Monteverdi's operatic masterpiece Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) offers penetrating psychological portraits of its characters through the composer's extraordinarily expressive music. The story, taken from the Odyssey, describes Ulysses' return to Ithaca after the Trojan War, and his reclamation of his wife Penelope from the many suitors who are pursuing her.
In a score in which only the vocal lines and a bass instrumental line are indicated, the success of any performance depends on the editor and/or conductor creating a realized score that remains true to the conventions of Monteverdi's time, and that is dramatically and musically satisfying to modern opera audiences accustomed to robust orchestral accompaniment to opera. The rewards of the spare accompaniment, which most scholars agree was the norm for early Baroque opera, are huge; Monteverdi packs ample dramatic tension and emotion into the vocal lines, and if large orchestral forces were used to propel the drama, as in most later opera, the expressive intimacy would be lost. In the hands of skillful and sensitive editors and performers, as is the case here, an instrumentally spare accompaniment is ideally suited to the dramatic and musical demands of the score.
The performances on the CD are above reproach. The voices are tonally strong, pure and beautiful, musically sensitive, and above all, dramatically expressive, breathing convincing life into each of the characters. The instrumental accompaniment, often thinned to a single instrument, is always musically satisfying and is clear in its depiction of the drama. The heroism, poignancy, and humor of Monteverdi's strong and lyrically intense but delicate music flourish in these committed performances. Conductor and keyboardist
Sergio Vartolo leads an energetic, well-paced performance.
Unfortunately, the recorded sound is less than ideal. The performers for the most part are too closely miked, and as a result, voices sometimes have an edge that seems to be more the result of the recording than the singers themselves, and the plucked strings of the cembalo, chittarone, and chitarra sound harsher than necessary. The most annoying element of the recording is a consistent lack of balance between the solo voices; there appear to have been two microphones for the soloists, one with a bright, present sound and the other with a veiled, distant sound. As a result, the dialogues, which make up a large portion of the opera, have the effect of the characters addressing each other from entirely different sonic spaces. For the listener who can get past this sonic vagary, though, this is an extraordinarily fine performance of Monteverdi's opera.