Handel's Operas, 1726-1741

spine width 41mm MW 200906

Reviews of Handel’s Operas 1704-1726

Jacket: Caricature of Senesino and Faustina Bordoni in the final scene of Admeto, 1727 (front); Set design by John Devoto for a palace scene (perhaps for Lotario,, 1729 1729) (back).

This volume is a monument to the source-critical method. It is a rigorous investigation of the bewilderingly abundant musical and literary sources of each opera, and its most lasting influence will be on all future editions of Handel’s music. Early Music

HANDEL’S

OPERAS 1726-1741

1726-1741

H

ANDEL ranks with Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi and Wagner among the supreme masters of opera, yet between 1754 (when Handel was still living) and 1920 not one of his operas was performed anywhere. Their revival in the modern theatre has been among the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the art. But they are still too little understood, or studied, and until recently no reliable modern editions existed. This long-awaited book is the sequel to Handel’s Operas 1704-1726 1704-1726, published in 1987. It is the first study in depth of Handel’s last twentytwo operas, including major masterpieces such as Orlando, Ariodante and Alcina and the brilliant lighter works Partenope, Serse and Imeneo. Each chapter contains a full synopsis and study of the libretto, a detailed assessment of the opera’s musical and dramatic qualities, a performance history and comparison of the different versions. In addition four general chapters throw a vivid light on the historical background. Two Epilogues touch on Handel’s dramatic vision, the revival of his operas in the twentieth century, and their performance today. There are a number of valuable Appendices. Together with its predecessor, the book provides the first complete overview of these works. WINTON DEAN was educated at Harrow and

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydell.co.uk / www.boydellandbrewer.com

Handel's Operas 1cut.indd 1

HANDEL’S

Alessandro Admeto, Re di Tessaglia Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra Siroe, Re di Persia Tolomeo, Re di Egitto Lotario Partenope Poro, Re dell’Indie Ezio Sosarme, Re di Media Orlando Arianna in Creta Ariodante Alcina Atalanta Arminio Giustino Berenice, Regina di Egitto Faramondo Serse Imeneo Deidamia

One of the great monuments of musical scholarship of our day – a mine of information lucidly delivered, sharply stimulating... a pleasure to read for its crisply expressed, infinitely discerning, and above all loving responses to the works themselves. Financial Times

OPERAS

Handel’s Operas, 1726-1741

DEAN

WINTON DEAN

King’s College, Cambridge. It was taking part in a Cambridge stage production of Saul nearly seventy years ago that fired his interest in Handel as a dramatic composer. His first book was on Bizet, followed by his major study Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, which set new standards in Handel scholarship, Handel and the Opera Seria, and (as co-author) Handel’s Operas 1704-1726. With Sarah Fuller he edited Handel’s 1704-1726 Giulio Cesare. He has written extensively on other operatic topics, and is the foremost British authority on Handel’s dramatic works.

BOYDELL

26/09/2006 17:20:17

handel’s oper as 1726­–1741

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 1

06/10/2006 14:51:02

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Frontispiece: Plan of Covent Garden Theatre, from Gabriel Dumont, Parallèle de plans des plus belles salles de spectacles…’ (c.1774), plate 20. Image reversed.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 2

06/10/2006 14:51:12

handel’s oper as 1726–1741

Winton Dean

THE BOYDELL PRESS

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 3

06/10/2006 14:51:12

© Winton Dean, 2006 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The right of Winton Dean to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2006 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 10: 1-84383-268-2 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mr Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall Disclaimer:

Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 4

06/10/2006 14:51:12

To the Dear Memory of my Wife THALIA (born 7 August 1918; married 4 September 1939; died 10 December 2000)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 5

06/10/2006 14:51:12

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 6

06/10/2006 14:51:12

Preface

T

his is the second half of what was originally intended as a single-volume study of Handel’s operatic career, undertaken in collaboration with the late John Merrill Knapp in the mid-1960s. It soon became apparent that the plan was too ambitious. No study in depth of Handel’s operas, nearly forty in number and a conspicuous landmark in the history of the Baroque musical theatre, had been published in any language. The amount of unpublished material, both in the scores themselves and linked with their performance and reception, was so vast that we decided to split the work into two volumes, making the break first at the temporary collapse of the Royal Academy of Music in 1728, and then, when it became apparent that this would have resulted in two volumes of unequal size, two years earlier at the arrival of Faustina Bordoni in London in the spring of 1726. The first volume, Handel’s Operas 1704–1726, was published by Oxford University Press in 1987, two years later than planned; a paperback edition, lightly revised by me after J.M.K.’s death in 1993, followed in 1995. Before the completion of the first volume J.M.K. withdrew from the project in circumstances explained in its Preface. He had however contributed some notes, of which I have made occasional use, for the early chapters in the present volume before the decision was taken to move the division back to 1726. The popularity of Handel’s operas after their long neglect, increasing as it were by compound interest over the last half-century, has led to the release from public record offices and private archives of more and more material throwing light on the background, performance and reception of the operas. Handel’s was an age of settled prosperity and increased leisure, at least for the upper and middle classes, with consequently a greater demand for entertainment of all kinds. For the whole period (nearly fifty years) of his residence in England Handel was continually in the public eye as a provider and eventually a national figurehead. His activities were announced, reported and discussed in the rapidly expanding press (not only in London), in pamphlets and in private correspondence. He himself seems to have written relatively few letters; not many have survived, and surely most recipients would have kept any they received. But copious correspondence was a feature of the age, not least among those who could afford to patronise the opera house. Otto Erich Deutsch in his Handel: A Documentary Biography (1955) reaped a fair harvest from this field, which has since yielded a further crop resulting from the researches of Elizabeth Gibson (Owen Swiney’s letters to the Duke of Richmond), Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill (the extensive correspondence of the Harris family), Lowell Lindgren (the letters of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni and the Italian circle in London), Carole Taylor (letters relating to the Opera of the Nobility) and others. The correspondence between Charles Jennens and Edward Holdsworth appeared in Volume 4

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 7

06/10/2006 14:51:12

viii

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

of the Halle Händel-Handbuch, an enlarged version of Deutsch edited by Siegfried Flesch containing further additional material. There is no reason to suppose that all manuscript sources have been exhausted. It is even possible that the minutes and records of the Royal Academy of Music after 1719 may lurk unsuspected in some unexplored archive. Among other recent publications of major importance for the operas are A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs by Donald Burrows and Martha J. Ronish (1994), John H. Roberts’s nine volumes of Handel Sources (1986), a number of pioneer articles dealing with theatre finances by Robert D. Hume and Judith Milhous, and the first fruits of the reconstituted Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (see below). At the time of writing five of the operas covered in this book have appeared, and others are in preparation. It is perhaps worth clarifying one or two misunderstandings arising from reviews of the first volume. The plot summaries in each opera chapter include full stage ­directions (italicised) taken from autographs and printed librettos. Their import­ance has been too little recognised. Like the discussions of libretto and music that follow, they reflect Handel’s first performances. The new opera volumes of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe adopt the same principle. There is overwhelming evidence that Handel took immense care over the original productions, but with rare exceptions such as the second version (December 1720) of Radamisto was casual about revivals when the heat of inspiration had died down and he had to accommodate fresh singers. They cannot be considered on a par with first versions. The sections on source materials at the end of each chapter appear to have been a stumbling-block in some quarters, on the ground that this was the business of the editors of the scores. So of course it is. But as Reinhard Strohm pointed out in his review (Music & Letters, October 1988), it was intended to shorten the road to new critical editions – which I am reliably informed it has done – and conversion into tabulated form ‘simply would not work’. When we embarked on this enterprise some forty years ago, no modern edition of the operas was in existence or even on the horizon. A Society for the republication of Handel’s works had been founded in Halle during the Second World War and had issued a handful of scores, including one opera (Serse). But owing to the political division of Germany the editors in the (then) German Democratic Republic had limited access to the basic sources, nearly all located in the West, and the few volumes they produced were little advance on Chrysander’s nineteenth-century edition, which, though invaluable in its time, was long out of date. Some progress had been made when in June 1984, partly as a result of pressure from the London Handel Institute and the American Handel Society, the decisive step was taken to upgrade the current HHA edition with an international editorial board and full scholarly guidelines. It issued its first volume under this dispensation (anthems) in 1987, the same year as Handel’s Operas 1704–1726, and its first opera (Rinaldo 1711 version) in 1993. There was every reason to include the results of our investigation of the copious, extremely complex and largely unpublished source material relating to the operas.   See Annette Landgraf, ‘Halle und die Hallische Händel-Ausgabe – Idee und Verwirklich­ ung. Ein Exkurs in die Jahre 1940–1946’, Georg Friedrich Händel – Ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934–1993) (Halle an der Saale, 1995), 315–42.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 8

06/10/2006 14:51:12



Preface

ix

Nor is it inconceivable that serious students other than specialists might find it useful to see such matter gathered in one place without being put to the expense of buying the scores. Moreover the material is segregated at the end of each chapter so that fastidious readers can pass by on the other side. In order to confine this volume within reasonable limits I have not repeated the first two chapters in the first volume, ‘Handel as Opera Composer’ and ‘Performance Practice’, though of course they are equally applicable here. Portions of the chapters on Atalanta, Giustino and Serse have appeared in Festschriften for O.W. Neighbour, Andrew Porter and Daniel Heartz. While working on this book over many years I have accumulated a huge number of debts to public and private libraries and to individual scholars, colleagues and friends. Most of my acknowledgements in the Preface to Handel’s Operas 1704–1726 still apply. Anyone who has worked on Handel must make obeisance to the great institutions that hold nearly all his autographs, performing scores and contemporary parts: the British Library, London; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg; and the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester (the Newman Flower Collection). Their staffs have been unfailingly helpful, both in person and correspondence, and in supplying microfilms. So have those of the following institutions, whose holdings, while less extensive, have often proved of great importance: the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Rowe Library, King’s College, Cambridge; the Royal College of Music; the Royal Academy of Music; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Hampshire Record Office, Winchester; the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel; the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hanover; the Stadtbibliothek, Brunswick; the Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Schoelcher Collection); the Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels (Fétis Collection); the Statens Musikbibliotek, Stockholm; the Library of Congress, Washington; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; and the Music Library of the University of Maryland, College Park (Coopersmith Collection). I exchanged information on the location of librettos in our respective countries with Professor Ellen T. Harris. I owe a more personal and very substantial debt of gratitude to the late Earl and Countess of Malmesbury and the late Gerald and Patricia Coke, who not only allowed me unlimited access to their valuable libraries over a long period but gave me much hospitality as well. (The Malmesbury Collection is now at the Hampshire Record Office, the Coke Collection at the Foundling Museum, London.) Others no longer living who gave me assistance in various ways were, in the early stages Professor Jens Peter Larsen, Professor Howard Brown, Dr James Hall, Philip Radcliffe and Charles Cudworth, and over a longer period Professor Bernd Baselt and Otto Gossmann. The late Lord Shaftesbury allowed me to examine his manuscript collection before it was purchased by Gerald Coke. Others to whom I owe a sometimes very considerable debt, in addition to what I derive from their work listed above, include Professor Donald Burrows, on whom

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 9

06/10/2006 14:51:13



Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

I have relied for details of paper, watermarks and rastration; Dr Terence Best (and through him the members of the Halle editorial office); Professor Reinhard Strohm; Professor Robert D. Hume; Professor Judith Milhous; Professor John Roberts; Dr Sarah Fuller-Lessard; Dr Sarah McCleave; Professor Curtis Price; Professor Brian Trowell; Professor Manfred Rätzer; Professor Lorenzo Bianconi; Professor Lowell Lindgren; Professor Colin Timms; Dr Elizabeth Gibson; Oliver Neighbour; Bruce Phillips and especially Anthony Hicks, who read the book in typescript, dug out some mistakes, and made a great many helpful suggestions, rendering particular assistance with the Appendices. If the lapse of time has removed any other benefactors from my memory, I ask their forgiveness. Finally I thank Mrs Gabrielle Mabley, who typed the whole book, much of it twice, and triumphed over the obstacles presented by my handwriting; Dr Nigel Fortune for applying his eagle eye to scrutinising and amending the proofs; and my son Stephen for manifold assistance and support and for compiling the index.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 10

06/10/2006 14:51:13

contents

List of illustrations Abbreviations

xiii xv

Note on the text

xvii

Note on sources

xviii

1 The Rival Queens 1726–1728

1

2 Alessandro

10

3 Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

36

4 Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

62

5 Siroe, Re di Persia

88

6 Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

108

7 The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734

125

8 Lotario

137

9 Partenope

151

10 Poro, Re dell’Indie

169

11 Ezio

194

12 Sosarme, Re di Media

210

13 Orlando

235

14 Arianna in Creta

256

15 Covent Garden 1734–1737

274

16 Ariodante

285

17 Alcina

312

18 Atalanta

335

19 Arminio

349

20 Giustino

362

21 Berenice, Regina di Egitto

380

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 11

06/10/2006 14:51:13

xii

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

22 The Last Operas 1738–1741

393

23 Faramondo

401

24 Serse

417

25 Imeneo

448

26 Deidamia

471

Epilogue 1  From Oratorio to Opera Epilogue 2 Handel’s Operas on the Modern Stage

484 487

Appendices A. Structural Analysis B.  Instrumentation C. Performances during Handel’s Life D.  Borrowings E.  Modern Stage Productions to end of 2005

493 494 495 503 512

Select Bibliography

541

Index of Handel’s Works

547

General Index

550

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 12

06/10/2006 14:51:13

list of illustr ations

Frontispiece: Plan of Covent Garden Theatre, from Gabriel Dumont, Parallèle de plans des plus belles salles de spectacles …’ (c.1774), plate 20. Image reversed. Plates (between pp.332–333): 1. Two theatre sets by Servandoni, ink with grey and brown wash: (a) fortified city wall; (b) city wall breached. 2. Alessandro autograph, suppressed duettino ‘Amo, spero’ (Tassile and Lisaura) in Act II scene 3 (1726). 3. (a)  Caricature of Senesino and Faustina Bordoni in the final scene of Admeto (1727, from An Epistle from S-r S-o to S-a F-a …) (b) Design by John Devoto for a Prison Scene, perhaps for Lotario (1729), pen, ink and watercolour. 4. Genserico, abandoned autograph draft adapted for Siroe (aria ‘Chi è più fedele’), c.1727. 5. Siroe, S2 copy with cut and amendments by Handel ?during original run (1728). 6. Set design by John Devoto for a Palace Scene (perhaps for Lotario, 1729). 7. Set design by John Devoto for a Palace Chamber (perhaps for Ezio, 1731). 8. (a)  Titus l’Empereur, aria ‘Mi restano le lagrime’: text used in Alcina, music in Ezio (‘Peni tu per un’ingrata’), 1731. (b)  Dionisio re di Portogallo, opening scene of autograph, adapted for Sosarme (1731/2). 9. Orlando autograph, part of Act II finale, showing 5/8 bars (1732). 10. Ariodante autograph, sketches for Act II dream pantomime ballet (1734). 11. Alcina autograph, opening of chorus ‘Dall’orror’ in Act III finale, with singers’ names (1735). 12. Ariodante cembalo score (?S4 copy), bass of unidentified aria ‘Se rende nel cor mio’ for Conti replacing ‘Dopo notte’ in Act III (April 1736).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 13

06/10/2006 14:51:13

xiv

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

13. Jupiter in Argos, opening of autograph draft with cues for insertions from earlier works (1738). 14. Ariodante, copy of ‘Scherza infida’ with vocal embellishments (?c.1740). 15. Rossane, manuscript libretto sent for censorship, adapted from Alessandro, produced at King’s Theatre, 1743. 16. Rossane, manuscript libretto sent for censorship, 1743, opening of Act I. The author and publishers would like to thank the following institutions for their kind permission to use the illustrations reproduced in this book. Frontispiece: the Syndics of Cambridge University Library [LE.41.17, plate 20]; 1a and b: Albertina Museum, Vienna [inv. 1296 and 1297]; 2: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 a 5, f.61v.]; 3a: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [Printed Books, 11630.h.62], 3b: Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA [pfMS.Thr.200]; 4: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 c 9, ff.31v., and 32r.]; 5: Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels [Fétis MUS MS II 3976, formerly MS 2540, ff.80r. and v.]; 6: British Museum © Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum [1891-6-27-1 (50)]: 7: British Museum © Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum [1891-6-27-1 (28)]; 8a: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 d 2, f.55v.]: 8b: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 c 10, f.5v.]: 9: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 b 8, f.56r.]; 10: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved (RM 20 a 7, f.61v.]; 11: British Library © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved [RM 20 a 4, f.81v.]; 12: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg [MA/1006a, f.80r.]; 13: the Syndics of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge [MU MS 258, p.35]; 14: Copyright of The Royal Academy of Music, London [MS 139, f.70r.); 15 and 16: Huntington Library, San Marino, CA [Larpent MS 41].

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 14

06/10/2006 14:51:13

ABBREVIATIONS

Add. MS Additional Manuscripts, British Library Baselt, Verzeichnis B. Baselt: Händel-Handbuch 1–3. Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis. 1: Bühnenwerke. 2: Oratorische Werke, Vokale Kammermusik, Kirchenmusik. 3: Instrumentalmusik (Leipzig, 1978, 1984, 1986) Best, Twenty Overtures G. F. Handel, Twenty Overtures in Authentic Keyboard Arrangements, ed. T. Best (London and Sevenoaks, 1985–6) BL British Library Burrows and Dunhill D. Burrows and R. Dunhill: Music and Theatre in Handel’s World. The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780 (Oxford, 2002) Burrows and Ronish D. Burrows and M. J. Ronish: A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs (Oxford, 1994) Clausen H.-D. Clausen: Händels Direktionspartituren (‘Handexemplare’), Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, 7 (Hamburg, 1972) Coke Harvester Microform, The Gerald Coke Handel Collection (Catalogue, 1988) Deutsch O. E. Deutsch: Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955; repr. 1974) Flower Newman Flower Collection, Manchester Central Library GHB Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, 1984– Gibson E. Gibson: The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728): The Institution and Its Directors (New York, 1989) Granville Granville Collection, British Library (Egerton MSS 2910–46) HG Händel-Gesellschaft edition (ed. F. Chrysander) HHA Hallische Händel-Ausgabe HHB Händel-Handbuch, 1–3: Verzeichnis (Leipzig, 1978–85) Händel-Handbuch, 4: Dokumente zu Leben und Schaffen (Leipzig, 1986; revision of Deutsch) HJb Händel-Jahrbuch, 1928–33, 1955– HWV Verzeichnis der Werke Georg Friedrich Händels Handel’s Operas I W. Dean and J. M. Knapp: Handel’s Operas 1704–1726 (Oxford, 1987; rev. 1995) JAMS Journal of the American Musicological Society JRMA Journal of the Royal Musical Association

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 15

06/10/2006 14:51:13

xvi

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Lennard

Barrett Lennard Collection, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (MU MS 789–855) Lindgren, Bononcini L. Lindgren: ‘A Bibliographical Scrutiny of Dramatic Works set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1972) Lindgren, Zamboni L. Lindgren: ‘Musicians and Librettists in the Correspondence of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni (Oxford, Bodleian Library MSS Rawlinson Letters 116–138’, Research Chronicle of the Royal Musical Association 24 (1991) M & L Music & Letters MQ Musical Quarterly MT Musical Times Music and Theatre N. Fortune (ed.): Music and Theatre. Essays in Honour of Winton Dean (Cambridge, 1987) PRMA Proceedings [later Journal] of the Royal Musical Association RM Royal Music Collection, British Library Smith, Descriptive Catalogue W. C. Smith: Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions (London, 1960; rev. 1970) Strohm, Essays R. Strohm: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985) Taylor, Italian Operagoing C. Taylor: ‘Italian Operagoing in London, 1700–1745’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1991)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 16

06/10/2006 14:51:13



Note on the text

Unless otherwise qualified, references in the text to Clausen, Deutsch, Eisenschmidt, Leichtentritt and Mainwaring are to the items cited in the Bibliography; references to Dent are to his chapter on the operas in Handel: A Symposium; ­references to Burney are to the 1935 edition of his History, where the operas are indexed under ‘Operas, Handel’. Unattributed quotations are taken from Deutsch (English edition). The revised German edition of Deutsch (Händel-Handbuch 4), published without ­consultation with British and American scholars, expands the German sources and adds some other details, notably the Jennens–Holdsworth correspondence, but omits much significant material and repeats a good many mistakes in the English edition. Virgole are inverted commas printed in the margins of librettos, indicating passages omitted in performance. Stage directions in libretto summaries are italicised. The Colman Opera Register was not compiled by Colman since the entries continue after the date of his death. The Register is reproduced in K. Sasse, ‘Opera Register from 1712 to 1735 (Colman-Register)’, HJb (1959), 199–223. Performing scores and other manuscripts with prefix MA are in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg. Pitches are identified by the Helmholtz system, where middle C is identified as c’, the C above as c’’ and the C above that as c’’’, similarly the C below middle C is identified as c, the c below that as C. The Gregorian calendar (NS) was adopted in Britain in 1752. Dates are given in Old Style (OS) except where specified. Occasionally both forms are given.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 17

06/10/2006 14:51:13

NOTE ON SOURCES

The voluminous manuscript sources on which this study, like its predecessor, is based require a brief description. The celebrated collection of autographs in the Royal Music Collection at the British Library, the fifteen volumes of miscellaneous works and fragments, many of them autograph, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the substantial body of Handel’s performing scores in the Staatsund Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg, have long been available. Chrysander used the autographs and performing scores (chiefly the latter) in preparing his edition, but did not print or mention a sizeable proportion of their contents, and was not primarily concerned with the light they throw on Handel’s method of work. Although aware of the Fitzwilliam manuscripts, he did not incorporate their evidence. All three collections have yielded much fresh information. They are far from exhausting the sources, even of primary material. In addition to the performing scores, five large eighteenth-century collections of Handel manuscript copies survive, cited as follows: (i) Malmesbury: copied for Elizabeth Legh, who died in August 1734, thereby supplying a terminal date; now owned by the Earl of Malmesbury (microfilm in the Hampshire Record Office, Winchester); (ii) Flower: copied for Charles Jennens, whence it passed to the Earls of Aylesford; most of it was bought by Sir Newman Flower and is now in the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester, but a number of volumes are in the Royal Music Collection and elsewhere; (iii) Shaftesbury: copied from about 1736 for the Fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, since 1987 in the Gerald Coke Collection; (iv) Lennard: copied c.1736–41, possibly for Handel’s publisher John Walsh the younger; later owned by H. Barrett Lennard, who left it to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; (v) Granville: Copied for Bernard Granville (the operas c.1740–43), now among the Egerton MSS at the British Library. Flower contains volumes of widely varying date and importance, including un­performed music copied from the autographs and a few passages whose originals have been lost. It has interesting annotations by Jennens, but its most remarkable   Cited as Aylesford to distinguish them from those in Manchester.   The bulk of this collection disappeared from view in 1855 and was only rediscovered in 1983.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 18

06/10/2006 14:51:13

Note on Sources



xix

feature is an almost complete collection of vocal and instrumental parts. They were never used in performance, and it is not known why Jennens required them, but in the absence of Handel’s theatre parts they throw light on the practice of a copyist from Handel’s circle (generally S2, who was probably a member of Handel’s orchestra) in extracting parts from a score. They can clarify doubtful details, but occasionally misinterpret Handel’s intentions. They omit overtures, presumably because they were available in print, and secco recitatives, and sometimes accompagnatos and sinfonias. They never include every aria in an opera, omitting not only those requiring unusual or elaborate forces, which Jennens might not have required, but others as well. Since the movements present are invariably numbered in sequence, we know that nothing has been removed, whether by design or accident. In no case do the contents reflect any surviving source. The principle of selection remains a mystery. With the possible exception of the parts, none of the music in these collections was intended for public performance. They are library copies, and therefore contain alternative and rejected versions often missing from the performing scores. Ranking with them is the large modern collection assembled by the late Gerald Coke (augmented since his death), now at the Foundling Museum in London. It contains much manuscript material relevant to the operas, from complete scores to selections and miscellanies, copied by professional and amateur scribes (with occasional ornamentation by singers) and a few sets of parts. The British Library (Royal Music and Additional MSS) and Hamburg collections hold many important sources in addition to those listed above. Smaller collections and single items of varying significance (not all directly linked to the operas in the present volume) are to be found in Berlin, Munich, Weimar, Kassel, Wiesentheid, Vienna, Stockholm, Washington, Tokyo, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, and the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music, London. Some of the Shaftesbury, Coke and Royal Music copies contain autograph insertions. The contemporary scores published by the Walshes, father and son, omit secco recitatives and occasionally other movements, and vary in the details of instrumentation supplied. Their habit of substituting da capo for dal segno in most but not all arias, omitting lead-back ritornellos, may have been designed to save space (and type). It is shared by many volumes in the Lennard Collection and seems to have originated with Handel’s chief copyist, J. C. Smith senior. If the opera was popular, the Walshes published one or two groups of Favourite Songs and an arrangement for amateur flautists. They also issued collections of overtures, in score, parts and keyboard arrangement. For the full assessment of this material it is essential to study, and if possible identify, and date the copyists. Much valuable preliminary work was done by Jens Peter Larsen in his book on Messiah and Hans Dieter Clausen in his study of the performing scores. Clausen’s work however was virtually confined to the contents of the Hamburg library, and Larsen did not have access to Flower and was unaware of the Malmesbury, Shaftesbury and Coke Collections. The symbols for copyists they propounded are thankfully adopted here where applicable:   Handel’s Messiah, Origins, Composition, Sources (London, 1957).   Händels Direktionspartituren (‘Handexemplare’) (Hamburg, 1972).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 19

06/10/2006 14:51:13

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

xx S1–S13

the Smith circle

RM1–RM9 Royal Music Library Hb 1, 2, and H1–12 Hamburg Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Of the additional copyists identified by Greek letters in Handel’s Operas 1704–1726 only Kappa and Lambda seem to have been still active during the years covered by this volume, and then only c.1728–29. I have added three more: [Mu (1720)

BL Add. MS 31562 (Radamisto)]

Nu (c.1729–35)

Flower MS 130 Hd4, v. 51 (Arianna) [and RM 18 c 4, Flavio aria]

Xi (mid-late 1730s) BL Add. MS 31572 (arias); Hamburg MA 165 (Alcina), MB 1654 (bass arias); parts – often in collaboration – in Durham (Esther), Coke 3 (Alexander’s Feast), 16 (Arianna) and 17 (Arminio); Flower (Arianna, v. 59–62). The copyist of Royal Academy of Music MSS 138–40 (opera arias, date uncertain, possibly c.1740) has been conjecturally identified by John Roberts with William Savage, who sang under Handel as boy and man from 1735. Excerpts from the operas copied by many unidentified hands, professional and amateur, occur in contemporary manuscripts, notably in the Coke Collection. The librettos on sale in the theatre, which served as programmes and listed casts, can generally be accepted as accurate for first performances. Those issued for revivals are less reliable; they were sometimes amended before sale by hand or hastily printed addenda, and occasionally later by members of the audience. For a few revivals a libretto has not yet been found (see Appendix C). All have their value in determining the texts of Handel’s performances. Note. Manuscripts in the British Library and elsewhere are numbered by folio, those in the Fitzwilliam Museum by page.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 20

06/10/2006 14:51:14

chapter 1 The Rival Queens 1726–1728

T

he Royal Academy of Music’s final years were and are notorious for the rivalry between the two greatest sopranos of the age and the scandal it provoked. Faustina Bordoni’s engagement for London had been projected as early as 30 March 1723, ‘as soon as Cuzzoni’s Time is up’ in the words of The London Journal, only a few weeks after Cuzzoni’s arrival. Competition was not then in view. The two nightingales held sway together without apparent casualty in C. F. Pollarolo’s Ariodante in Venice in 1718, since when Faustina had won increasing fame in Italy. She had strong support from Owen Swiney, the Academy’s agent there, through whom she was contracted in June 1725. According to Hawkins, Handel had had enough of Cuzzoni’s ‘rebellious spirit’ and wanted to get rid of her. However, Riva’s letter to Muratori of 7 September 1725, quoted below, implies that both singers were engaged for three seasons. The London Journal stated on 4 September that Faustina was ‘to rival Signiora Cuzzoni’ for a salary of £2,500. It is not clear whether this was supposed to cover one, two or three seasons. In any case it was probably a guess. Different figures have been quoted, but it seems likely that Cuzzoni, Faustina and Senesino were each paid something in the region of 1,500 guineas for a season; and they may have received as much again from benefits. The equivalent today would be astronomical. Faustina arrived in March 1726 after an engagement in Vienna and made her début on 5 May in Handel’s Alessandro, the last opera of the season. Odious ­ comparisons were soon afoot. Antonio Cocchi heard Faustina for the first time on 12 May and considered her ‘far inferior to Cuzzoni’, an impression he confirmed on a second   For the Royal Academy’s seasons up to the arrival of Faustina Bordoni in March 1726 and the constitution under which the Academy operated, see Handel’s Operas I. Unattributed ­quotations in this chapter are taken from Deutsch or Gibson, the latter being the best documented study of these years. It contains the sections devoted to music in Owen Swiney’s letters to the Duke of Richmond.   For Swiney (1676–1754) see Gibson and Handel’s Operas I, 321–3. His correspondence with Richmond, while a valuable source, shows him as violently partisan, alternately garrulous, ­cantankerous and obsequious. He complains repeatedly that the Academy had not paid him his due for, among other things, ‘treating of Damned Eunuchs with a dish of Chocolate, or Tea’.   J. Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Parctice of Music (London, 1776; repr. 1853; facs. 1963), 873.   See J. Milhous and R. D. Hume, ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS 46 (1993), 35–6.   For a table of performances given by the Royal Academy, see Handel’s Operas I, 308–9.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 1

