Storytelling, musicality & musicology: Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall

Thomas Gainsborough: Portrait of Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (c. 1773) (Photo: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts)

The Trials of Tenducci: Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer, Tommaso Giordani; Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 9 March 2026

Irish Baroque Orchestra makes a welcome visit to London with a wonderful evening combining story-telling and virtuosity, exploring music associated with the impecunious Italian castrato Tenducci on his travels in England & Ireland with performances of great presence and bravura

When I interviewed Peter Whelan last year he talked about his interest not only in music but in the stories behind it, [see my interview ‘Spurred on by the story-telling’] and this is exemplified by his series of discs with Irish Baroque Orchestra exploring Ireland’s 18th century musical heritage by focusing on particular characters. Notable amongst these was their 2021 disc The Trials of Tenducci on Linn Records [see my review] focusing on the Italian castrato, Tenducci who made a career in England and Ireland along with getting himself into one or two scrapes!

On Monday 9 March 2026, Peter Whelan and Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) were joined by countertenor Hugh Cutting for a concert version of The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall. The programme included music that Tenducci had sung, music by composers with whom he was friends and music by contemporaries in Ireland, including pieces by Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer and Tommaso Giordani.

Tenducci came to London in 1758 and started off singing secondary roles. But he would go on to become something of a superstar, and be painted twice by Gainsborough. Tenducci’s big break was in Thomas Arne’s Artaxerxes in London in 1762, an English language opera seria (rather than the more common English ballad opera), based on a libretto by Metastasio. Tenducci sang the role of the hero, Arbaces. He became friends with the composer Johann Christian Bach and sang in the premiere of Bach’s Adriano in Siria at the King’s Theatre in London in 1764, and sang Arbace in Bach’s Artaserse in 1766. Also in 1764, Tenducci met the eight-year-old Mozart when he and his father visited London, and in 1778 when Mozart and Tenducci met again in Paris, Mozart wrote the singer a concert aria now, alas, lost. Tenducci repeated the role of Arbaces in Arne’s Artaxerxes in the first Dublin staging of the work in 1765-1766 when it seems to have been popular as there was a run of 33 performances.

But along the way, Tenducci managed to spend time in a debtors’ prison in London in 1760, though he did at one point escape. Then whilst in Ireland, Tenducci gave lessons to Dorothea Maunsell, a barrister’s daughter in Dublin. They married secretly in 1766 when she was 15. This episode involved, flight, trial and imprisonment, and eventually the marriage was annulled for non-consummation. Maunsell’s father changed his mind and allowed the marriage and the two travelled to Edinburgh where both performed in Arne’s Artaxerxes, though the marriage did not last long

The concert began with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E flat, K16 which was written around the time the boy first met Tenducci in London. It is in three movements and each makes significant use of the horns. The first movement was engagingly lively with the music having an irrepressible bounce to it. The slower second movement, also still using horns, paired sustained upper lines with a moving bass line that gave the music an unsettled feel, then the invigorating finale finished with an exploration of instrumental colours. The orchestra, led from the fortepiano by Peter Whelan, played with great presence

Next came an aria from an early work by Arne, his masque Alfred which premiered in 1740. ‘Vengeance, O come inspire me’ began with a vigorous orchestral introduction, then Hugh Cutting displayed great relish for the engagingly athletic vocal line.

Lacking Mozart’s concert aria for Tenducci, the programme included two arias from Mozart’s 1770 opera, Mitridate Re di Ponto which premiered in Milan. Hugh Cutting sang two of Farnace’s arias, the first of which was ‘Gia dagli occhi’, began with a dramatic accompagnato where Cutting really captured our attention and before leading to a beautifully shaped lyric aria.

Throughout the evening, Cutting sang from memory and in each aria he showed great commitment to text, drama and emotions, drawing us into each individual world and displaying a degree of engagement which took the performance well beyond a simple concert.

Both J.C.Bach and Tenducci worked with the oboist Johann Christian Fischer who lived in London from 1768 and was a popular soloist in concerts. He wrote at least ten oboe concertos, and we heard the final movement from Oboe Concerto No. 7 in F with the solo played by IBO’s Emma Black. The movement is a set of variations on the Irish song Gramachree Molly, which was first heard on the oboe with just continuo accompaniment before the strings took over and Black proceeded to spin a series of delightful elaborations over the accompaniment. All in all, a rather charming piece.

