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Messiah aside,
Athalia may just be the best of all Handel's Biblical oratorios--it has a compact plot (the evil queen Athalia, daughter of Jezebel, is overthrown in favor of the one descendant of King Solomon whom she hadn't managed to kill), an unusually good libretto based on Racine, choruses both poignant and stirring, and
da capo arias that actually make dramatic sense. The only previous recording, Christopher Hogwood's splendid 1986 account (featuring a stellar Baroque-specialist cast headed by Emma Kirkby, with Joan Sutherland giving a creditable performance from an entirely different planet), isn't currently available--making this the only
Athalia in the catalog. If you can tolerate some truly funky pronunciation from the all-German cast, the performance is terrific. The chorus and orchestra are accurate, sensitive, and (when the trumpets, horns, and drums join in) gutsy; despite their peculiar vowel sounds, the soloists are all thoroughly convincing. Special mention must be made of contralto Annette Reinhold, who is sensational as the high priest, Joad: her singing is pure, commanding, ardent, and convincingly masculine. Those who have the Hogwood recording should certainly hang onto it, but especially because of Naxos's price, anyone who loves Handel should try this.
--Matthew Westphal