06/10/2006 14:51:14



Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

visit. On 20 May the directors banned the practice of allowing privileged persons on the stage during performances (it had been forbidden before but had crept back), a wise precaution in view of what was to follow. Swiney thought Alessandro a bad choice and expected it to be a failure, but it was a rousing success, in part perhaps for non-musical reasons, attaining thirteen performances in a month. The public flocked to the Haymarket until Senesino’s illness brought the season to an abrupt end on 7 June. Although The British Journal of 4 September 1725 described Faustina as ‘a second Cuzzoni’ their voices and skills – not to mention their characters – were very different. Cuzzoni’s was the higher voice, with a compass about a tone above Faustina’s. Her effective range in her Handel parts was e ’ to b ’’ with a rare top B and low D (and a single b’ in Alessandro), Faustina’s c’ to a’’. Quantz, who heard Admeto and Bononcini’s Astianatte in spring 1727, gives their respective compasses as c’–c’’’ and b  –g’’. His ­ assessment of their individual skills won general agreement, and is confirmed by the manner in which Handel wrote for them. Both possessed exceptional powers, perfect intonation and breath control, and taste in embellishments, Faustina’s the more brilliant, Cuzzoni’s the more expressive. Brilliance was Faustina’s supreme quality. According to Hawkins, ‘In the powers of execution, and a distinct manner of singing quick passages, she exceeded Cuzzoni’, whereas the latter commanded ‘a power of expression that frequently melted the audience into tears’. Burney singled out ‘the neatness and velocity’ of Faustina’s divisions and Cuzzoni’s control of crescendo, diminuendo and rubato with ‘a native warble [that] enabled her to execute divisions with such facility as to conceal every appearance of difficulty’. Tosi, a singing teacher of an older generation and a laudator temporis acti, agreed, praising Faustina’s ‘prodigious felicity’ in executing difficulties and Cuzzoni’s ‘delightful, soothing cantabiles’ and command of the Pathetick. There is no question, however, that in character and appearance Faustina was by far the more attractive of the two. She was also the finer actress, and, as Quantz tactfully put it, ‘Cuzzoni’s figure was not advantageous for the stage’. Horace Walpole’s similar opinion is well known. The loyalties of the Academy directors were divided from the start. The seeds of the future strife between Handel’s company and the Opera of the Nobility had perhaps already been sown. Faustina’s engagement had met with opposition even before she left Italy; Swiney, who referred to her as ‘the incomparable Faustina’, considered this ‘very unjust and very unnatural’. Cuzzoni had been the reigning queen and the toast of the town ever since the 1722/23 season and undoubtedly resented the appearance of a rival. The resident Italians – Riva, Rolli, Bononcini, Cocchi, Zamboni and others – who formed a Roman Catholic group in a Protestant city and generally acted together, took her side. She acquired other doughty ­champions, especially among aristo­cratic ladies (the men for understandable reasons were more   Cocchi’s Diary, quoted in Lindgren, Bononcini, 338.   As translated by Burney, History, II, 745–6.   Observations on the Florid Song, tr Galliard (London, 1743), 171.   For Walpole’s comments and more detailed estimates by Quantz and other contemporaries, see the entries on both singers in The New Grove (1980, 2001).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 2

06/10/2006 14:51:14

The Rival Queens, 1726–1728 



inclined to Faustina), but the split soon widened to embrace all ranks of Society. As in the world of modern football, the partisans became more virulent, or at least more vociferous, than the protagonists; and the press joined in the fun. There were signs of trouble before the 1726/27 season began. It was delayed by the allegedly prolonged illness of Senesino, though Swiney reported from Bologna on 13 August that he had never seen him in better health. Senesino told him that he was not due in London till the latter part of January 1727. The Academy tried but failed to find a replacement, and let the theatre to a company of Italian comedians, who played on non-opera nights till the end of the season. A year before, on 18 December 1725, Daniel Defoe had aired in the Weekly Journal a project for an Academy of Music to perform operas in English (he was to elaborate it in 1728 in a pamphlet entitled Augusta Triumphans, or The Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe).10 It provoked a vigorous reply from the Italian party, but the cause gained support. On 19 November 1726 John Rich, proprietor of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, revived Bononcini’s Camilla, last heard in 1719, as ‘an English opera’. It captured the town and enjoyed twenty-six performances before the end of the season. The Prologue alluded to Senesino’s constant absence While, twixt his Rival Queens,11 such mutual hate Threats hourly Ruin to yon tuneful State [i.e. the Royal Academy]. A week later Mrs Pendarves wrote ominously to her sister, ‘They say we shall have operas in a fortnight, but I think Madam Sandoni [Cuzzoni] and the Faustina are not perfectly agreed about their parts’. On 10 December Mist’s Weekly Journal published an ironical report: ‘Our last Advices from the Haymarket take Notice of a second Reconcilement between the Rival Queens ... an unhappy Breach being made betwixt them since their first Reconcilement, occasioned by one of them making Mouths at the other while she was singing. This Treaty has been three Months in negotiating, and could never have been brought about had it not been for the great Skill and Address of some of the ablest Ministers of the Royal Academy’. Senesino arrived in mid-December, not the first or the last singer to blame the English climate for damage to his voice, accompanied by his brother Giovanni Bernardi, another castrato, who Swiney thought might come in useful, since he could like Boschi ‘go on and off the Stage without Songs’. Giovanni never reached that eminence, though he sang in at least one concert. The season began at last on 7 January 1727, with seven performances of Ariosti’s Lucio Vero, followed on the 31st by Admeto, which gave Handel another instant success, celebrated by Henry Carey in a laudatory poem published anonymously in the British Journal of 25 March. In February his ­ naturalisation went through both Houses of Parliament with remarkable speed: he applied on the 13th and received the Royal Assent on the 20th. Shortly 10  B. Trowell, ‘Daniel Defoe’s Plan for an Academy of Music at Christ’s Hospital ...’, in Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 403–27, and Gibson, 388ff. 11  Nathaniel Lee’s popular tragedy The Rival Queens, or The Death of Alexander the Great (1677) was revived nearly every season. The double link with Handel’s latest opera was a coincidence too happy to ignore.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 3

06/10/2006 14:51:14

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741



afterwards, surely as an act of thanksgiving, he embarked on the patriotic opera Riccardo Primo. On 4 April Admeto had its seventeenth successive performance, with Princess Amelia, one of the King’s granddaughters, among the audience. The December ‘Treaty’ was wearing thin: the performance was interrupted by barracking, something tolerated in most circumstances but taboo when a member of the Royal Family was present. On or about the 8th the Countess of Pembroke, a strong Cuzzoni supporter, wrote an apologetic letter to Mrs Charlotte Clayton, Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales (Amelia’s mother), claiming that the singer had been told she would be hissed off the stage; she threatened not to appear, but was ordered to do so by Lady Pembroke. She was cat-called in one aria, whereupon her supporters ‘would not suffer the Faustina to speak afterwards’. That was evidently the principal cause of offence. At this point, according to the Daily Journal of 15 April, Faustina fell ‘very ill of the Measles, attended with a high Fever’. Ottone was hastily put on for two performances (11 and 13 April). Then Cuzzoni in turn fell sick; the première of Bononcini’s Astianatte was twice postponed, from 22 April to 6 May, and Handel filled the gap with two performances of Floridante. It was perhaps at this time that Handel added (incomplete) vocal embellishments to a copy of Teofane’s arias transposed down for alto or mezzo-soprano.12 This must have been for an English substitute; no Italian would need it. Teofane had been Cuzzoni’s part in Ottone. Cuzzoni’s illness may have been diplomatic, though one listener reported that her voice ‘was prodigiously out of order on 6 May’ and Faustina’s partisans say ‘very confidently that she will never recover it. Some say it is a great cold, others the Pox, and some that she is breeding.’13 She did not breed till a year later. The libretto of Astianatte goes back to Racine’s Andromaque via Haym’s adaptation of Antonio Salvi’s 1701 libretto for Perti. Bononcini’s opera is not remembered for its music, which according to Burney made little impression and was soon forgotten; he mentions only two arias, both in Cuzzoni’s part, one of which he censures for the ‘aukward and difficult’ divisions in the voice part. Quantz says it was less acclaimed than Admeto, and that Handel’s ‘Grundstimme’ prevailed over Bononcini’s ‘Oberstimme’ (translated in Deutsch as ‘harmonic structure’ and ‘melodic invention’). Only seven Favourite Songs and a minuet were published. Astianatte was Bononcini’s only opera for the Academy after 1724, when the younger Duchess of Marlborough (Sarah’s daughter) engaged him as a household musician to conduct private concerts for £500 a year. It is not known if he continued to play the cello continuo at the Haymarket. The Academy may have hoped to boost its revenue by planning a public contest, as with Muzio Scevola in 1721: on 4 February 1727 the directors had anounced that ‘after the Excellent Opera composed by Mr. Handel [Admeto] ... Signior Attilio [Ariosti] shall compose one: And Signior Bononcini is to compose the next after that. Thus, as this Theatre can boast of the three best Voices in Europe, and the best Instruments; so the Town will have the Pleasure of hearing these three different Stiles of composing’. The directors may have known that Bononcini was considering 12  See Handel: Three Ornamented Arias, ed. W. Dean (Oxford, 1976). 13  Robert Hassell to Robert Cotesworth, 10 May 1727 (Gibson, 252).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 4

06/10/2006 14:51:14



The Rival Queens, 1726–1728 

an opera on Racine’s play as early as autumn 1725.14 In the event Ariosti’s opera, Teuzzone, was apparently not ready in time and was postponed till the following season. Astianatte retains its place in history thanks to ‘a great Disturbance ... occasioned by the Partisans of the Two Celebrated Rival Ladies’ at its ninth performance on 6 June in the presence of Caroline, Princess of Wales, who was to be queen within a week. ‘The Contention at first was only carried on by Hissing on one Side, and Clapping on the other; but proceeded at length to Catcalls, and other great Indecencies’. These came mostly from the gallery and were so persistent that the opera was never finished.15 A week later Lord Hervey, in a letter to Stephen Fox, gave a vivid description of the event and its repercussions on Society. ‘In short, the whole world is gone mad upon this dispute. No Cuzzonist will go to a tavern with a Faustinian; and the ladies of one party have scratched those of the other out of their list of visits.’ The scandal brought the season as well as the opera to an abrupt end, though the news of George I’s death in Germany on 11 June would in any case have closed the theatre. One of his last acts had been to send the directors a letter informing them that if they did not satisfy Cuzzoni he would refuse to attend the theatre or pay the Academy his usual bounty of £1,000.16 The directors hastily smoothed things out, leaving the way open for a possible da capo with embellishments the following season. All this gave the London press the opportunity of a lifetime. Throughout the summer satirical pamphlets in prose and verse, mostly doggerel and sometimes indecent (jocular speculation about what Senesino could and could not perform), mingled with denunciations of the huge salaries paid to foreigners to utter sentiments that no one could understand.17 The Devil to pay at St. James’s; or A full and true Account of a most horrid and bloody Battle between Madam Faustina and Madam Cuzzoni, advertised in June and July and formerly attributed to John Arbuthnot, charged them with pulling each other’s hair on stage and recommended that they settle the matter in the boxing ring. The Academy’s final season began a month earlier than usual on 20 September 1727 and, apart from three performances of Ariosti’s Teuzzone, was devoted wholly to Handel, whose activity at this time was prodigious. He staged significantly modified versions of three old operas (Admeto, Alessandro and Radamisto), rewrote much of Riccardo Primo in response to the new reign, began an abortive Genserico, and composed two wholly new operas, Siroe and Tolomeo, all before mid-April 1728, not to mention such substantial trifles as four anthems for the coronation of George II. An unexpected feature of this season is the absence of reported hostilities on the Cuzzoni–Faustina front, though relations between them probably remained cool. They sang together at a Crown and Anchor concert in honour of St Cecilia on 22 November, and again in a serenata at the Portuguese Envoy’s residence in Golden Square early in April 1728 to celebrate a double Royal Marriage on the Iberian 14  Lindgren, Bononcini, 377. 15  ‘They jumped from the end of the second act to the coro’, Zamboni to Jacques Le Coq, 13 June (Lindgren, Zamboni, 100). 16  Ibid., 6 June. 17  Many are printed in Gibson, Appendices D and E.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 5

06/10/2006 14:51:14



Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Peninsula. The Envoy ­subsequently ‘promis’d to repair the Damage done to Golden Square’, doubtless resulting from the provision of ‘a large Cask filled with several Hogsheads of Wine’. Nevertheless, prospects were gloomy. It might be thought that the excitements and scandals would have raised attendances and supplemented the Academy’s coffers. For various reasons such was not the case. Thanks to Senesino’s hypochondria the Academy had mounted only thirty-nine performances in the previous season after an average of nearly sixty in the first six; the stock market had been upset by the discovery at the end of 1726 of a new plot to restore the Pretender; and the huge salaries demanded by the star singers had exhausted the capital guaranteed by the subscribers, some of whom were in arrears with their payments. Hence Mrs Pendarves’s letter of 25 November 1727: ‘I doubt operas will not survive longer than this winter, they are now at their last gasp; the subscription is expired and nobody will renew it. The directors are always squabbling, and they have so many divisions among themselves that I wonder they have not broken up before.’ There was another reason for Mrs Pendarves’s despair. Rich returned to the attack at Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a revival of Camilla in November, and followed it with a more deadly threat, the production of The Beggar’s Opera by Gay and Pepusch on 29 January 1728. The satire at once hit the mark. The proceedings at the Haymarket had become increasingly ridiculous and the champions of opera in English had long been seeking a banner to follow. The result was one of the most sensational successes in the history of the English theatre. Gay wrote to Swift on 15 February that it was affecting audiences at the Haymarket: ‘The outlandish, as they now call it, opera has been so thin of late that some have called that the Beggar’s Opera.’ And on 30 March, ‘The Beggar’s Opera has now been acted thirty-six times, and was as full last night as the first, and as yet there is not the least probability of a thin audience.’ It had sixty-two performances in the Lincoln’s Inn Fields season and twenty more by another company during the summer. Meanwhile the Haymarket season, after struggling on with Siroe, Tolomeo and a revival of Admeto, was cut short yet again, on 1 June, when Faustina was taken ill. The Academy had for some time been making agitated noises about its finances. During each of the last two seasons the directors made three calls on the subscribers, with repeated threats against defaulters. Haym in his dedication of the Tolomeo libretto to the Earl of Albemarle (30 April) appealed to all opera lovers for support. The twenty-first and final call was payable on 24 April 1728. The Academy both owed and was owed considerable debts. All through the winter of 1727–28 and into the spring Faustina complained lustily that money was still due to her from the previous season, and that she had not received the customary gratuities when she sang in private. As late as October 1729 Swiney was still browbeating Richmond with grumbles that he had not been paid in full for his services over several years. On the other side of the balance the directors called a meeting for 3 April 1728 ‘in order to consult with such Measures as may be thought most proper for the speedy Recovery of all their Debts’, and another on 22 May ‘in order to receive any further Proposals that shall be offered for Carrying on the Operas’. On the 25th they sent one subscriber a notice: ‘As the Operas will soon be over & the Royal Opera stands very much

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 6

06/10/2006 14:51:14



The Rival Queens, 1726–1728 

indebted to the Performers & others engaged in their Service which in Honour and Justice must be paid, but cannot be done till the Calls are answered. Wee therefore desire you’l please to order the Immediate payments of your last 3 Calls amounting to £21.’ Finally ‘All subscribers are desired to be present’ on 5 June ‘to consider of proper Measures for recovering the Debts due to the Academy, and discharging what is due to Performers, Tradesmen, and others; and also to determine how the Scenes, Cloaths, &c are to be disposed of, if the Operas cannot be continued’. What happened next is still obscure. The generally accepted verdict seems to be that the Academy promptly collapsed. According to Mainwaring, ‘The Nobility would not consent to [Handel’s] design of parting with Senesino, and Handel was determined to have no farther concerns with him ... and thus the Academy ... was at once dissolved’. Hawkins speaks of ‘the disagreement between Handel and the directors of the opera, which terminated in the dissolution of the Royal Academy’. Burney declared himself unable to determine whether the quarrels of the queens or Handel’s disagreement with Senesino ‘precipitated the dissolution of the Royal Academy’. There is confusion here with the events of five years later. The Academy had no intention of giving up. In a letter to Senesino (21 December 1728) Rolli says specifically that the Academy ‘is not yet dissolved’ and at first wanted to have both ladies back.18 Within days after the end of the season Heidegger left for Italy to engage singers for a projected 1728/29 season; he reported that they refused to come, as Faustina and Senesino had been threatening, but he could engage the same singers for 1729/30. The Academy decided to give concerts as a stopgap ‘to entertain the Ladies’. On 6 December it held a meeting to elect a Deputy Governor and Directors for the following year. The result is not known, and the concerts may never have taken place; newspapers neither advertised nor reported them. But this was not the end (see Chapter 7). So far from winding itself up, the Academy set about organising a new ­subscription. Elizabeth Gibson discovered in the Richmond archives a list – undated but ­probably from spring 1728 – of thirty-five persons who ‘promise to subscribe the sum of two hundred pounds to the corporation of the Royal Academy of Music towards carrying on of Operas which are to begin in October 1728’.19 The list includes twenty-one former directors. This could lie behind Swiney’s statement on 27 May 1728 that Handel and Heidegger had both told him the Academy had money in the Bank. He added in another letter (undated) that both had promised to support his claims. The necessity of dealing even-handedly with the two prima donnas profoundly affected the structure and quality of the operas Handel wrote for them. On 7 September 1725 (NS) Giuseppe Riva, the Modenese Representative in London, wrote to the historian L. A. Muratori in Rome, in response to an enquiry: ‘For this year and the two following there must be two equal parts in the operas for Cuzzoni and Faustina; Senesino is the chief male character, and his part must be heroic; the other three 18  If this letter is correctly dated, Deutsch (229–30) confuses Heidegger with Handel, whose continental journey was not till the following year. 19  Gibson, 278–9.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 7

06/10/2006 14:51:15

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741



male parts must proceed by degrees with three arias each, one in each Act. The duet should be at the end of the second Act, and between the two ladies.’ Handel ignored the last injunction, for reasons that soon became obvious. In any case, only in one opera (Ottone) did he end the second Act with a ladies’ duet. The two preceding ­conditions presented no difficulty. But the first was absolute; he had to conform, if only to keep the peace. It imposed serious restrictions on both libretto and music. It was no easy matter to find librettos that (a) had equal parts for two sopranos, (b) allowed full scope for the peculiar qualities of each, and (c) created a coherent and convincing drama. It is no surprise that of the five operas Handel wrote for the rival queens only one, Admeto, comes close to establishing a satisfactory balance. The others are pulled out of shape, and though each is full of splendid music none carries conviction as a whole. This accounts for the fact that they have enjoyed fewer revivals on the modern stage than all but two or three of the twenty-eight operas Handel composed from Agrippina in 1709 to Alcina in 1735. Table 1.  Instrumentation of the Haymarket orchestra as reported in three accounts Guildhall 10 Oct. 1727 Violins Violas Cellos Double Basses Flutes/Recorders a Oboes a Bassoons Horns Trumpets Timpani Archlute/Theorbo Harpsichords

18 5 2 2 — 6 7 4 2 1 — —

Fougeroux, spring 1728 24 (including violas) — 3 2 present — 3 present presentb — 1 2

Clerk, 5 May 1733 24 (including violas) — 4 2 — 2 4 — — — 1 2

  Flutes, recorders and oboes were regularly played by the same players. So on occasion were horns and trumpets.

a

b  There are no trumpets in the three operas Fougeroux heard. Did he mistake Handel’s exuberant oboes for clairons? Orlando too has no trumpets but requires recorders and horns.

While a great many words were lavished on singers, the Haymarket orchestra received comparatively little attention. Most contemporaries who mentioned it agreed on its excellence. Quantz said that it ‘consisted for the greater part of Germans, several Italians, and a few Englishmen ... All together, under Handel’s conducting, made an extremely good effect.’ He does not give numbers, and names only Pietro Castrucci who, with his brother Prospero, led it for many years, probably from 1720

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 8

06/10/2006 14:51:15



The Rival Queens, 1726–1728 

till 1736,20 and was held in high repute. For further details, apart from those projected in February 1719 for the Academy’s first season,21 we have slightly incomplete accounts by two amateur enthusiasts, Pierre Jacques Fougeroux, a Frenchman making a kind of reverse Grand Tour of southern England in the spring of 1728,22 and Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who heard Orlando five years later (see Table 1). Fougeroux, who heard Siroe, Tolomeo and Admeto, praised the brilliance of the violins and the ‘grand fracas’ made by the whole band. Clerk said the violins ‘made a terrible noise & often drown’d the voices’; but the Castrucci ‘play’d with great dexterity’.23 Fougeroux’s witness is important for the light it throws on performance practice. He reports that in secco recitatives Handel used two harpsichords, playing one himself, a cello and a theorbo, and cut short the accompanying chords, a practice that Fougeroux disliked because it contradicted the conventions of French opera. The Guildhall concert in Table 1 was at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, attended by the new King George II, when ‘the performers [were] all from the opera and both Theatres and the Musick Composed by Mr. Hendell’.24

20  See Lord Shaftesbury’s letter of 18 January 1737 to James Harris (Burrows and Dunhill, 22). 21  See Handel’s Operas I, 303 and 33–4. 22  W. Dean, ‘A French Traveller’s View of Handel’s Operas’, M & L 55 (1974), 172–8; repr. Essays on Opera (Oxford, 1990), 39–44. 23  See Chapter 13. 24  See D. Burrows, ‘Handel’s London Theatre Orchestra’, Early Music 13 (1985), 349–57.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 9

06/10/2006 14:51:15

chapter 2 Alessandro

T

he action takes place at and around Oxidraca, an Indian city on the Ganges (but unknown to classical geography). The Argument points out that Alexander the Great’s almost single-handed capture of the city, his quarrel with Clito, whom he kills for deriding his claim to be the son of Jupiter, and his passionate love for Rossane ‘are Facts deduced from the History of those Times. But the Amours of Lisaura Scythian Princess with Alexander, as those of Taxilis the Indian King with Lisaura, and the rest, are entirely fabulous.’ Act I begins with a spectacular tour de force: Alessandro, proclaiming himself the son of Jove, by the Means of a Scaling Engine, mounts the Walls of Oxidraca ... The Besieg’d fly at the Approach of Alexander ... He throws himself within the Wall: The Besieged rally thither again, and repulse the Besiegers back with their Scaling-Machine. Leonatus, a Macedonian captain arrives with other Soldiers, and with a Batt’ring Ram to demolish the Wall ... The Wall tumbles; and Alexander is seen among a Heap of slaughter’d Enemies, and defending himself against others, who are all put to flight by Leonatus, and his Macedonians (see Plate 1a and b). Leonato remonstrates with Alessandro for risking his precious life by rushing ahead to ‘gain the Palm alone’. Alessandro prefers a short life with fame and honour. Exeunt all re-entering thro’ the Breach. In an Encampment Rossane and Lisaura, issuing forth, each from her Pavilion, within Sight of the ruin’d Wall. Each loves Alessandro and fears for his fate. Tassile informs them that Oxidraca has fallen and Alessandro is safe. Lisaura would be delighted but for jealousy of her rival. Rossane (Alessandro’s captive) feels much the same, and resolves to exercise all her charms on the victor. Tassile is grateful to Alessandro for restoring his throne but resents him as a rival for Lisaura’s love and prays that he may fall for someone else. In the Breach Alessandro, echoed by Tassile and the three Macedonian captains, Leonato, Cleone and Clito, boasts of his glory and regrets that there are no more worlds to conquer. Cleone flatters him. The ladies enter; he embraces first one, then the other, making both and Tassile jealous. Lisaura resolves to stand it no longer. In an Apartment Rossane laments that all her beauty cannot ‘conquer this unconstant man’. Alessandro asks why she ran away from him; she says she must be the only woman in his life. His reply is ambiguous: he loves but must dissemble. Puzzled, she likens herself to a branch at the mercy of contrary winds but hopes for the best. The three captains confer. Clito asks Cleone, who loves Rossane, how he can tolerate Alessandro as a rival. Cleone disgusts him by replying that it is hopeless to strive against gods. Leonato assures Clito of his friendship. Clito says he will follow Alessandro as his leader, but never flatter him with impious worship. In the Temple of Jupiter Ammon; with the Statues of Jove, Hercules,   He does not give the reason, but see below, p. 14.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 10

06/10/2006 14:51:15

Alessandro

11

and Alexander. Cleone at the Head of the Sacrificers hails Alessandro as the conquering son of Jove and bids all sacrifice to him. Alessandro accepts the title; Tassile concurs, but Clito will bow to Jupiter only and tells Alessandro not to insult the gods. Alessandro, furious, lays him prostrate by Force. Both women ask him to pardon Clito, calm his anger and turn to love. He agrees ‘to take some short repose and taste the fruitful Sweets of pleasing Love’ before resuming a career of glory that shall reach ‘beyond the Confines of the Sun’. Act II. In a shady Retreat in a Garden Rossane implores breezes and fountains to ease her pain and composes herself to Sleep. Alessandro enters and goes to kiss her, observed by Lisaura. (‘Rossane sleep! and Alexander wake! Due observation of this Scene I’ll take.’) Alessandro, annoyed by the presence of Lisaura, changes course and begs consolation from her. Rossane, waking up and seeing this, pretends to sleep again. Alessandro pursues his advances to Lisaura, but with a nice irony she repeats his words addressed to Rossane and goes out. Glad to be rid of her, he again approaches Rossane, who quotes back his words to Lisaura and likewise departs, leaving him hurt, chiefly in his pride: one of them is a slave, the other a barbarian, and he the monarch of the world! His love turns to contempt and hatred. Lisaura, longing to be free of ‘tyrant passion’, meets Tassile, who tells her that Alessandro’s love is false but he himself will always love her. Suspecting that Alessandro loves Rossane, Lisaura wishes she could view him with detachment, but the intensity of her feelings overpowers her. In a Chamber Rossane resolves to break free from Alessandro’s inconstancies. She asks him to prove his love by setting her free. Although he suspects that she means to leave him, he consents. She likens herself to a singing bird which, released from its cage, returns to be near its master. He decides to abandon the pretence of loving Lisaura. When the latter reports that Rossane is preparing to return to her native land, Alessandro renounces love as a tiresome and painful occupation: he will resume his military career. Lisaura begins to hope once more, believing that Rossane, like a deer escaping from a trap, will take care not to be caught again. In the next scene Alessandro, seated on a Throne accompanied by Tassile and the three captains, distributes his empire among his supporters, giving India to Clito but again referring to himself as the son of Jove. Clito says he will accept honours only from Philip’s son, and when Alessandro waxes indignant accuses him of slighting his mother’s honour. Alessandro snatches a Spear from one of the Soldiers, and is going to smite Clitus, but is prevented by Taxilis. While Alessandro is thus engaged the Canopy over the Throne is by Conspiracy made to fall. Alessandro, sensing treason, attributes his escape to Jove, orders Tassile to prepare his Indian troops and Cleone to arrest and imprison Clito. Clito, citing his gallant deeds by the side of Alessandro and his father, asks rather for death on the spot, but is hurried away. Rossane, believing Alessandro dead beneath the ruins, faints away. Alessandro, delighted that his danger reveals her love, is about to embrace her when Leonato reports that the conquered people, believing Alessandro dead, have taken up arms. Alessandro hurries off to fight, confident that Rossane’s love will bring him fresh laurels. She is resolved to love him for ever, whether he speaks true or false.   Salone con Trono in the autograph; unspecified in the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 11

06/10/2006 14:51:15

12

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Act III. A Tower, in which Clitus is confin’d, under the Guard of Cleon. Clito scornfully refuses to answer Cleone’s suggestion that he humble himself before Alessandro. Leonato enters with armed Men and releases Clito, who goes out of the Tower, and Cleon is confin’d there by the Followers of Leonatus. Leonato and Clito depart, resolved ‘to reform unbridled Pride’ and break the yoke of tyranny. Cleone summons his soldiers, who return and demolish the gates of the prison. He will fan Alessandro’s anger like a wind, humble his enemies and ‘engross the Favour of the Throne’. In a Garden Rossane and Lisaura agree to cease their rivalry: since both love the conqueror of the world, let him choose between them. Lisaura asks Alessandro to cease tormenting her and free her from uncertainty. He replies that he cannot love her without wronging his friend and ally Tassile, and offers her any of his kingdoms. She loves him so much that she desires only his happiness. Rossane returns with the news that Clito and Leonato have imprisoned Cleone and are leading the Macedonians against him. She begs him to escape. Tassile goes to raise his Indian troops. Alessandro is confident of disarming the rebels on his own, after which he will fly to Rossane’s arms. Rossane, her spirits swinging between hope and fear, prays to the gods to protect the hero and avert civil war. In the next scene (locality unspecified) Clito, Leonato and a Chorus of Soldiers oddly declare that the tyrant’s fury is abating. Alessandro quells them with a word. Tassile reports that the rebels of Oxidraca have been arrested and put in chains. Clito orders his supporters to lay down their arms, and Alessandro pardons everyone, adding a sententious aria about true greatness paraphrased from Virgil’s line ‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos’. In the final scene in the Temple of Jupiter the two princesses pray for peace and all give thanks for Alessandro’s clemency. He offers Lisaura his friendship, paying tribute to her generosity, and Rossane his love. Both are accepted in a pair of duets leading to a trio and final coro. The source of this libretto, based ultimately on Plutarch, is La superbia d’Alessandro by Ortensio Mauro, set by Agostino Steffani, produced at Hanover in 1690 and revived with alterations the following year as Il zelo di Leonato. Rolli and Handel drew on both versions. Aside from printed librettos, Handel had access to Steffani’s autograph, imported along with the Hanoverian dynasty and now in the British Library, which combines the two versions. Less cavalier than usual, Rolli took over two of Mauro’s most impressive sequences, the opening episodes of the first two acts, almost without change. Nearly all the recitative in the first five scenes of Act I comes from Mauro (a good deal shortened), including the accompanied sections ‘Ossidraca superba’ and ‘Che vidi? Che mirai?’, as well as Alessandro’s aria ‘Fra le stragi’ and the ensemble ‘Fra le guerre’. Leonato’s prominence in Scene ii derives from the 1691 version. Tassile’s aria ‘Vibra, cortese Amor’ replaces a similar aria in a later Mauro scene (I.ix), but is introduced by the same recitative. The first two scenes in Act II are virtually the same in both librettos. Rolli made only minor changes and cuts, retaining Rossane’s scena ‘Solitudini amate’ – ‘Aure, fonti’, the   ‘To spare the humble and fight down the proud’ (Aeneid VI, 853).   BL RM 23 f 12–14. For Steffani’s two versions see C. Timms, Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and his Music (New York, 2003), 222–9.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 12

