Natalie Dessay: ''V'adoro pupille'' (Giulio Cesare) 

Toujours un plaisir indispensable 😊

Dessay one of the best Cleopatra's EVER!!!!!!!

Oh man! One of Handel's most beautiful arias. I can listen to it forever... Soo beautifully sang here! Most beautiful ornamentation too. There is a real video also here on RU-vid.

Meravigliosa!

It's funny how they derived the plots from Antiquity though! In the end it was still our imaginating running wild. I remember reading that Rameau composed an opera about Zoroaster, but some time later he actually read about Zoroaste and had to change the story! At least people had a fascination with these stories, and I love to see them in opera. They don't just tell us the myth or story from antiquity, they also show how people in the baroque era thought about antiquity. Very interesting!

I love this singer!

@MrHbc3 I agree...the physicality of Dessay in the Paris performances brought a youthful energy to the role which is so desired. As she said in interviews, that production's conception was to portray Cleopatra as a young girl instead of a regal queen, and indeed the heavy emphasis on lively, flirtatious arias written by Handel certainly provides more opportunity for comedy than tragedy!

Et les variations délicieuses 😋

@p4o3n Thanks! It's enormously difficult to make, but the results are fabulous! DBS suggested I should write in the ornaments next time, but it's nice actually to see where they deviate from the original! I like Emmanuelle's ornaments...they're flamboyant, Baroque, IMPOSSIBLY DIFFICULT, but Dessay always pulls them off like nothing! Astonishing!

@Intermezzo89 This is definitely a rare and special recording! Natalie Dessay actually has a little bit of a natural lisp...but it doesn't matter since this is simply divine!

@MrMarcobussoletti Si, variazioni stupende!

Most Excellent !

Dal min. 4.43 le variazioni stupende della Natalie strappano le lacrime ...

@tervito Very true...it just doesn't work in real life many times...I think the key is "less is more"...which is so hard to do! Kirkby has that pure, crystalline voice that suits it so well...on the complete polar opposite, I think, funny enough, Caballe's wonderful rendition of V'adoro is seductive in a completely different way!

@Monteverdiforever YES!!!!

I liked Sonia on the CD as Caesar, but in the (you tube) visual version Zazzo is perfect, and great with Natalie in the comic scenes. Especially the scene in which she goes, as Julia, to meet Caesar in his camp.... and is wheeled in on one of those things made for wheeling cases of beer around. Everybody was a genius in that one.

SUBLIME !!!!!!!

@primohomme Everyone's entitled to their own opinions! I love Sills in this role too, though surprisingly, Valerie Masterson's performance (though in English and with no acting) is vocally a treasure too!

A great recording, it's only a pity that no one from the recording team realized the little lisp at 03:49 in the word "pietose". But that's only a minor mistake, this version of "V'adoro pupille" is one of the very very best!

@SerafinaLily9 Because it's a "period performance" using Baroque instruments, which are tuned slightly lower than modern pitch...adds that "authentic" touch ;)

@xchikaxchan Me too! :)

@tervito I live Sills and Masterson in addition to those you mentioned, and Kirkby always thrills me! :) "V'adoro" isn't my favourite on the disc for sure although it's wonderful...I like Dessay's "Piangero" best, followed by "Se pieta". I think she does desolate and dramatic better than limpid and languid (probably suits her personality better too :P).

@MrHbc3 Yes, Baroque music often doesn't have the gratuitous, ridiculous bloodshed or slapstick happy endings of the bel canto, often deriving plots from the Ancient Roman and Greek world and from ancient history. Thank goodness! This story of Cleopatra has a happy ending! :)

@tervito There is! He's getting a HUGE facelift these days! :)

@MrHbc3 Yes I agree...I liked the idea of the production and the costumes, but didn't like how it represented the opera. It's a weird hybrid between ancient Egypt and Handel's time and a modern museum, so it comes out a little weird. I hear she's doing Giulio Cesare at the Met in 2013, so I'm hoping it's going a new, less parodied production! That would be exciting! :)

4:15, batt. 46-47

As long as you don't dwell on what happened to her and Caesar later on, anyway.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of baroque music is that there are far fewer cases of plots boiling down to soprano meets tenor, has an affair and dies. Plenty, for my taste, of suspense but less bloodshed on the part of good guys. I still don't like it that Morgana (speaking of Natalie) in Alcina... perishes along with Renee. Again with Natalie and Lucia/Lucie.. great music and bad goings on in the extreme. Back in the fifties I loved Broadway Musical comedy.

This aria, in the Paris production on YT, is a total spoof of stilted, pretentious, old fashioned acting. Natalie, however, does it so gracefully and well that it looks good. All the women in this scene are dressed, not as Egyptians but as gentlewomen of the time of Handel... a few years later, if I remember my history.

V'adoro, pupille, I adore you, eyes, saette d'amore, arrows of love le vostre faville Your sparkles son grate nel sen. are pleasing in my breast. Pietose vi brama Have pity on il mesto mio core, my sad heart ch'ogn'ora vi chiama That at every hour calls l'amato suo ben. the lover your beloved.

Qué horror.

Far too much vibrato for the baroque style. She warbles like an uncertain bird and with a discernible lack of emotional commitment to the role, not compensated by the elaborate ornamentation. For a superb rendition, see Inger Dam-Jenson and the Royal Danish Opera.