Ombra Cara: Arias of George Frideric Handel

"For all the scholarship and convincing guesswork that may underlie [conductor René] Jacobs’s performances, he is certainly intense and Romantic, as even his detractors recognize. His recent recordings attest to his boldness of approach, consistency of vision and brilliance of effect. ... A CD of Handel arias and duets with [Bejun] Mehta ('Ombra Cara,' Harmonia Mundi HMC 902077; CD with a bonus DVD) is simply beautiful — a duet with Rosemary Joshua pure heaven — and fascinating in the technical kinship between Mr. Mehta and Mr. Jacobs (who has now given up his public singing career). Both subscribe to Mr. Jacobs’s plausible theory that the best countertenors gain body and weight of voice if their falsetto is built on a firm tenorial foundation. In a way this might be seen as another dig at the British, given the disembodied, grown-up-treble sound of many early British countertenors" (John Rockwell, "Conductor Flies Freely over Critical Gulfs," New York Times, 11/20/11).
View catalog record here!