By Ralph P. Locke

Conductor Jane Glover, marvelous soloists — including superstar countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen — and a superb chorus and orchestra invigorate one of Handel’s last and greatest works.

HANDEL: Jephtha (dramatic oratorio)

Lauren Snouffer (Iphis), Katelyn Lee (Angel), Clara Osowski (Storgè), Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (Hamor), David Portillo (Jephtha), Neal Davies (Zebul).

Music of the Baroque Chorus and Orchestra, cond. Jane Glover.

Reference FR-755 [2 CDs] 133 minutes.

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Opera director Yuval Sharon recently stated that ambiguity is an essential part of the aesthetic appeal and complexity of art (interview on Will Robin’s podcast “Sound Expertise”). I never thought of Handel as evoking ambiguity. But, in the end of Part 2 of Handel’s last dramatic oratorio Jephtha (1751), a moment of great puzzlement hit me between the eyes. Or, rather, between the ears. (I was listening with earbuds.)

Jephtha, an Israelite judge and chieftain (whose story is told in the biblical book of Judges 10-12), has made a vow that, if, with God’s aid, he leads his troops to triumph over the Ammonites, he will sacrifice to God whatever living creature first comes out of his house upon his return.

He returns triumphant, and his beloved daughter comes out of his house to lead the maidens in rejoicing. Jephtha, in anguish, confesses to all, in normal recitative (accompanied by basso continuo), the unwise vow that he had made.

His wife Storgè, in a powerful accompagnato recitative and aria, objects forcefully. Iphis’s beloved, the soldier Hamor, offers to be killed in her place. And Part 2 ends with an extremely upsetting, puzzling chorus: “How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees…. [But] we mortals on earth below … on this maxim still obey: ‘Whatever is, is right.’” (The last four words come from Alexander Pope’s philosophical poem “An Essay on Man.” Pope capitalized the first “is” and “right,” and Handel reflects this in his music.)

How can an “impious vow” (the words of the Israelite general Zebul) be virtuous in the sight of God? I was stunned, waiting for Part 3 to begin. The resolution comes by a miraculous intervention: an angel announces that Iphis need only remain a virgin for the rest of her days (that being, presumably, a less literal, more humane way of sacrificing herself to God). All characters rejoice in this “happy turn,” but we are left with an uneasy sense that the values of biblical days are not necessarily those of our own — nor, perhaps, even of Handel’s. Ambiguity lingers in the air, amidst all the beauty and grandeur on display here. People who demand consistency in all matters may reject Handel’s Jephtha as outdated and even noxious. I’d say that it dramatizes powerfully some important principles and values, including the crucial but problematic one of self-sacrifice for a (supposed?) higher good, and that it thus remains highly relevant today.

It certainly feels so in this new recording, made during a single public performance in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, Illinois (the town made famous by a planned march of Nazi sympathizers through it in 1977, which the American Civil Liberties Union defended in the courts, arguably with good reason). The performers are Music of the Baroque, a professional chorus and orchestra, founded in 1971 and here led by the renowned Baroque-era authority Jane Glover.

The soloists are uniformly splendid, carrying on the great Music of the Baroque tradition of the 1970s that included such magnificent singers as Judith Nelson and (in a performance that I attended back then) a young Isola Jones. Even soprano Katelyn Lee, who, as the Angel, gets a single recitative and aria, is marvelous. (The rest of the time Lee sings in her usual place in the chorus.) Soprano Lauren Snouffer, mezzo Clara Osowski, and tenor David Portillo are always clear in diction and mellifluous in tone. So is the remarkable countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, whose astonishing performance at age 20, while still an undergraduate at Harvard, I reviewed here (Gluck’s Demofoonte, a performance conducted by Alan Curtis and issued quite belatedly). By the way, the role of Iphis’s beloved, Hamor, was indeed sung by a countertenor in the work’s first performances, conducted by Handel. So this is not an adjustment made to substitute for, say, a castrato or a female mezzo.

Renowned Baroque-era authority Jane Glover.  Photo: Jim Steere

The orchestra of Music of the Baroque is full of professionals from Chicago and elsewhere in the region, such as renowned trumpeter Barbara Butler. Continuo is provided by a lovely sounding harpsichord and even more enchanting theorbo. No surprise: they all play marvelously — presumably most of them using modern instruments. The chorus, prepared by Andrew Megill, is just as admirable, though I needed to consult the libretto to catch more than a few words from the chorus. But that’s almost inevitable.

Glover takes sensible tempos, varying them slightly and sensitively in response to the text and drama. At a few points she could have been just a touch slower to help David Portillo in fearsome coloratura passages. She is listed as Dame Jane Glover on the cover and in the booklet, but, as a pro-democracy American, I choose not to bend the knee before titles granted by a hereditary (and inordinately wealthy) monarch.

There have been at least six previous recordings, all no doubt highly accomplished. (Conductors include Marcus Creed, Nicholas McGegan, Harry Christophers, and John Eliot Gardiner.) The new one, from Music of the Baroque under Glover, surely ranks up there with the best previous recordings, and it includes an excellent booklet note and full English libretto.  (For the convenience of those who are streaming, the booklet is available for free online.)

Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). Both are now available in paperback; the second, also as an e-book. Ralph Locke also contributes to American Record Guide and to the online arts-magazines New York Arts, Opera Today, and The Boston Musical Intelligencer. His articles have appeared in major scholarly journals, in Oxford Music Online (Grove Dictionary), and in the program books of major opera houses, e.g., Santa Fe (New Mexico), Wexford (Ireland), Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, and the Bavarian State Opera (Munich). The present review first appeared in American Record Guide and is included here by kind permission.