06/10/2006 14:51:15

Alessandro

13

repeated arioso ‘Permettete ch’io vi baci’ and Alessandro’s disillusioned aria ‘Vani amori’ (slightly altered). Elsewhere he kept a few lines of recitative in I.vi and vii, including ‘Vilipese bellezze’, a couple of lines in I.ix, about ten lines for Tassile and Lisaura in II.iii including a miniature duet (set by Handel but cut before performance), a dozen lines of recitative in II.vi (Alessandro’s second assault on Clito) and a few words in III.iii (though the action here – Clito’s rescue from the tower – is the same). In Mauro’s libretto the two princesses agree peace terms towards the end of Act I; Rolli ­transferred this to III.iii, but it makes little difference to the plot. Rolli’s changes were largely a matter of contraction. He simplified the amorous cross-currents in one respect (in Mauro Cleone and Clito are both in love with Rossane) while complicating them in another by enlarging Alessandro’s vacillations between Rossane and Lisaura. In Mauro it is Leonato whom Alessandro knocks down in the Act I temple scene. Rolli has Alessandro twice attacking Clito without doing him much damage (in the historical account he kills him); the second assault on the same man merely duplicates the first, especially as Clito does not appear in between. What fatally undermines Rolli’s libretto and unsettles the whole opera is his casual treatment of the conspiracy. In Steffani’s opera we see it developing and can follow its course step by step. Ermolao, a young nobleman in Alessandro’s bodyguard, rashly asks for the most beautiful slave in the sacked city, for which Alessandro has him whipped. Eager for revenge, he enlists the targets of Alessandro’s two assaults, first Leonato and then Clito, as well as others who resent Alessandro posing as the son of Jupiter. Tassile pretends to sympathise with them, but finally traps them on a wooden bridge, whose ends are broken down by his Indian troops, so that all the conspirators except Leonato are drowned in the Ganges. In Rolli we hear nothing of the plot either before Alessandro’s first assault on Clito or between the two. This destroys the cumulative rhythm of the drama, leaving the collapse of the canopy unmotivated. When this occurs without warning in II.vi per Cospirazione the effect is ludicrous. And when Alessandro finally confronts the conspirators in III. vi they sing a brief ensemble of defiance and promptly capitulate. No doubt the idea was to demonstrate Alessandro’s charisma, but it is ineffective in the theatre since it receives no dramatic or musical sustenance. Moreover Rolli abridges the parts of all three captains so ruthlessly that they have little room to develop as characters. Ermolao was perhaps eliminated because an extra singer was not available, though Rolli would have done better to conflate him with one of the other Macedonian captains. Undoubtedly the basic reason for Rolli short-changing the conspiracy was the need to expand the women’s parts for Faustina and Cuzzoni. They had also to be balanced in dramatic and musical prominence. The task of creating a series of situations in which an aria for one princess was followed as soon as possible by an aria for the other was in itself liable to pull the opera out of shape, and would have taxed a more skilful librettist than Rolli. The librettist – Mauro in the first instance – was circumscribed in another way. Alexander the Great was so familiar a figure in history and the arts that deviation from the stereotype was limited. The received Alexander was a military hero, brave to the point of recklessness in challenging cities and armies single-handed; generous to defeated enemies, yet sometimes brutal to his supporters; given to ­ ungovernable

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 13

06/10/2006 14:51:15

14

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

rage when disobeyed or thwarted; above all, possessed of an overweening pride – the classical hubris – in proclaiming himself the son of Jupiter and insisting on others acknowledging this by prostrating themselves before him. He is a man of contra­dictory qualities, admirable and odious, both in extremes. The audience would expect to encounter this in the opera, and to see some of the principal incidents in his career enacted on the stage. Richard G. King has discussed this aspect at length in his doctoral dissertation, but he goes too far towards equating the hero of the opera with the historical Alexander. The librettists, as was to be expected, put their own slant on history, not only by softening the fate of Clito (Alexander murdered many other innocent persons as well) but by introducing the crucial but unhistorical character of Lisaura. Plutarch’s Alexander was not particularly interested in women, yet for much of the opera his counterpart is concerned with little else. If Alessandro is to be judged as a work of art, his historical prototype is only marginally relevant and needs to be kept in the background. In both Mauro’s and Rolli’s librettos Alessandro’s behaviour carries more than a touch of cynicism. In both, he loves Rossane but keeps Lisaura stringing along. In Mauro his insincerity is clear from the outset; he courts Lisaura because he needs to keep the Scythians on his side. Handel at first accepted this and copied Mauro’s lines into his autograph (I.vii) but did not set them. Alessandro is left with no motive but his own lasciviousness (which meets its just reward in the Act II garden scene) for toying with Lisaura. His eventual explanation for rejecting her in III.iv, that he needs to reward Tassile’s loyalty, reads like a lame excuse, prompting the thought that he might have made the point earlier. Moreover his generous acts are to some extent devalued because a ruler’s forgiveness of enemies was an almost invariable feature of current operatic convention, even when it defied every canon of human probability or consistency. Handel never quite manages to fuse the contradictory aspects of Alessandro’s character in a convincing portrait. He swings like a weathercock between soldier, lover, tyrant and benevolent despot. He does not move us as a human being in the same way as Grimoaldo, Bajazet or other divided characters. The opening sequence establishes the heroic, military and overweening sides of his character. His aria ‘Fra le stragi’, like others in the opera, has a very long ritornello (36 bars), saved from monotony by pianissimo episodes for reduced upper strings over a silent bass line, later filled by Senesino’s trills and messa di voce. Standing in the breach, he sings his own praises in a spirited ensemble in gavotte rhythm, warmly endorsed by the other male characters, horns and independent oboes. Most of his music proceeds in   ‘The Composition and Reception of Handel’s Alessandro (1726)’, (Ph.D. diss., Stanford ­ niversity, 1991). See also his ‘Classical History and Handel’s Alessandro’, M & L 77 (1996), 34– U 63.   King raises the wider question of the extent to which the characters in Handel’s operas were true to history and recognised as such. Many of them are so obscure that the audience probably had no preconceived opinion. Julius Caesar of course is an exception, but his love affair with Cleopatra, the motive force of Handel’s opera, is a historical fact.   The opening bars had done duty in Maddalena’s aria ‘Se impassibile’ and the final coro of La Resurrezione.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 14

06/10/2006 14:51:16

Alessandro

15

extrovert fashion. His eight arias – a larger ration than either of the ladies – with one notable exception are all in major keys. This is appropriate: he is so self-confident, not to say smug, that he need not bother about conscience or inner conflicts. ‘Men fedele’, in which his short phrases (‘ma son vinto, son amante’) are punctuated by a spiky five-note violin figure that becomes increasingly prominent, is a not very subtle attempt to convince his captive Rossane of his love. The rather obscure text of the B section hints at reservations. This is a relic of a more arrogant original following his admission that his motives for courting Lisaura are political. Alessandro next appears in his public persona, dedicating the spoils of victory to his supposed father Jupiter. His fury at Clito’s refusal to prostrate himself inspires a burst of semiquavers for strings in octaves in a passage of recitative, not a particularly strong section in musical terms. After the intercession of the ladies he relaxes in an aria (‘Da un breve riposo’) that is well composed but dramatically something of an anticlimax, especially at the end of an act. The ritornello is rich in ideas, variously developed through both sections. The dancing rhythm at the start over a tonic pedal, with a flattened seventh in the first bar, and the Adagio very early in the A section as his thoughts turn to love, illustrate his mood and the words to a nicety, though the treatment is a trifle sequential. Alessandro is at his most humanly credible, and enjoys his finest music, early in Act  II. The first two scenes are the high point of the opera. They show him in a far from heroic light. There is a delicious irony in Handel’s treatment of this episode, prompted by Mauro’s amusing text. Finding Rossane asleep, he addresses her amorously in E flat (Affettuoso in the autograph), unaware that Lisaura is watching. When he catches sight of Lisaura he addresses her in different but equally amorous terms in G minor, observed now by the waking Rossane. Each of them then quotes back the aria he addressed to the other, Lisaura in A, Rossane in C minor. His ego is deftly punctured. Furious at the lèse-majesté inflicted by two mere women on the conqueror of the world, he explodes in the tremendous G minor aria ‘Vano amore’, a miracle of contrapuntal and rhythmic energy and ingenuity. The sixteenbar ritornello, which never returns, is scored in concerto fashion, the woodwind (divided oboes and bassoons) pitted against upper strings, the violins rising from their bottom G, and both against the full orchestra (Ex. 1). Alessandro gives vent to his rage in short breathless phrases, with long divisions on key words (‘cedete’, ‘m’agita’, ‘dispetto’). The change in the B section from Andante 3/4 to Presto 4/4 and an unexpected key, C minor, when we expect the relative major B flat, is intensely dramatic, the tension screwed up before and after by taut contractions of the initial ritornello to eleven and three bars. Handel’s original aria at this point, of which the first eight bars survive in the autograph, was quite different and much less appropriate, a gentle Andante in E flat on material later used for Tassile’s ‘Sempre fido’. King plausibly suggests that Handel was following Steffani’s even blander setting (F major, 6/8) in La superbia d’Alessandro, and stigmatises both as ‘impotent whining’. In Scene v, after releasing Rossane from captivity, Alessandro repels Lisaura’s advances and repudiates love altogether in a conventional anger aria, ‘Risolvo abbandonar’, redeemed by an initial surprise: he interjects an emphatic ‘No!’ on F   ‘Classical History and Handel’s Alessandro’, 49.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 15

06/10/2006 14:51:16

16

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 16

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

06/10/2006 14:51:17

Alessandro

17

natural (the key of the aria) after a half-cadence in A major before the ritornello. The word is Handel’s interpolation; it is not in the libretto. ‘Il cor mio’, addressed to Rossane after he has been summoned to deal with the rebellion, is a simple love song, unexpected in the mouth of this cantankerous conqueror. The gentle rocking figure for violins in thirds that punctuates the vocal phrases throughout both sections suggests rather the address of some pastoral swain. Though unimpressive on paper it has great charm and is welcome in an opera heavily encrusted with virtuosity and display. There is no initial ritornello, but a fully scored one after the A section, the only passage in which oboes and viola take part. Neither of Alessandro’s Act III arias rises high or contributes anything new. ‘Pupille amate’ is the better, but it merely echoes the context of ‘Il mio cor’: another love song to Rossane before going into action, again with the only ritornello after the A section, a simple binary design with repeats. In the more fully scored B section a striding chromatic figure in octaves illustrates the image of threatening storms at sea – not very aptly, for they are ‘in van’. Alessandro’s last aria, ‘Prove sono’, falls back on routine, as if Handel were tired of his hero; he wrote innumerable 3/8 arias of this type. The finale, in which Alessandro sings duets with each lady in turn, followed by a short trio and concluding coro, all thematically linked, is more remarkable for its design and scoring than for invention, though the material, again in 3/8, is pleasant enough, with a faint anticipation of ‘O thou that tellest good tidings of Sion’. The need to provide equal opportunities for two vivacious prima donnas clearly taxed Handel, not so much in musical invention as in characterisation. Although the parts are not exactly equal – Rossane (Faustina) has an extra aria in Act II as well as a superb accompagnato in Act I – he achieved a remarkable degree of parallelism. The ladies make their first entrance together in I.iii in an accompagnato verging on arioso, with an eloquent ritornello led by solo oboe. Their last utterance before the finale is a similar episode with a ritornello at the start and another at the end (omitted by Chrysander), resolving the A minor into C major. Each has a slow aria in Act II, and they are the only two arias in the opera with a tempo mark slower than Andante. They also have a regular duet, ‘Placa l’alma’, the single example in the five operas that Handel wrote for them. Whenever they sing together, if they are not echoing each other’s phrases, they take the top melodic line in turn. It was more difficult to distinguish their characters, since the sole motive for each is love for Alesssandro, varied by jealousy. This problem was solved brilliantly in the next opera, Admeto; it was not solved in Alessandro. Handel clearly devoted a great deal of care to his music for Faustina, whom he had almost certainly never heard, though he must have gained an idea of her voice from using some of her arias in the pasticcio Elpidia the year before. He provided lavish scope in aria after aria for the rapid trills and agile coloratura for which she was renowned. Her best note was said to be E; Handel wrote four of her seven arias in sharp major keys, two of them and a duet in A major (Cuzzoni has no solo music in sharp keys). Except in the accompagnato ‘Vilipese bellezze’ (I.viii) Rossane’s music is predominantly cheerful, confident and sparkling with ornament. She is in love with Alessandro from the start, but seldom plumbs the emotional depths, and there is no development in her character. In ‘Alla sua gabbia d’oro’ (II.iv) and ‘Brilla

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 17

06/10/2006 14:51:17

18

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

nell’alma’ (III.iii) she receives two of Handel’s most spectacular – even extravagant – receptacles for virtuosity. They are brilliantly effective if well sung, but have little other purpose than to display Faustina’s gifts and excite applause. The former is full of warblings and twitterings for unison violins, to illustrate the bird simile, and a forest of rapid triplets and sextuplets for the singer; its most imaginative moment is the sudden drop into the tonic minor for the lines ‘la sua prigion gli è cara più della libertà’ after a pause on ‘sai perchè’ (bars 29–32). ‘Brilla nell’alma’, which outshines Lisaura’s immediately preceding ‘Sì, m’è caro’, is in the fully developed Vinci–Hasse style with marching quaver accompaniment (except when the violins break into excited semiquavers) characteristic of the arias Handel wrote some years later for Carestini in Arianna and Ariodante. Burney amusingly referred to its ‘quick, pulsative accompaniment ... as regular as the vibrations of a pendulum’. Harmonically very simple, it depends entirely on the athletic voice part, in which scales and octave leaps alternate with long scintillating divisions. Handel may have chosen this style as a compliment to Faustina, though she was not yet Hasse’s wife. Rossane’s first aria, ‘Lusinghe più care’ – her London stage début – has a catchy tune in a tripping rhythm that won immediate popularity. The tone is light, almost flirtatious, and perhaps more characteristic of Cuzzoni. It is neatly organised, the long ritornello contracted after the A section and still more at the dal segno, so that it never outstays its welcome. ‘Vilipese bellezze’, one of Handel’s finest accompa­gnatos (F minor immediately after Lisaura’s G minor aria), is a marvellous depiction of Rossane’s shifting moods. The ritornello, rich in suspensions, crossing string parts and downward chromatic motion, strikes a passionate, tragic note (Ex. 2). The music moves beautifully to the relative major as Rossane’s hopes begin to rise, only to fall back into the minor when they fade and the opening words return. ‘Un lusinghiero’ sounds like a first shot at Morgana’s ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ in Alcina (same key and some common material).10 It swings again between two moods (does Alessandro love her or does he not?) without the undercurrent of anxiety. The B section, with new material and some effective syncopation, is unusually long (57 bars). Handel shortened it later, probably for Strada in 1732, removing much elaboration. Both sections tend to overwork the divisions. The ladies’ duet, on a favourite theme that turns up in numerous instrumental works, is neatly worked. The trilling initial motive is extended in the closing ritornello (sixteen bars after twelve at the start) to compensate for the absence of a B section and da capo. The full orchestra, including oboes, is

  She does not seem to have liked the aria, which Handel replaced; see below. 10  In fact both arias echo ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ in the cantata O come chiare e belle, the vocal line of which is much closer to the Alcina version.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 18

06/10/2006 14:51:18

Alessandro

19

confined to the ritornellos, but a cello obbligato adds a warbling commentary to the solo sections from bar 20. Rossane opens Act II with one of Handel’s most magical sleep scenes, a compound of sinfonia, accompagnato and cavatina, in which the lulling dotted figure of the introduction, richly scored for divided recorders and oboes, independent bassoons and five-part strings (three violins) returns in varied form to accompany the cavatina ‘Aure, fonti’. The carefully marked diminuendo, with the winds dropping out, before the first entry of the voice is a happy touch. The rhythm     , representing perhaps the gentle breeze in the garden or the trickle of the fountains, pervades the cavatina, occurring in every part, the falling interval sometimes inverted, and brings it to a pianissimo end in the tonic C minor after Rossane has fallen asleep on the dominant. ‘Dica il falso’, with which Rossane ends Act II, is scarcely strong enough for its position, and suffers from being the third consecutive aria in 3/8 time. Based on a suppressed aria (‘Spesso suol bella tiranna’) for Cleone in Act I, it begins with a near echo of Cornelia’s ‘Cessa omai di sospirare’ in Giulio Cesare. The music is adequate, and makes varied play with phrases of different length in both sections, but tells us nothing new about Rossane. It is exceptional for Handel to end the first two acts without some strong gesture. Rossane’s last aria in Act III, ‘Tempesta e calma’, is her weakest, unusual only in beginning on the sharpened seventh of the scale as if in the middle of a sentence. It reverts to the contrasted moods of fear and hope, but without much conviction, and seems designed merely to make up her quota. Lisaura’s career runs parallel with Rossane’s, but she is the more emotional of the two. Four of her six arias and an arioso are in minor keys. It is not at first clear how deeply in love she is, or if she has been dazzled by Alessandro’s reputation. She is certainly in the toils by Act II, but she accepts her rival’s success courageously and without too deep a wrench. The temper of ‘Quanto dolce’ suggests that she is still playing with the idea of love. The material is standard, but the phrase-lengths are variously and attractively extended in both parts, and the enriched ritornello after the A section, with new suspensions and fuller scoring, adds distinction. ‘No, più soffrir non voglio’ is more passionate and more interesting. The big opening ritornello (fourteen bars, reduced later to five, then three) has a flavour of the concerto: first violins pianissimo, echoed by a tutti and then by the bassoons in thirds, with a descending chromatic bass in bars 11–12, taken up by the voice towards the end of the A section. The ideas are not particularly striking (the voice’s first phrase looks back to ‘Vanne, sorella ingrata’ in Radamisto), but they are developed with a good deal of fire, carried through the B section, and hint at a spitfire quality in Lisaura. The coloratura leaps to an occasional b ’’, a note beyond Faustina’s normal reach, but comfortable for Cuzzoni. Lisaura’s music in Act II is more deeply expressive than Rossane’s. The little arioso ‘Tiranna passion’ (A minor, following the G minor of Alessandro’s ‘Vani amori’) has a haunting eloquence scarcely to be expected in a mere four bars;11 its repetition after eight bars of agitated recitative ending in an interrupted cadence produces a 11  Handel was a master of such multum in parvo fragments, for example Atalanta’s ‘A piangere ogn’ora’ in Act II Scene ii of Serse.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 19

06/10/2006 14:51:18

20

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

miniature da capo form. Finer still is the F minor siciliano ‘Che tirannia d’amor’, a combination of key and rhythm that so often finds Handel at the height of his powers. The ritornello sets the mood with the initial four-note bass figure, later omnipresent, and the violins’ drooping thirds, and sits down firmly on the dominant, whereupon the voice enters with a new melody in the tonic. Handel had trouble with this ritornello, making many changes in the third bar. The aria gives vivid ­expression to Lisaura’s heartache, in love with a man who fails to respond, notably in the suspensions over a pedal at the words ‘vana speranza! misera fedeltà!’ as the violins soar above (Ex. 3). Both later ritornellos modify and develop the initial material, emphasising the rhythm of the first bar, which the voice adopts, filling the third, to start the reprise, a tiny but telling detail. ‘La cervetta’ too, reverting to A minor, is a beautiful aria, strongly reminiscent of ‘A suoi piedi’ in Tamerlano (same key, metre, tempo and accompaniment, similar angular phrases with rising sevenths, especially in the B section). The music quite transcends the tame simile of the text, with the aid of cross-rhythms (much hemiola) and a series of unexpected progressions on the word ‘ingannator’ and again in the B section.

In Act III Lisaura, like Rossane, has little to do except mark time. ‘Sì, m’è caro’ is just saved from triviality by lively rhythm. ‘L’amor che per te sento’ is an odd piece, in which the voice’s abrupt phrases are repeatedly answered by a strong top line, entrusted in the ritornellos to all the oboes and two-thirds of the violins. The three silent bars, each with a fermata, may be intended to suggest the effort it costs Lisaura to accept her rival’s success; but her renunciation deserved a more signal emphasis. It is interesting to note that Handel changed his mind about Lisaura, resulting in a late change to the plot. Originally she was to soften towards Tassile in II.iii and pair off with him in the final scene. Handel set the passages of recitative to that effect (subsequently cancelled in the autograph), the first containing a short duet arioso

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 20

06/10/2006 14:51:18

Alessandro

21

(Plate 2; he was following Steffani’s opera here, both in words and music12), and they were both copied into the performing score (words only in the first episode; the page containing the second was torn out when the recitative was reset). Chrysander printed the second from the autograph (version A, HG 124), but omitted the first: his version A on HG 71 gives the music as performed in 1726; B was substituted when ‘Sempre fido’ was transposed to F for Bertolli in 1732. The first version is worth quoting (Ex. 4). Handel may have felt that for Lisaura to toy with and accept Tassile was inconsistent with the intense emotion (exploiting Cuzzoni’s gift for pathos) of her ensuing aria in II.iii, ‘Che tirannia d’amor’; or Cuzzoni may have felt slighted at being paired off with the second castrato, Baldi. The effect is to emphasise the strength of Lisaura’s love for Alessandro, making it impossible for her to perform an

12  See King, ‘Composition and Reception’, 42–5.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 21

06/10/2006 14:51:19

22

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

about-turn in the last scene. Curiously the words of the first passage are in Handel’s 1726 libretto but not Rolli’s, that of the second in Rolli’s libretto but not Handel’s. (See below, under Libretto.) Handel had to devote so much space to his three virtuosos that the subsidiary characters are rather elbowed out, Tassile having to be content with two arias, Clito with one and a cavatina, Cleone and Leonato with one apiece. None of them is allowed to develop; Clito in particular is not given enough music to establish him as a virtuous foil to Alessandro. Tassile’s arias are both admirable. ‘Vibra, cortese amor’, introduced by an expressive recitative, builds on a tonally restless ritornello – an oriental touch perhaps (he is an Indian king) as well as a reflection of his uneasiness at Alessandro’s attentions to Lisaura. Spare in texture, it is enlivened by harmonic interest and a tendency for the phrases to extend beyond what the ear expects. ‘Sempre fido’ deploys an attractive figure for recorders in thirds that Handel had used several times before, for example in Agrippina and Muzio Scevola, after lifting it in the first place from Keiser. He is so pleased with it that it permeates both sections. Tassile pleads his devotion to Lisaura with a delightful freshness. The light opening without preamble builds up to a fully scored ritornello after the A section, the only bars in which the viola is independent. Clito’s ‘A sprone, a fren leggiero’ also lacks an opening ritornello, though it had one originally. It jogs amiably along, as befits an equine simile, but is scarcely up to Handel’s usual standard in arias for Boschi. On the other hand the cavatina ‘Sfortunato’ that opens Act III is as powerful as it is brief (fourteen bars, of which the voice sings only in eight). As so often when he finds a sympathetic character incarcerated, Handel rises to the occasion. The texture is rich, in five parts throughout, the bassoons anticipating the voice entry; they are directed to play forte while the rest of the orchestra is piano. The music moves beautifully to the relative major when Clito mentions his faith and honour. Leonato’s ‘Pregi son d’un alma grande’ breathes vigour and defiance, based mostly on rising arpeggios, the diminished seventh arpeggio in bar 8 worked neatly into the B section, but is not specially distinguished. Cleone’s ‘Sarò qual vento’ too is largely a matter of arpeggios, contrasted with blustering semiquaver scales representing the wind likened to Alessandro’s anticipated anger. It is not personal to Cleone, whose sycophantic character is indicated only in recitative. Perhaps to balance the virtuosity of the solo music, Handel introduced a measure of flexibility into the overall plan. There are four sinfonias (though that in II.vi is very brief), six accompagnatos (two of them virtually duet-ariosos equipped with ritornellos), two cori in addition to that at the end, two outstanding cavatinas, one regular duet (without da capo), and not least a composite finale combining two more duets, a trio and the concluding coro. This is enhanced by the cumulative scoring, a single strand of unison violins for Alessandro’s duet with Lisaura, recorders and violins in thirds for his more committed relationship with Rossane, oboes replacing the recorders in the brief trio, and the full panoply with trumpets and horns in the coro, which develops material from the preceding movements to form a spacious, original and musically satisfying conclusion. At this period Handel was beginning to expand the opening and closing scenes of his operas, a process initiated some years earlier in Act III of Radamisto and prominent in the first acts of Scipione and Riccardo Primo.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 22

06/10/2006 14:51:20

Alessandro

23

In Alessandro both the opening and closing scenes are expanded, and they share the same key. The finale balances the opening sequence, a complex embracing two military sinfonias, recitatives of both types and Alessandro’s aria ‘Fra le stragi’, bound together by the key of D major. The substance of the music is conventional, but in conjunction with the spectacular action, fully detailed in the stage directions, it works splendidly in the theatre and gives the opera a powerful initial boost. The second sinfonia expands the first and introduces a second trumpet, though it has little to do. The very spirited overture should be viewed as part of the sequence, for which reason it has no dance movement. It opens with a fine far-flung gesture; the fugue, much admired by Burney, who otherwise gives a rather perfunctory account of the opera, is a good illustration of Handel’s skill in digesting ungainly subjects. Another impressive complex launches the first temple scene (I.ix). The C minor sinfonia enlarges the French overture design by interposing a recitative before a tense double fugue, leading into a stately accompagnato as Alessandro addresses his ‘divine’ father. The Act II throne-room scene originally began with another French overture, but Handel transferred it to Scipione and substituted the rather flat four-bar Grave. The whole opera shows great care in the workmanship. The varied treatment of subsidiary ritornellos in most of the arias, always a strong point with Handel, is particularly resourceful. The countless small insertions and corrections in the autograph13 – as well as more substantial changes – are a further indication. Nevertheless Alessandro, though it rises very high, especially in Act II, is not a satisfactory whole. Thanks to the lopsided libretto the action too often hangs fire. The chief characters cease to develop as they do in Handel’s finest operas and begin to repeat themselves. Alessandro’s relationship to Rossane is settled before the end of Act II, and the conspiracy is so scurvily treated that it never leaves the ground. The almost relentless brilliance of the vocal writing for the three central characters, especially the two sopranos, threatens to become wearisome and to express only virtuosity itself, a fault also prominent in Riccardo Primo. There are rather too many movements in rapid triple time, especially 3/8, in which Handel is sometimes inclined to doodle, but in the entire opera only one aria and two cavatinas with a tempo slower than Andante. It is not surprising that Alessandro, along with Siroe, has had fewer modern productions than any of Handel’s other Royal Academy operas.

History and Text Alessandro was composed in the expectation of Faustina’s arrival. The Academy had been anxious to acquire her services since 1723, and negotiated with her through Owen Swiney, their agent in Italy, in the spring of 1725; she signed an agreement in late June–early July.14 Handel began the music in the autumn of 1725; the part of 13  For an admirable survey, citing many examples of improvement in detail, see King’s dissertation (‘Composition and Reception’). Alessandro of course is not unique in this respect. 14  Gibson, 354ff. Swiney, a strong Faustina supporter, disapproved of the subject of Alessandro (chosen apparently by Haym and Handel) because it was likely to provoke the personal rivalry that subsequently ensued, and he was afraid that Faustina would suffer more than the established Cuzzoni.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 23

06/10/2006 14:51:20

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

24

Leonato, sung by the tenor Antinori, who reached London in November, was written for an alto as far as the coro in I.v (Handel then wrote ‘Leonato in tenor’ against his stave). But Faustina was slow in coming; she had been engaged for the carnival season in Vienna that winter. Handel hurriedly composed Scipione as a stopgap and produced it on 12 March 1726. Much of Alessandro had been written by then; to save time Handel lifted the substantial sinfonia from II.vi, after Smith had copied it in the performing score, and used it to begin Act II of Scipione. Faustina’s arrival was announced in the press on 19 March. Handel dated the autograph at the end 11 April 1726. The first performance took place, before the serried ranks of the Royal Family and nobility, at the King’s Theatre on 5 May, with the following cast: alessandro Senesino (alto castrato) lisaura Francesca Cuzzoni (soprano) rossane Faustina Bordoni (soprano) tassile Antonio Baldi (alto castrato) cleone Anna Dotti (contralto) leonato Luigi Antinori (tenor) clito Giuseppe Boschi (bass) The opera was very successful, receiving thirteen performances in a month; a fourteenth at the end of the season (14 June) was cancelled owing to Senesino’s illness. Swiney was told that it would otherwise have had four or five more. The demand was such that Lady Sarah Cowper had great difficulty in obtaining tickets. The Daily Journal reported that Faustina was received ‘with great Applause’, but Antonio Cocchi was less impressed.15 Many years later Horace Walpole remembered that Senesino at the siege of Oxidraca ‘so far forgot himself in the heat of the conquest, as to stick his sword into one of the pasteboard stones of the wall of the town, and bore it in triumph before him as he entered the breach’.16 During the run Handel introduced two substitute arias for Faustina, which strangely displaced the catchiest and the most brilliant in the score. ‘L’armi implora’, a spacious prayer to the goddess of love, ousted Faustina’s first aria, ‘Lusinghe più care’ in the same key. It is an attractive piece, fitting the context, and has the advantage of giving the opera another slow aria. ‘Si dolce lusingar’, though lively enough, scarcely measures up to ‘Brilla nell’alma’ (the key change, C minor in place of E major, would have required adjustment of the previous recitative, but there is no sign of this in the performing score). Perhaps Faustina objected to the fullness of the orchestral accompaniments in the originals, particularly in ‘Brilla nell’alma’. This would accord with the fact that in two of her other arias, ‘Un lusinghiero’ and ‘Tempesta e calma’, Handel thinned out the violin part. Handel revived Alessandro on 26 December 1727 with most of the original cast. Leonato was cut out, but Cleone was retained and may have been sung by the bass Giovanni Battista Palmerini, the only unemployed member of the company. He probably had no aria; Handel on similar occasions did not bother to change the 15  See Chapter 1. 16  The World, 8 February 1753. The reference could of course be to a revival.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 24

