Nathaniel Watson, Amanda Forsythe, Daniel Auchincloss and Nathalie Paulin in Les Indes Galantes. (Photo: Julian Bullitt)

In a way it's hard to critique Rameau's Les Indes Galantes, because there's so little like it being performed today. What can you compare it to? It's classified as an "opera-ballet," but it's neither a cohesive 'opera' nor a 'ballet' (instead it's a set of thematically related romantic fables, alternating with dances that seem to float on the edge of audience participation). And the whole piece stops every now and then for a major special effect (like the volcano that erupts at the end of the second act - or pardon me, entrée). I think in the end Les Indes is best described as a kind of baroque variety show.

I don't mean that as a crack, btw. Much of the charm of the recent Boston Baroque production (and it was quite charming, trust me) was that you were never sure what might be coming next.  You did know that each scene was going to have a whimsical point to make about l'amour, but the settings of these musical valentines ranged from Persia to Peru, and were crammed with sultans, sun-gods, savages, and even transvestites; one minute, lovers were kissing before the lava reached the village; the next, they were trading suspiciously intoxicating "peace pipes."  Basically, there was something for everyone.

Luckily, every scene was likewise crammed with gorgeous music, too. Conductor Martin Pearlman has a special jones for the French baroque, and his case for a stripped-down version of Les Indes (the original was something of a spectacle) was that the music was spectacular all on its own, and he was proved quite right; particularly the first half of Rameau's score is wonderful - and so varied in its scene-painting that it shocked contemporary audiences. Plus it closes on a thrilling high note with that volcanic eruption (you don't normally link "French baroque" with "Krakatoa," but believe me, Rameau pulls it off). It's true that the work's second half is more variable in its inspiration, but still boasts ravishing moments, like the lovely quartet that pulls together the third entrée, and the elegant closing chaconne. One left the concert feeling that we really don't hear enough Rameau in this town.

The French genius was well-served by the period orchestra, whose playing was exquisite, and the chorus was in good voice, too - but the performance's chief jewel proved to be its soloists, who were all of outstanding quality. Local favorite Amanda Forsythe was most in period - the early eighteenth century - with her pearly, pure tone (her radiant comic acting was timeless, but that's another issue), while soprano Nathalie Paulin seemed to be replying to her from several decades later, but with a dusky richness so transporting that you didn't care. The men were just as strong, and likewise roughly in period - the powerful Sumner Thompson was probably the stand-out (in a passionate turn as a suicidal Incan that's probably the vocal highlight of the opera) but baritone Nathaniel Watson impressed with his eloquent lyricism too, and tenors Aaron Sheehan and Daniel Auchincloss more than held their own in their respective entrées. All in all, this was the most consistent set of soloists I've yet heard with Boston Baroque.

I wish I could give the same high marks to the accompanying dances, but these proved the production's sole weak point. Choreographed by the talented Marjorie Folkman - late of the Mark Morris Dance Group - they were much in her mentor's style, but exhibited little of his sense of musical structure and meaning, and so were lightly charming, but that's about it. Folkman was certainly constrained in terms of space, but you also felt an unnecessary constraint in her choreographic ambition; things got a bit more complex (and more genuinely lyrical) in the later entrées, but one still felt the dances weren't quite worthy of their accompaniment.

Meanwhile the clever direction by Sam Helfrich made witty use of what few (contemporary) props the staging could allow - and he even cheekily pulled the chorus into the action, too (they waved tiny national flags to introduce each change of locale, and even boogied a bit). In some ways Helfrich's ironic flair answered a question that's clearly on Pearlman's mind, i.e. how do you stage baroque works without turning them into museum pieces? Still, by the end of the evening some of the director's gambits had begun to seem superficial, and a few of his knowing jokes (like the predictable one about those "peace pipes") went on a bit too long; we began to perceive that something central to Rameau's vision - its truly wonder-struck exoticism - had somehow gone missing from the staging. This only argues, of course, for a fuller production from Pearlman at a later date. In the meantime we should be grateful for his tireless work in bringing this luminous score back into the repertoire.

