About the Prague concert etc.

Philippe Jaroussky is returning to Prague
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I summarized it and accentuated what is new (at least for me).

They ask him about the program for the Prague concert. He says he wanted to underline the relationship between Farinelli and his teacher Nicola Porpora. Farinelli started his career in Naples with the recital to honor of Porpora. And when he was finishing his artistic life, he sang Porporas arie again. "With the concert, where will sound especially Porporas music, I want to narrate about this friendship."

They speak about the Czech composers. Philippe loves Zelenkas music, especially how the vocal scores converse with the orchestra accompaniment – as for this is Zelenka similar to Händel. The music of Josef Mysliveček he hasn’t never sung, but he read up many of his opera scores, so maybe in the future he will sing some of them.

They speak about Czech early music ensembles – Philippe cooperated only with Musica Florea (in 2008), he enjoyed it, he was satisfied with the chamber work. But he knows also e. g. Collegium 1704, so also maybe in the future they will cooperate.

The Prague concert will be with Venice Baroque Orchestra and Andrea Marcon. With VBO there will be the first cooperation, but for PJ is important to be in the contact with Italian musicians and to imbibe their specific style (e. g. now in Salzburg with Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini).

They ask him about modern music. PJ speaks about Caravaggio, he appreciates that the music was written just for him, because – unlike he sings the music written for castrati – in this case there is a live dialog between the singer and the composer. "It’s beautiful an too rewarding. You can find out what is your voice actually like, how are you seen by the others. This can be distinct from how you percieve yourself."

PJ also talks about his free time – no sport, only the music. "When I travell or have a free time at a hotel room, I listen to the recordings of my colleagues, study new scores, find new impulses. It’s too easy by the internet. I think it’s really new method how to search new music."

Thanks, Jarofil for the hard work (I guess not too many people are fluent in Czech on this forum!) and it's always interesting to find an interview that covers new ground.

A.

"Ave Deus recondite" was one of the first works that I heard in the voice of Philippe. And still excites me greatly.
Thanks, Jarofil-traslator.

Jarofil, thank you;it is very interesting.

Inteview in the magazine Rozhlas, with Petr Veber

The audience wants a risk

The countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is an unpretending singing star. He manages his falsetto with an effortless sureness and bravura and his work with musical phrases, modeling of tone, pronuntiation, dynamics and timbre evokes the feeling of pefectness. Thanks to exclusiveness of his voice specialization and timbre of his countertenor he was a gem this year’s Prague music festival Struny podzimu (Strings of Autumn), as he was already four years ago on Letní slavnosti staré hudby (Early Music Festival). The organizers of the distinctly conceived autumn exhibition got a desirable soloist together with Venice Baroque Orchestra to the program made of the arias written for the famous baroque castrato Farinelli.

PV: Do you rate the modern countertenor generally rather as a women’s or rather still men’s voice, with a timbre refering maybe even to the boy’s voices?
PJ: Certainly I prefer the second before that I would be compared with a women’s voice. I’m convinced that if concerns the sound quality of countertenor, there remains something of the boy’s voice. Few months ago I recorded a part of Pie Jesu from Fauré’s Requiem. It’s a melody written for a boy’s solo – and for me is very interesting during the singing this part to try to find something of my former boy’s voice in myself. It would be ideal to retain a purity, nature and freshness of the childish voice, but at the same time to put in it something of adulthood. The difference compared to the chilhood consists naturally in the more oper, more expressive tone.

PV: Why did you dedicate your Prague concert to the famous Farinelli?
PJ: There was and is multitude of artists, which have programs also constructed on Farinelli, they mostly stem from the most known arias, which this phenomenal singer interpreted. But I wanted to offer something little different. So I had an idea, why not to intercept and narrate the story of the relationship between Farinelli and his teacher, composer Nicola Porpora. Farinelli debuted in Naples performing his compositions. He closed his career in London – and aslo with Porpora’s music… I decided to set my recital only of Porpora’s arias composed for Farinelli.

PV: How is the cooperation with Andrea Marcon and Venice Baroque Orchestra?
PJ: Certainly we will realize together many other concerts. I sing a lot with French ensembles, also with German ones, but I would like to enlarge the work with Italian orchestras – after all I sing mostly just the Italian repertoire. I like the sound of the Italian ensembles very much. I mean e. g. Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico. For me is very important to be in contact with Italian musicians and conductors. Among other things also for the studium of the Italian style and to improve it.

PV: Do you have time and taste sometimes to attend to perhaps also a contemporary music?
PJ: The new production is very important, of course, I admire composers that attend to it – their work maybe remain rather than the work of interprets. The scores, I sing at the concerts of so called early or classical music, mostly weren’t written for my voice: originally they were intended for castrati. In the case of new music there is a different situation. So the occasional cooperation with a contemporary composer provides me the opportunity of reciprocal dialogue, which is itself something pleasure and beautiful. And it can even happen, that I get to know something new about my voice, because the living authors tend to have crystallyzed ideas and opinions, which can open to me a new view.

PV: Do you work with the timbre of your voice consciously, do you tint the tone?
PJ: This do the singers also in another voice specializations, of course, not only countertenors. In fact, it doesn’t concern the complete change of colour – it’s quite impossible, it’s a base of your voice – but rather finding the small nuances and tones of timbre. It concerns the flexibility, technique, vocal range. For me it isn’t sometimes quite easy, because I’m not a high soprano, but neither alto, I’m rather mezzosoprano, so I have to choose my roles thoroughly. Too deep score is dangerous, and also the high one.

PV: You mean especially the oper scores…
PJ: Yes. There aren’t so many oper roles, which I can sing without deliberation, therefore I’m as for oper singing a little restrained.

