Jacobs s novelty is in thinking that when Monteverdi writes for two equal voices with the same clef and matching music it sounds better with singers who sound utterly different from one another. Jacobs approaches the work with courage, a wide range of tempos and a vivid imagination features that characterize so much of his finest musicianship.
Many sections positively glow.
But it remains hard to see how this challenges the grand old recordings of the years around 1970. Pope Paul V. If, as seems likely, he was hoping for a church appointment, his ploy failed, which makes the Vespro della Beata Vergine probably the most famous unsuccessful job application in history. We know very little about Monteverdi s plans for performing this music and its revolutionary mixture of old style contrapuntal polyphony and new style vocal expressiveness is too idiosyncratic to offer many clues. Recent recordings have taken very different approaches. Rene Jacobs takes a middle course here, including antiphons but otherwise leaving Monteverdi s music intact.