Thanks to his omnivorous curiosity, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has revived an authentic masterpiece. Several opera composers--Lully, Handel, and Gluck--had already availed themselves of the amorous and stormy adventures of the knight Rinaldo and the enchantress Armida, drawn from Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated. Composed in 1784, Haydn's Armida was his the final opera he wrote for his patron Prince Esterházy, but it was also the composer's debut opera seria. Even so--and just like Mozart--Haydn knew how to free himself from the rigid and monotonous alternation of aria and recitative that customarily governed this genre. Thus the final act, which unfolds in an enchanted forest, offers us a half-hour of nearly uninterrupted music, even prefiguring the romantic shape of things to come in the 19th century. This recording was made from a concert performance in June 2000 in Vienna's sumptuous Musikverein under the blazing baton of Harnoncourt. The cast is impeccable--including Christoph Prégardien and Patricia Petibon and dominated by the stunning Cecilia Bartoli, who can swerve within a few bars from boiling anger to the most overwhelming amorous pleading. --Franck Erikson Haydn's operas, all too seldom encountered in the opera house, make magnificent home listening. Here, the leisurely dramatic progress is less disturbing; and one can, if one will, skip acres of recitative and concentrate on the magnificent lyric numbers. Not that Haydn lacked a sense of the dramatic – witness many moments in the symphonies and string quartets. And indeed in the operas too, if one picks one's moments, and forgoes comparison with the (mainly rather later) masterpieces of his friend Mozart. Almost all Haydn's finest opera scores were written for Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's theatre at his grand estate at Eszterháza. Armida (1784) was the last of the series, and the one most often performed during Haydn's lifetime – not only in the prince's private theatre, but elsewhere in Hungary, and in Italy as well. It isn't difficult to see why this should be: the story, ultimately derived from an incident in Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, was already familiar on the eighteenth-century opera stage, its elements of sorcery, of love ultimately conquered by duty, and of military prowess temporarily suspended, providing abundant opportunities for composer, designer and machinist. The cast, limited to six singers, and requiring no chorus, is neatly balanced: Rinaldo, the erring Christian leader, is finally brought back to duty's path by his comrades Ubaldo and Clotarco; on the other side are Idreno, the Saracen king, his niece, the sorceress Armida, and the Egyptian princess Zelmira (who, intended to lure Christian knights to their doom, falls in love with Clotarco, and he with her). Most of the lyric numbers are arias, but Haydn also gives us splendid ensembles at the end of each act (duet, trio and tutti respectively), and a series of outstandingly apt, and beautiful, accompanied recitatives. Hitherto Antál Dorati's recording (1979), part of his Haydn opera series for Philips, has had the field to itself. Now we have a thrilling new version, taken live during a concert performance at the Musikverein at last year's Vienna Festival. The orchestra is Harnoncourt's superb period-instrument Concentus Musicus, and a very fine cast was assembled. Dorati's soloists, though, have little to fear from the comparison. In the title role for Dorati, Jessye Norman was in excellent voice; Cecilia Bartoli, however, brings a new dimension to the part with the fury (never less than thoroughly musical fury) that she summons in her final aria. And Bartoli is mistress in the delivery of recitative (acres of which are cut in this performance; Dorati allowed us rather more of it). Christoph Prégardien, sovereign Lieder singer, hasn't quite the heroic timbre or ease in coloratura of Claes H. Ahnsjö in the old set, though he is never less than adequate. I find little to choose between Norma Burrowes and Patricia Petibon in the second soprano role – both are excellent, and well worthy of the three arias Haydn allotted to Zelmira (the same number as hero and heroine). In the male supporting roles, I find Oliver Widmer as the Saracen king less colourful and weighty than Samuel Ramey on the Philips set, and Markus Schäfer, though he sings very well, doesn't make the most of Clotarco's one, serious, aria. Scot Weir sings Ubaldo's two solos in fine style (though, like most male singers these days, he lacks a true, confident trill). Dorati's approach in his 1979 performance was properly revelatory: there is no lack of élan, there are few signs of haste. The score unfolds along firm lines, yet with time for affectionate detail. Harnoncourt is more exciting – more excited, one feels: there is strong contrast between the fierce driving force in the military music, and the passion of the love scenes. An odd detail with such a lively approach: Harnoncourt takes entries in the accompanied recitatives in ‘cantata' style, that is, bringing in the orchestra after the singer has completed the previous phrase, rather than simultaneously (as written and, traditionally, as taken in opera performance). I was surprised how few appoggiaturas from low-lying phrases were taken from below the note. The secco recitatives, or what is left of them, move rather slowly – even more than Dorati, Harnoncourt cuts recitatives back to a minimum, with scant regard for their textual content. At the start of the final scene, Harnoncourt repeats the march from Act 1 scene 4 in preference to the suggested one given as an appendix to the full score in the Henle edition. He adds some ‘Turkish' percussion to the wind march passage in the Sinfonia, and to the Act 1 Marcia; and I noted the odd additional timpani part – all probably due to a desire to make the (unusually silent) Viennese audience as happy as possible. The presentation of the recording provokes mixed feelings. Teldec has produced what looks like a squat, lavishly illustrated book, with a very good introductory note by David Wyn Jones, synopsis, libretto, notes on the singers, the composition of the orchestra, recording details and three-language translation with the Italian original. The trouble is, the unprotected CDs are inserted into the front and back covers in such a way that they are bound to become finger-marked in no time at all. The recording is mellow, well balanced and clear (how could it be otherwise in the Musikverein?). It is a personal matter which version one prefers; I am grateful to have both, and it will be a long time before there's a third recording of this endlessly fascinating opera to complicate the choice further. Peter Branscombe -- From International Record Review