composers of the 18th century had written for the same heroines: Cleopatra, Rodelinda, Alcina, Agrippina.
At that time when opera became a publishing business, it was the case that the same libretto, with the appropriate modifications, gave rise to different musical versions, all in search of success. This fierce competition became evident yesterday with the Caribbean singer combining arias about the same character and investigating the multifaceted nature of these historical heroines. The one who is also a UNESCO Ambassador for Peace displayed all her baroque bel canto vocal skills, with an expressive and theatrical timbre and an elegant mastery of vibrato and coloratura.
He was accompanied by Concerto Köln, an ensemble that for thirty years has been playing a very fresh baroque repertoire that has been heard a thousand times. With them, an aria from the Rodelindaregina de' Longobardi by Carl-Heinrich Graun, "Risolvere non oso", was allowed to premiere in Spain, with which the concert began. Which was followed by the much better known "Ritorna o caro" from Handel's Rodelinda. An emotional variety of this character that may not be as broad as that of Alcina and Cleopatra, but possesses great depth, as the heroine of 7th century Milan remains faithful to the memory of her husband, the King Bertarido, and rejects Duke Grimoaldo who has usurped his power.
After two beautiful Alcina arias - in which Handel amply demonstrated why he was invincible in the commercial duel with his colleagues -, De Bique also faced, amid applause, Handel's Agrippina (" The soul mia frà le tempeste") to that of Telemann in the opera Germanicas ("Rimembanza crude l"), because if the first composed 35 operas, this one surpassed him with 40. And he ended the concert comparing Handel again and Graun in the Cleopatra of Giulio Cesare in Egitto and that of Cleopatra and Cesare.
Generous with the audience, the round of kisses began with Il trionfo del tempo. by Handel, to cheer up with sparkling coloraturas and finish by repeating "Tra le procelle assorto" from Cleopatra and Cesare amid acclamations. "Thanks to the Torroella festival for its support of the baroque", added the diva, in an evening of great beauty.