06/10/2006 14:51:20

Alessandro

25

clefs of recitatives in his performing score. The absence of a printed libretto makes it impossible to identify any changes, but it is likely that some of the cuts made in 1732 date from this occasion; the performing score shows signs of progressive abbreviation. There were at least four performances up to 4 January, and probably about five more; the Daily Courant, the only paper to advertise opera performances at this date, is missing for some weeks. Handel’s second and last revival took place on 25 November 1732 with the following largely new cast: alessandro Senesino lisaura Celeste Gismondi (soprano) rossane Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) tassile Francesca Bertolli (contralto) clito Antonio Montagnana (bass) Leonato and Cleone were both omitted. Viscount Percival was present at a rehearsal in the opera house on the 22nd. There were six performances, at least four of them attended by George II and the Royal Family in force. The Colman Opera Diary reported ‘a full House’ on the first night (but ‘Sigra Gismonda had a Cold’), ‘a thin House’ on the second. Handel made extensive cuts in the score, especially the recitative (nearly 250 lines, spread over all three acts). III.iii with ‘Sì, m’è caro’ and ‘Brilla nell’alma’ was omitted altogether, along with the accompagnato, ‘Vilipese bellezze’, ‘Pregi son d’un alma grande’, ‘Risolvo abbandonar’, the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’, and the two duets in the finale. The opening scene of Act III was rewritten to include Faustina’s ‘Si dolce lusingar’ transposed to A minor for Tassile, after which Clito sang Cleone’s ‘Sarò qual vento’ down an octave with slight modifications for bass voice and new B section text: he will fly to Alessandro not to rouse his anger against the conspirators but to proclaim his own fidelity, a change scarcely supported by the music. Tassile’s two original arias were put up a tone for Bertolli, ‘Vibra, cortese Amor’ to E minor, ‘Sempre fido’ to F major. One of Strada’s arias, ‘Lusinghe più care’, was similarly raised to A major. Alessandro did not take long to reach Germany. It was staged at Hamburg on 18 November 1726 (NS) as Der hochmüthige Alexander, a translation of Steffani’s title used when La superbia d’Alessandro was produced at Hamburg in 1695. The 1726 production was a hybrid, some of Steffani’s recitatives, in Gottlieb Fiedler’s 1695 German translation, being yoked to Handel’s arias in Italian, though there must have been adjustments. The libretto leaves no doubt that it was essentially Handel’s opera. Only two performances are known. The arias ‘Pregi son’, ‘Che tirannia d’Amor’ and ‘Pupille amate’ were cut, and ‘Sempre fido’ replaced by ‘No, non si teme’ from Scipione. The coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’ in III.vi was sung twice; the scene, a good deal longer than in Handel’s opera, restored some of the action in La superbia d’Alessandro. A production at Brunswick on 17 August 1728 (NS), presumably arranged by Schürmann, went a good deal further, rejecting all Rolli’s contributions except some aria texts. It was in effect a setting of Mauro’s 1690 libretto with most of Handel’s fitted in where possible, retaining of course his Mauro scenes at the start of the first two acts. Four arias were transferred to different scenes, ‘Da un breve riposo’ from

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 25

06/10/2006 14:51:20

26

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the end of Act I to near the end of Act III. The result is a much stronger drama, with the conspiracy and the character of the conspirators developed in detail, and the rivalry between the ladies eliminated in the middle of Act I. Six of Handel’s arias (‘Vibra cortese amor’, ‘Pregi son’, ‘Il cor mio’, ‘Dica il falso’, ‘Brilla nell’alma’ and ‘Prove sono di grandezza’), two duets (‘Placa l’alma’ and ‘In generoso onor’), the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’ and most of the accompagnatos were omitted. Alessandro did not have a duet with each lady at the end; instead Lisaura and Tassile received one earlier. In addition eleven airs were inserted, including one from Rodelinda (‘Con rauco mormorio’) and three in Mauro’s libretto that Handel did not set; Schürmann no doubt supplied them. Alessandro’s ‘Risolvo abbandonar’ was transferred to Clito. In total Alessandro, who emerges as a less trivial character, and Rossane each lost two arias, while the other male characters (including Ermolao) gained eight between them – nine if Jupiter is included. Act I ended, as in Mauro, with a supernatural scene. Jupiter descends in a machine with many other deities to support his ‘son’, and the Act concludes with a composite ballet danced by gods in the machine and priests on the stage. There was more extra spectacle: in Act I Alessandro entered through a triumphal arch in a chariot drawn by elephants and towards the end of the opera a practicable bridge over the Ganges was cut at both ends, precipitating the conspirators into the river. J. F. A. von Uffenbach attended two performances and was particularly struck by the spectacular machinery, mentioning the realistic elephants, though he also praised the music.17 On 8 November 1743 the Daily Advertiser announced the revival at the King’s Theatre of ‘an Opera, call’d Roxana; or, Alexander in India. Compos’d by Mr. Handel. With Dances and other Decorations entirely new’. It was produced on 15 November as Rossane and received twelve performances to the end of the year and four more in March 1744. Three apparently related productions followed in the next few years: ‘Alexander in India. A new Opera’ on 15 April 1746, ‘Roxana’ on 24 February 1747, and ‘Roxana. Compos’d by Mr. Handel’ on 20 February 1748. For the first two no composer was named. There has been much confusion about these productions, ever since Burney attributed all four to Lampugnani, who was resident composer at the King’s Theatre in 1743–44. A further source of confusion was the use of the title Alexander in India: Metastasio’s famous libretto Alessandro nell’Indie was the source of Handel’s Poro but had no connection with his Alessandro.18 Handel, though not personally involved, lent his performing score of Alessandro in 1743, probably to redeem a broken promise to compose two new operas for Lord Middlesex, manager of the King’s Theatre. A manuscript libretto in the Larpent Collection,19 heavily encrusted with cancellations, insertions and paste-overs, shows that the original intention was to perform a somewhat reduced version of Handel’s 1726 score under the title Le rivali regine, but a series of successive alterations resulted in a pasticcio. The printed libretto includes all accompagnatos, duets and ensembles 17  Tagbuch einer Spazierfarth durch die Hessische in die Braunschweig-Lüneburgische Lande, ed. M. Arnim (Göttingen, 1928), quoted by King in ‘Composition and Reception’ but not in Deutsch. 18  For a full account of these productions, see W. Dean, ‘Rossane: Pasticcio or Handel ­Opera?’, GHB 7 (1998), 143–55. 19  In the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. See Plates 15 and 16.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 26

06/10/2006 14:51:20

Alessandro

27

(except the trio in the finale), but only ten of Handel’s twenty-seven arias (including cavatinas), together with ten alien aria texts. No complete score survives, but with the aid of fragmentary musical sources (manuscript selections in Hamburg, MA/196, and the James Hall Collection at Princeton University, and Walsh’s Favourite Songs) it is possible to identify four of the ten as parodied on earlier Handel arias: ‘Vedeste mai sul prato’ and ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ from Siroe, ‘Là dove gli occhi’ from Admeto, and ‘Return, O God of Hosts’ from Samson. One aria, distinguished by an asterisk, is not by Handel, and may be ascribed to Lampugnani. The remaining five could also be Handel parodies. This version gravely weakened Alessandro’s character in Act II, destroying the impact of the finest scene in the opera and turning the conqueror of the world into a limp self-pitying lover. It is hardly surprising that Mrs Delany was disappointed, as she wrote to her sister (18 November 1743): ‘I was at the opera of Alexander, which under the disguise it suffered, was infinitely better than any Italian opera; but it vexed me to hear some favourite songs mangled.’ The 1746 production was almost certainly a pasticcio on Metastasio’s libretto put together by Lampugnani, although he was no longer in England; it had nothing to do with Handel. The 1747 Rossane, performed eight times, was much closer to Alessandro than that of 1743. Six or seven arias reverted to their original positions (the setting of ‘Pregi son d’un alma grande’ could have been that composed for Scipione in 1730). Only two of the 1743 insertions (both Handel parodies) remained, but four arias from other Handel operas were added: ‘Più che penso’ and ‘Se bramate di amar’ from Serse, ‘Qual leon che fere irato’ from Arianna, and ‘Non si vanti un’alma audace’ from Giustino, the last two with slightly modified texts. The 1747 printed libretto has been wrongly ascribed to 1748; it names the cast of the 1746/47 season, not that of 1747/48. No libretto for 1748 is known, but it was evidently a revival of 1747, perhaps with changes. The mezzo-soprano Caterina Galli succeeded the castrato Reginelli as Alessandro. The third of the four performances, on 8 March, was for her benefit, when it was announced that she would sing ‘all the Original Songs of Senesino’. It is doubtful if she did: only five of the eight are in the 1747 libretto. The casts for 1743 and 1747 were: 1743 1747 alessandro Angelo Maria Monticelli Nicolò Reginelli (soprano castrato) (soprano castrato) lisaura Rosa Mancini (soprano) Marianna Pirker (soprano) rossane Caterina Visconti (soprano) Domenica Casarini (soprano) tassile Giulia Frasi (soprano) Giovanni Triulzi (?tenor) cleone Maria Maddalena Caselli Giulia Frasi (soprano) clito Fratesanti (bass) Giuseppe Ciacchi (?bass) Leonato, though included in the first draft of Act I in the Larpent libretto, was subsequently omitted. Handel included ‘Lusinghe più care’ in his 1730 revival of Scipione. It also appears in a pasticcio score based on Vinci’s Artaserse, perhaps for Vienna in August 1730.20 20  R. Strohm, Italienische Opernarien der frühen Settecento (1720–1730) (Cologne, 1976), II, 234.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 27

06/10/2006 14:51:20

28

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Many of the arias became popular in London as concert pieces: ‘L’amor che per ti sento’ sung by Miss Warren at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 8, 13, 18 and 30 May 1728, on the first occasion for her joint benefit; by Ann Turner Robinson, also for her benefit, at Drury Lane on 26 March 1729, together with ‘Solitudini amate’ and presumably ‘Aure, fonti’; and by Miss Sheward for her benefit at the Great Room in Dean Street on 17 March 1752. ‘Lusinghe più care’ was played by Kytch on the oboe for his benefit at Hickford’s Room on 16 April 1729, and sung by Susannah Arne (Mrs Cibber) at the Little Haymarket on 26 January and 4 February 1734. ‘Il cor mio’ and ‘Men fedele’ were sung by Monticelli at the King’s Theatre on 25 March 1746 in a Musicians Fund benefit concert that Handel gave with Gluck. ‘Dica il falso’ was sung by Domenica Casarini (from her part in Rossane) at a similar Musicians Fund benefit on 14 April 1747 and by Francesina at the Great Room in Dean Street on 22 February 1752. Galli sang ‘Prove sono’ at a Musicians Fund benefit on 21 March 1749. The overture featured on numerous occasions, at the Little Haymarket on 20 and 22 October and 19 November 1733, 26 January 1734 and 27 December 1751; at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 14 May 1745; and at a subscription concert in the Great Room in Dean Street on 11 January 1752. There have been three modern stage revivals, at Dresden (1959), Chichester (1981) and Halle (1983). Westdeutscher Rundfunk issued a complete recording conducted by Sigiswald Kuijken in connection with concert and broadcast performances in 1984. A second recording, conducted by Mieczyslaw Nowakowski, appeared on the Schwann Studios Classique label in 1989.

Autograph The autograph (RM20 a 5), which Handel did not foliate in his usual manner, shows signs of haste and many second thoughts, some affecting the plot. Three arias were rewritten or replaced, and only the opening bars remain; another is complete but was never performed; a fifth received a new text. Several scenes contain lines of recitative that Handel either did not set, or set and subsequently cancelled, here or in the performing score or both. As one would expect, where Chrysander printed A and B versions the autograph has A. Act I contains many insertions (fols 7–8, 27–9, 30–1, 35–8, 40–1), mostly made during the course of composition or very soon after. As already mentioned, Handel began the part of Leonato for alto. He, not Clito, has the recitative ‘Oh smisurato ardire!’ Handel later added the tenor version, omitted by Chrysander, on fol. 6. The B section and da capo of the second sinfonia (HG 8–10) were inserted after Smith had copied the score but before the first performance, perhaps to accommodate the elaborate stage action. ‘Quanto dolce’ is written as a dal segno aria, the opening ritornello omitted after the B section. In the recitative of Scene vi Handel added two lines for Tassile in the margin, but later crossed them out. Scenes v–vii underwent a great deal of reorganisation, involving a major change to the plot and some confusion in scene numbering. Handel labelled both v and vii as Scena 6: ‘Fra le guerre’ may once have been intended to come later. He set Lisaura’s ‘No, più soffrir’ twice

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 28

06/10/2006 14:51:20

Alessandro

29

on the same material, extending and greatly improving the ritornello;21 only the first eleven bars of the first setting survive. The recitatives of vii, both accompagnato and secco, are an insertion. This – or at least the secco – replaced a very different recitative for Alessandro of which Handel wrote out the text (taken from Mauro) but no music. Here Alessandro is quite cynical: he is only pretending to woo Lisaura to keep the Scythians on his side. The aria ‘Men fedele’ followed, the words parodied on a different text beginning ‘Vincitore trionfante’. This scene may have been altered because it made Alessandro too unsympathetic. The scene for the three captains (HG 44) was marked to follow, but not set. Instead Rossane’s recitative on HG 41 led to what looks like a tired simile aria, ‘Qual onda e quest’alma’ (Andante 3/8 A minor), of which the first twenty-two bars survive, though like the first ‘No, non soffrir’ it was probably completed. Again Handel used the material for its substitute, ‘Un lusinghiero’, changing many small details. ‘Un lusinghiero’, on Cantoni paper, was then further revised, perhaps to fit the imagery of the text. In the first version of the scene for the three captains Cleone had an aria but Leonato did not. Cleone’s ‘Spesso suol beltà tiranna’ (no tempo 3/8 F major) survives complete, but was soon rejected. It is a dull piece on a sententious text with an A section in binary form with repeats, the violins doubling the voice at the octave. Handel expanded the music for ‘Dica il falso’ at the end of Act II. He probably inserted Leonato’s ‘Pregi son’ when he rejected ‘Spesso suol’. ‘A sprone a fren leggiero’ has a cancelled eight-bar ritornello. Something was intended to follow Cleone’s recitative ‘Al magnanimo, al forte’ (HG 49); there is a gap, and a leaf was removed. Handel changed his mind twice about the spacing of the chord before Alessandro’s ‘Primo motor’. In Act II the top line on HG 62 (opening of ‘Aure, fonti’) was originally for flauto solo, and Alessandro’s recitative ‘Eccola in preda’ had an extra line enlarging on Rossane’s beauty; this was cancelled in the performing score. Handel added the direction Affettuoso to Alessandro’s ‘Permettete’ in lighter ink. He composed Lisaura’s repetition of these words in B flat, but noted that it was to be copied in A. ‘Vano amore’ (fols 57–60) is an important insertion. As already noted, he first set a slightly different text in a very different mood, of which the first eight bars survive. The music was used soon after for Tassile’s ‘Sempre fido’, to which it is much more suited. The recitatives on HG 71 (version A) and 74 were originally longer: the former contained a miniature duet with continuo accompaniment for Lisaura and Tassile (Ex. 4 and Plate 2), modelled (as King has shown) on the corresponding passage in Steffani’s opera. The recorders doubling the voice at the octave in bars 16–21 and 34–54 of ‘Sempre fido’ were added by Handel in the performing score. The closing bars of the B section of ‘La cervetta’ were much rewritten. Scene vi began with the twomovement sinfonia in B flat transferred to Scipione; Handel crossed it out and wrote the four-bar Grave at the end. The stage direction at the bottom of HG 87 is Cade la machina. Originally Cleone went out at ‘al suo sdegno’ (top of HG 89); Handel added the next four bars on a slip (fol. 77). Scenes vii and viii contain passages of unset recitative for Alessandro and Leonato. After ‘di sempre amarlo’ (HG 92) Handel wrote Scene 9 Lisaura e detta and the opening words of a recitative for the two ladies. 21  King gives an excellent analysis of this (‘Compositon and Reception’, 49–53).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 29

06/10/2006 14:51:21

30

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

He may have intended to end the act with a duet of reconciliation corresponding to III.iii, but the continuation has been torn out. The last three and a half lines of recitative on HG 92 and ‘Dica il falso’ (fols 81–4) are an early insertion. The cries of ‘All’ armi!’ in III.ii were an afterthought written in the margin. ‘Si dolce lusingar’ (fols 97–9) is an insertion following Lisaura’s line of recitative ‘Io non ti cedo’, where it is misplaced, no doubt because the key fits; it was certainly composed for Rossane (Faustina). The coloratura at the bottom of HG 107 was originally different in line and rhythm; in several places in the autograph Handel was concerned to modify the coloratura for Faustina. ‘L’armi implora’ (A and B versions in Chrysander’s appendix) is another example. ‘Tempesta e calma’ has many corrections, both the violin and voice parts being simplified. In the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’ the soprano line is marked S. An (i.e. Senesino and Anna Dotti), the alto Baldi – all three backstage, since they are singing against their own side – the tenor Leonato, the bass Clito; there are no chorus parts in the opera. The accompagnato duet ‘Spegni, oh supremo’ has a three-bar ritornello after ‘rendi la pace!’ After the coro Handel added the date li 11 [originally 9] d’Aprile 1726. Two leaves at the end carry the additional aria ‘L’armi implora’ in version A, with signs indicating that bars 9–11 are to be altered. The new bars 9–13 modifying and extending Faustina’s first burst of coloratura, are in place in Chrysander’s B version (as printed by Walsh), which also has a couple of harmonic changes in the B section.

Librettos 1726 Handel. ‘Drama. Da Rappresentarsi Nel Regio Teatro di Hay-Market; per la Reale Accademia di Musica ... Printed, and Sold at the King’s Theatre in the HayMarket.’ 63 pp. Brief Argument in Italian and English. Handel is named, but not Rolli. The text contains five short passages of recitative, in I.vi, II.iii (2), II.vii and III.iv, that Handel either did not set or subsequently cancelled. On the other hand Chrysander includes two passages, the first four bars on HG 32 and the A version of the final recitative (HG 124), removed before the libretto was printed. Alessandro’s extra line in the recitative ‘Eccola in preda’ (II.ii) is also not present. 1726 Edlin. ‘Drama di Paolo Rolli. Londra: by Thomas Edlin, at the Prince’s Arms, over-against Exeter-Exchange in the Strand.’ Greek quotation from Plato’s Republic, otherwise in Italian only, published by Rolli without reference to the theatre. Dedication to Princess of Wales, who saw the original in Hanover when she went to make her Royal Consort happy (?when they married in 1705). No da capos indicated. III is headed Campo. Otherwise text as 1726 theatre libretto, except that it includes the two removed passages mentioned above and a few minor variants. 1726 Hamburg. ‘Der hochmütighe Alexander. In einem Sing-spiele auf dem Hamburgischen Schau-Platze Vorgestellet ... Gedruckt mit Stromerschen Schrifften.’ Handel is named. Vorbericht rather fuller than in the London librettos. Recitatives in German, set pieces including cori, the four short ariosos in II.ii and ‘Spegni, O supremo’, in Italian with German translation alongside. Ballets included in each Act: Entrée der Combattanten after ‘Fra le guerre’ in I.v, Entrée Comique at the end of Act II, Grand Ballet in the finale, placed before ‘In generoso onor’. Three arias are omitted

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 30

06/10/2006 14:51:21

Alessandro

31

and one replaced, as noted above. There are a few changes to the plot. Evidently it was thought (with reason) that the conspiracy needed strengthening; a scene for Leonato looking forward to the collapse of the canopy was inserted before II.vi, and the latter part of Act III rearranged to include episodes from Steffani’s opera omitted by Rolli. The conspirators do not surrender without a word; most of them (but not the leaders) are drowned when the bridge is cut. 1728 Brunswick. ‘Der Hochmüthige Alexander. In einer Oper vorgestellet Auf dem Grossen Braunschweigischen Theatro In der Sommer-Messe MDCCXXVIII Wolfenbüttel Christian Bartsch.’ Handel not named. Characters listed as in Mauro’s 1690 libretto, including Cleone Alexander’s favourite, a flatterer and a Sicilian, Ermolao a young nobleman in Alexander’s bodyguard, and Jupiter in a machine. Dances at the end of the first two Acts, for gods and priests in Act I, Greek heroes and Persian ladies in Act II. All recitatives and ensemble in I.v in German only. Arias and other set pieces in Italian with German translation. Alessandro assaults Leonato, not Clito in Act I; only Leonato survives immersion in Act III. 1732 Handel. Title as 1726 without ‘per la Reale Accademia di Musica’, but ‘Printed by T. Wood in Little-Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s theatre in the Hay-Market’. 43 pp. Neither Rolli nor Handel named. The recitative cuts affect nearly every scene: 72 lines in Act I, 105 in Act II, 72 in Act III. Leonato and Cleone are omitted, their lines (when essential) transferred to Clito (e.g. in II.ii) or Tassile (in I.ix, II.viii and III.ii); but Cleone is still present as a ghost. Alessandro addresses him by name in II.vii, and he is listed in the heading of III.i. Other changes are noted above.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/199) is a complex document. Basically a Smith copy, made by stages while Handel was still at work on the score, it contains additions and annotations in at least eight different hands: Handel himself, four of his copyists (S1, S3, H6 and ?H5), two at least in 1743, and Chrysander. It reflects changes made before the 1726 première, in 1727/28, 1732 and for Rossane in 1743. Of the nine insertions listed by Clausen, five antedate the first performance: the B section of the sinfonia on HG 7 (probably), the aria ‘Pregi son’ and connecting recitatives (fols 56–8, HG 45–7), the four-bar sinfonia at the start of II.vi together with the recitative as far as ‘trafiggi’ (bottom of HG 88, fols 102, 105–6), the continuation of this recitative to the first bar on the bottom system of HG 89, recopied perhaps to take in the added bars on fol. 77 of the autograph (fol. 107, bound back to front), and the B version of the recitative on HG 124. ‘Si dolce lusingar’ in C minor (fols 128–30, clefs H 6, remainder ?H 5) was inserted during the 1726 run. There is no sign of Faustina’s other extra aria, ‘L’armi implora’. The 1727–28 revival is probably reflected in some of the recitative cuts, perhaps including the severe contractions in II.vi (the new shortened version copied by S1 on fols 103–4, an insertion within an insertion), as well as the transference of some of Leonato’s music to Cleone and Clito (Cleone was omitted in 1732). There are signs of cumulative cuts in some recitatives, for example in II.viii and III.ii. Leonato’s ‘Sire,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 31

06/10/2006 14:51:21

32

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

il popolo’ (top of HG 90) is altered for alto Cleone, which must date from 1727/28, since in 1732 it was given to Tassile. The drastic 1732 cuts are indicated by cancellation or paste-overs (sometimes both, though most of the paste-overs have been removed) and inserted cadences; by no means all are bracketed by Chrysander. ‘Lusinghe più care’ was recopied in A major for Strada with small changes in the bass line (S1, fols 25–9). Upward transpositions by a tone are marked for Bertolli in ‘Vibra, cortese Amor’ and ‘Sempre fido’. In the new III.ii ‘Si dolce lusingar’ was recopied for her in A minor (S3, fols 118–21), and the main cadences in Cleone’s ‘Sarò qual vento’ modified for Montagnana (Clito), or possibly for Palmerini if he sang the aria in 1727/28. Scattered through the score are a number of changes to the words of recitatives, and a few to the notes, some probably written by Handel. At some stage, perhaps in 1732, he cut the three-bar coda to ‘Spegni, O supremo’. Two or three hands annotated the manuscript in connection with the 1743 Rossane, probably as guidance to a copyist for preparing a fresh score. New texts were parodied on the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’, adopted in error in HG, and on part of ‘Pregi son’, though this aria was in the event replaced. Among other points indicated are cuts (‘No, più soffrir’, Alessandro’s recitative ‘Che onor si rende’, ‘Tempesta e calma’), substitutions (‘Sgombra dell’anima’ for ‘Sarò qual vento’) and the insertion of new recitatives in II.viii and III.iv, passages in the 1726 libretto that Handel had not set. Chrysander added the completion of the B flat sinfonia in II.vi and (as noted above) the A version of the recitative on HG 124. The Malmesbury score (music written by S2 and Smith junior in alternation, text by Smith senior) is the earliest copy (from the performing score), probably dating from 1726. It is the only source for the placing of the two substitute arias for Faustina. The text agrees with the A versions in HG, except in the final recitative. It is short on instrumentation and stage directions, even at crucial points such as Alessandro’s two assaults on Clito. Some tempos are omitted, but ‘Dica il falso’ is Allegro, as in the Cluer print and Lennard. ‘All’armi!’ (HG 96) is for Alessandro and Tassile (alto) and Leonato (tenor), all off-stage (so also in Granville). RM 19 c 3 (S2, mid-1740s) was once part of the Aylesford (Flower) Collection; it contains annotations and corrections by Jennens, including bass figuring in ‘Men fedele’. It was copied from the autograph, with full 1726 recitatives and a number cancelled there or in the performing score, but not the four-bar ‘Apprestati’ (HG 32). It has both sinfonias in II.vi and all HG A versions, including that in the last recitative. Not surprisingly S2 misread the abbreviated names against the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’, giving the soprano part to a mythical Sigr Andr. Faustina’s substitute arias are not present. The Granville copy (Eg. 2923, S5, early 1740s) also derives closely from the autograph, probably at one remove, and contains nothing later than 1726. The text is similar to RM 19 c 3, including the complete 1726 recitatives and HG A versions. The recitative ‘Apprestati’ and the extra bars in ‘Eccola in preda’ are present, but not two suppressed recitative passages in II.iii. Otherwise the only material differences are that it gives only the four-bar sinfonia in II.vi and adds ‘Si dolce lusingar’ in C minor at the end.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 32

06/10/2006 14:51:21

Alessandro

33

Lennard (Smith, c.1735) gives an intermediate text between the 1726 and 1732 librettos, and may to some extent reflect the version performed in 1727/28. Apart from ‘Apprestati’ it makes only two recitative cuts in Act I (in ii and vii), a good many more in II.iv–viii and III. iv–vi, but fewer than in 1732. In II.vi the shortened text agrees with the insertion on fols 103–4 of the performing score. It has version A on HG 55, 71, 81 and 124 (contrary to both printed librettos), but B on HG 43 and 84. Tassile takes Leonato’s part in II.viii, as in 1732. The sinfonia on HG 7 is missing, replaced by an instruction to repeat the ‘piccola sinfonia’ on HG 5, and so are the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’ and Faustina’s substitute arias. Smith follows Cluer in giving scant instrumental detail and undercutting most dal segno arias with a da capo. ‘Quanto dolci’ (erroneously), ‘Dica il falso’, ‘Pupille amate’ and ‘Tempesta e calma’ are all Allegro. Berlin MS 9053, in the miniaturist hand found also in the Coke Collection, was copied from Cluer (omitting the ariosos ‘Permettete’ and ‘Superbette’) but includes the two substitute arias for Faustina at the end. Add. MS 31563 is a nineteenth-century copy from the autograph. The Flower parts – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2 (including flauti), horns 1 and 222 – were copied by S2 c.1743, mostly from the autograph (the cancelled opening ritornello of ‘A sprone’ is included), but there are some odd omissions: not only the overture and secco recitatives (as usual), but the accompagnatos ‘Ossidraca superba’ and ‘Spegni, O supremo’, the two Ossidraca sinfonias, the arias ‘La cervetta’ and ‘Sarò qual vento’, the cavatina ‘Sfortunato’, and the coro ‘D’un fiero tiranno’. The B flat (Scipione) sinfonia is misplaced to the start of Act III. The two extra Faustina arias (‘L’armi implora’ in the B version) are included at the end. Both oboe parts generally double the first violins, but they are divided in ‘Da un breve riposo’ (perhaps incorrectly) and ‘Vano amore’. S2 supplies them in ‘Quanto dolce’ and ‘A sprone’ because the autograph has Tutti (ignored by Chrysander) and in ‘Si dolce lusingar’ (autograph only unisoni), but omits them in ‘L’armi implora’ (they may not have been present in his unidentified source). They drop out in the arias when the voice enters, except in bars 39–48 of ‘Da un breve riposo’, possibly an error. The cello part mentions bassoons only in ‘No, più soffrir’. Many excerpts from Alessandro appear in mixed volumes in the British Library and elsewhere. Those in RM 18 c 3 (‘Sempre fido’), RM18 c 10 (nine items, mostly sinfonias and accompagnatos but including the cori ‘Fra le guerre’ and ‘D’un fiero tiranno’, probably intended to supplement the Cluer score) and RM 18 c 11 (the two sinfonias of II.vi, the ariosos ‘Tiranna passion’ and two unpublished pieces cancelled in the autograph, Cleone’s aria ‘Spesso suol’ and the duet recitative and arioso ‘Amo, spero’ for Lisaura and Tassile in II.iii, c.1746) were copied by S2 for Jennens. ‘Si dolce lusingar’ in C minor in RM 18 b 4 (S1) and Jennens’s own arrangement of flute parts in ‘Men fedele’ and ‘Quanto dolce’ in RM 19 a 8 also came from the Aylesford Collection. Other isolated items are the two extra Faustina arias in Add. MS 31521 (S2, c.1726), ‘Solitudini amate’ and ‘Aure, fonti’ in Flower MS 130 Hd4, v. 313 (Smith, c.1746), ‘Prove sono’ in RM 19 d 12, ‘Pupille amate’ in Add. MS 24307, and the duets ‘Placa l’alma’ and ‘In generoso amor’ in the Coopersmith Collection 22  The horn parts are in the library of the University of Maryland.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 33

06/10/2006 14:51:21

34

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

at the University of Maryland (S5, c.1744). The Coke Collection has a manuscript supplementing the Cluer score (ex-Shaftesbury, S2, ?1736). Handel’s keyboard arrangement of the overture23 exists, with only a few slight variants, in six early manuscripts: two Malmesbury volumes (both Smith, c.1726 and 1728), the Coke Rivers manuscript (Smith junior, c.1726/27), RM 18 c 1 (S2, c.1728), RM 18 c 2 (Lambda, c.1728), and New York Public Library Mus. Res. MN* (copyist unknown, c.1739). Cluer published the score on 6 August 1726, having invited a subscription on 27 May. There were eighty subscribers for 106 copies, some from as far away as Dublin, Hamburg, Stockholm and New York. The score omits all sinfonias and recitatives of both types (except ‘Solitudini amate’), the cori ‘Fra le guerre’ and ‘D’un fiero tiranno’, the arioso ‘Tiranna passion’, and the aria ‘Sempre fido’, but includes the three duets and the ariosos ‘Permettete’ and ‘Superbette’ in II.ii in the keys first sung, misattributing the first to Senesino and Faustina, the second to Senesino and Cuzzoni. The scoring is complete, but the instruments are seldom named, except in the overture, ‘Solitudini amate’ – ‘Aure, fonti’ and the final coro. The bassoons however are mentioned in ‘No, più soffrir’ and ‘Sfortunato’. Nearly all dal segno arias have a da capo, omitting the ritornello after the B section. A few pieces have no tempo mark, but ‘Lusinghe più care’, ‘Da un breve reposo’, ‘Dica il falso’ and ‘Tempesta e calma’ are Allegro.24 The opera’s success provoked a good deal of piratical activity from other publishers. Benjamin Cooke advertised two collections of ‘the most celebrated Songs’ on 4 August. They were issued without imprints as ‘Sold at the Music-Shops’, and included the overture and the two additional arias for Faustina, which thus appeared before Cluer’s authorised score. There is some confusion over this publication, the contents varying in different copies, including duplication. Smith (A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions, nos 3 and 8) misinterpreted ‘Permettete’ and ‘Superbette’ as duets. Walsh soon took over Cooke’s publications, if he was not behind them from the first. He (with Hare) and Cluer (with Creake) advertised rival flute arrangements in October and November 1726, and Cooke and Walsh advertised the overture in parts in January and April 1727. Walsh and Hare published Handel’s keyboard arrangement of the overture in their second collection in October 1728; David Wright issued a pirated edition in the same year. There was even a Paris publication of the overture, in four parts, issued jointly by three publishers in 1743. The Rossane productions in 1743 and 1747/48 inspired some confusing activity by Walsh. The Favourite Songs in Roxana or Alexander in India, issued in February 1744, contains twelve pieces printed from old plates of various publications carrying the names of the original singers. Nine come from Alessandro (‘Il cor mio’ in A major), two from Siroe and one from Admeto, with their original words, not those sung in Rossane. The Opera of Roxana or Alexander in India (c.1748) contains all the arias and duets in the 1726 Alessandro, with the two Faustina additions at the end, again from old plates. ‘Sempre fido’ is ascribed to Cuzzoni (perhaps a guess, since it it is not in Cluer). 23  Edited by Terence Best in G. F. Handel: Twenty Overtures, II. 24  ‘Lusinghe più care’ is Allegro ma non troppo in the autograph, Allegro in the performing score. The other three and ‘Pupille amate’ have no tempo in autograph or performing score.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 34

