Track Listing

1. Sinfonia
2. Chorus: 'Oh the Pleasure Of the Plains!'
3. Recitative: 'Ye Verdant Plains And Woody Mountains'
4. Air: 'Hush, Ye Pretty Warbling Quire!'
5. Air: 'Where Shall I Seek the Charming Fair?'
6. Recitative: 'Stay, Shepherd, Stay!'
7. Air: 'Shepherd, What Art Thou Pursuing?'
8. Recitative: 'Lo, Here My Love!'
9. Air: 'Love In Her Eyes Sits Playing'
10. Recitative: 'Oh! Didst Thou Know the Pains Of Absent Love'
11. Air: 'As When the Dove'
12. Duet: 'Happy We'
13. Chorus: 'Wretched Lovers!'
14. Recitative: 'I Rage--I Melt--I Burn'
15. Air: 'O Ruddier Than the Cherry'
16. Recitative: 'Whither, Fairest, Art Thou Running'
17. Air: 'Cease To Beauty To Be Suing'
18. Air: 'Would You Gain the Tender Creature'
19. Recitative: 'His Hideous Love Provokes My Rage'
20. Air: 'Love Sounds th' Alarm'
21. Recitative: 'Cease, Oh Cease, Thou Gentle Youth'
22. Trio: 'The Flocks Shall Leave the Mountains'
23. Recitative: 'Help, Galatea! Help, Ye Parent Gods!'
24. Chorus: 'Mourn, All Ye Muses!'
25. Air With Chorus: 'Must I My Acis Still Bemoan'
26. Recitative: ''Tis Done! Thus I Exert My Pow'r Divine'
27. Air: 'Heart, the Seat Of Soft Delight'
28. Chorus: 'Galatea, Dry Thy Tears'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59850 in Music
• Released on: 2007-10-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .33 pounds
• Running time: 79 minutes

Customer Reviews

Good to have it back
This 1960 recording of Handel's pastoral 'little opera' was out on Argos (I think) on vinyl but has been missing for many years now. It's good to have it back as it captures the young Joan Sutherland at the start of her career singing alongside Peter Pears! Although they were to appear together on record again in the 70s (in the best Turandot on disc) they were not natural partners, their repertoire being generally widely dissimilar. Pears here is gentlemanly and constrained; Sutherland sweet and poised. The real revelation, perhaps, is in the conducting of Adrian Boult: vigorous and graceful in turns and not a million miles away from the authentic performance revolution that was just around the corner. The work is charming, light stuff - with some memorable, melodious airs and duets. Despite its age, the recording is very bright and clear - no problem whatsoever.

Excellent - but the whole work would have been even better
I have the original LPs (Oiseau-Lyre, an off-shoot of Decca) from which this CD derives. They are certainly overdue for reissue. They appeared briefly on 2 Decca CDs, long gone. I agree with all that Guy Whit says and have only two reservations about this issue. One is that, sadly, it is of substantial 'highlights' only, not quite the full work, and some good things inevitably are not there. The other (and it is marginal) is that the singing of the St. Antony Singers is a little 'beefy' by today's standards. But Sutherland and Pears are really good, Owen Brannigan is extremely characterful as the giant Polyphemus, and the work is excellently directed by Boult, with springing rhythms and a real sense of style. It is in any case a very enjoyable piece of light Handel, and even if we don't get quite all of it here, what we do get is marvellous.

welcome back!
Wonderful to hear this performance again: quite honestly, Sutherland, Pears, Brannigan and Boult and the orchestral playing are loads better than most of the early music performance we're getting today, which veers between bloodless and uninvolved (like the Naxos version of this piece) and wobbly singers whose forced, vibrato-filled voices suggest that the mid-20thc early music discoveries were in vain. Here Sutherland gives lessons on how to tone down a massive voice, singing with delicacy (and a real trill); all three main singers sing real words which mean something. The chorus is heavy and a bit stodgy but they produce drama and energy: the second tenor (Galliver) has a rather fluttery vibrato, though it's not as distressing as I remembered it.
I'm overjoyed to have this recording again: I've played it twice since it arrived yesterday, and it's renewed my enthusiasm for (1) the piece, (2) Handel, (3) Sutherland and Pears, and (4) especially, Boult.
Incidentally, how truncated is it? It appears to have exactly the same numbers as the Naxos recording, the only other one I have.