Our local music scene is chock-a-block with worthy programs sporting titles like"Jewels and Discoveries" - and alas, usually a few of the gems in question turn out to be rhinestones.

So imagine my surprise when Boston Baroque's "Jewels and Discoveries" - which only saw two performances, last weekend - turned out to be solid Cartier from start to finish.  Conductor Martin Pearlman pulled together a program of brilliant obscurities, and his orchestra, chorus and soloists polished them to a dazzling sheen.  Tenor Keith Jameson was sidelined due to illness, but he was ably replaced (in Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda) by the talented Aaron Sheehan, and everyone else seemed energized and more precisely on point than they've been in the recent past; or perhaps the difference was that conductor Pearlman, though he kept the pace sprightly (as always), only occasionally broke the usual baroque speed limits.  Whatever the reason, this was Boston Baroque at its finest - which is very, very good indeed.

Or perhaps the difference was simply that the program sparkled so consistently, and the singers and players themselves responded to that quality.  The concert opened with Dietrich Buxtehude's Heut’ triumphieret Gottes Sohn (Today God’s Son triumphs), an Easter cantata of surpassing grace and richness. An introductory sinfonia and fanfare led to a remarkably melodic chorale in which a series of soloists took pride of place - with particularly fine work coming from alto Martin Near and bass-baritone Ulysses Thomas. This was followed by two striking works of Monteverdi, Beatus Vir, a sublime setting of Psalm 112 which Pearlman gave his usual dancing buoyancy, and then what amounted to the centerpiece of the evening, Il combattimento Tancredi e Clorinda, a stunningly dramatic piece based on Torquato Tasso’s epic poem of the Crusades. In this Christianist potboiler, the hero Tancredi challenges a Saracen knight to battle at the gates of Jerusalem, not guessing that "he" is really a "she" (Clorinda, in fact, the woman he loves, surprise surprise!). Can you guess the rest? Probably - although I'm afraid these days we have to wince a bit at the final twist, in which the dying Clorinda, a Muslim, begs her beloved (and unwitting killer) to baptize her. Yuck.

Still, even this questionable bit of Christian triumphalism (Monteverdi was a priest, remember) is rendered with sublime delicacy (indeed, poor Clorinda's death is almost overwhelmingly poignant) and the rest of Tancredi e Clorinda is simply terrific. Monteverdi literally invented the tremolo for the piece (that's right, before Tancredi e Clorinda nobody had ever heard a tremolo), explicitly demanded very precise pizzicatos to convey the thwacks of the lovers' swords, and in general called for a wild dynamic that in its day was thought crazy. And to be honest, battle music really hasn't gotten that much better over the past four centuries - Tancredi e Clorinda still thrills, and the narration is a hoot, with the lovers' vows framed by "he said" and "she said" from the narrator, as if we were simultaneously listening to an opera and watching a silent movie. Both Tancredi and Clorinda were ably embodied by bass Bradford Gleim and soprano Mary Wilson, and Aaron Sheehan, though stepping in at the last moment, made quite the dashing narrator.  (He had to dash, as this was the one time in the program Pearlman's tempo approached a gallop.)

The second half of the concert, though still remarkable, never reached quite the same musical and dramatic peaks.  It opened with sacred music by Heinrich Biber, mixed with two of the same composer's Mystery Sonatas, violin pieces devised to convey the 15 mysteries of the rosary.  The psalm settings and the Agnus Dei Pearlman had selected were lovely (and gave soprano Teresa Wakim,  alto Thea Lobo and tenor Murray Kidd a chance to shine), but it was the sonatas that threw off a strangely  memorable fire.  Each of the 15 is tuned - or "distuned" - in a particular way (which is too complicated to go into here), which gives the instrument an eccentric timbre, and gives the violinist a headache, probably (because of the unusual tuning of the instrument, each piece has its own bizarre key signature, too).  Add to that the fact that both of the sonatas on the program ("The Crucifixion" and "Assumption of the Virgin") seemed fiendishly difficult, and you can imagine the challenge facing concertmaster Christina Day Martinson.  She seemed unfazed by all this, however (but then she never seems fazed), and, working with two separate violins, carried off the sonatas with spirited verve (indeed, the final gigue from the "Assumption" was almost dizzying).

