MONTEVERDI Madrigals: Tempro la cetra; 3 Interrote speranze; 2,3 Con che soavità. 2 Bel pastore. 1,3 Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. 1,2,3 Scherzi musicali: Quel squardo sdegnosetto; Et è pur dunque vero 1 • Read more 1 Carlo Gaifa (ten); 2 Vincenzo Manno (ten); 3 Ens Concerto • TACTUS 561301 (56:39 Text, no Translation) Monteverdi performance style, as it has evolved over the decades in Germany and Italy, has certainly come a long way forwards (or backwards, depending on your perspective) in meeting the emotional demands of the music rather than merely its technical aspects. Granted, even in somewhat staid England we had, and have, such fine interpreters of this music as Nigel Rogers (as both tenor and director) and Andrew Parrott (as both keyboardist and director), but for many the benchmark performances in this genre came from Reinhard Goebel and his Cologne Musica Antiqua, which were in turn based on styles pioneered by Nadia Boulanger in the 1930s and the New York Pro Musica in the 1950s. Indeed, Goebel’s splendid 1979 recording of Combattimento (Archiv 415296), on which Rogers was the tenor, was my performance of choice for lo these 30 years, not only because of Rogers’s splendid musicianship, style, and interpretation, which worked to overcome his somewhat dry voice, but also for the irregular rhythmic thrust of Goebel’s conducting that propelled the music with a drive and fervor unmatched in its time. Well, it’s now 2008 (as I write this) and not 1979, and Roberto Gini’s recording has supplanted Goebel’s in my mind. The reason is not merely the equally high quality of the Italian group’s playing—stylish, meticulously in tune, well modulated, and alive to feeling—but also the extraordinarily high quality of the singing. I’m not at all familiar with either Carlo Gaifa or Vincenzo Manno and so, since neither the CD insert nor the booklet indicate which tenor sings what, I assume (perhaps wrongly) that Carlo Gaifa, whose name is listed first, is the lead tenor in the long and extremely difficult Combattimento , and that Vincenzo Manno is the lighter, higher tenor who sings in Tempro la cetra and as second tenor in Interrote speranze. Both have extraordinarily beautiful voices; those who’ve became used, over the years, to either imperfect light opera tenors tossed into Monteverdi because they couldn’t hack Rossini or Mozart, or tenors like Rogers, “musical” but somewhat dry of timbre, will revel in the Italianate beauty of their voices. They blend perfectly in Interrote speranze , and Gaifa’s solo singing (if it is indeed he) on Combattimento reveals a power that wouldn’t be out of place in Tosca , though with finer technical control than most modern-day Italian opera tenors have. Soprano Cadelo’s high range sounds a bit squally in Combattimento , where she appears to have been in poor voice, but she is splendid in the other pieces. Moreover, Combattimento seems to have been recorded in a less resonant acoustic than the other works, which I’m sure also contributes to the sonic impact of the voices. This performance of Interrote speranze is a shade slower than the versions by Boulanger and New York Pro Musica, but I wouldn’t trade the gorgeous melisma of sound these two tenors produce for anything. Tactus has scored a bull’s-eye with this disc, compiled from recordings made by Gini over a 17-year period (1987–2004). My only complaint is that the lyrics are in Italian only. Get it, listen, marvel, and treasure it. FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley