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This live performance from the Huelgas Ensemble ahs all the intimacy of chamber music, thanks to its conversational ensemble playing and unforced singing. Mezzo Michaela Riener is aptly silver-toned... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2018, 4 out of 5 stars
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Opus Klassik Awards
2019
Winner - Opera (up to and including 18th century)
Contents
Huelgas-Ensemble, Bernd Oliver Fröhlich (tenor), Sabine Lutzenberger (mezzo-soprano), Michaela Riener (mezzo-soprano), Matthew Vine (tenor), Achim Schulz (tenor), Katelijne Van Laethem (soprano), Axelle Bernage (mezzo-soprano) Paul Van Nevel Show 13 remaining tracks for Caccini, F: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina Hide 13 tracks for Caccini, F: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina
July 2018
This live performance from the Huelgas Ensemble ahs all the intimacy of chamber music, thanks to its conversational ensemble playing and unforced singing. Mezzo Michaela Riener is aptly silver-toned as the conniving sorceress Alcina…Van Nevel imbues an air of courtly restraint to this account, with subtle expressive nuances and measure tempos.
July 2018
Particularly arresting in its depiction of a mind in despair is Michaela Riener’s delivery of Alcina’s lament at being abandoned by Ruggiero…The instrumentalists play with style and sensitivity, and the necessary scoring (the printed rubrics do not solve all the problems) has been applied with skill and imagination.
Some of the singing per se is very good, particularly in the case of the two central characters, with Michaela Riener’s Alcina rising effectively to the drama of the breaking of the sorceresses’ power over Achim Schulz’s Ruggiero. The latter is the possessor of a pleasing, well-produced lyric tenor, but as with all the cast the tentative approach to ornamentation suggests a lack of familiarity with the style.
20th May 2018
Michaela Riener’s vindictive Alcina, Achim Schulz’s languid Ruggiero and Sabine Lutzenberger’s ravishing, androgynous-sounding Melissa are stylistic paragons, as are “choruses” of water spirits, monsters and enchanted plants