The crowning glory of the program was literally a discovery - an early Gloria by Handel that was only authenticated a few years ago.  To be honest, though very beautiful, the piece almost felt like a bit of an anti-climax after the impressively knotty Mystery Sonatas  - luckily, however, Mary Wilson returned to carry it off. Ms. Wilson's voice is just about perfect for Handel - her tone is ripe with sun, and her phrasings so flexible they seem to almost ripple. By the end of her beguiling performance, any and all sense of anticlimax had been banished.

More reasons to be happy

Earlier I reported on a "new" New Year's Eve tradition - the Nutcracker at First Night; I was lucky enough the next day to join another local tradition - Boston Baroque's New Year's concert, which every year features an entertaining mix of vocal music, a few period obscurities, and one or two crowd-pleasers.

I'm obviously not the only person in Boston in on this particular secret (and last year's version was a particular hoot) - so it was no surprise that Sanders Theatre was sold out this January 1, which means that people were packed together literally cheek-by-jowl in that glorious gothic pile's rigid pews (I guess back in the day Harvard undergraduates were really undernourished).  To be honest, things were so tight that sometimes it was hard to concentrate on the music; I guess you can't expect a musical organization to sell fewer tickets than it has "seats," but maybe it's time for a third showing of this particular favorite, to accommodate the crowds.

The star of the show this time was the great bass Kevin Deas (at left), who had just lit up Boston Baroque's Messiah a few weeks ago.  Mr. Deas only sang three numbers - from three different periods, in three different styles - but each was wonderful in its own way.  First was the famous Polyphemus aria from Acis and Galatea ("O ruddier than the cherry"), then the rollicking spiritual "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?" (with the baroque orchestra clapping along), and then Kern and Hammerstein's mysteriously moving "Ol' Man River" from Showboat. Deas was in fine form throughout, his deeper-than-deep voice always gracefully evocative, although perhaps "Ol' Man River" proved the most powerful of the set - but then how could it not, as its timeless melody showcases one of Oscar Hammerstein's simplest, and yet greatest, lyrics; this is one of those pieces in which "art song" and "the American songbook" completely overlap.

The rest of the concert was always diverting, but somewhat more variable.  Conductor Martin Pearlman (below right) opened with Corelli's "Christmas Concerto," (Op. 6, No. 8), which he took, as is his wont these days, at a wide variety of tempi.  And as usual, the orchestra's sense of ensemble began to fray a bit at the slowest speeds, but everything came together wonderfully when Pearlman sped up  - first violinist Christina Day Martinson in particular had a field day fiddling in the glorious last movement.

Martinson was likewise on fire in Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Violin (BMV 1060) with period oboist Marc Schachman only a small step behind.  The string playing remained tightly focused in Germiniani's Variations on La follia (Concerto Grosso No. 12, derived from Corelli again) - and the winds, led by Schachman, if anything sounded even better.

Alas, somehow the ensemble seemed to grow a bit winded itself in the lengthy "Water Music" Suite in F Major, which concluded the concert - perhaps this Handel perennial (presented here with the famous "Alla hornpipe" seemingly borrowed from the D Major Suite), was, in its full glory, just too much of a good thing.  And the brass section, which had sparkled on natural trumpet in Messiah, here sounded garbled and out-of-control on the even-more-challenging natural horn. Not that it's ever a chore listening to the "Water Music;" and all in all, the concert glittered with enough high points to convince me I'll have to lose some serious weight if I hope to squeeze into whatever space is left at this party next year!

Martin Pearlman conducts Boston Baroque.

