"Gelido in ogni vena" Giovanni Battista Ferrandini, "Siroe" Libretto: Pietro Metastasio
Countertenor + piano accompagniment: Philippe Jaroussky Live on France Inter Nov 2023 Cosroes' aria (Act III, scene V)
Gelido in ogni vena Scorrer mi sento il sangue, L'ombra del figlio esangue M'ingombra di terror.
E per maggior mia pena Vedo che fui crudele A un'anima innocente, Al core del mio cor.
** I feel my blood congealing run Thro' ev'ry vein, in ev'ry part, And the pale ghost of my dear son, Strikes dread and terror to my heart.
And still to add to greater woe, The loyal innocent I've slain, Of cruelty at length I know, I, on myself, have fix'd the stain.
Gelido in ogni vena" is an aria from a libretto by Pietro Metastasio*. It appears in two distinct operas: "Siroe" and "Farnace". (Farnace: 1927, "Gelido in ogni vena" was set to music by almost every composer in Baroque and beyond. The approaches are very different and interesting to hear. They range from Vinci's approach which is more pleasing than it is gripping to Vivaldi's soul-crushing benchmark of what a baroque aria can be.
The fellow Venetian Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (*1710) has a yet different approach. It's not quite clear when his version was composed, only that it happened before 1758. The dread that befalls Cosroe when he imagines seeing his deceased son whom he (justly) feels he has wronged that makes his blood run cold with fear and guilt, Ferrandini illustrates with fragile diminished jumps and subtle harmonic shifts and chromatics as Cosroe's world is coming apart at the seams, shifting and shaking while he tries to somehow smoothen the cracks and live on. More personal and intimate than Vivaldi's, Ferrandini's interpretation is sublime by its own merit.
*) (this seems more likely even though some sources credit Antonio Maria Lucchini, but it seems that his version didn't contain "Gelido ...")
The full da capo aria can be found on Philippe Jaroussky's album "Forgotten Arias" [x]. On the radio, live, he gives us a two-minute slice.
The full radio podcast is still available here: [x]
Translation Source: Siroe, re di Persia. Drama per musica 1736, British Library [x]
