Handel: Bad Guys – Xavier Sabata

Villains, it turns out, sing some of Handel’s best music — a paradox this Catalan countertenor has understood better than most singers who have tried the racket of the vice-figure recital. Sabata does not merely impersonate wickedness. He listens for the cracks in it.

Take the reading of “Vo dar pace a un alma altiera,” which opens the disc. Tamerlano is supposed to be magnanimous here, or pretending to be, and Sabata lets you hear both possibilities at once — the noble line bent very slightly out of true, so that the coloratura on “pace” sounds less like peace than like a threat wearing peace’s clothing. This is a trick worthy of the great Handelian actors on record, the kind of ambiguity that used to be Janet Baker’s private property. Sabata’s instrument is smaller and grainier than Baker’s was, and there is a slight beat in the voice under pressure — you notice it in the upper reaches of “Domerò la tua fierezza” — but the intelligence compensates, mostly.

Polinesso gets three arias, rightly, because he is the purest snake in the whole Handel gallery — a schemer with no self-justifying speech, no aria of remorse, nothing but appetite dressed up in noble recitative. “Spero per voi, sì, sì” is smooth, almost oily, the phrasing wound tight around itself, and Minasi’s continuo team (theorbo prominent, deliciously dry) needles at him from underneath like a guilty conscience he doesn’t have. Then “Dover, giustizia, amor” turns vicious, the coloratura hurled out rather than spun, consonants biting into the string tone. It’s a small master class in how Baroque bravura can be made to signify menace rather than mere vocal athleticism — something not every countertenor manages; some just decorate.

Il Pomo d’Oro plays with a lean, slightly acidic sound throughout, gut strings singing without excess vibrato, and Minasi favors tempos on the swift side — sometimes almost too swift. “Voglio stragi, e voglio morte” from Teseo, taken at genuine prestissimo fury, is thrilling for about ninety seconds and then starts to feel like a stunt, the words blurring past faster than Handel’s own rhetoric can register meaning. I wanted a touch more air in the phrasing, a beat more menace and less mere velocity. Compare (and one must, inevitably) the ferocity Bejun Mehta or the late lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson could summon at tempos that let every syllable land.

But then comes “Pena tiranna” from Amadigi di Gaula, and this is where the disc earns its keep entirely.

Dardano, the “villain” here, has just lost the woman he loves, and Handel — with that bottomless sympathy of his for suffering of any moral coloring — gives him music practically indistinguishable in tenderness from “Lascia ch’io pianga.” Sabata sings it exquisitely: the messa di voce on the opening phrase is genuinely touching, breath control immaculate, ornaments in the da capo kept modest, almost embarrassed, as if the character himself were surprised to feel this much. It’s the emotional center of the whole recital, proof (as if we needed it after three centuries) that Handel never believed in villains, only in people behaving badly under duress. Tolomeo’s oily little “Belle dèe di questo core” — barely two minutes, practically a throwaway seduction — gets exactly the right note of smirking insincerity; Sabata doesn’t oversell it, letting the brevity itself do the sneering.

The two arias from Ottone find Sabata in his most secure vocal estate on the disc — “Bel labbro formato” unfolds with real bel canto shape, the tone rounder than elsewhere, vowels allowed to bloom instead of being clipped for dramatic effect. It suggests, encouragingly, where this voice may be headed as it matures: less character work, more pure line. Not a bad destination.

Is this an indispensable Handel record? Not quite indispensable, no — the engineering places the voice very close and slightly dry, robbing some arias of the bloom a more forgiving acoustic would have given them, and a couple of the faster numbers sacrifice text for adrenaline. But as a study of Handel’s moral imagination, of how thoroughly he refused to let his monsters be merely monstrous, it’s smart, often gripping, and never routine. Sabata has chosen his villains shrewdly and sung them with more wit than most collections of this kind can claim. Recommended, with the reservations noted — and with real enthusiasm for “Pena tiranna” alone.