I try to hear both major local versions of Messiah every year, and there was one moment from this year's Boston Baroque edition that I will never forget - the duet for bass and natural trumpet in the third part. The piece begins, "The trumpet shall sound," but in the hands of trumpeter Robinson Pyle, the instrument actually sang, in tandem with Kevin Deas, the wonderfully rich bass who was essaying a famous passage from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (the one establishing the doctrine of Christian resurrection). It's one of the loveliest melodies in all of Handel (and that's saying something), and Deas and Pyle had clearly worked together so that Pyle could closely follow the bass's ornamentation of the beautiful line, "We shall be changed." It was probably the best playing on natural trumpet I've ever heard in my life, as well as one of the most moving duets between a singer and an instrumentalist I've been lucky enough to witness. When Deas recognized Pyle at the close of the aria, it all but brought down the house.

Well, that was quite the high point - if only the rest of the performance had been so elevated! Not that Boston Baroque's version of this classic wasn't a lovely evening of music; it was. But it's beginning to feel a bit rigid in its eccentricity, and a bit unfocused in its attack. Ironically enough, the ensemble's conductor, Martin Pearlman, was among the first instigators of the revolution in Messiah performance that swept concert halls two decades ago.  Pearlman's idea was to bring the rhythms of dance to the musical drama, and to scale what had become a rigidly grand Victorian epic down to a nimbler, more intimate, and perhaps more human, experience.

In my opinion, this was all to the good - and today the stentorian Messiah that Pearlman was reacting against has pretty much become a thing of the past.  But I'm afraid over the years the conductor has become a bit rigid himself about a few things - he always favored brisk rhythms, for instance, but by now several pieces of his Messiah have gotten so fast that they aren't just dances but jigs (and they seem to shed more and more color and detail the quicker he takes them).  Plus Pearlman organizes his chorus into quartets, rather than in blocks (with all the sopranos together, then all the altos, etc.), which I imagine he thinks gives their sound a kind of blended transparency - which it does, up to a point.  But it also makes it harder for the singers to synch up the vocal melisma that is the backbone of many of Handel's melodies, and thus things sometimes turn blurry (particularly at the clips Pearlman often prefers).  Indeed, sometimes one distinctly felt in Pearlman's Messiah that he was putting the chorus at a disadvantage.  But I began to realize as I listened this year that a key difference between the Pearlman version and the Christophers version (over at  Handel and Haydn) is that Christophers, once a professional singer, views his orchestra as an extension of his chorus, while Pearlman, a keyboardist,  unconsciously sees his chorus as an extension of his orchestra - and why shouldn't they therefore just be able to sing as fast as he wants them to?

Oh, well - it's true not everything was too fast; Pearlman didn't dash through "He was despised and rejected of men," for instance.  Much of the performance was at an appropriately thoughtful pace.  And Boston Baroque had clearly corrected a problem they've had in the past: when Pearlman conducted from the harpsichord, the ensemble didn't begin to fray as it was once wont to do.  Still, the Boston Baroque orchestra isn't playing as cleanly as they might (though they now have that dancing lilt down pat).  And I was disappointed here and there with the soloists, even though I admire them all from previous hearings.  The luminous Amanda Forsythe had her usual pearly tone, but she didn't quite have the power, at least on Saturday night, that she has possessed in the past.  And counter tenor Matthew White, though he has a haunting timbre that's just right for many passages in Messiah, also scrapes a bit at the bottom of the role (which edges into contralto territory), and something about his voice didn't mix well with the tenor's in their duet.  Meanwhile said tenor, Keith Jameson, had some wonderful moments but also some tentative ones; the only member of the quartet, in fact, who sang with consistent authority was bass Deas, who outdid himself in that final duet.  It was a ringing reminder of the magic that Pearlman and company can still wreak with this immortal masterpiece.

Beethoven goes baroque

Ludwig van with a manuscript sketch of the Seventh Symphony.

Boston is a funny little town in which the music press is absolutely determined to not tell the public the news. For years, the city has been bustling with early music activity, and by now it boasts three or four of the best period music organizations in America (H&H, the Boston Early Music Festival, Emmanuel Music and Boston Baroque). These days, it's widely recognized as probably the center of period performance in the country.

Yet most Bostonians are utterly innocent of this fact. They don't know anything about what probably counts as their hometown's major musical achievement of the last few decades. Because they're never told about it. Oh, the local press dutifully notes, and even reviews, the zillions of period music concerts that now dot the city's calendar. But they cover the scene the way they covered the build-up to the Iraq War - they dutifully record the detail, but resolutely refuse to connect the dots. By now, there should have been cover stories in the Globe, and of course a special on WGBH - which I know is a laughable proposition right there; WGBH doesn't give a damn about its home city's arts scene, we all know that. Its idea of "arts programming" is Jared trying to talk Emily into spending her beer money on the ballet!

Swaddled thus in blissful ignorance, Bostonians are happy to imagine their music scene is precisely what the local deep pockets tell them it is. In this la-la land, the BSO is the big, and indeed only, artistic game in town, and there an end. Now don't get me wrong; James Levine is a fantastic craftsman, and when he's around, the BSO sounds fabulous. It's very pretty - and oh my god the passion, etc.! We all know the drill - which doesn't change the fact that the BSO is a sideshow of the Met and essentially a showcase for the very best suburban music that educated money can buy.

Meanwhile the smart money goes elsewhere - and one place it goes is Boston Baroque, which last weekend essayed a program with the Big Kahuna of period music squarely in its sights - the program ended with Ludwig van's famous Seventh Symphony. Beethoven, to those unfamiliar, is both boundary and watershed for the early music movement. He stands at the cusp of the explosion in musical technology which essentially created the "modern" orchestra, just as he stood on the hinge between the classical and romantic periods. So does he belong in the modern or period musical camp?  Mainstream symphonies are loathe to give him up, as they've had to cede Handel, and Haydn, and even much of Mozart, to early music specialists. And yet I find over and over that the most exciting and revelatory Beethoven I hear is done on period rather than modern instruments.

So I was hoping for big things from Boston Baroque - and they mostly didn't disappoint, although conductor Martin Pearlman did get carried away with the whole "apotheosis of dance" thang that everybody likes to cite about the Seventh these days, and let the last two movements get repetitively loud and bangy. (This is probably in the notation, I know - but remember Beethoven was practically deaf by the time he wrote this symphony!) There was more exciting work early on - particularly in the first movement, in which Pearlman pulled off the strange trick of showing us how Beethoven slowly assembles his trademark sound from the different sections of the orchestra (in contrast, modern instruments, with their smooth, glossy surfaces, always blend too much into one another). And for once the rough edge of the natural horns sounded absolutely wonderful - indeed the lusty, raucous volleys from the brass resounded in Jordan Hall like the calls of post horns across the 19th-century countryside.

Beethoven wasn't the only big name on the program, though, which opened with Mozart's Symphony No. 33, a charming early work that the orchestra played with clean, elegant brio. The symphony all but brims with melodic ideas, and is lit by Mozart's youthful confidence, but its development isn't particularly challenging or even interesting - you get the feeling the young genius just didn't have time for that (and who can blame him?).

Pearlman returned to Beethoven for the evening's second highlight, the solo scene "Ah! perfido" sung by local gal-made-good Barbara Quintiliani (at left).  Ms. Quintiliani is blessed with a big, gorgeous voice that can be lusciously ripe one moment then thrillingly stern the next - which is perfect for "Ah! perfido," in which the soprano turns on a dime between condemning her faithless lover and pathetically begging for pity - or even his return.  Her later excerpts from Cherubini's “Medée," played less to that dichotomy, and were a little meandering too, and so were less gripping.  Even here, though, Quintiliani made a powerful impression - and left me longing to hear her in Verdi, where it seems her mix of emotional honey and intellectual authority might reach its greatest pitch.  We don't hear Verdi much in town these days, more's the pity - maybe some local opera company will catch Quintiliani and decide to change that.  At any rate, she deserves to be a bigger star, and something tells me someday she will be.

Soprano on the cutting edge

Michael Maniaci in action.

There's a spectre haunting the early music movement.