06/10/2006 14:51:21

Alessandro

35

Randall published ‘Ah no, non voler, mio ben’ from Rossane as sung by Pacchierotti in a pasticcio based on Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie (c.1780). Chrysander’s score of Alessandro (1877) is accurate in the main but inconsistent and sometimes casual in detail, for example in the treatment of cuts in the performing score and 1732 libretto; there are about twenty more than indicated in HG. It is not clear why he includes the four bars of recitative ‘Apprestati, oh Cleone’ in I.v (HG 32), which are not even in the 1726 libretto and are cancelled in the performing score, while excluding passages of equal or greater validity, such as the three-bar ritornello after ‘rendi la pace’ (HG 123). He contradicts the autograph in the instrumentation of ‘Quanto dolce’ and ‘A sprone’. Omissions include the tenor setting of Leonato’s recitative ‘Oh smisurato ardire’ in I.ii (autograph), Adagio on ‘Che vidi!’ in I.iii (all sources), Affettuoso on Alessandro’s ‘Permettete’ in II.ii (autograph), and the direction tenero which occurs three times on the word ‘perdonar’ in ‘Prove sono’. This is in the autograph, performing score and copies and even survives in the 1743 Rossane (Hamburg MA/196).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 35

06/10/2006 14:51:21

chapter 3 Admeto, Re Di Tessaglia

T

he action takes place in Larissa, the capital city of Thessaly, in classical times. In the royal apartments of the palace Admeto, the King, lies indisposed in his Bed, where he sleeps. A ballet of spectres carrying blood-stained daggers enacts his dreams. He rises up from his Bed in a Fit of Rage, calling on the spectres to cease tormenting him. They vanish. He goes again to repose himself, longing to die in peace. Orindo, a courtier, brings him two messages: his guest Ercole (Hercules) desires to take his leave, and Trasimede, the King’s brother, ‘raves over the portrait of some painted beauty’ and is as distraught as Admeto himself. In a brief visit to the sickroom Ercole declares that the motive of his mighty deeds is glory, not love for Iole. Alceste, the Queen, prays to Apollo to soften her husband’s pain and her own. The god’s statue replies that only the death of a near relative can cure him. As Admeto composes himself to sleep, Alceste resolves to die for him and looks forward to their next meeting in Elysium. The set changes to A Wood, where the Trojan princess Antigona and her tutor Meraspe are living both in Shepherd’s Habit. They are refugees from Troy, which has been sacked by Ercole. Antigona, who was betrothed to Admeto before his marriage to Alceste, denounces him as a traitor, and blames his illness on Jove’s anger at his broken vows. She laments the death of her father Laomedon at Troy and, seeking a means of introduction to the palace, asks Meraspe to pose as her father. In the Inside Walks of a Garden Alceste with a Ponyard in her Hand, and a Train of Damsels that are veil’d, and weeping, tells them not to bewail her willing sacrifice. All depart, and Admeto enters with Ercole and guards, rejoicing in his recovered health. He is interrupted by cries of woe within. Here all the back Part of the Theatre opens, and near a Fountain’s Side is presented to View Alceste slain, with the Sword in her Bosom. Orindo gives Admeto a note from Alceste saying she chose death to save his life. Here the Theatre shuts in again. Admeto, overwhelmed with grief, begs Ercole, who among other mighty deeds once rescued Theseus from hell, to go down again and release Alceste. Ercole agrees, leaving Admeto to ponder on the delusions fostered by hope. Meanwhile in the wood Meraspe brings Antigona the news that Admeto is better and Alceste dead by her own hand. They rejoice that Antigona may marry Admeto after all, but retire into a thicket on hearing the approach of a hunt. Trasimede enters with the Picture [of Antigona] in his Hand, and followed by the Hunters. He dotes on the portrait. Seeing a means of gaining access to court, Antigona and Meraspe advance. She astonishes Trasimede by denying her identity; she is Rosilda, and Fidalbo (Meraspe) is her father. Trasimede at once invites her, ‘since a rural life’s habitual to you’, to look after the royal garden, hails her as the goddess Diana, tells one of his Followers who   These and many other stage directions are omitted by Chrysander; see below, under Libretto.   As n. 1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 36

06/10/2006 14:51:21

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

37

goes out to collect the huntsmen, and departs. Antigona, likening herself to a ‘coasting sparrow­hawk’, looks forward to showing Admeto the error of his ways. Act II presents Hell, in which is seen Alceste chain’d to a Rock, and tormented by two Furies. This Scene opens to the Sound of a Symphony, which strikes Terror. Hercules, with his Club, who leads about Cerberus in a Chain. Presently he throws Cerberus into a deep Abyss, out of which issues a great Quantity of Smoke and Flames. During a second symphony he descends into the Abyss, beats the Furies with his Club ... who being all struck with Fear, fly on their Wings thro’ the Air, and go out of the Summit of the Cave. Hercules unlooses Alceste, and conducts her out of Hell, helping her to mount over the Rocks with him; the abyss slowly disappears. She looks forward eagerly to Admeto’s welcome. In A Garden Antigona, depressed by Admeto’s unresponsiveness, meets Orindo, who beckons her, and offers to kiss her. She indignantly rejects his advances. Trasimede enters with a Picture in his Hand. Preferring the substance of Antigona to the shadow, he throws down the Portrait, and Orindo privately gathers it up. Antigona is resolved to have Admeto or nobody and rejects Trasimede too. When Admeto enters, Orindo gives him Antigona’s Picture. Admeto says it cannot represent Antigona since Trasimede, when sent to Troy to negotiate the marriage, brought back a different portrait. He sends Orindo to watch Trasimede and thinks longingly of Alceste. While Admetus stands ready to enter the Scene (having left it after his aria), he comes in joined by Antigona and Meraspes. Thrasymedes observes them apart. Antigona kneels at the Feet of the King, he raises her from the Ground and observes first the Picture, and then Antigona, astonished at the resemblance between his gardener Rosilda and the portrait. In answer to his enquiry she says she saw Trasimede doting on the picture and mourning ‘the fatal loss of dead Antigona’. Admeto realises that Trasimede must have fobbed him off with a picture of someone else (Trasimede overhears this and resolves to have the picture stolen) and believes her assurance that Antigona is dead. When she asks if he would marry her if she were alive he says he does not know and abruptly departs. Meraspe asks Antigona why she did not reveal herself. She says the time is not yet ripe; her hopes are drowned in a sea of troubles. The set changes to A Wood. Alceste, disguis’d in a military Habit, tells Ercole that she wants to see if Admeto has taken another love in her absence, and sends him ahead to say he could not find her in hell. Left alone, she is consumed by jealousy. Admeto, depressed at the thought of loving two women both of whom are dead, resolves to die himself. Trasimede enters with ‘Rosilda’ forced along by Soldiers, but releases her when she asks indignantly if this is his fidelity to Antigona. To him a Page, who presents him a Picture, and Antigona retires aside. He surveys the Picture, recognises it as one of Admeto, not Antigona, and orders it to be taken back to the royal cabinet. As the Page is making his Exit with the King’s Picture, he drops it unadvisedly. Antigona is delighted to pick it up. The disguised Alceste sees her kissing it and assumes the worst. She asks Antigona, who admits to loving Admeto, if she has any hope of her love being returned. Antigona does not answer: her fate hangs uncertain as a trembling star. Alceste begins cursing Admeto, but checks herself: the girl may have stolen the portrait. Until she finds out she will be true to her duty.   Chrysander omits this direction, which comes between Ercole’s accompagnato and Alceste’s cry of ‘Alcide!’   Stage direction in Italian text only.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 37

06/10/2006 14:51:22

38

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Act III opens in A Courtyard. Meraspe tells Admeto about the arrest of ‘Rosilda’, revealing her identity and her hopes of marrying the widowed King (he does not know that Trasimede has since released her). Orindo reports that Ercole has returned from hell alone, and is sent to find Antigona and her abductors. Meraspe assures Admeto of Antigona’s love and fidelity. Admeto is torn between longing for the dead Alceste and the thought of Antigona being maltreated by the licentious soldiery. He feels he ought to love her and sings a not very relevant simile aria about a tigress and a turtle-dove. While Admetus is offering to go, Hercules comes in and meets him. He says Alceste must be in Elysium since he could not find her in hell. Admeto remarks (aside) that everything is conspiring to throw him into Antigona’s arms. Ercole, surprised that his false news evoked no expression of regret, concludes that Alceste has reason for jealousy. In the next scene (a wood in the Italian text, clearly a mistake for a Piazza in the English translation and HG) Antigona, again kissing Admeto’s portrait, has barely begun an aria when Alceste comes in and wrings the Picture out of her Hands by Force. Orindo enters with Soldiers and takes the disguised Alceste for the abductor mentioned by Admeto. The Soldiers surround Alceste, whom they bound in chains. Antigona takes again from her the Picture in a disdainful manner, resumes and completes her interrupted aria and goes out. Ercole, astonished to find Alceste under arrest, raises his Club, forces the soldiers to release her, and sends them and Orindo packing. He tells Alceste bluntly that the King loves another woman, and advises her to return to court at once. Striving to conquer her jealousy, she sings an aria about flowers, breezes and birds gracing Admeto’s path. The last scene takes place in the palace. Trasimede hears from Meraspe that Antigona is to marry Admeto and for the first time learns her identity. She points out that she cannot help loving Admeto; Trasimede will find someone else. Unappeased, he works himself into a fury and vows to kill his brother. Admeto and Antigona, determined to marry at once, sing a love duet overheard by Alceste and Trasimede. At the end the latter offers to smite Admetus; but being met with by Alceste, she takes the Sword out of his Hand, and he goes off unobserved. Admeto takes Alceste for his assailant and orders her arrest. The Guards surround Alceste to carry her off. Only then does he recognise her. Amid general explanations Trasimede returns and kneels before Admeto, who lifts him from the Ground and forgives him. When Admeto hesitates between the two women, Antigona takes Alceste by the Hand, and presents her to Admetus as having twice saved his life. Trasimede’s hopes begin to rise, but he is not rewarded. Alceste sings a love song to her husband (Plate 3a), who acknowledges his debt to both ladies; he owes his life to one, to the other his honour. The origin of this libretto is an old Venetian opera, L’Antigona delusa da Alceste, with words by Aurelio Aureli and music by P. A. Ziani, first produced in 1660. Aureli took the central situation from the Alcestis of Euripides (Alcestis dies to save her husband and is rescued from hell by Hercules) and combined it with a typical Venetian imbroglio of misunderstandings, dropped portraits and disguised identities. As in Monteverdi’s last two operas, and many others of the period, the action takes place   A mistranslation for ‘angrily’.   The libretto accidentally omits the heading.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 38

06/10/2006 14:51:22

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

39

on three loosely connected levels, inhabited by gods, heroes and servants. There is also an allegorical Prologue, sung by a miscellany of personified abstractions. The gods’ decrees affect the destiny of the heroes; the servants supply a parallel strain of comedy and ironic comment. The plot is complicated by numerous extra characters, including three servants (Orindo, Lesbo and Lillo) and a pair of subsidiary estranged lovers. Ziani’s opera was often revived – in Bologna (1661), Milan (1662), Naples (1669), Venice (1670), and Hanover (1679 and 1681) – and the libretto underwent progressive changes, not of a radical order. Handel’s immediate source was that of Hanover 1679, whose text had been revised by the court poet Ortensio Mauro, and Ziani’s music supplemented by the obscure composer Mattia Trento. Mauro’s contribution was comparatively slight; apart from a few new aria texts and the insertion of the Act III duet, he expanded the comic element, ending the first two acts with knockabout scenes for Lesbo beset by groups of satyrs and gladiators, followed by a ballet. Handel was thus confronted by a typically old-fashioned libretto of the mid-century. His changes were necessarily radical. He abolished the Prologue, the immortals Pluto, Cloto (one of the Fates) and Mercury, who extend the scene in hell (II. i) with much frigid argument, the secondary lovers, and the low-life episodes, for example in the first scene, where Admeto’s servant Lesbo, asleep in the bedroom of his dying master, enjoys an amorous dream. In earlier librettos much more was made of Lesbo’s love for Antigona (in her disguise as a shepherdess), which Handel transferred to Orindo, a courtier rather than a skittish page, and confined to a single scene. He reduced the unruly mass of characters to a manageable seven. His collaborator, sometimes assumed to be Rolli,10 was almost certainly Haym. The text carries few of Rolli’s fingerprints, for example his tendency to rewrite the recitative dialogue, to substitute new, verbose and confused aria texts, and to put his name to the result.11 By far the greater part of the dialogue, as in the Haym librettos, was taken unchanged from 1679, though a good deal shortened. As in the   Strohm (Essays, 54) cites the 1681 issue, which does not contain Alceste’s aria ‘Gelosia spietata aletto’. According to H. D. Clausen (‘Händels Admeto und Bononcini’s Astianatte’, GHB 6 (1996), 146) both versions were drawn upon, but he states incorrectly that the Act III duet ‘Alma mia, dolce ristoro’ appears only in 1681. There is no reason to suppose that Handel’s librettist used more than one issue.   A scholarly article by Georg Ellinger, ‘Händels Admet und seine Quelle’ (Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1885), 201–24), contains perceptive comments on Handel’s treatment of plot and character, but compares his libretto with Aureli’s original, which he dates c.1664. Lillo had disappeared by 1662.   Earlier versions ended Act I with shepherdesses and huntsmen, Act II with Lesbo and ‘artegiani’ searching for the lost portrait, both concluding with a ballet. Aureli had ended Act II with a burlesque dialogue for Orindo and Lesbo. 10  By Strohm (Essays) and Ellen Harris in her collected edition of Handel’s opera librettos (The Librettos of Handel’s Operas (facsimile), 13 vols (New York and London, 1989)). 11  Rolli was a compulsive rewriter, retaining only a few lines of recitative in Floridante and Scipione, four arias in the final version of Riccardo Primo, and the opening scenes of Acts I and II of Alessandro.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 39

06/10/2006 14:51:22

40

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

nearest parallel, Giulio Cesare, another libretto with a remote seventeenth-century source, most of the original aria texts were clearly unsuitable, banal in diction or in strophic form with refrains after each stanza. Only seven were retained, mostly modified: ‘Chiudetevi’ and ‘Luci care’ in Act I, ‘Sparite, O pensieri’ and ‘Gelosia spietata aletto’ in Act II, ‘A languir ed a penar’, ‘Amor è un tiranno’ and ‘Armati, O core’, together with the duet in Act III. The accompagnato in which Ercole addresses Cerberus was taken over without change, and Trasimede’s Act I aria ‘Se l’arco avessi’ adapted from some lines of recitative. Handel removed a number of entrance and mid-scene arias, and created two cavatinas for Admeto in I.i and III.i, but did not keep rigidly to the exit aria convention. Neither he nor Mauro bothered about the liaison des scènes. Many of the most striking scenes in the opera were new: the ballet of spectres; Admeto’s accompagnato and the link to the overture (the 1679 libretto began with ‘Chiudetevi’); Alceste’s farewell to her attendants (I.v); the ending of the first two acts with strong arias for Antigona and Alceste – an almost invariable feature of Handel’s operas – in place of the comic ballets; the solo scenes for Antigona (II.iv), Admeto (II.viii) and Trasimede (II.x), enabling principal characters to give full vent to their emotions; most of III.vii, in which Trasimede discovers Antigona’s identity (this came earlier in 1679, before Handel’s III.iv); and the whole final scene after the pardon of Trasimede. In 1679 Admeto calmly orders Antigona to yield to fate and marry Trasimede, and is echoed by Alceste. Handel showed his care for dramatic propriety by not pairing Trasimede with Antigona. In addition he greatly improved the balance of Act I by bringing forward Antigona’s first entrance to follow Alceste’s farewell to her husband. In 1679 the act falls into two unequal parts, the first fifteen scenes dealing with Admeto, Alceste and the court, and only the last four with Antigona and Meraspe in the wood. For the most part Haym and Handel did a good job, without eradicating all traces of an obsolete convention. The hide-and-seek with dropped and stolen portraits (somewhat simplified from 1679), the conveniently vacant post for a female gardener (as in Giulio Cesare), and the Chinese-box system of disguises (for long periods the identity of both heroines is concealed from some of the other characters, but not from all) strain credulity, though less so in the theatre than on paper. The discrepancy between two aesthetic levels, the tangles woven by Antigona, Meraspe and Trasimede on the one hand and the classical grandeur of the Euripides plot on the other, is largely mitigated by the power of Handel’s music. More open to criticism is the abrupt change in Alceste’s character in Act II. Immediately after her rescue her thoughts are all for her husband. By her next appearance she has disguised herself as a soldier and is consumed by jealousy. Though Ercole points out that she has no grounds, she sends him to Admeto with a false message – thereby bringing her later troubles on her own head – and explodes in the furious aria ‘Gelosia, spietata Aletto’ (II.vii). Handel’s impassioned response is characteristic, but the aria pulls the character out of focus.12 12  Mauro perhaps spotted this; at the 1681 revival he substituted a less convulsive text in two strophes, the first addressed to jealousy, the second to constancy. This is the only major difference between the two Hanover librettos. Aureli’s aria at this point expressed conflicting emotions of love and jealousy.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 40

06/10/2006 14:51:22

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

41

It might be argued ex post facto that Alceste’s sojourn in hell may have affected her mental balance, or that Handel wished to emphasise the mutability of women, or that he found it advisable to give Faustina a trenchant aria as different as possible from the rest of her part. In any event the contrast with earlier and later scenes is out of proportion. Jealous without a cause in II.vi, she fights down unworthy thoughts when Antigona gives her cause by admitting her love for Admeto (II.xii); and when Ercole says that Admeto reciprocates it she sings a tender aria about flowers and birds (III. vi). It is clear that Handel wished to stress the nobility of her character, quite apart from her heroic death. ‘Vedrò fra poco’ in II.xii is an insertion for which there is no parallel in the source. ‘Là dove gli occhi’ in III.vi flatly contradicts the source, where she sings an aria renouncing love – and Handel underlines the point by changing the last words of her recitative from ‘Admeto ingrato’ to ‘Admeto amato’. Nevertheless her furtive behaviour in Act III, lurking behind corners disguised as a man, detracts somewhat from her dignity. It is not surprising that the music falters at the same point. The last act, though a certain relaxation towards comedy was clearly deliberate, shows a decline from the superb level of the first two. But for this weakness Admeto would rank among Handel’s greatest operas. The variety of the music is as striking as its inventive resource. As usual he was inspired by the Greek setting: he realises the central issues of the myth, at once individual and symbolic, with extraordinary power. Admeto is a clear step forward on the road from Medea in Teseo and Acis and Galatea to the glories of Semele and Hercules. The supernatural episodes at the start of the first two acts are very impressive. The situation leads Handel naturally into formal experiment, combining symphonic movements, dancing, scenic spectacle and accompagnato in sequences of lapidary splendour. The raising of the curtain in the middle of the overture, whose conventional dance movement is replaced by the magnificent Lentemento sinfonia during which the spectres hover round the dying King – a dance indeed, but how different from the usual Minuet or Gavotte! – launches the opera on a stroke of transcendent genius. The second overture, at the start of Act II, is still finer. It is a tone picture of hell, with the three dolce cadence figures in the introduction perhaps suggesting the heroic Alceste. The astonishing chromatic fugue has parallels in similar contexts (‘They loathed to drink’ in Israel in Eg ypt, ‘And with his stripes’ in Messiah), but there is a hint of Bach in the ruthless precision with which it is worked out. As Burney noted with admiration, ‘the subject, in itself very curious and uncommon, is reversed [inverted] in the answer, and then interwoven and carried on as a counter subject throughout the movement’ (Ex. 5). Unison violin figures on the G string evoke the barking of Cerberus in Ercole’s accompagnato, and another close-knit fugal sinfonia follows as he subdues the furies. Both these scenes, especially the second, throw the mind forward to Gluck, whose debt to Handel’s treatment of the supernatural has been insufficiently recognised. Quite as striking as Handel’s illumination of the classical myth, and less predictable, is the degree to which he integrates the secondary plot and conceals some of the cracks in the libretto. The ultimate perfection may elude him, but he makes the motives and behaviour of Antigona entirely credible and saves the opera from collapsing into two irreconcilable halves. This is a triumph of characterisation.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 41

06/10/2006 14:51:22

42

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel exploits to the full his unrivalled command of the voice, and particularly of the contrasted talents of his two leading ladies, the dramatic intensity of Faustina and the warbling fluttering eloquence, at once decorative and appealing, of Cuzzoni. Admeto is unquestionably the finest of the five Handel operas in which they appeared together, thanks in part to the sharp differentiation between their two characters. It is easy, in glancing through the score, to overlook the skill with which he subdues bravura pieces and simile arias to the demands of the drama. In the theatre we may be conscious of uneven inspiration, especially in the third act, but we never feel, as might be expected from the libretto, that one half of the plot, and one heroine, is outclassed by the other. This is also a measure of Handel’s understanding of Admeto, who supplies not only the title but the central pivot of the opera. He is a much more sympathetic character than in Euripides; Streatfeild’s ‘selfish amorist’ is a total misconception. It is his death scene, not that of Alceste, that we witness; he does not promise not to remarry (as he does in Euripides), he knows nothing in advance of Alceste’s intention to die for him, and he does not commit himself to wooing Antigona until he is convinced that Ercole’s mission has failed. He has every reason to feel that fate is throwing him into her arms, especially as he was betrothed to her before he met Alceste and would have married her but for Trasimede’s deception. The introduction of this episode puts any close comparison with Euripides out of court. Handel’s Admeto may not be the most virile of heroes, but he is no weakling. ‘Sparite, O pensieri’ leaves no doubt of his deep love for Alceste. His indecisiveness after her death arises from a genuinely divided conscience, and her reappearance lands him in a moral dilemma from which only Antigona’s self-sacrifice can release him. The faint aura of self-indulgence which his music exhales is due in part to the fact that fate constantly calls the tune and in part to the comparative weakness of two out of his three quick arias. There is more variety of mood and design in his music than in that of the other characters; he has two accompagnatos, two cavatinas, a duet and five arias, one of which (‘Un lampo è la speranza’) exhibits a hybrid form, the A section being a binary vocal dance with repeats. The death-bed scene represents Handel at the height of his powers as musician and dramatist. As the spectres disappear Admeto wakes with a start, uttering his first words con stupore, and we realise that we have been witnessing the tortured dreams of a dying man. The tempo of the recitative veers

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 42

06/10/2006 14:51:23

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

43

abruptly between Agitato or Furioso13 and Adagio e piano, the mood between frenzy and exhausted resignation. Bold modulations, unexpected juxtapositions and interrupted cadences establish a harmonic tension of romantic violence. Some of the transitions are startling, especially the jump from F major via the chords of B flat minor and C major to E major at the words ‘Non avrò mai dunque riposo?’, where a gentle figure of falling semiquavers brings consolation as exquisite as it is unexpected and temporary (Ex. 6). From this suffering only death can bring release, and at ‘morir in pace’ the music passes into a cavatina whose valedictory sweetness is heightened by a major key (E flat) and a dotted figure of caressing tenderness on the violins. But the tonality droops, as if the effort were too much, into the related minor keys, F minor, C minor and G minor, and the momentary gleam of C major in the ritornello is beautifully darkened by a seventh suspension in the foreshortened coda.

Admeto’s recovery is treated with equal artistry. The jaunty melody of ‘Cangiò d’aspetto’ conveys very happily the King’s mingled relief and surprise, and there is a touch of light-headedness about the lively cross-rhythms that break out in bars 5–7 of the ritornello. By this means, by the change of texture towards the end of the A section and by the chromatic inflexions of the B section, Handel dispels any hint of complacency. The sudden lifting of the burden is further accentuated by the choice of key – D major, immediately following the E minor close of Alceste’s farewell to her attendants – a brilliant instance of Handel’s manipulation of tonality for a dramatic purpose. Admeto also has the next aria in this scene, suitably couched in B minor, but the obscure words seem to have baffled Handel’s search for the right tone. It was a difficult choice, for the part is already replete with expressions 13  One such marking, on the last beat of bar 16, is omitted by Chrysander (HG 6, final bar).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 43

06/10/2006 14:51:23

44

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

of grief and anguish. The King’s meditation on the delusiveness of hope sounds almost detached.14 Both his arias in Act II on the other hand are beyond praise. ‘Sparite, O pensieri’, in that typically Handelian E major mood of serenity trembling on the brink of tears, expresses the ache in his longing for Alceste, most notably in the lingering cadences where the voice comes repeatedly to rest on the third of the chord. The sequential movement of the melody reflects the persistence of his emotion; a fastidious choice of harmony repels monotony. His despair, perfectly placed after Alceste’s jealousy aria, finds vent in another magnificent scena. The Adagio accompagnato is a simple succession of deliberately spaced chords passing through many keys, but so infallibly judged – especially the plunge into D flat and the move from G minor to B flat minor at ‘Giusti Numi’ – as to convey a profound searching of the heart. The aria, in the tragic key of F minor, is based on a creeping semiquaver figure of inexpressible sadness that wanders from one instrument to another, eventually reaches the voice at ‘dividere quel cor’ and haunts the B section as well. Other phrases of varied shape and length are cunningly woven into the instrumental texture. As in many arias of this type, the first three words (‘Ah, sì, morrò’) precede the ritornello. Their return unaccompanied in the middle of the aria, and later a silent bar followed by a quiet diminished seventh, are two of many masterly details. The reflective little cavatina with which the love-lorn Admeto begins Act III belongs to a type in which Handel’s operas are marvellously rich. Though only eighteen bars long and deceptively simple, it contrives, with the aid of eloquent suspensions, the hint of a ground bass, and an independent violin part in wide-ranging arpeggios, to make an impression, at once concentrated and spacious, altogether out of proportion to its length. ‘La tigre arde di sdegno’ no doubt gave Senesino a chance to let off steam, but it scarcely surmounts a strained zoological text in which the angry tigress of the first part is forced into awkward contrast with the querulous turtle-dove of the second; the simile, instead of illuminating the drama, leads it into a cul-de-sac. But the love duet with Antigona just before the dénouement is one of the gems of the score. It is overheard by both Alceste and Trasimede, and the irony of the situation is deliciously conveyed by the music, not least in the unharmonised ritornello, whose demure little tune suddenly drops two octaves to form a bass for the voices (Ex. 7). It continues to punctuate the duet at irregular intervals, like a sly commentary, in a variety of shapes and textures: now over a dominant pedal, now with a touch of canon, and in the final ritornello above a suave new bass disarmingly built from a rising scale. It never appears on the voices, which keep up a mellifluous cooing in thirds and imitations. The whole duet has a most original flavour, quite unlike the conventional congruence of operatic lovers but exactly apt to a situation in which the hero, in the unsuspected presence of his ‘dead’ wife, makes advances to the other woman.