PV: Does help you your instumentalist experience? Does it inspire your sound vision?
PJ: Before I became a singer I was a musician, a violinist. But whether I cleave by singing to the vision of violin tone, I don’t know… The music is for me very important, but I work a lot on the correspondence with the words I sing. But certainly it doesn’t lead onwards to overacting, I rather try to do an internal, deep, most sincere as possible. It concerns to feel the language and to sing it, but not to enunciate more over, not too overact. In this way I feel comfortably.

PV: The text leads you to the musical expression more straightforwardly?
PJ: In the baroque music, each is aria different, but there are certain types – stormy, passiontate, pastoral, very sad, happy… It’s a style, in which music helps very well to find out the word’s expression. The passions are often connected with coloraturas, therefore you feel them by whole body.

PV: What do you think about the technical virtuosity? Can it slide to only exhibition?
PJ: It concerns music in general, not only the baroque one. If you sing or play – if you are e. g. a violinist, so e. g. Paganini’s Capriccio – , the virtuosity is a part of expression. When you stand in front of the audience, you feel they want to experience the sense that they watch a risk. If we go back e. g. to Porpora’s arias, some of them are based on the vocal acrobatics. Porpora could dare it; Farinelli, who sang them, was one of the greatest virtuoses of all time. Searching the Porpora’s arias I’m finding out, that he wrote also much relatively easy music – simple and touching, maybe I can say sweet arias, which evoke a deep emotion. And Farinelli’s voice, as we know, Porpora knew very well, so my selection gives me a vision, maybe a little unexpected, how could really be Farinelli’s singing. I’m not Farinelli, of course, but I can hint that it could be not only a virtuosity.

PV: How could you describe your impression of inimitably virtuosic singing of mezzosopranist Cecilia Bartoli, who also sings arias originally intended for Farinelli?
PJ: Cecilia Bartoli is fantastic. She can sing even the most difficult arias, those I naturally can‘t sing, and besides also the most simple song melodies. She works hard. She constantly searches, asks questions herself, changes things, never stays with a comfortable solution, risks, issues herself to a maximum. In all these thinks she can be an example how to work for us all.

PV: We know you as an interpret of music of Jan Dismas Zelenka. What do you think about this baroque author from Bohemia?
PJ: I’m convinced he is very important person, in our times we find him again. His music is played by more and more artists – and they do it because of it’s qualities. As for me, I’m a singer and I like pretty sounding vocal scores. By Zelenka is moreover what we know also from Händel: the voice leads a very intimate dialog with the orchestra. And the rich orchestra acompaniment is another think I like very much.

PV: What do you think of, what are your dreams?
PJ: I have various dreams. If it concerns oper characters which I could interpret on the stage, I think of Händel’s Alcina, Porpora’s Polifemo… In next years I also want to enlarge the musical activities with my ensemble Artaserse, which I founded in 2002. And I would like also one thing: I want to enlarge my English repertoire – Henry Purcell, John Dowland, Händel’s oratoria… But I also want to sing Bach, more spiritual music and music based less on virtuosity and more on the word, e. g. French songs like Debussy or Fauré. Consequently to sing not only the castrato repertoire.

PV: How much important for you is to be a Frenchman?
PJ: Although I don’t have a French name, the Russian essences are felt in it, but I feel very French, I have the French mentality, I live in Paris and I love my city… and I like singing French songs, because I know I sing them really French.

PV: You deal with a baroque music, the emotions of the old world, but you belong to the contemporary generation influenced by internet, power of visual perception. Can it be together?
PJ: I’m an artist of internet generation, no doubt. With internet is all so easy – it can happen to you that you stick on the net for hours. Most of time I spend in hotels I do exactly the same – I search new partituras, new ideas, I listen to something via internet… It’s a new way how to find out the till now unknown music. Internet brings also the pirate downloadings of music, which is for us artists dangerous, but in the same time I know very well, that just internet helped me a lot to penetrate to the international knowledge, to the concerts in South America or Japaneese… Everybody can see me and listen to me… For the artists it is in the internet age more easy than in the past.

PV: At the end let me one more question, which you probably aren’t ask so often. Do you listen to the radio?
PJ: Yes. In France, radio has quite a big response. I think people sometimes like listening something what is chosen for them by someone else, they like discovering and being surprised – it’s something different than if they choose the music themselves. This is interesting.

Google-translator translates badly, but I think Remy Martin was completely fascinated.

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Great stuff, Jarofil! Thanks!

Re Philippe's "dreams" - I do hope he is not planning to sing the title rôles in "Alcina" and "Polifemo"!!! Alcina is well beyond his vocal range, and besides, Cencic has cornered the market in frocks (is there a male equivalent of the breeches rôle?) and, as I recall, Polifemo was an ugly Cyclops so Philippe's physical charms would utterly disqualify him for such a rôle ...

A.

Dear Jarofil,

I would like to express my gratitude for all the work you did. I know by experience that it takes a lot of time to make a good translation. Therefore, once again, I really want to thank you very much. It's a very intersting article.

kind regards, Egbertine

OMG! What a remembrance of this concert!!!

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What Philippe says to the question: How difficult is to succeed in the domain of countertenor singing (related to the Prague concert)?
(translated from Czech translation)

"You range in pianissimo, skillfully, and at the same time you have to make use of the dynamic abilities and potentialities, a certain powder (metaph.). It’s extremely difficult, of course, and to reach this kind of target is each time an adventure. You have an idol/model in Farinelli, and it is herewith very entangling and you have to work precisely and that’s very difficult – to express not only the countenance/mood, but also the quality of the music."

Dear Jana!!

Jarofil

Many thanks for sharing this treasure and for translation!