The spectre of the castrato.

Don't laugh; to some period music professionals, somehow approximating the combination of female range and male lung power typical of the notorious castrati has become a kind of musical holy grail. In a way, it's understandable; period musicians are constantly striving to replicate lost practices and instruments, the better to perform music written prior to the instrumental revolutions of the nineteenth century in the manner in which it was originally played. Their pursuit of this ideal has led to a revolution in our approach to Handel and Bach, and even Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. But the one period instrument that seems to lie permanently beyond our postmodern grasp is the voice of the castrato.

No one (so far) has actually suggested we bring back the castrati, of course, for obvious reasons. But the yearning to experience what Mozart and Handel once heard - and wrote music for - is often palpable in the early music world; indeed, it's not too much to say that a small cult of the castrato has sprung up there. The countertenor, of course, has meanwhile become ubiquitous - but even the greatest of these falsetto magicians, it must be admitted, often lack the agility, range, and power of a great soprano. The involution of their technique often mutes, or even blurs, their diction, and as they inch up toward (but usually never quite reach) coloratura territory, they tend to grow more studied and careful.

Thus, I suppose the appearance of the "male soprano" was inevitable - singers who claim that through anatomical or hormonal anomaly, they've retained their pre-pubescent voiceboxes into adulthood. Michael Maniaci (at top), who sang a program of Mozart with Boston Baroque last weekend, is one of the most successful of this rare new breed. Before you ask, the singer claims that during puberty, his vocal chords never lengthened and coarsened as is typical of the average male; aside from that, Maniaci explains, he's just like any other grown man.

How, exactly, his hormones "missed" his larynx, the singer doesn't really explain - but the proof of this kind of thing, as they say, is in the pudding, and I have to admit that at first blush, Maniaci sounds strikingly different from a countertenor. His voice blooms at the top of his range, which is, indeed, up around a coloratura high C, where he's utterly agile and free, throwing off gorgeous top notes seemingly at will. What's curious about Maniaci, however, is that his vocal production is quite uneven. The castrati had voices that smoothly slid down into a high tenor (and there is one extant recording - the last castrato died in 1922! - that hardly dazzles, but does support this claim). But Maniaci's voice weakens as it drops, and then slips off a cliff at its low end (much, to be honest, as a countertenor's does). And to be honest, his diction and phrasing sparkle on his high notes, but blur as he goes further down.

There is, however, that gorgeous top to his voice, which shone brightest in "Ah se a morir mi chiama" from Mozart's Lucio Silla (Maniaci's program was drawn from early works for castrati by the young genius), and especially the joyous "Exsultate, jubilate" (K. 165), which Maniaci sang brilliantly, and which is becoming one of his signature pieces.

Yet one wondered - was Mr. Maniaci that much stronger than a radiant soprano would be in the same parts? It was hard to argue that the timbre of his top notes was so different from those produced by a woman; and while he had power, it wasn't overwhelming power (indeed, plenty of sopranos could have flattened him). What's most striking about him, in fact, is simply that these high C's are coming out of a male body - but this effect in many ways feels cultural, or even political, in its ramifications rather than purely musical. And to me, the image of a woman in male dress, singing, say, the trousers role from Idomeneo (which was originally taken by a castrato) has much the same cultural and political edge. The only difference is that the soprano has the range for the whole role. (Indeed, Mozart wasn't happy with the castrato who first sang in Idomeneo, and rewrote the part for a tenor.)

Such questions of cultural interest vs. musical quality perhaps were top-of-mind for me because in the rest of the concert, which was given over to instrumental Mozart, Boston Baroque often acquitted itself brilliantly. The opening overture from The Impresario, another very early work, was exuberant and charming. The ensemble was less spirited in the following overture to La clemenza di Tito, but still played with warmth and feeling. The "Haffner" symphony, which closed the concert, brought back the high spirits, and seemed to surge along with an energy that was practically rollicking, with light, pointed playing from the winds. Alas, there were some wrong notes squawked by the natural horns right at the end, but somehow this seemed easy to forgive in a performance so splendid in every other respect.

