IBO & Peter Whelan - The Trials of Tenducci - The Scotsman

Described by novelist Tobias Smollett as “a thing from Italy” who “looks for all the world like a man, though they say it is not,” Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, the late 18th century Sienna-born celebrity castrato, cut an unorthodox profile. During a colourful life he variously did time in debtors prison, fled as a fugitive and eloped with a 15-year-old, all while pursuing stardom as a singer in Dublin, London and Edinburgh (1768-69). This tribute album by the Irish Baroque Orchestra under Peter Whelan focuses on Tenducci’s Irish connection, wrapping contemporary instrumental music around some of the vocal favourites of his repertoire, sung by Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught. A fetching Dublin twang colours Giordani’s incidental music to Messink’s pantomime The Island of Saints, and JC Bach’s arrangement of The Braes of Ballenden. There’s Mozart, there’s operatic virtuosity from the pen of Arne, and other relative obscurities, too. Refreshingly novel.