14  At some performances Handel may have substituted a different aria; see below.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 44

06/10/2006 14:51:24

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

45

For the greater part of two acts Alceste is a heroine beyond compare, noble in her self-sacrifice, tender, loving, yet at the same time regal. She has all the grandeur of Gluck’s Alceste, softened by a more touching humanity. ‘Luci care’, the aria in which, having taken her decision, she addresses the sleeping Admeto as she thinks for the last time, is a wonderful creation, as subtle in design as it is poignant in expression. The two principal motives, a cry of anguished farewell and a smoother phrase invoking sleep, are combined in a form that is neither cavatina nor da capo aria nor rondo but takes elements from all three. The gradual intensification of the texture, instrumental and harmonic, produces an overwhelming effect. The six-bar ritornello is for continuo alone; the coda, extended to ten bars and richly harmonised in five instrumental parts, takes the overflow of emotion when it becomes too strong for the voice to utter. Perhaps the most sublime moment is the unheralded entry of a single flute (its only appearance in the opera) at bar 45, overlapping a cadence in the dominant and introducing new material, which reappears in the coda. This withholding of an instrument or group of instruments for a late entry, whether in an aria, an act or an opera, is typical of Handel’s structural cunning. The E minor siciliano in which Alceste takes leave of her ladies is scarcely less moving, though the means employed – points of imitation between treble and bass at the beginning of phrases, intricate four-part writing with much crossing of parts, quiet switches between minor and major, subtly varied sequences, Neapolitan sixth harmony – are found in many Handel arias of this type. The B section, as befits the situation, all but eschews major tonality. ‘Quanto godrà’ is another magnificent inspiration. Alceste does not merely anticipate Admeto’s joy at seeing her again; the music glows with a personal radiance, soon to be quenched in bitter irony. Again two rhythmically opposed ideas are interfused, the resolute gesture of triumph in the dotted first phrase and the urgency of the semiquaver figure introduced by the oboes in thirds (symbolising perhaps her eagerness for a speedy reunion), which rises resplendently from the bass towards the end of the first part and is captured by the strings in the second. The immense drive and vitality of the aria springs from these contrasted rhythms and the splendid progression in bars 6 and 7, with viola and bass moving in contrary motion against a double internal pedal, tonic and supertonic (Ex. 8). ‘Gelosia’ with its downward unison scales and blazing coloratura cannot fail to make an impact, but as we have seen it strains the characterisation, nor does it equal similar outbursts in Hercules and elsewhere. More distinguished, as music and drama, is ‘Vedrò fra poco’, which restores Alceste’s stature by releasing her from the suspicion of pettiness and brings the act to an exuberant close. Quite apart from the superb melody, unfolding in extended paragraphs, there is much subtle contrivance here. The workmanship is solid, even learned, as in the treatment of the walking motive introduced in the bass of bar 4 and imitated by the treble two bars later. After the twenty-two-bar ritornello in four parts, with its long string of seventh suspensions, the voice takes up the opening phrase against a new and independent string accompaniment (pianissimo), and the music surges on in five real parts with very little doubling. Yet it makes an impression of vernal lightness and spontaneity, as if walking on air.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 45

06/10/2006 14:51:24

46

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Alceste fades out in Act III. Her two arias, one an ornithological fantasy perhaps intended to demonstrate that Faustina could chirrup and trill as well as Cuzzoni or any violin, the other an amiable love song doubtless inserted as a set-off to the duet, call for little comment. The music is not bad; it simply marks time, communicating nothing fresh. As often elsewhere, Handel’s inspiration gives an intuitive response to what is weak or conventional in the libretto. Nowhere is his grasp of female psychology more comprehensive than in his portrait of Antigona, who makes the perfect foil to Alceste and is neither dwarfed nor shamed by the comparison. She has greater pliancy and resilience and a kittenish streak absent from her rival, but she lacks neither courage nor depth of feeling. If her motive in approaching Admeto’s court seems to be as much wounded pride as love for the King, we cannot suppose that the emotion of ‘Da tanti affanni’ is feigned. She is considerate of Trasimede’s wounded feelings (‘E che ci posso’), and

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 46

06/10/2006 14:51:25

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

47

her ultimate retirement in favour of Alceste strikes us not as a structural convenience but as dramatically right and consistent. Behind her natural cheerfulness – indeed ebullience (her entire part except for ‘Da tanti affanni’ is in major keys) – there is undaunted determination; but besides claws and cunning she possesses irresistible charm, and knows how to exercise it. Handel calls on all Cuzzoni’s powers of trilling, warbling and pearly coloratura to etch her character; the decoration is functional, not extraneous or superimposed; almost every bar of the part is as individual to Antigona as the more regal and impassioned music of Faustina is to Alceste. The accompagnato that introduces Antigona is unusual. The exceptionally long and beautiful ritornello (19 bars), with its pedals and curious treatment of the strings, sometimes slurred, sometimes martellato, sometimes both at once, must be designed to establish a pastoral open-air contrast to the tragic enclosed mood of Alceste’s ‘Luci care’. But Antigona’s first words, denouncing Admeto as traitor and faithless lover, are set reflectively against a pianissimo accompaniment in an unclouded major key, and repeated four bars later to create a tidy cyclic form. She seems to be savouring the idea rather than surrendering to the emotion. Perhaps Handel is already preparing the way for her final renunciation. There is something at once touching and ironical – a very Handelian compound – about the episode, which in a few bars brings Antigona unmistakably to life. Her seven arias are very even in quality. Several are simile pieces, but even when Handel gives full vent to his gift for picturesque illustration, as with the swooping and hovering sparrowhawk in ‘Sen vola lo sparvier’ and the twinkling star in ‘La sorte mia’, he never falls into empty passage-work or loses touch with character. The sudden pedals in the voice part, contrasted with the tumbling violin figures, vividly suggest the flight of the bird in the former aria; the latter makes sparkling use of Cuzzoni’s trill, especially on the word ‘tremula’, and indulges felicitously in phrases of three bars and other unsymmetrical lengths. Four of Antigona’s arias are in B flat, a key as apt to Cuzzoni as A is to Faustina, but that is about all they have in common. ‘Spera allor’ veers constantly and eloquently towards C minor, in the ritornello and later, and once moves on through C major. The repetitions are softened by a good deal of rhythmic variety. Irregular phrase-lengths and a varied pattern of melodic material are still more prominent in ‘E per monti’, where short units of contrasted shape – groups of four semiquavers, three firmly repeated crotchets, arpeggiated quaver triads – are built up into an exhilarating demonstration of Antigona’s resolve to get her own way. ‘Io ti bacio’, based on a discarded setting of ‘Piangerò’ in Giulio Cesare, is brief but eloquent, and gains much from its context. Antigona begins an address to Admeto’s portrait. Cut short by Alceste, she presently resumes the aria,15 omitting the two-bar ritornello and taking off from the dominant instead of the mediant minor. Every detail is deftly placed, not least the interrupted cadence towards the end of the A section and the crowning entry of the strings, for a mere one and a half bars, after the da capo. ‘E che ci posso’, though dramatically apt, conforms with the general decline in invention in the last act. There remains Antigona’s single incursion into the minor, ‘Da tanti affanni’, a siciliano in the same key, rhythm, tempo 15  With the opening word changed; it should be ‘Sì, ti bacio’ in the first version, ‘Io ti bacio’ in the second. There is nothing to suggest the repetition in the source libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 47

06/10/2006 14:51:25

48

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

and layout as Alceste’s ‘Farò così più bella’. The resemblance is perhaps too close, as if Cuzzoni had insisted on a copy of Faustina’s aria. But ‘Da tanti affanni’ is a most beautiful piece, in that mood of tragic pathos that Handel so often found for the heartache of frustrated lovers; Asteria’s ‘Se non mi vuol amar’ in Act I of Tamerlano is a close parallel in all respects, including key and the plaintive chromaticism of the B section. This access of emotion after Admeto’s abrupt departure inevitably wins sympathy for Antigona. Trasimede’s part in the action is undignified and scarcely consistent. A weak and indecisive man who spends hours poring over the portrait of a pretty girl, he makes a murderous attack on his brother with the sole apparent purpose of giving Alceste another chance to display her heroism. Yet Handel endows him with some exquisite music. All four of his arias have character, and they explore a wide range of mood. ‘Se l’arco avessi’ and the hunting sinfonia earlier in the scene are the only pieces apart from the coro in which the horns appear. They bring a welcome touch of colour to the serious tone of the act, and the aria, in which Handel explores the sonority of horns, oboes and four-part strings with the utmost resource, is a dazzling piece of orchestral virtuosity; to Burney it was ‘one of the best and most agreeable hunting songs that was ever composed’. The long A section, assembled from a few simple phrases, all pervaded by the quaver figure introduced in the second bar, depends entirely on texture; the tonality in 126 bars just attains the dominant. If in this aria Handel displays his skill in concealing the limitations of the horns, ‘Da te più tosto’ makes our heart bleed for a character who has done little to command credibility, let alone sympathy. It is a love song of ravishing tenderness with one of those wonderful E flat melodies whose perfection defies analysis. Its simplicity – the texture is largely a matter of thirds and octaves – is of course heightened by art, as in the delicious clashes between E flat and D natural towards the end of the A section and still more in the opening: the aria slides out of the recitative without cadence or ritornello, beginning on a pianissimo first inversion of E flat after a chord of G minor. ‘Chi è nato’ seems short-winded at first glance, but gains character from the processional rhythm and the colouring of the oboes in thirds, often independent of the strings. ‘Armati, O core’ is a vigorous outburst of wrath, unimpaired by the fact that Handel often used the same ingredients to similar effect elsewhere. The first phrase comes from the tenor aria ‘Brich, brullender Abgrund’ in the Brockes Passion; the jagged diminished seventh arpeggios in octaves are a regular vengeance motive. Ercole is little more than an agent for executing Admeto’s wishes – though a very potent one, as his treatment of Cerberus demonstrates – and has no chance to develop. The hint of comedy with which this professional strong man was traditionally portrayed never becomes grotesque, but (as in Hercules) his utterances have an undercurrent of humorous self-satisfaction; it is difficult not to smile at his ‘Opportuno qui giungo’ (III.x) when he turns up to help straighten the muddle which with a little imagination and initiative he might have prevented. Both his arias exhibit that brand of bluff heartiness (generally in a minor key) that seems to have been Boschi’s stock-in-trade; Handel nearly always wrote well for him, but there is no denying the standardised nature of the product. ‘La gloria sola’ is considerably the better of the two. Contrasted with the usual doubling of the vocal and instrumental bass is

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 48

06/10/2006 14:51:25

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

49

a good deal of close-packed counterpoint. The opening motive appears in all three instrumental parts as well as the voice, and is interestingly developed in the ritornello at the end of the A section, which is two and a half bars longer than that at the beginning. The ascending chromatic line may hint at the dangers in the path to glory and Ercole’s confidence that they can be overcome. The B section, contrasted in material and tonality – smooth rhythms, richer part-writing, untroubled major key – is a notable source of strength. A curious feature of this aria is Handel’s reuse, perhaps subconscious, of material from the Allegro of the overture (see in particular HG 3, bottom line). Orindo and Meraspe are confined to a single aria apiece. Though neither is quite vintage Handel, Orindo’s is touching in its context; every lover found a friend in Handel. Meraspe’s is compact and dignified, as befits a man who enjoyed some standing in Troy. It will be seen that Handel’s writing for Palmerini differs from that for Boschi; the voice is almost independent of the instrumental bass. The scoring demands no detailed consideration, apart from the points already mentioned, but it partakes of the careful workmanship characteristic of the whole opera. This is equally true of the secco recitatives; Alceste’s decision to sacrifice herself (I.iii) and Admeto’s final recognition (III.x) are treated with particular sensitivity. The tonal scheme is interesting. Each act begins in a flat minor key and ends in a major key, without duplication (Act 1, D minor-A major, Act II, G minor-E major, Act III, C minor-F major); the close in the relative major of the original tonic brings the wheel full circle. Flat keys govern most of the important scenes (including all five accompagnatos) and outnumber the sharp keys by nearly three to one; this is not unusual in Handel’s more serious dramatic works.16 The tonal scheme of the opening scene (D minor, G minor, E flat major, C minor, F minor) reflects an obvious search for unity, and the scene in hell is firmly rooted in G minor, resolving on to B flat after the rescue. The latter is, however, the key principally associated with Antigona; there is no doubt a deliberate intention behind the fact that both her arias in Act III are in this key, whereas both Alceste’s are as far away as possible, in A. Although no autograph survives, the known compass of the singers suggests that few if any pieces were transposed before performance.

History and Text Handel finished the score on 10 November 1726; this date was added by Jennens at the end of the Flower copy and must derive from the lost autograph. The first full rehearsal on 25 January 1727 was attended by Elizabeth Legh and Mrs. Pendarves, who wrote to her sister on the following day: ‘Mrs. Legh is transported with joy at ... hearing Mr. Handel’s opera ... she is out of her senses.’ Handel conducted the first performance on 31 January, with the following cast: admeto Senesino (alto castrato) alceste Faustina Bordoni (soprano) antigona Francesca Cuzzoni (soprano) 16  Hercules and Theodora are conspicuous examples.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 49

06/10/2006 14:51:25

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

50

trasimede Antonio Baldi (alto castrato) ercole Giuseppe Boschi (bass) orindo Anna Dotti (contralto) meraspe Giovanni Battista Palmerini (bass) The opera was an instant success, receiving seventeen consecutive performances, interrupted only by the illness of first Faustina and then Cuzzoni, and two more before the end of the season. The Colman Opera Register recorded that ‘during this time the House filled every night fuller than ever was known at any opera for so long together’. Burney quoted ‘a gentleman who constantly attended its representation’ to the same effect. There was one dissentient voice; Robert Hassell, a provincial music publisher, wrote in a letter of 27 April: ‘Admetus has had a great Run much above its merits in my opinion. For it is not so good as Rodelinda and two or three more, but has been more followed and cryed up than any of them’.17 All three principal singers were acclaimed by the public, though in the case of the two leading ladies not the same public. The rivalry between their supporters came to the boil during the run, and found expression in several satirical pamphlets, some deplorable verses, and disturbances in the theatre, one of which, at the seventeenth performance of Admeto on 4 April, gave great offence to Princess Amelia.18 The part of Admeto suited Senesino’s gift for pathetic expression (Burney uses the word ‘pathetic’ again and again of his music and his singing in this opera), and he surpassed himself as an actor. Burney was ‘told by persons who heard this opera performed when it first came out, that Senesino never sung or acted better, or more to the satisfaction of the public, than in the opening scene’. Quantz, who arrived in London on 7 March and heard some of the later performances, thought the music magnificent and described the singing at length in his Autobiography.19 The French traveller Fougeroux too was full of praise for the orchestra. The formalities for Handel’s naturalisation were completed on 20 February during the run of Admeto, when George I gave the Royal Assent to a special Bill. The Hanover Alceste had been the first Italian opera he attended in February 1679.20 Admeto was probably one of the last.21 He left London for Hanover on 3 June and died suddenly on the 11th.

17  Gibson, 251. 18  See the letter from the Countess of Pembroke to Mrs Charlotte Clayton, quoted on p. 4. According to Burney it was while Cuzzoni was singing ‘Sen vola lo sparvier’ in Admeto that a man in the gallery shouted ‘Damn her: she has got a nest of nightingales in her belly’. Lady Cowper wrote ‘She is the devil of a singer’ against Faustina’s name in her copy of the libretto. 19  See p. 2. 20  Strohm, Essays, 55. 21  According to D. Burrows and R. D. Hume, ‘George I, the Haymarket Opera Company and Handel’s Water Music’, Early Music 19 (1991), 332–3, he attended all nineteen performances of Admeto, followed by two of Floridante and five of Bononcini’s Astianatte. This is most unlikely. The items cited in evidence do not refer specifically to the King. Had he been present during the disturbances, the fact would surely have been mentioned in the press and elsewhere (and the disturbances might not have occurred). A. H. Scouten, The London Stage, Part 3: 1729–1747, makes no mention of his presence at any of these performances.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 50

06/10/2006 14:51:25

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

51

The eleventh performance, on 7 March, was for Faustina’s benefit, said to have brought her £1,800, and ‘several New Additions’ were advertised. Two of these can be identified in the first two arias in Chrysander’s appendix. ‘Spera, sì, mio caro bene’ and ‘Io son qual fenice’ replaced ‘Luci care’ and ‘Quanto godrà’ respectively. This preference for one moderate and one flashy piece over two of the greatest inspirations in the score reflects little credit on Faustina’s taste. She may have resented the fact, noted by Burney, that in ‘Quanto godrà’ the divisions are given more liberally to the instruments than to the voice. A third insertion was the fine B minor aria ‘Amor ed empietà’, sung by Senesino with a different B section text in the revival of Floridante a few weeks later (29 April).22 The three arias are found together, headed Additional Songs in Admetus, in the Barrett Lennard volume of ‘Miscellanys’; ‘Amor ed empietà’ also appears in the Shaftesbury manuscript supplementing the Cluer score of Admeto. It may have replaced ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ in the same key, on which it is a distinct improvement. These additions were advertised for the rest of the run, but some patchwork may have been required at the last two performances. On 8 and 11 April Admeto was postponed on account of the indisposition of Faustina, but returned to the bill, in what form we do not know, on the 15th and 18th. Handel revived Admeto for six performances at the start of the next season, the first on 30 September 1727, and for three more at the end, the first on 25 May 1728. It was the last opera given under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Music, on 1 June; another performance was advertised for 11 June, but cancelled owing to a possibly diplomatic illness of Faustina. With one exception the cast was unchanged. Anna Dotti was singing in Brussels in late autumn 1727 and was probably replaced in September by Mrs Wright, a soprano, who certainly sang Orindo’s part in May 1728. This lady, whether for reasons of temperament or figure, was judged incapable of playing a male role. Accordingly Orindo became ‘Orinda, a Lady of the Court’.23 This had strange consequences for the plot, since Orinda cannot decently make love to Antigona or command troops. The latter task in Act III falls incongruously to Meraspe, who as a result nearly finds himself in two places at once; he has Orindo’s recitatives in Scenes v, vi and ix. The love scene in II.ii was replaced by a new recitative and aria, ‘Dolce riso, dolci sguardi’, a floridly ornamented affair in A major based on material from the duet ‘Placa l’alma’ in Alessandro.24 The whole part is shortened; Orinda appears only once in Act I (vii) and not at all in Act III, though some residual matter in the libretto suggests that it was the original intention to include her in the first scene. The three arias inserted for Faustina’s benefit were not retained. The 1731/32 season began with three revivals hastily adapted to a new company of singers. The third of them was Admeto, produced on 7 December and given six times 22  This was doubtless the reason why, unlike the two arias for Faustina, it was not incorporated as a regular feature of the score, for example to the copies acquired for the Brunswick and Hamburg productions. 23  Compare the transformation of Nireno into Nerina for Benedetta Sorosina in Giulio Cesare in 1725. 24  This aria was at some time put down a fourth to E major for alto, possibly for Bagnolesi (Alceste) in 1731. It appears in this key at the end of the Flower score and parts.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 51

06/10/2006 14:51:25

52

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

up to 11 January (a performance on 4 January was cancelled owing to the illness of a singer). The Royal Family attended every performance in force. Only Senesino of the 1727 cast retained his part. Alceste was sung by Anna Bagnolesi (contralto) – her first role in England – Antigona by Strada, Trasimede by Campioli, Ercole by Pinacci (tenor), Meraspe by Montagnana; Orindo was omitted. The new pitch of Alceste’s and Ercole’s parts necessitated many changes; others, including copious cuts in recitative, were inspired by a desire to shorten at all costs. The result is a sorry hash, which sacrifices music and drama alike to expediency. Alceste retained two of her seven arias (‘Vedrò fra poco’ and ‘Sì, caro’, presumably transposed25); of the other five, ‘Luci care’ was replaced by ‘Spera, sì, mio caro bene’ (as in March 1727, but in a lower key, probably D minor), ‘Quanto godrà’ by the slight ‘Mostratevi serene’,26 ‘Là dove gli occhi’ by ‘Sento prima le procelle’, a spectacular outburst of fire and brimstone composed fifteen years earlier for the castrato Bernacchi in a revival of Pirro e Demetrio.27 ‘Farò così’ was cut, and ‘Gelosia’ inaptly transferred, with some modification of the words, to Ercole. The latter lost both his original arias; ‘La gloria sola’ was replaced by ‘L’aquila altera’, a simile aria written for Faustina in Riccardo Primo, ‘Amor è un tiranno’ by ‘Vanne amor tu sei tiranno’, an unidentified piece probably taken from another opera with parodied words. Antigona sang ‘E per monti’ from II.iv at her first appearance instead of ‘Spera allor’; Faustina’s ‘Io son qual fenice’ instead of ‘E per monti’ (a love song here, when Antigona has just rejected Trasimede, is peculiarly ill-timed); and Alceste’s ‘Là dove gli occhi’ instead of ‘E che ci posso’. Meraspe had two arias, ‘Volate più dei venti’ from Muzio Scevola, introduced by a recitative in which he asks the god of love to console Antigona, inserted after ‘Da tanti affanni’ in II.vi, and Ercole’s ‘Amor è un tiranno’ in place of ‘Signor lo credi a me’. This is not only maladroit in Meraspe’s mouth; it means that each of the lower voices sings an aria enshrining the same trite sentiments within a few minutes. Trasimede’s ‘Da te più tosto’ and of course Orindo’s ‘Bella, non t’adirar’ were cut. Several of Admeto’s scenes were emasculated, the great accompagnatos ‘Orride larve’ and ‘Quivi tra questi’ being reduced to six and four lines respectively and ‘Cangiò d’aspetto’ and ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ losing their B section and da capo. The abbreviation of Senesino’s part is not the only oddity about this revival. It is surprising that Montagnana was given the less important of the two lower male parts, with only two arias. He had first sung for Handel in the Tamerlano revival a month earlier, and perhaps his exceptional gifts were not yet recognised (he sang three arias in Poro in November, but all were taken from earlier works); the tenor Pinacci had arrived with a higher reputation. Alceste lost three of her finest arias, doubtless occasioned by the change of pitch and Bagnolesi’s lower status. As a result Antigona (Strada) emerged as the principal character. Altogether nine of the arias sung at the première disappeared; two of the three additions for Faustina’s benefit 25  One of them may have been replaced by ‘Dolce riso, dolci sguardi’ in E major. 26  Handel took the text of this aria and ‘Amor ed empietà’ from Salvi’s Dionisio re di Portogallo, which he was later to set as Sosarme. 27  Handel simplified the aria for Bagnolesi, shortening the A section by fourteen bars and removing a messa di voce sustained for 4½ bars on the first note as well as much coloratura.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 52

06/10/2006 14:51:25

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

53

were restored, one of them for a different character; and five were added, at least four of them lifted from earlier works. With the possible exception of ‘Mostratevi serene’ there was no fresh composition. At least three of Alceste’s arias and two of Ercole’s must have been transposed, the latter’s perhaps down an octave. The unpublished tenor aria ‘Spirti fieri dell’alme guerrieri’ (see below, under Autograph) was certainly composed for Pinacci as Ercole in this revival, and may have been inserted (in I.vi) after the libretto had been printed. It is a reworking, with considerable improvements and a new B section text, of the aria beginning with the same words in Rodrigo. Admeto was the last Handel opera acted in London (or anywhere else) during the composer’s life. On 12 March 1754, long after the switch to oratorio, Vanneschi revived it for five performances at the King’s Theatre with ‘New Decorations’. Burney says it was ‘received with great indifference’ and is contemptuous of the singers, who included two sopranos associated with Handel’s oratorio seasons, Giulia Frasi (Antigona) and Christina Passerini (Trasimede). Admeto was sung by the castrato Pietro Serafini, Alceste by Caterina Visconti (soprano), Ercole by Ottavio Albuzio (tenor), and Meraspe by Ranieri (bass); Orindo was again cut. The text was based on 1731, but ‘Luci care’, ‘Quanto godrà’, ‘Là dove gli occhi’ and ‘E che ci posso’ reverted to their proper positions, and Trasimede (now a soprano) received Alceste’s ‘Farò così’ in place of ‘Da te più tosto’. Admeto sang the full da capo version of ‘Un lampo è la speranza’, but the other cuts in his part remained. Manuscript annotations in a copy of the Cluer score in the Coke Collection were evidently written by someone preparing the 1754 revival. For the most part they agree with the libretto. Of the two arias not in Cluer, ‘Volate più dei venti’ is not mentioned; an ambiguous note suggests that ‘Vanne amor’ (in III.iii in the libretto) may have been considered as a substitute for ‘Da te più tosto’ in II.iii, though this would make little sense. A few transpositions are indicated: ‘Io son qual fenice’ up a tone to G for Antigona (this may date from 1731), ‘Farò così’ up a minor third to G minor for Trasimede, ‘Chi è nato’ (Trasimede) up a tone to D minor, ‘La tigre arde’ (Admeto) up a major third to A. This is the only transposition in Admeto’s part, but the annotations are clearly incomplete. Trasimede’s ‘Armati, O core’ is marked ‘transposed’, but the word is crossed out. William C. Smith28 claimed that the annotations are in Handel’s writing; they certainly are not (in any case he was blind by 1754), but they could be in that of the younger J. C. Smith. Handel, though not responsible for the revival, might have authorised Smith to prepare it. That could account for the disappearance of the performing score and perhaps the autograph as well. If they left Handel’s house and found their way to the King’s Theatre, they could have perished when the building was burnt down. It certainly looks as if the annotator was familiar with the text of the 1731 revival. The popularity of the music is attested by frequent performances of single items. Handel himself incorporated ‘Sì, caro’ in his 1731 revival of Rinaldo, and ‘Mostratevi serene’ in his pasticcio Oreste (Covent Garden, 18 December 1734). ‘Là dove gli occhi’ was sung with parodied words in Lampugnani’s arrangement of Rossane at the King’s Theatre in 1743 (see Chapter 2), and three arias from Admeto (‘Sen vola lo sparvier’, ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ and ‘Se l’avessi’) figured in the pasticcio Lucio Vero in 28  ‘The 1754 Revival of Handel’s Admeto’, M & L 51 (1970), 141–9.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 53

06/10/2006 14:51:26

54

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

November 1747. During Handel’s last years ‘Sen vola lo sparvier’ was adapted, probably by the younger Smith, for a new setting of ‘From virtue springs’ in Theodora. Burney mentions ‘Un lampo è la speranza’, ‘Se l’arco avessi’ and ‘Sì, caro’ as general favourites. The London Stage records nine performances of ‘Sì, caro’ up to 1731 by three different singers (Miss Warren, Mrs Hill and Mrs [?Ann Turner] Robinson) at five different venues, and ten of ‘Se l’arco avessi’ up to 1735, some of them of an eccentric nature. Mrs Barbier sang it three times at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1728–29, once for her own benefit at a performance of Hamlet; in 1730 the trumpeter Burk Thumoth played it three times as a trumpet solo (once as a ‘Trumpet Farce’); Mrs Wright offered a different version at Covent Garden on 20 April and 1 May 1733, on the first occasion ‘accompanyed with a Trumpet’, on the second by ‘Trumpets, French Horns, etc.’; Osborne, a boy pupil of Henry Carey, sang it at the Little Haymarket Theatre on 31 August 1735. Only one performance of ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ is recorded (by Clarke at Drury Lane on 26 March 1729), and one of ‘Sparite, O pensieri’ (by Mrs Barbier at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 5 March 1729). Domenica Casarini sang ‘Là dove gli occhi’ at a Musicians Fund benefit at the King’s Theatre on 14 April 1747 (not mentioned in The London Stage). Mrs Barbier sang ‘La tigre arde’ at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 5 March 1729 and in the Crow Street Music Hall, Dublin, on 4 December 1731; Clarke sang it at Drury Lane on 26 March 1729. The overture figured at the Little Haymarket on 1 December 1733 (at a performance of The Relapse), and at the Manchester Subscription Concerts on 14 May and 23 July 1745. Admeto enjoyed considerable early success in Germany. An arrangement by G. C. Schürmann with the set pieces in Italian, the recitatives in German, was produced at Brunswick in August 1729 and revived in February 1732 and August 1739. A different German translation by C. G. Wendt had three performances at Hamburg in 1730, the first on 23 January (NS) and was revived every year till 1736, for thirteen performances in all. Both German productions gave a very full text: see below, under Librettos. There have been about a dozen modern productions, the earliest at Brunswick (1925) and Halle (1958). These and the four in England (Abingdon 1964, Birmingham 1968, Colchester 1973, Cambridge 1999) were in translation. Admeto was the first Handel opera broadcast by the BBC Third Programme (1 February 1947), translated by Geoffrey Dunn and conducted by Stanford Robinson in an edition prepared by Anthony Lewis, who conducted the very successful Birmingham production with Janet Baker as Alcestis. A BBC studio performance of this version, broadcast in August 1968, was issued as a commercial recording by Ponto in 2004. A recording under Alan Curtis was issued by EMI Electrola in 1978.

Autograph Only two arias and a fragment of a third, all composed after the première and all unpublished, survive in autograph. ‘Dolce riso, dolci sguardi’ (RM 20 f 11, fols 22–3) was composed for Mrs Wright (Orinda) probably in autumn 1727, ‘Spirti fieri dell’alme guerrieri’ (RM 20 d 2, fols 9–10) for Pinacci (Ercole) in 1731. The tempo, originally Allegro, was changed to Andante. Handel followed it with a new four-bar

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 54

06/10/2006 14:51:26

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

55

recitative for Admeto and a cue for ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ to follow, thus locating it firmly at the end of I.vi. An incomplete tenor setting of ‘Fra le spine’ in Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 256, pp. 1–2, a reworking of another Rodrigo aria, undoubtedly dates from the same occasion.29 Handel abandoned it in the thirtieth bar.

Librettos 1727. ‘Admeto, Re di Tessaglia, Drama. Da Rappresentarsi Nel Regio Teatro di Hay-Market Per La Reale Accademia di Musica ... Printed, and Sold, at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market’ [viii +] 77 pp. Handel is named, but not the librettist or the scene designer.30 Argument in Italian and English, the former taken almost word for word from Aureli’s 1660 libretto. The English version, after summarising the story as told in the Alcestis, declares: ‘This is collected out of the Fables of the Ancients: The rest is the Work of Fiction, purely for the ornamenting the Drama’. The text is substantially Chrysander’s, but the latter omits many important stage directions, including the attribution of the accompanied recitative ‘Risanarti non puoi’ in I.iii to Apollo’s statue, Admeto’s falling asleep before Alceste proclaims her resolve to die for him in the same scene, the whole rubric for I.v (the garden, Alceste with a dagger and her veiled and weeping attendants), Ercole’s drastic treatment of Cerberus (II.i), Alceste’s disguise as a soldier (II.vii), Trasimede’s release of Antigona (II.ix), the location of III.i, and much action in III.v and vi, including the soldiers chaining Alceste and Antigona snatching back the portrait. Many of these directions are in copies of the score as well as the libretto. Chrysander places the cue for the closing of the back scene in I.vii (HG 28) seven bars too early. The ballet of spectres in the opening scene is not mentioned in the libretto, though it appears in all copies of the score; it could have been a late addition. 1728. Title as 1727 except for date, text reset. 79pp. The only important change is that ‘Orindo, Gentleman of the Court’ becomes ‘Orinda, a Lady of the Court’, with the modifications and cuts noted above. One line for Antigona in the last scene is omitted. 1729 Brunswick. ‘Drama per Musica da rappresentarsi nel famosissimo Teatro di Braunsviga Nella Fiera d’Estate L’Anno 1729. Wolfenbüttel druckts Christian Bartsch’. Bilingual, including title and all preliminaries; Italian and German text on opposite pages. Full text including both Faustina replacement arias. Orindo, listed as court cavalier or Admeto’s Hof-Junker, takes Orinda’s aria ‘Dolce riso’ but not her sex. Scene headings mostly more elaborate than in London librettos, but theatre evidently not equipped for flying in II.i. II.vii (Luogo delizioso con Campi de Tessaglia in Lontananza) begins with Ercole singing ‘Serenatevi, O luci belle’ from Teseo. Dances in I.i, II.i and after II (Thessalian peasants of both sexes). 1730 Hamburg. ‘Admetus, König in Thessalien in einer Oper auf dem Hamburgischen Schau-Platze vorgestellet ... Gedruckt mit Stromerschen Schriften.’ 29  HHB prints it under Rodrigo but the watermark (K10) confirms the 1731–32 date. 30  Deutsch (201) attributes the scenery to Goupy, but the sentence he quotes comes from the libretto of Riccardo Primo, not Admeto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 55

06/10/2006 14:51:26

56

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel and the translator Wend(t) are named, but no cast. Possibly based on the Brunswick version, though the translation is new; contains the same dances, Faustina’s two substituted arias and ‘Serenatevi, O luci belle’ but not ‘Dolce riso’. Recitatives in German, arias, duet and coro in Italian with German text alongside. 1731 Hamburg. Title as 1730 except for date and ‘Gedruckt mit Piscators Schrifften’. Text unchanged. 1731 Handel. ‘The Second Edition, with many Additions ... Printed and Sold by T. Wood in Little-Britain ... [Price 1s.]’ 55 pp. It was in fact the third edition. The Argument, in English only, is reduced to its first three paragraphs on the classical half of the plot. Handel is not named. The many changes – more subtractions than additions – are summarised above. A few extra lines of recitative are inserted as links, and one new stage direction, A Guard gives him [Admeto] a Letter in I.vii (now vi) two lines after the revelation of Alceste’s body. 1732 Brunswick. ‘Admetus König in Thessalien in der Winter-Messe Anno MDCCXXII’. As 1729 but in German only (except arias and duet in both languages). Coro in German identical with 1729 translation, fits Handel’s music and was probably sung to it. II.iv shifted from a pleasure garden to a suburban desert, presumably to fit available scenery. 1739 Brunswick. As 1732 with date changed to ‘In der Sommer-Messe 1739’. In none of the Brunswick librettos are Handel or any singers named. 1754 London (Vanneschi). ‘Drama per Musica pel Teatro di S.M.B. ... Printed by G. Woodfall, at the King’s-Arms, Charing-Cross ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 77 pp. Handel is once more acknowledged. Based mostly on 1731, but with six earlier arias restored, one of them (‘Farò così’) for a different character in a fresh context, indicating a partial return to the 1727 text in the roles of Alceste and Antigona. ‘Farò così’ is introduced by a new recitative, ‘Quanto godrà’ by that preceding ‘Mostratevi serene’ in 1731.