The rose window at St. John the Divine in New York.

One of the great achievements of the early music movement - and Martin Pearlman's Boston Baroque in particular - has been its reclamation of Monteverdi from his lapsarian status as "that Italian guy before Bach." Last weekend's performances of the great composer's Vespers of 1610 only cemented that achievement. Monteverdi should have always been set somewhere on the boundary of Big Three territory, in that he brought pre-baroque forms such as the madrigal to the highest pitch they ever reached. But as early music pioneers have made us more and more familiar with his masterpieces, his status as a forger of new musical form has begun to seem to rival Beethoven's and Wagner's. Monteverdi of course all but invented opera, but nearly as original is his Vespers, a work unprecedented (at the time) in its scope and ambition, and one that all but defies categorization even today.

Of course on the surface, Monteverdi pretty much follows the normal structure of the Catholic rite of vespers, the evening ritual in which a series of sung psalms and antiphons leads to a Magnificat, a canticle dedicated to both the glory and humility of the Virgin Mary. In fact the Vespers was written, many believe, as a kind of audition for the top musical post at St. Mark's cathedral in Venice (Monteverdi got the job).

But it's hard to look at this piece as a résumé-builder, even for a genius; instead it sometimes feels like a kind of musical big bang, a technical, stylistic, and metaphorical explosion that in a way kick-started everything. Monteverdi leaps from motet to sonata to psalm and back again, all while somehow maintaining a sense of unity; he splits and re-forms his choir at will, and sometimes provides them with up to 10 separate vocal parts, all operating in synchrony(the piece also calls for seven soloists). What's more, Vespers is set all over the performance space, be it cathedral, chapel or concert hall - sometimes we can't even see the singers, as they're intended as voices of the cosmos, responding re-assuringly to the profession of human faith.

Now I don't believe in God, but Monteverdi certainly did (he eventually became a priest), and frankly, sometimes he almost convinces me of His existence. There are few more haunting moments in all of Western music, for instance, than "Duo seraphim," his duet for two angels floating in space, singing the glory of the Almighty (they're eventually joined by a third, who fuses with them into a single note when they praise the Trinity). Here conductor Martin Pearlman placed his tenors, Derek Chester and Aaron Sheehan, in the balconies of Jordan Hall, to thrillingly plaintive effect, and Monteverdi's evocation of the mystery of God's presence gripped us not only as great music but also as great theatre (and maybe even great architecture).

Alas, not all the soloists fared as well from the stage itself. Mr. Pearlman had clearly instructed his singers to strip their styles down toward pure-tone singing, and so I missed some of the vocal richness I expected from Mary Wilson and Kristen Watson, who both shone to better advantage in operatic roles with Boston Baroque earlier this year; indeed, of Pearlman's soloists (almost all of them familiar from earlier programs) I felt only baritone Donald Wilkinson was operating at his best. And the wind section, though fine in unison, sometimes got a little ragged when each instrument was exposed for long stretches. Likewise the height of Monteverdi's polyphony - those 10-part-plus sequences - didn't always feel entirely coherent.

But this is, admittedly, an incredible challenge, and any roughness here may have been partly due to understandable opening-night coordination issues; at any rate the chorus generally sounded superb, and nowhere more beautiful than in Monteverdi's concluding Magnificat, one of the most touching ever written. And Pearlman's mastery of the total arc of the Vespers was always and everywhere evident. The piece calls for a high degree of editorial intervention; much of the instrumentation is suggested but not pinned down, the position of some motets is disputed, and precisely which antiphons should be included is never specified (Pearlman took his from the Feast of the Assumption, certainly an appropriate choice). It's no secret that Pearlman's decisions on these and other key points have led to a version that many consider "the" Vespers of our time (it's already won a Grammy). Certainly the "Pearlman version" limns every - sometimes contradictory - facet of the piece: its intimacy and its grandeur, its period "feel" and yet its strange sense of timelessness. His exploitation of every nook and cranny of Jordan Hall was also brilliant, and only makes me long to hear this version in New York on March 6, when Boston Baroque will bring the Vespers to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, surely a close-to-ideal venue for hearing Monteverdi's music of the spheres.

