The groundbreaking Roman composer Alessandro Stradella’s unjustly neglected oratorio ESTER, LIBERATRICE DEL POPOLO EBREO shines forth in a sparkling new release from Jessica Gould and Navona Records. Exploring themes of courage, self acceptance, ambition, justice, and power, this piece tells the story of Esther, a timid girl, secret Jew, and Persian Queen, who summons the bravery to save her people from annihilation.
Today, Jessica is our featured artist in the “Inside Story,” a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn what initially drew her to the works of Stradella, and the ways in which his oratorio can teach us valuable lessons about modern day struggles…
Tell us about your first performance and early musical experiences.
I’d have to ask which one because my childhood was a blur of performances! I studied violin and was always singing in the school chorus or acting in a play. I got in trouble in math class repeatedly for humming the tunes from my family’s endlessly repeated old-timey classical music recordings at home, so maybe it was in a classroom! Oistrakh over Algebra, thank you very much! My first high school performance as a soloist at age 14 was Der Wegweiser from Schubert’s Winterreise (yes, indeed), which I’m convinced the teacher assigned me because of my propensity for showing up to school head to toe in snarling Goth black. Even Queen Esther, the subject of our new release with Navona Records, made an appearance in my very early life as I donned a paper crown and a fancy dress in a nursery school Purim Spiel, our annual play that celebrates Esther’s triumph (the G-rated toddler-friendly version, of course, replete with juice, cookies, and a nap).
My first voice teacher told me “You’ll either be a mezzo or a dramatic soprano. You’re too young to tell. I was 15 then and I’ve been not fitting into fachs ever since.
My teacher during my junior year abroad in Florence told me when I was 20: “Se non pronunci le parole sarà una PIZZA!!!” (If you don’t pronounce the words, it will be pizza!). A golden command regarding Monteverdi that has served me well in everything else ever since.
You are a singer as well as a filmmaker. That’s not a combination you see everyday. Can you tell us more?
In addition to music my background is in the visual arts. As a teenager, adult classes were open to me at Parsons School of Design and RISD, among others. My work was exhibited and sold and the doors of various fine art institutions of higher learning were open to me as well. I was strongly encouraged to pursue painting but my classical singing “bug” refused to disappear. When I sing I “hear” colors and when I form a musical phrase I “see” a line. Although chiaroscuro is a painting term, it is vital to singing as well. We use light and dark coloration in the service of whatever text we sing, which helps us bring foreign languages alive for audiences who don’t speak them.
When the pandemic struck, NYU Casa Italiana commissioned a short film from me, which, to my surprise, went on to win over 90 awards from film festivals around the world. My first reaction upon being asked to make a film was terror, but I found that my hybrid preparation predisposed me well, enabling me to proceed as a filmmaker because I already understood composition and color. I should add that it’s been a pleasure creating the Ester promo videos, filmed in Padova, for this project!
Your recording with Navona Records is a baroque oratorio by the great Alessandro Stradella that sets the Old Testament story of Queen Esther. What drew you to both this composer and character?
Even by the high theatricality standards of the baroque, Stradella stands out for the unusually vivid, multilayered, and dramatically delicious way that he constructs his characters. He challenges the performer not just as a singer but as an actor. On a first reading one can marvel at the beauty and clever structure of the music. Subsequent readings reveal a depth of psychological insight which, to me, foreshadows middle and late-period Verdi.
The character of Esther, music or no, has captivated and frustrated commentators for eons. She has many angles but people have been trying to put her in a box for centuries. Is she a feminist or is she a manipulator? Is she brilliant to attain power while engaging in performative meekness or is this just another version of traditional feminine wiles? I think, much like Verdi does with Violetta in La Traviata, (although not for the same reasons) Stradella demands several different voices for this one character as she evolves from timidity to action and terror to triumph. He does the same thing with her nemesis Aman, whose arc, in contrast, descends from arrogance to dejection.
How did you address Esther’s many angles?
In the recording I endeavored to use a more immature and tighter sound, if you will, for Act I, because that is when she is deeply anxious and paralyzed by the choice before her. She can risk her life and come out as a Jew and maybe save her people from genocide, or she can play it safe, continue to pretend to be Persian, survive, and live a very comfortable life while her people are massacred. In Act II, I aimed for a more full bodied, so-called “womanly” tone because this is where she realizes that only by accepting who she is can she save anyone. By the second act, she has become an adult with the agency to change a seemingly impossible situation. The person she becomes demands a different vocal color from the person she was. Her voice in Act II becomes freer because by accepting her heroic destiny, she herself becomes free. Then when she triumphs in the end, her recitative interjections are brilliant and trumpet like as she transitions into an icon.
In the two promos I filmed, you see her very clearly in the aria from Act I (Miei fidi pensieri), because that is when she is focussed on herself and her struggle to take action. In the aria from Act II (Supplicante), you barely see her at all because her ego has been subsumed into the common good, which is the mark of a hero.
This is the first recording of this piece featuring musicians and engineering of a certain caliber. While other Stradella works have received substantial attention, Ester has been puzzlingly neglected. Any idea as to why that is?
That is a mystery to me. This piece is so extraordinary, its music so cleverly composed and its characters so vivid that one assumes it would inspire great enthusiasm. When my series, Salon Sanctuary Concerts, presented it in New York in 2019, it hadn’t been presented there since 1985! I was honored to collaborate with such extraordinary colleagues, both American and Italian, to bring our particular rendition to life. It is a piece in which every role gives a singer something to sink their teeth into. Most interestingly of all, the largest role by far belongs to the villain Aman! He has much more to sing than Ester! I think making the bad guy the central character is Stradella’s way of being provocative and perverse, which is how he lived much of his life, and a large part of why his life didn’t last long. Being able to record in the stunning 15th-century Scuola della Carità in Padova was an added treat that deeply inspired all of us.
Do you think Esther’s story has a message for modern listeners?
I think the story of Esther has a message for the modern world, the ancient world, and every world in between. Why? Because the issues of genocide, despotism, female agency, brains over brawn, pride in your own identity, the path to action and the refusal to hide occur in so many eras and so many peoples and so many situations that one loses count. One could argue that Esther is a tabula rasa for the oppressed. It’s a Jewish story, but it can be applied (and it has been appropriated by other faiths) to many contexts. I would invite listeners to consider this piece and this story as not only the Jewish story that was set by a Catholic composer for a Catholic audience, but as a universal human story that might offer guidance through the various and manifold challenges of today.
And the music happens to be gorgeous. So there’s that…
Praised for “a dramatic intensity that honored the texts” by the New York Times, soprano Jessica Gould has been noted for her “electrifying voice" (Musicweb International), “multi-hued powerful sound” (Seen and Heard International), and “beautiful interpretation” (Lute Society of America Quarterly). With repertoire spanning four centuries, her discography includes projects for Sony Classics, New World Records, and MV Cremona, among others. Recitals include concerts with lutenist Nigel North, with whom she has appeared as a guest artist on the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Faculty Series, among others.