Copies and Editions In the absence of autograph and performing score some details of the textual history are obscure. The earliest complete copy is Malmesbury (S2), signed and dated 1727 by Elizabeth Legh. It contains two unica: the statue’s recitative is a different setting for tenor, and Meraspe’s recitative in III.i is for a considerably lower bass voice. Both tie in with two unpublished settings of Meraspe’s aria ‘Signor, lo credi a me’, copied by S2 in RM 19 a 1. All three settings are based on the same material. It is clear from internal evidence, in the treatment of both the verbal text and the musical ideas, that the tenor setting (in D minor with an independently written part for bassoons and a much shorter B section) came first, that the bass setting (in A minor for a deep voice going down to E) followed, and that both preceded the more mature published version. (They were probably copied from the lost autograph in accordance with the practice S2 was later to adopt for Jennens.) It would be tempting at first glance to suppose that the bass setting was written for Montagnana in 1731, as indicated in HHB, but the content rules this out. Handel must have first conceived Meraspe’s part for a tenor of limited capacity – probably Antinori,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 56

06/10/2006 14:51:26

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

57

the tenor of the previous season – who was also assigned the brief utterance of the statue, then transferred it to the low bass for whom the recitative in III.i was written, and finally settled on Palmerini, whose voice (like that of Boschi) had the compass of a baritone. The six complete copies – the others are Lennard (S1, late 1730s), Flower (S2, c.1738), Granville (S5, early 1740s), RM 19 c 1 (S5 or S6,31 c.1755) and RM 19 c 2 (S13, 1784/85)32 – show no wide variation; but Malmesbury, though sparing in instrumentation, dynamics and stage directions, is the only score (with the exception of the eccentric and incomplete Add. MS 38002) that antedates Handel’s first revival. Its text therefore brings us as near as we can get to that of the first performance. The most significant details in which it differs from some (not all) of the later copies are the recitative cadences before Ercole’s first entry (bottom of HG9, G minor), before ‘Luci care’ (HG13, C major), and before ‘Là dove gli occhi’ (HG 102, E major). In these respects it agrees with Lennard and RM 19 c 1, which must have come from the same stable. The other copies have cadences respectively in B minor, A (? major) and A major (except that this cadence in Flower is in E major). In each case this points to the subsequent insertion or replacement of an aria. It is not clear what could have preceded Ercole’s entry; an aria for Orindo is unlikely in this context (Chrysander conjecturally ascribes ‘Mostratevi serene’ to Orindo, but it does not fit here dramatically and is in the wrong key). Before ‘Luci care’ Chrysander altered the cadence in A in RM 19 c 2 to C (he annotated both this copy and RM 19 c 1). Faustina sang ‘Spero, sì’ here in March 1727, but it is in the same key as ‘Luci care’, F minor. It must, however, have been transposed when the contralto Bagnolesi sang it in 1731; D minor would fit. The A major cadence on HG 102 almost certainly introduced the D major aria ‘Sento prima le procelle’ in 1731. Some copies show further traces of Handel’s revivals; for example RM 19 c 1, like the 1731 libretto, omits the last fourteen bars of the recitative for Antigona and Meraspe in I.viii (HG 31), ending with a D minor cadence at ‘svenata Alceste’. Granville and RM 19 c 2 have the same three additional arias as HG; RM 19 c 2 despite the implication in Squire (p. 99), contains many more stage directions than RM 19 c 1, but the latter has the vital one for Admeto to sleep after ‘E non si tema’ (HG 13). Flower, which contains most of the stage directions not in Chrysander, derives from the same stable as Granville and RM 19 c 2, but has some unusual features. Its appendix, in addition to the three additional arias in HG (‘Mostratevi serene’ copiously figured), contains ‘Dolce riso’ for alto in E major and a seven-bar B section (Lentement) for the second sinfonia in II.i (HG 46–8) with da capo indicated. This occurs elsewhere only in the supplementary Shaftesbury manuscript, and was doubtless copied from the autograph. So probably was the interesting and unique stage direction in II.i (HG 49), where at the words ‘ritorna ravvivata’ Ercole restores Alceste to life by touching her with Mercury’s wand (La tocca con il caduceo di Mercurio e la ritorna in vita). 31  The two hands are very similar. Larsen opts for S6, but the clefs seem more characteristic of S5. The words are in a different hand. 32  See J. H. Roberts, in T. Best (ed.), Handel Collections and their History, 51.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 57

06/10/2006 14:51:26

58

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The Flower parts (S2, c.1743) – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, basso, oboes including traversa 1 and 2, (plus horns 1 and 2 at the University of Maryland) – offer the usual strange selection. Besides secco recitatives, overture, sinfonias and coro, which Jennens may not have required, S2 left out the accompagnatos in I.iv and II.i and seven arias (‘Farò così’, ‘Quanto godrà’, ‘Bella, non t’adirar’, ‘Da te più tosto’, ‘A languir ed a penar’, ‘Signor, lo credi a me’, and ‘Armati, O core’). An appendix contains ‘Se l’arco avessi’ (misplaced), the four supplementary arias in the Flower score (‘Dolce riso’ in E major) and ‘Sento prima le procelle’ – not as sung in 1731/32 but in its more elaborate version composed for Bernacchi in 1717. The movements are numbered consecutively throughout from 1 to 29, so there is no question of accidental loss. The parts were not copied from the Flower score; apart from omissions and one addition, ‘Io son qual fenice’ and ‘Spera, sì’ are full da capo arias in the parts, dal segno in the score. S2 probably compiled the parts from several sources. Both score and parts give many more dynamics than Chrysander, or even than RM 19 c 2, as well as some differences in scoring. In the Lentemento (HG 5, the only non-vocal movement) the last five bars, except the first beat, are for strings only pianissimo, and the tutti at bar 15 is piano, not forte (as it is also in RM 18 c 3, a copy of part of the opening scene). The dynamics in this short piece are exceptionally detailed, including many pianissimos. The last beat on HG 6 is Furioso, as in Malmesbury and nearly all later copies. In bars 31–2 and 81 of ‘Se l’arco’, where Chrysander supplies forte marks, the Flower score and parts have piano. Many other examples could be cited. In the opening ritornello of the duet ‘Alma mia’ the basso part doubles the treble two octaves below (in Lennard and RM 19 c 1 it doubles the first five notes only – lazy copying no doubt, yet rests follow). It contains passages for cellos only in ‘E per monti’ and ‘Vedrò fra poco’. ‘Sì, caro’ has a viola part in the four-bar ritornello leading to the dal segno. The oboes are divided more often than usual, and play more frequently while the voice is singing, though in the absence of autograph and performing score there is no knowing if this is correct. In ‘La gloria sola’ they double the violins throughout, including the B section, except in the first phrase of bars 9 and 23 and where the violins go below their compass. In ‘Vedrò fra poco’ they play throughout the A section, marked pianissimo when the voice enters. They double the violins in the ritornellos of ‘E che ci posso’ and ‘Spera, sì’ but are silent in ‘Ah, sì, morrò’. Add. MS 38002 (Smith, c.1727–28) is an incomplete aria collection made for a soprano singer, probably one of the Prince of Wales’s daughters, Handel’s pupils.33 The fact that it includes the unpublished tenor setting of ‘Signor, lo credi a me’ (with the voice up an octave) chimes with the early date, supported by the paper. All names of characters, recitatives and stage directions are omitted, together with the hunting sinfonia, the coro and three arias (both of Ercole’s and ‘Armati, O core’, the least suited to a soprano voice). Both overtures are in keyboard arrangements. The first includes the Lentemento, marked Larghetto with many changes of detail; the second embraces the two fugal movements, marked Andante and Allegro respectively. The arias are complete in full score, though not quite in the correct order. Nearly all 33  RM 19 f 3 (Giulio Cesare) is an exact parallel, with some of the same tools used in the binding. See Handel’s Operas I, pp. 520–1 and note 70. RM 19 f 4 (Floridante) is a similar copy for alto voice.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 58

06/10/2006 14:51:26

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

59

those for alto voice – Admeto’s seven, Orindo’s one, and two of Trasimede’s – are transposed up a third or a fourth; only ‘Se l’arco’ retains its original pitch, no doubt on account of the horns. The duet is included, with Admeto’s part unchanged; it has some interesting dynamics that appear in no other source. Another aria collection, Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Mus. MS 9053, was copied (?mid-1730s) by the microscopic hand found in two volumes of the Coke Collection, evidently from the Cluer score, whose arrangement it follows exactly. However ‘Io son qual fenice’ and ‘Spera, sì’ have additional figuring, and there are a few minor variants: the overture’s introduction is Largo, bar 25 of its Allegro is senza organo, and ‘Luci care’ is Larghetto. All dal segno arias are da capo, though ‘Farò così’ was originally written with a correct segno on all staves, subsequently cancelled. All but four of the arias have an English version squeezed in above the voice part. This is illegible on film, but the incipits in the index prefixed to the volume suggest that it is a straight translation, unlike other operas in this hand.34 Six ex-Aylesford volumes in the British Library contain excerpts from Admeto copied by S2 (unless stated otherwise), mostly c.1728–30: RM 18 c 1 (overture, Larghetto= Lentemento in I.i, sinfonia in II.i, keyboard arrangements), RM 18 c 2 (overture for keyboard), RM 18 c 3 (Lentemento and accompagnato ‘Orride larve’ in I.i; ‘Quanto godrà’ (H4); accompagnato ‘Quivi tra questi’ and ‘Ah, sì, morrò’), RM 18 c 10 (‘Mostratevi serene’, ‘Sento prima le procelle’ – both with voice part in treble clef an octave too high – the statue’s recitative ‘Risanarti non puoi’, the sinfonia and accompagnato in I.iv, the sinfonia in I.ix and the accompanied recitative ‘In van ti scuoti’ in II.i), RM 18 b 4 (‘Dolce riso’ in A major, ‘Mrs. Wright in Admetus’; ‘Mostratevi serene’ unfigured (H8)), RM 19 a 1 (the two unpublished settings of ‘Signor, lo credi a me’). The keyboard transcriptions of the two overtures in Add. MS 38002, RM 18 c 1 and RM 18 c 2 are in Handel’s arrangements,35 as are three other early copies of both overtures, in the Coke Rivers MS (Smith junior, c.1727) and two volumes in the Malmesbury Collection (Smith junior, c.1727; Smith senior, c.1728). A number of other excepts survive in several libraries: four arias, two of them incomplete, in BL Add. MS 24307 (‘Vedrò fra poco’ in D major and ‘Ah sì morrò’ in 3/4, copied by S2; ‘Sparite, O pensieri’ and ‘Sì, caro’ in G major, copied by H6/9); the three arias added for Faustina’s benefit (‘Amor ed empietà’,36 ‘Spera, sì’ and ‘Io non qual fenice’) in Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 798 (S5, 1738 or later); ‘Mostratevi serene’ and ‘Volate più dei venti’, ‘Additional Song in Admetus’, ascribed to Ercole instead of Meraspe, in BL Add MS 31572 (copyist Xi);37 ‘Vedrò fra poco’ in RM 19 d 12 (? S1) and Manchester MS v. 313 (Smith, c.1746); ‘Dolce riso’ (S2) in Bodleian MS Mus. c 1080. The Coke Collection has excerpts from Admeto in no fewer than twelve volumes. 34  See Handel’s Operas I, pp. 257, 362, 480. 35  See Terence Best, Twenty Overtures, III. 36  There is another copy of this aria in RM 18 b 4 (‘by Sr. Senesini’). The version sung in Floridante (RM 18 c 3) has a different text in the B section. Both are S2 copies. 37  This copyist seems to have had some connection with the Smith circle. In addition to the whole of Add. MS 31572, he was responsible, sometimes in conjunction with S2, for copying parts in Esther (Durham), Alexander’s Feast (Coke), Arminio (Coke) and a cello part in Arminio (Flower).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 59

06/10/2006 14:51:26

60

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

They include two different arrangements (one Handel’s, copied by Smith junior, the other in an untidy unrecognised hand) of the overture and two sinfonias in II.i, and a number of arias in full or short score. ‘Sì, caro’ appears in five manuscripts, twice (in G major) with almost identical vocal ornamentation. There are S2 copies of ‘Ah, sì morrò’, ‘Sparite, O pensieri’, ‘Cangiò d’aspetto’ and ‘La tigre arde’, and two volumes containing parts: twenty-four items for flute (voice), strings and figured bass, nearly all in transposed keys with occasional cues for other instruments, and a not quite complete set for ‘La tigre arde’, ‘Ah, sì morrò’ and ‘Se l’arco avessi’. A volume from the Shaftesbury Collection (S2) supplements the Cluer score, including five accompagnatos (HG 6, 13, 16, 46, 72), three sinfonias (HG 16, 31, 46) and two arias, ‘Spera, sì’ (HG 121) and ‘Amor ed empietà’, reflecting an early state of the score. ‘Risanarti’ is in the tenor version (as in Malmesbury), the hunting sinfonia in I.ix has no violins, and the sinfonia in HG 46 has an unpublished B section (Lentement) and da capo, as in the appendix of the Flower copy. Cluer’s score (‘Admetus, an Opera, Compos’d by Mr. Handel’) was published on 24 June 1727. The list of fifty-seven subscribers (for ninety-three copies) includes one from New York. All recitatives, the Lentemento in I.i, the hunting sinfonia and the second sinfonia in II.i are omitted, but both overtures and the coro are present. ‘Io son qual fenice’ replaces ‘Quanto godrà’; ‘Spera, sì’ appears at the end of Act II under the heading ‘Additional Song Sung by Siga Faustina in ye 1st Act’.38 Dal segno arias are given a lazy da capo. ‘Io ti bacio’ lacks its string coda. Some tempo marks are missing, but others are present that Chrysander ignores (see below). ‘Io son qual fenice’ is Allegro – a mistake; it is Andante in Malmesbury and later copies, as in HG. The success of the opera stimulated publishers into lively activity. Before the appearance of the score Walsh and Hare brought out the overture in parts (April) and a flute arrangement on 3 June, though Benjamin Cooke had already issued a flute arrangement ‘by Authority of the Patentee’ (i.e. Cluer) on 20 May. Walsh followed up with nine Favourite Songs (14 September 1728), both overtures for keyboard (not in Handel’s arrangement, 28 October 1728), and ‘Se l’arco’ in parts in a collection of Six Celebrated Songs made on purpose for French Horns (26 June 1731). He included a version of the same aria arranged for two horns in Forrest Music, vol. II (1733). ‘Sì, caro’ (more than once), ‘Io ti bacio’ and ‘Un lampo è la speranza’ appeared on single sheets. Most of these editions were reissued later, besides further arrangements and selections. Chrysander based his edition (1877) mainly on RM 19 c 2, the latest of the copies, and Cluer, but made some use of RM 19 c 1. Though accurate in the main, it is often defective in detail. Apart from the missing stage directions noted above, without which it is difficult to follow the intricacies of the plot, it is short on dynamics and tempo indications. The following movements are all Allegro in sources available to Chrysander: ‘La gloria sola’, second sinfonia in II.i (HG 46), ‘Quanto godrà’ ­(sometimes Allegro e staccato), ‘Chi è nato’, ‘La tigre arde’, and ‘E che ci posso’. ‘A languir ed a penar’ and ‘Io ti bacio’ (the complete aria) are Largo in all sources 38  The copy of the Cluer score in the Shaftesbury (Coke) Collection contains the Lentemento and ‘Quanto godrà’ as manuscript insertions in the hand of S2, which suggests that the Lentementos may have been omitted at Faustina’s benefit.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 60

06/10/2006 14:51:27

Admeto, Re di Tessaglia

61

except RM 19 c 2, which also omits some of the Allegro tempos. Why Chrysander should have given it preference remains a mystery. All librettos and most manuscripts agree that the four-bar fragment of ‘Io ti bacio’ should begin ‘Sì ti bacio’, and Malmesbury, Flower and Granville give the tempo as Larghetto, with Largo for the full aria, which makes a good point: Antigona savours her apparent triumph by lingering over it.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 61

06/10/2006 14:51:27

chapter 4 Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterr a

T

he Argument, taken partly from Briani’s libretto, relates some political history, how Isacio (Isaac Comnenus) obtained the throne of Cyprus from the Byzantine Emperor by forgery, followed by a military victory over his successor, which ‘puffed him up with Pride, and made him insolent and cruel ... Hence he refused the port of Limissus [Limassol] ... to the English Navy, without having any regard for the Princess of Navarre [Berengaria in history, Costanza in the opera], who was there to espouse Richard [Cœur de Lion], and who had laboured her Way thither through a strong and violent Tempest’. The date is ‘towards the Year’ 1190 [recte 1191]. Richard was on his way to the Third Crusade. ‘The Scene is the Court of Limissus, and the Palace of Isacius’. Act I. Like a certain later opera set on the coast of Cyprus, Riccardo Primo begins with a spectacular storm. The Coast near Limissus, a tempestuous Sea, with Ships bulging [rotta] amongst the Rocks. Costanza, with her ‘Cousin and Tutor’ Berardo is in despair over the fate of Riccardo; although she has never seen him, she claims to adore him and wants to die if he has perished. Isacio, his daughter Pulcheria and Oronte, ‘Prince of Syria, Confederate’ of Isacio, arrive with Guards. In reply to Pulcheria Costanza says her name is Doride, and her companion is her cousin Narsete; Costanza perished in the storm. Isacio, impressed by her manner (‘Quanto è gentile!’), tells Pulcheria to entertain the strangers in his palace and prepare for her wedding to Oronte. She is happy to obey both commands. She takes Costanza by the hand and they go out followed by Berardo, but Oronte is held back by Isacio. Isacio orders Oronte to burn the wrecked British ships and leaves. Oronte gives vent to his passion for Pulcheria. In A Pavilion not far from the Rivers of Limissus Riccardo, with his Commanders and a letter open in his hand, from which he has learned that Costanza is at Isacio’s court, resolves to go there, where he is not known. He likewise burns with passion for a woman he has never seen. In A Room with a Table Costanza tells Berardo of her friendly reception from Pulcheria. Oronte enters from one side, Pulcheria from the other. Oronte begins to   Handel, vague in dealing with proper names, writes Limisso, Lamisso, Larisso indiscriminately.   This direction in the autograph is missing in the libretto, the performing score (as reconstituted) and HG; it belongs strictly to Handel’s first version but is equally applicable to the second.   Sic; but rive means shores, or banks.   Omitted from the libretto, as are almost all stage directions from here to the end of the Act and the set change at I.iv.   Thanks to omissions and mistakes this scene is almost incomprehensible in the libretto. The second occurrence of the couplet beginning ‘Doride, hai nel sembiante’ belongs to Pulcheria, preceded by a line for Costanza. The HG text is correct.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 62

06/10/2006 14:51:27

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

63

pay extravagant compliments to ‘Doride’, who remains silent. Pulcheria suddenly comes between them and laughing repeats his words, to his acute embarrassment. He tries to interrupt, but in a burst of anger she calls him a traitor and continues to mock him. She assures Costanza that she feels no hostility towards her; she wants only to punish Oronte. Isacio enters suddenly, sends away all but Costanza (Berardo under protest), and first tries to take her hand, then approaches as if to embrace her. She first retires, then kneels before him. Oronte enters hurriedly (Costanza quickly gets up) and announces that an ambassador from the English King is on his way. Isacio, laughing with Oronte, asks what he wants. Oronte reports that Riccardo landed by night with a large army from a hundred ships. Isacio tells him to admit the ambassador. Costanza leaves with a plea to be left in peace. The ambassador is Riccardo himself. He asks Isacio for the King’s bride. Isacio, standing weightily [grave] and proudly, leaning on a table, at once guesses that ‘Doride’ is Costanza, and tells the ambassador that Riccardo will soon behold his royal spouse. Riccardo likens himself to a mariner who beset by furious storms catches sight of his guiding star. Act II. In A Room [in Isacio’s Palace] Costanza is in despair: if heaven is against her, what can she hope for? She and Berardo have been prevented from seeing the ambassador. She sends Berardo to find out if Riccardo knows that she is at the court. She is forced to admit her identity to Isacio, who replies with deliberate ambiguity that she will soon see her husband. He has no intention of giving her up: ‘Successful Fraud, in Love, is call’d a Virtue’. Pulcheria asks Isacio to postpone her wedding to Oronte, to test his fidelity after his behaviour in Act I. He tells her brusquely that she must marry Riccardo under Costanza’s name; interests of state require it; Riccardo has seen neither woman and will doubtless fall for her charm. Appalled, she shrinks from the deception, but decides to obey and then expose it. In the next scene (no set change specified) Berardo tells Costanza and Oronte of Isacio’s plot, which he has overheard, and that Pulcheria is about to set out on her mission. Both are furious. Costanza tells Oronte who she is; he denounces father and daughter as criminals and promises condign vengeance. Costanza calls on the absent Riccardo to avenge her sufferings. The set changes to The shore of Limissus with a royal pavilion; a golden throne on one side. Riccardo enters accompanied by his army, then Pulcheria with a train of young ladies. Riccardo frets that Costanza is slow in coming. When Pulcheria approaches he finds her very different from her description, but nevertheless beautiful; she recognises him as the ambassador. A Military Salvo follows, saluting her as Queen. Oronte enters, having broken through a hundred men, and reveals the truth. Riccardo explodes with wrath against Isacio. Pulcheria offers to remain as prisoner, but he orders her back to her father to ‘teach him Reason’. When Oronte points out   Chrysander took this direction from the autograph of the first version. It is in no secondversion source, but could still apply.   The libretto specifies no place here or in II.vii (HG 63). The scene numbering, particularly in the last two Acts, is confused in all sources, due partly to Rolli’s usual neglect of scene structure, partly to changes from Handel’s first to second version.   Libretto has only A Royal Pavilion. Corrado in the HG heading is a survival from Handel’s first version.   The direction is in the autograph without music.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 63

06/10/2006 14:51:27

64

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

that Isacio promised Pulcheria to him but has broken his word, she calls him a traitor and departs after a split aria addressed to Riccardo and Oronte in turn. Oronte gives Riccardo a royal signet as authority over his thousand Syrians. Riccardo resolves to demonstrate how an English monarch can be gracious while punishing crimes and places English troops under Oronte’s command. Oronte, impressed by Riccardo’s valour and constancy in love, observes that not without reason is he called Cœur de Lion, and looks forward to seeing ‘Fraud overcome, and Valour, Justice, and fair Truth Triumphant’. In A Hall [in the Palace] Riccardo returns to Isacio, still as ambassador, and denounces him for treachery and abuse of ‘the Sacred Laws of Hospitality’ and ‘for the last time’ demands the release of Costanza. Isacio tries to brazen it out – Riccardo will profit from the deal, gaining Cyprus with Pulcheria’s hand – and asks for time to think. Riccardo refuses, offering him the choice of war or peace. Isacio chooses war, and says Riccardo began it by keeping Pulcheria prisoner.10 Pulcheria enters, praises Riccardo’s courtesy and generosity, and begs Isacio to give Costanza up. He surprisingly agrees. The set changes to A Closet. Costanza, seated, leaning on a Table, quotes her cavatina at the beginning of the Act, changing the first word from ‘if’ to ‘yes’. Pulcheria introduces the ‘English ambassador’, but soon blurts out the truth. Riccardo asks her to keep the secret a little longer, to give them time to escape. Pulcheria departs with an aria of supreme irrelevance, and the Act ends with a love duet. Act III. Outside the city of Limissus11 Richard, Sword in Hand, follow’d by the Souldiers and Orontes, who comes with the English Army to the Succour of Richard. Riccardo curses the city and Isacio, who has apparently broken diplomatic etiquette and made a treacherous attack on the returning embassy. Riccardo himself has been driven back by force of numbers, Costanza captured and forced within the walls, and the drawbridge raised. Oronte suggests holding back the assault till he and his Syrians reach the walls via a secret passage and unfurl his standard. Riccardo makes a rousing patriotic address to his companions from the Thames, invoking British valour and honour. In A Hall [in the palace] Costanza calls on death to end her sufferings. Pulcheria offers to go to Riccardo as hostage for her safety. Costanza prays for the protection of justice and innocence. Isacio enters and claims to be motivated not by injustice and anger but by love: he would rather die than lose Costanza. She says she is pledged to Riccardo; he replies that she ‘must be the Conqueror’s Reward’. Berardo reports the approach of the British army and says there is still time to make peace, but Isacio cannot bear the prospect of losing Costanza to another, and goes off to fight. Costanza agrees to Berardo accompanying Pulcheria to Riccardo and asks him to kiss his hand; either he or death shall have her. The set changes to The Walls of Limisuss under an Assault, Part of which is to tumble down by the Force of a batt’ring Ram. A Warlike Symphony. Meanwhile the Army Advances. Riccardo sings a military aria. Here the Wall tumbles, and thro’ the Breach Isacio is seen at the Head of his Soldiers, who appears holding his Sword in his Right Hand, and Constantia on his Left. He threatens to kill her unless Riccardo halts. Pulcheria rushes in and asks him to kill her (Pulcheria) instead. Riccardo offers to stop the assault if 10  An echo of the first version, in which Riccardo has kept Pulcheria in chains. 11  The libretto gives no location (see below), places Scene ii (HG 88) in A Closet (Cabinetto), and indicates no change of set in Scene viii (ix in HG 109).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 64

06/10/2006 14:51:27

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

65

Costanza is released, but Isacio is implacable: if the attack advances a single step, Costanza will die. Pulcheria goes to take hold of one of the Soldiers Swords and threatens to kill herself. Riccardo tries to stop her, but Isacio tells her to go ahead and is about to stab Costanza when Oronte enters (?from the secret passage) with his Soldiers, who stay the Blow, and disarms Isacio, who flees. Oronte tells his men to pursue him and ‘put the vile Crowd about him to the Sword’. Riccardo orders only those who resist to be killed. Pulcheria asks if he will be a compassionate victor. ‘For my own glory’, he replies, and leads an ensemble ‘On to Victory’. In A Royal Hall Costanza is still afraid, but Berardo (who has apparently rescued her) assures her that the tyrant will soon be in chains, a suppliant at her feet, since nothing can resist British soldiers. Pulcheria hopes that Riccardo will spare her father’s life and Costanza promises to melt him with her prayers. Oronte brings happy news: Isacio has surrendered, and Riccardo has pardoned everyone. In the final scene, A Triumphal Arch, with a long Range of Pillars, introduced by a March, Riccardo gives Pulcheria the kingdom of Cyprus and the husband of her choice. She picks Oronte. Riccardo offers love to Costanza, sincere friendship to Pulcheria. There is nothing to indicate Isacio’s presence in this scene, but he joins in the conventional coro, having evidently been included in the general amnesty off-stage. That summarises the plot in Handel’s performances. The source is Isacio Tiranno by Francesco Briani, set by Antonio Lotti for Venice’s San Giovanni Grisostomo Theatre in autumn 1710,12 when Isacio was sung by Carli, Pulcheria by Durastanti and Costanza by Scarabelli, who had all appeared in Agrippina some months earlier. But there was an intermediate stage. Earlier in 1727 Handel set a different version, a good deal closer to Briani’s original, but never brought it to the stage. Paolo Rolli was responsible for both adaptations.

