But it's the instrumental playing that stands out: pert, shapely, spicy, full of drama.
(The same could not be said of the vivacious instrumental playing in "Qual farfalletta").
"My orientation puts the voice in the center of musical expression," he said, including instrumental playing.
In international musical life, it is growing hard to distinguish between one national school of instrumental playing and another.
Instrumental playing from La Nuova Musica under conductor David Bates is delicate and much more deadpan, providing a semblance of chasteness.
Some of the Collegium's instrumental playing seemed understated, especially that of the trumpeters, ideally among the stars of the oratorio, who proved undistinguished at best.
In the opening-credit sequence, a chillwave instrumental plays over a montage of lush, tree-lined streets and saturated neon against an inky blue sky.
The arrival of radiant music to cut through the fugato turmoil is a burst of benevolence, and the instrumental playing has character as well as beauty.
The instrumental playing, with a few inexact entries, wasn't quite perfect, but it had other advantages: the music-making was mellow, naturally flowing, affectionately human.
Flattery, however crude or instrumental, plays an inflated role in the intellectual and moral vacuum of his Presidency, and a politics of ingratiation is by its nature erratic.