We then returned to Arne for Tenducci’s party piece, the role of Arbaces in Artaxerxes (the libretto based on Metastasio but in Arne’s own English version). The opera has suffered from the fact that score and parts were lost in the Covent Garden theatre fire of 1808 and only the arias survive. When Ian Page and the Mozartists performed it at Covent Garden in 2009 [see my review] they used new recitatives by Ian Page and other material by Duncan Druce and the performance is on Signum Classics.

‘Water parted from the sea’ was one of Tenducci’s hit numbers, and it proved to be a rather lovely piece with a lyrical vocal line over quite a rich, busy accompaniment.

We ended part one with a return to Mozart’s Mitridate. ‘Venga pur minacci’ proved to be a virtuoso piece, with Cutting projecting Farnace’s brave defiance in dramatic manner allied to a vigorous orchestral contribution which created a sense of excitement.

The second half opened with another of Mozart’s symphonies written in London, this time Symphony No. 4 in D K19. The opening movement was lively and certainly upbeat, with the young composer revelling in contrasts in the music, and again prominent horns. Whelan and his players brought energy and presence to the music so it was positively uplifting. The slow movement was graceful, but had some interesting moving inner parts with moments in the spotlight for the violas, then the finale concluded things with a swing as the nine-year-old composer brought out contrasts in texture.

In 1770, Tenducci took part in the London premiere of Gluck’s Orfeo, though this was in effect a pasticcio with extra music by J.C. Bach and others. We heard music from Gluck’s original 1762 version (though it would be intriguing to reconstruct that 1770 pasticcio). The Dance of the Furies was vivid indeed, and the horns were positively furious. This was a less well-upholstered view of Gluck’s music, immediate with a real edge to it. Then Hugh Cutting sang ‘Che faro senza Euridice?’ with the long preceding accompanied recitative. The recitative was powerful indeed with a strong orchestral presence complementing a performance from Cutting that was very intent, full of finely expressive tone quality. This continued into the aria where the sheer beauty of Cutting’s tone was complemented by expressive shape to the music and fine words.

We then turned the Italian composer Tommaso Giordani. He first came to London in the 1750s as part of his father’s small opera company. In the 1760s, Giordani was in Dublin where he worked at Smock Alley. His ventures were unsuccessful, and he spent 16 years in London working for the Italian opera. He was back in Ireland in the 1780s and in 1785 wrote the music for a pantomime The Island of Saints, or The Institution of the Shamrock for which he arranged Irish melodies. We heard The Celebrated Overture and Irish Medley to The Island of Saints. The first movement had a perky charm and its energy went with a bit of a swing. The slow movement featured a lovely oboe melody (a folk tune, Shepherds I have lost my love) over plucked strings. The finale was a medley of Irish tunes, essentially a sequence of jigs and reels which were projected with loving gusto by the string players, catapulting us into a different, less polite world.

Giordani is reputed to have written the aria Caro mio ben which was popularised when included in a volume of Italian songs and arias published in 1894. Whether he did or not is moot, but the aria is known to generations of young singers. Here Cutting and IBO made it a thing of expressive beauty.

We ended with Tenducci’s friend J.C. Bach as Cutting sang Arbace’s aria ‘Vo solcando un mar crudele’ from Artaserse (i.e. J.C. Bach’s version of the same plot as Arne). The music demonstrated a sophisticated energy with the orchestral introduction seeming proximate to the music of Mozart. Cutting’s performance was upfront and direct, then suddenly we had cascades of notes with the virtuosity punctuated by moments of sturm und drang from the orchestra.

This was a terrific evening where storytelling, musicality and musicology went hand in hand. Cutting, Whelan and Irish Baroque Orchestra gave each item great dramatic presence, they were invested in the music no matter how unknown it was and projected a sense of engagement and enthusiasm. The sense of intriguing narrative behind the music meant that we could thread these fine performances into a satisfying whole.