KEY POINTS:
Offstage, Spanish soprano Maria Bayo tells her followers that she's "just an ordinary person with all the little ups and downs that any job involves".
On disc, she is an electrifying presence, and the happy combination of voltage and artistry that illuminated her Arias de Zarzuela Barroca CD three years ago has not dimmed in her latest offering.
With the cream of Spain's early music set behind her in the ensemble Al Ayre Espagnol, directed by the bearish Eduardo Lopez Banzo, Bayo offers zarzuela recitatives and arias by Jose de Nebra (1702-1768).
To the uninitiated, zarzuela might sound like a tapas treat, but it is a Spanish theatrical entertainment that combines music, spoken dialogue, and everything from operatic arias to low comedy. Threatened by the rise of Italian opera in the late 18th century, it survived. The zarzuela circuit is alive and well in Madrid theatres and international singers such as Placido Domingo have acknowledged the repertoire on disc.
Bayo is a specialist and makes Nebra's music spring from its yellowed pages.
"Let him be blinded, cry out and yearn," she cries out in one recitative, following it with the brilliant, tongue-in-cheek aria Who has ever trusted to a serene sea?
If you have been captivated by the recent rediscovery of Vivaldi operas, Bayo's CD is indispensable. When castanets are added to two seguidillas, we might suspect that Vivaldi is plying his art in a Madrid taberna. In the aria One eye was he lacking, what could be more Spanish than the strum of guitar?
In two instrumental compositions by Nebra, lilt borders on swing, baroque trumpets seem one moment to be spiralling from a distant bullring, then blustering away behind a Rossini crescendo.
The ensemble also offers Boccherini's sonfonia La Casa del Diablo, with a finale boldly stolen from Gluck to emphasise the terrible fate of being caught in the devil's domain.
This is a handsome package from Harmonia Mundi with a bonus DVD of some beautifully poised performances by Bayo and the musicians.
This is a gem waiting to be discovered.
* Jose de Nebra, Arias de zarzuelas (Harmonia Mundi HMI 987069, through Elite Imports)