A very happy new year from Boston Baroque

Boston Baroque has in recent years created its own New Year's tradition of light, often comic, concerts performed on both the holiday's eve and the day itself. This year's heartwarming, mostly-Mozart program proved particularly welcome, given the gloomy weather and the current general mood. And it made me wonder yet again why the program's hilarious secret weapon, baritone David Kravitz, isn't a bigger star. In a just world, he'd be crooning on the radio and featured on local television - particularly as he's obviously a clever, witty guy (offstage, he's a former SCOTUS clerk, and is behind the screamingly liberal Blue Mass Group blog, which you should read). But because even public TV can't be bothered much with our city's culture, he's only famous among those of us who can squeeze into his live performances.

Oh, well - lucky us. In the opening Bastien and Bastienne - a short "singspiele" written by Mozart when he was all of twelve - Kravitz (left, Globe photo by Lisa Poole) sang the role of a "supposed sorcerer," while he took the lead (and only) part in the program's finale, Domenico Cimarosa's hilarious The Music Director. Kravitz excelled in both, and sang throughout with his customary command, but he was truly peerless in the Cimarosa. In the Mozart, his worldly-wise magician was pure charlatan, when it might have been more piquant to throw a genuine daftness into the mix (the piece was, after all, supposedly commissioned by Anton Mesmer, later to be parodied in Cosi fan tutte). In the witty Music Director, however, Kravitz was utterly in his element - not only was his sound gorgeous, but his characterization was superb, proving that he can slice the comic ham with the best of 'em.

But back to Bastien and Bastienne, which is a sweetly melodic version of the kind of genre piece popular in Mozart's day: a country lad is seduced away from his lass by an unseen "city girl," but with the help of an eccentric magician, said country girl wins her boy back. Here neither Bastien nor Bastienne was particularly pastoral in look or type, but soprano Kristen Watson and tenor Lawrence Jones acquitted themselves well in the roles nonetheless - the lissome Watson with a silvery tone and a broad-but-not-too-broad comic attack, and Jones with a more sincere acting style and a light but pure tenor. Their stage movement was clever and apt - Boston Baroque has almost made a science out of this - and the music, though unsurprisingly a bit generic (the guy was 12!) was actually quite varied, and was played by Boston Baroque with sympathetic verve. Which made the performance not only perfectly charming, but also imbued with some deeper interest, as the piece is filled with hints and foreshadowings of the themes Mozart would spend his later operatic life developing.

Between these two comic bagatelles Pearlman had programmed the composer's familiar 40th Symphony - although as his wont, in a variant rarely heard, the "original" version (which lacks the clarinet line). This was the most serious music-making of the program, and the orchestra approached it with precision and spirit, while Pearlman offered his usual graceful insights. Without the clarinets, needless to say, the winds have a cleaner, but more forceful, profile in the symphony, and Pearlman drew out the dissonances and hints of suspension that undergird the slower second and third movements, so that the work seemed (as many modern critics would have it) highly dynamic and melancholic, and seemed to ramify both backward in time toward the baroque, and forward to the impending romantic movement. Pearlman didn't quite make me forget those clarinets, I'm afraid, but he certainly made his case.

Then Kravitz returned as The Music Director, singing his own translation of Cimarosa's witty take on an instantly recognizable musical type - a likeably pompous conductor (who assures us, apropos of nothing, that he's "not a diva") stuck grappling with an unruly orchestra, indeed an orchestra that comes in at so many wrong times and places that Kravitz was soon muttering that “I’ve a strong suspicion there’s another conductor.” Meanwhile Mr. Pearlman, baton in hand, was just five feet away. He soon got his, however - his own signature gestures found their way into Kravitz's body language before the show was over. But no one seemed more tickled by this than Pearlman himself. The only question in any one's mind at the final standing ovation was - how will they ever top this next year?