It wasn't just creative inspiration that drove Handel to compose secular cantatas during his stay in Rome in 1707-1708. In an effort to control the immorality and infidelity of the times, Pope Clement XI had closed all the public theaters in Rome, and Handel, like every other composer whose livelihood depended on theatrical works, turned to the secular cantata: short, small-scale, unstaged dramatic works that concentrate all the dramatic action in the music so that it could be performed in the villas of the nobles and thus away from the eyes and ears of the church. In the case of the three cantatas on this 1997 recording, all the dramatic action is concentrated in the voice of French soprano
Véronique Gens.
She can handle it -- indeed, more than handle it, she can soar with it. Whether the subject is Lucrezia, the Roman heroine raped by Sextus Tarquinius, bemoaning her fate; Armida, the furious villainess of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, cursing her paramour; or Agrippini, the distraught mother of the Nero, awaiting her assassination,
Gens is completely in character and totally commanding. One of the most passionate and technically accomplished of the second generation of historically informed performance practice singers,
Gens performs like a woman possessed here, her nobility aflame in la Lucrezia, her fervor afire in Armida abbandonata, and her spirit ablaze in Agrippina condotta a morire. Ably accompanied by the four-piece continuo ensemble
Les Basses Réunies led by cellist
Bruno Cocset,
Gens turns in a performance that may be short, small-scale, and unstaged, but is nevertheless quintessentially dramatic and overwhelmingly effective. Virgin's recording is clear, close, and warm.