The First Version Apart from some doubts about the early part of Act II and a few bars of recitative before the final coro, it is possible to reconstruct the whole of the first version, words and music, from Handel’s confused and misbound autograph, with a little help from the performing score. For most of Act I, Act II as far as Scene vi, and the first half of Act III Rolli followed the outline of Briani’s plot fairly closely. He made considerable cuts in the recitatives but retained many of Briani’s lines, patching them with contributions of his own. He kept eight aria texts with minor adjustments and two sections of accompagnato (see Table 2). He retained one character in Briani who disappears later (with none too happy consequences): Corrado, a Bohemian prince and Riccardo’s confidant, who carries messages between the two camps and in Act I informs Riccardo of Costanza’s whereabouts, avoiding the awkward expedient of a letter; he is in effect Riccardo’s ambassador. Briani ended his first two acts with 12  Briani dedicated his libretto to the Duke of Marlborough accompanied by a list of his titles running to twelve lines and ending with three etceteras. He is not known to have been in Venice at the time, but his reputation may have been sufficient to inspire such an apostrophe.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 65

06/10/2006 14:51:27

66

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

arias for Isacio and Oronte; not surprisingly Handel preferred to give these key positions to leading characters, Riccardo and Pulcheria. In one respect Handel and Rolli altered the balance of the opera, greatly reducing the importance of the subplot, the troubled relationship between Pulcheria and Oronte. In Lotti’s opera Oronte has six arias against two in Handel’s first version. Costanza, sung by Handel’s Poppea, has eleven, Pulcheria seven and Riccardo five, though the last two share a duet in Act II. It was of course essential for Handel as far as possible to equalise the parts of his three principal singers, especially the two ladies. Act II probably began very much as in the eventual version, but this is not certain as its first three arias do not survive in autograph. Isacio’s aria, in a different context with a different text, was followed by a short scene in Riccardo’s camp (con l’essercito accampato) in which Riccardo and Corrado debate whether to trust Isacio. Riccardo is in favour, Corrado argues against. The episode in which Berardo overhears Isacio’s plot is made much clearer by stage directions (Scene iv. Isacio e poi Pulcheria e Berardo a parte ... Scene v ... e poi Berardo ch’esce da dove si era nascosto). When Pulcheria in the guise of Costanza comes to Riccardo’s camp escorted by Corrado and a train of damsels, the soldiers lower their lances in atto di adorazione al suono di Timpani e Trombe. She has no aria here, but when offering to remain as hostage she sends Corrado with a letter to Isacio. Riccardo puts her in chains. (In Briani Isacio accompanies Pulcheria to the camp, and Riccardo has a long scene with her, including a duet, before discovering who she is. They even sit on the throne together.) The lines in which Riccardo and Oronte unite their forces and extol British valour are not present, nor are the last three scenes in HG, though two arias from the first version were transferred to them later (see Table 2). The act ends with a scene of reproach for Pulcheria and Oronte, based approximately on Briani, where they have a long scene of alternate love and fury; but while Briani ends effectively with a jealousy aria for Oronte, Rolli and Handel prefer a simile aria about an eagle and its offspring. There is no duet; in this version, Riccardo does not set eyes on Costanza till Isacio drags her on to the battlements in III.vii and they do not meet till the last scene of all. Act III begins with Isacio renewing his attempts on Costanza’s virtue, interrupted by the arrival of Corrado with Pulcheria’s letter, to the effect that unless Isacio releases Costanza Riccardo will put her (Pulcheria) to death. Isacio explodes, disowns his daughter and tears up her letter. This is the original context for his second aria, which had different words in the B section. Next Rolli inserted a scene, not in Briani, in which Riccardo, alone in a wood, likens himself to an amorous pigeon, and by implication to a fish, presumably to give Senesino a soulful aria. This is played on the front stage, after which the shutters open (s’apre il Proscenico) to reveal the walls of Limissus on one side and Riccardo’s pavilion on the other. Pulcheria, in chains, learns of Isacio’s treatment of her letter and asks Oronte to kill her. The assault on the city is differently treated, but the tactics pursued by both sides (threats to kill their hostage, unless – ) and the results are much the same. In the palace Costanza, apparently released from her chains by Oronte, is still without hope. In the final battle, introduced by a four-bar sinfonia, Riccardo enters fighting with Isacio, strikes him down, and is at the point of killing him when Pulcheria breaks away from her guards and pleads for his life, saying she is equally at fault. Riccardo has no ­intention

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 66

06/10/2006 14:51:27

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

67

of sparing such a double-dyed traitor. At last he meets Costanza face to face, and they sing the duet later transferred in altered form to Act II. The recitatives of the last scene are incomplete. Isacio is chained and stripped of his royal insignia and presumably spared at Costanza’s request. The last three arias in HG and the March are not present, though the third aria occurs a little earlier in different form. The musical differences between the two versions are considerable.13 Tables 2 and 3 give some idea of their extent (see also below under Autograph); but why were radical changes thought necessary so soon after the first version? Two explanations can be offered: (i) Less than a month after the completion of the first version George I died on 11 June, and the decision was taken to dedicate the opera to his successor, George II. The libretto already contained local references; it was Handel’s only opera based on English history, and its hero was a King of England. To strengthen the link with the monarchy while at the same time fortifying Handel’s personal standing with the King for whose coronation he had just composed four splendid anthems, to express gratitude to the nation that had accepted him as a British citizen earlier in the year, perhaps to boost the popularity of Italian opera with the nobility who were its principal patrons and financial supporters, Handel and Rolli decided to give the patriotic drum a good thump by adding gratuitous references to British valour, justice and power, chiefly in II.vi and vii and III.i and vii, not forgetting to mention the Thames. At the same time it was advisable to mitigate Riccardo’s occasional harshness, for example his threat to put Pulcheria to death and his negative reception of her pleas for her father’s life. Riccardo must be shown as a model of magnanimity. A native Englishman might have permitted himself a cynical smile at an entertainment in which an Italian and an ex-German compared another ex-German to a Norman who spoke no English as a paragon of British virtue and honour. (ii) Rolli undertook a radical revision of the libretto’s language. In his adaptation of old texts, instead of just making cuts and supplying new arias, as Haym usually did, he liked to paraphrase or rewrite, leaving his personal imprint. His first version of Riccardo may have been a rushed job; by the autumn he had time to amend and polish – a process carried much further than plot changes required – to justify the grossly inaccurate claim in the printed libretto that ‘il Drama è quasi tutto del Sig Paolo Rolli’. To some extent he covered his tracks by putting new texts to music that Handel had already composed (see Table 3) and by further shortening and modifying the recitatives. Briani’s language is undistinguished, with a tendency to drag in frigid classical allusions; almost all the Greek and Roman gods put in an appearance, together with Argus, Thetis, Aletto and, in the B action of ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’, Helen and Poppea (who are still present in Handel’s first version). Rolli’s is more literary and high-flown, full of elaborate similes and flowery metaphors but less dramatic because less concrete. His construction is poor, especially towards the end of the last two acts, where superfluous arias clog or confuse the action, though this may have been partly due to Handel’s effort to deal equal hands to his three star singers. 13  The incipits of the first version are in HHB 1, 295–300.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 67

06/10/2006 14:51:27

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

68 Table 2 First Version Act I

i

Lido di Limisso

ii

Act II

iii

Padiglione vicino alle rive

iv vi vii

Appartamento con tavolino

i

[Appartamento]

ii iii iv

Campo di Riccardo Atrio regio

v vi vii

Lido di Limisso

‘L’aquila altera’ (Pulch)

ix i

ii iii v

viii ix

Stanza nella rocca di Limisso

accomp. ‘Numi, soccorso’ (Cost)

‘Del cielo e dell’abisso’ (Isac) ‘Bacia per me la mano’ (Cost) Bosco vicino alla muro ‘Son qual colombo amante’ (Ric) Le mure di Limisso con padiglione di Riccardo *  accomp. ‘A chi? misera’ (Pulch) *  ‘Nubiloso fra tempeste’ (Pulch)

Atrio

x

ult

‘Se m’è contrario il ciel’ (Cost) ‘Dell’empia frode’ (Ber) ‘Di notte il pellegrino’ (Cost) *  ‘Per ch’io goda’ (Isac) ‘Nube, che il sole’ (Ric) accomp. ‘Ah padre!’ (Pulch) ‘Quel gelsomino’ (Pulch) ‘Bella, già il cor’ (Oron) ‘Caro, torna a me’ (Cost) ‘Quando vieni il mio conforto’ (Ric) ‘Io più soffrir non so’ (Ric)

viii

Act III

* accomp. ‘Chi tenti, real Costanza?’ (Ber Cost) *  ‘Se perì l’amato bene’ (Cost) *  ‘Vado per obedirti’ (Pulch) *  ‘Per due begl’occhi’ (Oron) ‘Fra poco spero’ (Corrado) ‘Calmate le tempeste’ (Ric) *  ‘Bella, teco non ho’ (Pulch) *  ‘Lascia la pace’ (Cost) ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ (Ric)

Sala regia

Sinfonia *  ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ (Cost)

Sinfonia ‘Di me non ti lagnar’ (Ric) ‘Quando non vede’ (Pulch) ‘Quanto goda’ (duet Cost & Ric) ‘Spira grata l’aura’ (coro)

Overture and secco recitatives omitted. *  Text from Briani, sometimes slightly modified.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 68

06/10/2006 14:51:28

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

69

Second Version accomp. ‘Lascia, Berardo’

‘V’adoro, o luci belle’ ‘Cessata è la procella’

modified new B section parodied parodied in II.vi parodied new B section

Appartamento ii iii

‘Ti vedrò regnar’

parodied used in II.viii

iv v

‘Caro, vieni a me’ ‘Quanto tarda il caro bene’ ‘Sì, già vedo il mio sole’ (Ric)

rewritten twice parodied

vi

‘Ai guardi tuoi’ (Pulch) ‘O, vendicarmi’ (Ric) ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’ (Oron)

used in III.i

vii viii ix

i

ii

parodied on I.iii

Atrio Cabinetto

(Fuor di città Limisso)

Atrio

iv

‘Nube che il sole’ (Ric) ‘Sì, m’è contrario il ciel’ (Cost)

ex II.iii

‘T’amo, sì’ (duet, Cost & Ric)

ex III ult rewritten

accomp. ‘Perfido Isacio’ (Ric) ‘Per mia vendetta’ (Oron) accomp. ‘O voi che meco’ (Ric) ‘All’orror delle procelle’ (Ric) ‘Morte, vieni’ (Cost) ‘Quell’innocente afflitto’ (Pulch) accomp. ‘Alto immenso poter’ (Cost) ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’ (Isac)

used in II.viii based on III.v based on III.x parodied B section parodied used in III.viii used in III.i

v vii

Il muro di Limisso assalito

‘Atterrato il muro cada’ (Ric) ‘Alla vittoria!’ (coro e sinfonia)

viii ix ult

Sala

‘Il volo così fido’ (Cost) ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ (Pulch) Marche ‘Volgete ogni desir’ (Ric)

Colonnato

‘La memoria de’ tormenti’ (coro)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 69

used in Siroe used in III.iii

parodied used in III.ii used in II.ix parodied

06/10/2006 14:51:28

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

70

Table 3. Adapted material in second version New text parodied on old music: (minor changes omitted) ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’ ‘Cessata è la procella’ ‘Ti vedrò regnar’ ‘Quanto tarda il caro bene’ ‘O vendicarmi’ ‘Bacia per me la mano’ (B section) ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’ (first line and B section) New text, music re-composed using old material

Based on

‘Vado per obedirti’ (B section)

1st version

‘Lascia la pace’ (B section)

1st version

‘Caro, vieni a me’

‘Caro, torna a me’

‘T’amo, sì’ (duet)

‘Quanto goda l’alma’ (duet)

‘Per mia vendetta’ (Oronte)

‘Io più soffrir non vo’ (Riccardo)

‘All’orror delle procelle’ (Riccardo)

‘Nubiloso fra tempeste’ (Pulcheria)

‘Quell’innocente afflitto’

‘Quando non vede la cara madre’

‘Atterrato il muro cada’ ‘Alla vittoria!’

}

Sinfonia

‘Il volo così fido’ (Costanza)

‘Son colombo amante’ (Riccardo)

‘Volgete ogni desir’

‘Di me non ti lagnar’

The crucial change, apart from considerations already mentioned, was the transference of the love duet back to Act II. This not only brought one aspect of the plot to its climax too soon; it had to be motivated by Isacio’s unconvincing change of mind in II.viii. That in turn necessitated major reorganisation at the start of Act III, since Rolli had to get Costanza back into the city and Pulcheria out of it. The suppression of Corrado meant that Riccardo had to find an anonymous correspondent in the city. The libretto creaks at other points, for example the introduction of Pulcheria’s ‘Ai guardi tuoi’ in II.vii. This resulted from a change of mind over Pulcheria’s character. In the first version she undergoes more trials, especially in Act III, where, put in chains by Riccardo and apparently abandoned by father and lover, she has an extra scene beginning with an accompagnato in tragic mood (words from Briani). (Ex. 9) This was perhaps removed because, with both heroines in fetters, her plight is too similar to Costanza’s. The second version stressed Pulcheria’s more flippant side, but ‘Ai guardi tuoi’ comes in awkwardly. It was always possible to fill gaps by popping in simile arias about birds, flowers, the weather, harassed navigators or lost travellers, but they bring the action to a stop

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 70

06/10/2006 14:51:28

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

71

and seldom contribute anything to character, and Handel was apt to give them an elaborate setting to show off the singers. The fact that they could easily be shifted from scene to scene or from character to character ensured their usefulness in revivals of any opera. On his best form Handel could sometimes integrate them, but it is notable that in his finest operas (Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Rodelinda, Orlando, Ariodante, Alcina) they are few and far between. Moreover – and this is scarcely Rolli’s fault – there is something basically bogus about the central relationship between Costanza and Riccardo. It was conventional for characters to fall in love with portraits (as in Ottone and Admeto), but for two persons who have never set eyes on one another to go through the opera repeatedly indulging in the language of infatuation strains credulity, even in the Baroque convention.14 Handel knew too much about human nature, and how to express its infinite variety, for this to escape him. There are signs that it did not escape him, and that he did his best to compensate. The quality of musical invention, though uneven, rises at times to exceptional heights, not least in the simile arias, for example in the elaborate workmanship and contrapuntal complexity of Isacio’s two arias and Pulcheria’s ‘L’aquila altera’. The scoring is richer than in any other Handel opera with the exception of Rinaldo and 14  Was this perhaps why the love duet was put back?

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 71

06/10/2006 14:51:29

72

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Giulio Cesare. The pattern of movements shows wide variation, with five outstanding accompagnatos, two cavatinas, an arioso embedded in recitative, a march, a sinfonia with ensemble ejaculations and a very original link between overture and beginning of the action. One aria has an accompagnato for B section; a cavatina is quoted later to make a dramatic point, a rare procedure at this period and a happy addition in the second version. Nevertheless, Riccardo Primo is not a satisfactory opera. All three Acts begin well, but everything happens too quickly in Act I, which is exceptionally short. It is a pity Rolli and Handel omitted Briani’s scene in which Pulcheria makes friends with Costanza, instead of reducing it to a couple of lines at the start of I.iv. Both the later acts come off their hinges towards the end. Act III rises highest; Burney thought it ‘not only the best of this particular opera, but of any that I have yet examined’. It is true that it is ‘replete with beauties of every kind of composition’, but Burney was not concerned with dramatic values (he never mentions the initial storm).15 The tension of the better scenes is too easily dispersed, often by long simile arias, and the ­ virtuosity of the vocal writing fails to conceal the lack of depth beneath. As a result the characterisation, the cement that holds Handel’s operas together, is under­ developed. The characters are mostly shallow-rooted, either monochrome (Riccardo and Isacio) or inconsistent (Pulcheria and Oronte). The part of Riccardo seems designed more for the gratification of Senesino and George II than for the elucidation of character. He is a hero, but not an interesting one, portrayed with little attempt at light and shade. He has two accompagnatos, eight arias, two of them single-chambered, an arioso and a duet, all except the introduction of one accompagnato in major keys. Apart from the cavatina and arioso in II.v they are all fast or at least a brisk Andante. They demand a voice with the penetration of a trumpet, which no doubt Senesino possessed. The first, ‘Cessata è la procella’, is pleasant enough but unexpressive as the introduction to a major character, much less a mighty warrior, and it fails to reflect an altered text: ‘risorge il mio contento’ in the first version becomes ‘l’alma non ha pace’ in the second, but Handel let the music stand. The jerky dotted accompaniment, so often the basis for some of Handel’s most moving inspirations, threatens to become monotonous here, and the shortness of the phrases prevents the music taking wing. ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ and ‘All’orror delle procelle’ in III.i are brilliant virtuoso pieces against a stormy orchestral background of conventional cut, similar in mood and scoring. The former makes an effective end to Act I and would bring down the curtain (if there was one) with aplomb. According to Burney the type of division in bars 40–1, repeated notes in semiquaver runs demanding rapid glottal execution, made an impression on Farinelli and was imitated by him and other castratos. ‘All’orror’ in particular, if well sung, is calculated to bring any audience to the boil, if only because it is a veritable obstacle race for the singer. But neither aria tells us much about Riccardo. Only in II.v does he show signs of a deeper humanity. ‘Quanto tarda il caro bene’ is a beautiful piece, typical of many such cavatinas. Here the dotted accompaniment 15  He may have been going by the Cluer score, which omits it, though he had access to the autographs. He certainly used Cluer; he quotes the first-version text of ‘Cessata è la procella’, which appears only there and (crossed out) in the autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 72

06/10/2006 14:51:29

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

73

serves a purpose, indicating perhaps a touch of the lover’s impatience. ‘Sì già vedo’, added for the second version, extends the mood and breaks up a long stretch of recitative. ‘O vendicarmi’ is a misfit. The words express three different ideas, desire for vengeance, anticipation of union with Costanza and encouragement to Oronte in his pursuit of Pulcheria, but the music is not an adequate expression of any of them – not surprisingly, for the text is parodied on an aria about hope sung by Corrado in Act I of the first version. ‘Nube che il sole adombra’ begins by echoing ‘Benché mi sprezzi’ in Tamerlano (in the same key) and continues with an anticipation of the violin sonata in D and the symphony for the Angel in Jephtha. It is delightful music with prettily varied rhythms and intermittent tonic pedals, but it was not composed for this scene and would fit into the mouth of any character who has had a piece of good news. The duet opens well with Riccardo’s Adagio ‘T’amo, sì’, in reply to Costanza’s question in recitative. This Adagio is not in the first version, ‘Quanto goda l’alma mia’ in Act III. At Costanza’s entry Handel lengthens the note values instead of changing the tempo; it is not clear if this implies a distinction. Though very long and heavily encrusted with decorations for violins and voice, it makes a satisfying end to the act. The material reappeared in the first part of the quintet in Jephtha. In Act III Riccardo is the man of action. His two accompagnatos are admirable. The ritornello before the first in which oboes rattling in thirds play a decisive part, originally introduced Costanza’s flight from Isacio’s lascivious threats. It is highly dramatic in either context. Here Handel brings back the strings and the first line of text to happy effect after a stretch of secco. ‘O voi che meco’, Riccardo’s address to his English army, has a noble breadth and a sharp harmonic wrench from G minor to E major, a favourite progression of Monteverdi’s, when he turns from citing Virgil’s famous line ‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos’16 to more tactical considerations. ‘All’orror’ is largely a release of steam, but ‘Atterrato’ is an action piece, a rousing summons to battle. It is cunningly scored, two trumpets and oboes blazing away in the twenty-four-bar ritornello and punctuating Senesino’s messa di voce with alternating fanfares. Smith added a note in the autograph that bassoons are to double the voice entry (?at the octave), and Handel added a drum part with thumps on the strong beats even when the voice is barely supported. Riccardo’s last aria, adapted from one scrapped in the first version, has little distinction. It belongs to the 3/8 type that seems to bleed triplets. If Riccardo is all virtue, Isacio is all vice, a slippery trickster and lecher in recitative, volcanic in arias. Unfortunately he has only two, and they show a single side of his character (the words of both are based on recitatives in Briani). By tradition the bass in opera seria was a secondary character, useful either as a purveyor of villainy or as a temporary relief from the high voices of sopranos and castratos. Boschi was a professional blusterer, and was scarcely ever permitted to be anything else. In all the sixteen operas in which he sang for Handel (fifteen parts written for him, one, in Radamisto, adapted) he was given only one slow aria (in Siroe). In III.iii Isacio claims a genuine love for Costanza, but he has no love music, even of a hypocritical nature. Consequently he threatens to degenerate into a scarecrow. The shifting suspicions 16  Handel had encountered this before in the utterance of Alexander the Great: see Chapter 2, p. 12.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 73

06/10/2006 14:51:29

74

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

and verbal fencing between him and Riccardo could have offered nourishing fare to the Verdi of Don Carlos. Handel was to write more varied bass parts for Montagnana, but not till the oratorio period, notably in Saul and Hercules, did he create a fully rounded bass character. Even so, both Isacio’s arias are magnificent. ‘Ti vedrò regnar’, originally a soliloquy, is a contrapuntal tour de force of the first order, the theme and its diminution put through all manner of contortions, including double invertible counterpoint. That is appropriate; the obscure text in the first version is concerned with devious stratagems and spoils. By giving it a more concrete reference as Isacio anticipates seeing his daughter on the English throne, Handel and/or Rolli strengthened its impact. ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’ is scarcely less trenchant, with lively four-part texture (sometimes five with the voice), angry scales in both directions set against striding octave leaps, and less doubling of voice and instrumental bass than in most Boschi arias. Handel later expanded the piece, transposed to B minor, for Montagnana in his 1731 revival of Tamerlano. The concentrated menace of the man bursts through both arias. One would have expected Cuzzoni with her agile high soprano to be cast as Pulcheria, but she sang Costanza, a passive victim almost throughout, whose elegiac utterances confine her mostly to slow tempos and the minor mode; six out of nine solos, including her accompagnato in Act III, are in minor keys. Her only opportunity to kick over the traces comes at the very end of the opera, where she can trill like a bird to her heart’s content. But her music rings true; she is the most convincing character in the opera. Her part in the opening accompagnato suggests anxiety verging on panic, and ‘Se perì l’amato bene’ confirms this. It establishes Costanza as a tragic, sensitive, perhaps slightly neurotic figure. The irregular phrase-lengths, rhythmic contrasts between the initial dotted motive and a recurrent figure of three quavers and a crotchet, interrupted cadences and a particularly lovely turn towards the relative major halfway through the A section project a mood of mingled tenderness and alarm appropriate to a woman who fears her lover dead – except that she has never seen him. ‘Lascia la pace’ does not add much, though it gave Handel considerable trouble. The absence of a ritornello emphasises the immediacy of her rejection of Isacio. Costanza’s music in Act II probes deeper. The exquisite cavatina ‘Se m’è contrario il cielo’ shows her partly resigned to her fate; the mood of serene sadness evokes the apt key of E major. It begins with a favourite phrase used often elsewhere, most movingly in ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan?’ The quotation later in the Act of a fragment in a different key with the first word changed from ‘Se’ to ‘Sì’, making the statement positive instead of conditional, is a particularly happy touch. ‘Di notte il pellegrino’ transcends its status as a simile aria and reverts to the tragic mood characteristic of its key, F sharp minor. (To take it too fast, as in the Rousset recording, is to kill it.) The B section, opening in a soothing A major over a pedal, representing the light that reassures the lone traveller, supplies momentary relief after the fluctuating tonality, chromatic detail and restless figuration of the A section, which returns with the inevitability of fate. ‘Caro, vieni’ was praised to the skies by Burney (‘truly captivating, and needs only to be sung by a singer of taste and feeling, to be modern now, or at any more distant period from the time of its first performance’) and Leichtentritt

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 74

06/10/2006 14:51:29

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

75

(‘one of the most magical love-songs in dramatic music’). It is a pleasing address to her absent lover, giving the singer a chance to exercise her trill and operate in a major key, but hardly exceptional. Costanza’s music in Act III rises to the heights. ‘Morte, vieni’, a miniature da capo aria with a four-bar accompagnato for B section, is one of the jewels of the score. The entire piece, with shortened da capo, is a mere sixteen and a half bars long, but it comprehends a world of feeling, coloured by the obbligato for traversa bassa against a quiet but richly woven string accompaniment in gentle dotted rhythm. The turn to A flat for the B section, though not unexpected, is very moving, and so is the simple recitative-style final cadence. The contrast of a pathetic F minor after the exuberant C major of Riccardo’s ‘All’orror’ is typical of Handel’s dramatic structuring. ‘Alto immenso poter’ in the sepulchral key of B flat minor, a rare example of an accompagnato ending a scene, develops extraordinary intensity through a succession of unpredictable chords (Ex. 10). ‘Bacia per me’, reverting to F minor, is one of Handel’s great tragic arias. The occasional touches of major tonality render the predominant minor mode even more poignant, and the smooth rhythm of the start of the B section performs a similar service for the hesitant opening phrases, which cannot be kept out and return after four bars. After this the blazing D major of Riccardo’s summons to battle is another effective stroke. ‘Il volo così fido’ at last gives Costanza a chance to cheer up. The imitative and cooperative chortlings and trillings of voice, unison violins and sopranino recorder make a pretty avian entertainment. It is the best of the three superfluous arias at the end of the opera. Pulcheria is a puzzling figure. Her part is much more brilliant and extrovert than Costanza’s; of her seven arias, six are in major keys, five are Allegro, and none is slower than Andante. But it presents problems: what sort of girl is she meant to be? In Act I she seems a spirited wench. ‘Vado per obedirti’ is the first cheerful piece in the opera; Pulcheria obeys her father’s command and assures Oronte of her love in a style of kittenish exuberance. Its most memorable feature is the neatly elided return to the da capo, the C sharp minor of the B section leading into the voice’s first phrase (A major) without a note of intervention from the orchestra. The scene in which she rebukes Oronte for making advances to Costanza, mocking him by repeating his words, looks back towards seventeenth-century Venetian opera in its mixture of light comedy and serious emotion. The whole episode with its reference to Pulcheria’s laughter (like Isacio’s in the next scene) comes from Briani. Handel could manage this sort of thing supremely well, as he was to show in Partenope and Serse, and he does so here, but it strikes an alien note in this predominantly heroic opera. The first words of Pulcheria’s aria ‘Bella, teco non ho’ interrupt Costanza in the middle of a sentence, assuring her of her continued confidence with a falling fourth decorated by a trill. The B section, addressed to Oronte, begins with an octave drop (‘Falso!’), repeated later, though both sections use similar material, with dotted string semiquavers. Is she serious or pulling Oronte’s leg? The situation is ambiguous; possibly that is Handel’s point. Again there is a neat return; the bass B, tonic of the B section, is held over to become the third of the sixth chord that began the aria. In Act II we meet a different Pulcheria. Isacio’s command that she go to Riccardo pretending to be Costanza plunges her into confusion, reflected in the superb

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 75

06/10/2006 14:51:29

76

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

a­ ccompagnato ‘Ah padre! Ah cielo!’ as she shrinks from such a betrayal of all parties but decides to go and then reveal the deception. Based on abrupt harmonic shifts involving seventh chords, it is the equal of Costanza’s ‘Alto immenso poter’. Pulcheria is here the tragic heroine. The ensuing aria, in which she likens herself to a jasmine in a meadow, an otiose simile, exploits a favourite syncopated rhythm with no little charm, but is dramatically null. When she meets Oronte again (II.vi) she has a third aria addressed to two persons in turn, first Riccardo, then Oronte, this time in both sections. The words of ‘Ai guardi tuoi’ are not very inspiring, and the musical ideas are neutral, but Handel, reverting to the nimble style of Pulcheria’s Act I arias, constructs a fascinating piece by means of sudden ejaculation (‘ma, che poi?’) in the manner of a Pergolesi intermezzo, little runs, cross-rhythms, silent bars, and shifts of emphasis between strong and weak beats. She almost plays the coquette with

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 76

06/10/2006 14:51:30

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

77

Riccardo, and softens her reproaches to Oronte, as if afraid of losing him. Since this is their last scene together and they are to be united at the end of the opera it was perhaps a tactical move. With ‘L’aquila altera’ Pulcheria returns to the grand manner. As already noted, Handel designed it to end the Act as a showpiece for Faustina and no doubt did not want to lose it – understandably, for it is a splendid aria, eagle or no eagle. So in the second version he inserted it between the first meeting of the lovers and their duet, to get Pulcheria off-stage and clear the decks. The work of Rolli, not Briani, it is the worst type of simile aria, bringing the action to a full stop just when it should be moving on, contributing nothing, and being incomprehensible to boot. What the eagle’s attitude to its offspring has to do with Pulcheria’s situation scarcely bears inspection.17 Yet the music is magnificent, in three independent instrumental parts throughout, with the voice adding a fourth. Full of ingenious counterpoint generating immense rhythmic energy, it would make an excellent concert piece. ‘Quell’innocente afflitto’ is another static aria, a gloss on Pulcheria’s sententious pronouncement in the recitative, ‘All Works of Honour are their own Reward’. It originated in the Act’s penultimate scene as a simile aria in which Pulcheria likens her longing to be reconciled with her estranged and humiliated father to a little lamb restored to its mother. Chrysander printed it as an appendix, alone of the first version’s discarded arias, on account of its unusual scoring. It is charming music, with expressive decoration of the vocal line, and beautifully scored in both versions, violins and oboes (clarinets earlier) making alternate contributions to the rich texture. ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ is routine B flat trundling; Faustina must have an innings before the close. Oronte, downgraded to create space for the three stars, is another incoherent personality. In Act I he is something between a weathercock and a cad, declaring ardent love in extravagant language for two women in rapid succession. But each of his three arias has merit. The love song he addresses to the absent Pulcheria in Act I is enriched by scoring that sounds fuller than its basic two-part structure would seem to imply; recorders and unison violins operate mostly in octaves over a not quite regular ostinato bass carried over into the B section, with another neat return. If the ostinato signifies constancy, it is presumably ironical, for almost at once Oronte devalues it by paying Costanza extravagant compliments the moment he sets eyes on her. His relationship with Pulcheria receives little further attention as he becomes the professional soldier. In Act II, though the situation hardly demands it, he is given a jolly hunting-type aria with horns, full of echoes, pedals and contrasted scale and arpeggio figures, a type with which Handel never fails. He expanded the long initial ritornello after completing the autograph and improved the balance by foreshortening the da capo. ‘Per mia vendetta’ is a spirited vengeance aria that derives force from great striding phrases for the violins, giving much employment to their G strings and sometimes descending two octaves and a third with a single foothold on the way. Berardo is no more than a fetcher and carrier with a single mediocre aria. 17  Handel set a slightly different text from the libretto’s which begins ‘D’altera’, and it was modified again in the performing score (see HHA Critical Report), but that does not affect the point.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 77

06/10/2006 14:51:30

78

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The opera begins with a brilliant stroke. The overture’s fugue on a strong subject launched by three emphatic crotchets that constantly punctuate the texture, with a climax of close invertible counterpoint, is followed not by a dance movement but by a vivid orchestral tone-picture of a storm, scored for strings, divided oboes and timpani, that becomes an accompagnato as Costanza and Berardo wait anxiously on the shore. The piano passages moving towards the minor reflect Costanza’s hopelessness. Handel’s storm may be less electric than Verdi’s in the same locality, but it is remarkable for its period and for its use of drums in a non-military context. It has been attributed to French influence, but storms in French opera overtures were a later tradition, initiated by Rameau in the 1740s. Strangely Handel marked the drums’ dynamics in English, soft, very soft, loud; Smith translated them into the usual Italian in the performing score and they appear thus in all copies. The scoring is exceptionally full and varied, employing not only the usual strings, oboes and bassoons but two horns, three trumpets, sopranino and treble recorders, traversa bassa (alto flute in G), timpani in several movements including accompagnato and an aria, and in the first version two primitive clarinets (chalumeaux). Handel had written for these in Tamerlano18 and they featured in a double concerto at Hickford’s Room on 26 April 1727, but the players may have left London before the autumn. The military movements in Act III employ the brass cumulatively: two trumpets in ‘Atterrato’, three in ‘Alla vittoria!’ (based on the same music, which originated in a bellicosa sinfonia in the first version),19 two trumpets and two horns in the March20 and coro. The trumpets dictate the key of D major, which becomes the basic tonality of the opera (overture as well as coro) and of Riccardo himself, who has three arias in that key. None of the other characters is allowed to touch it. An attempt by Reinhard Gerlach21 to find significance in the distribution of other keys (E major for example) scarcely holds water in view of the chopping and changing, with occasional transposition, between the two versions. A curious feature of the coro is that Handel wrote Tamb. instead of Timp. against the drum part in the autograph. This would imply a preference for the side-drum, but it is probably a slip; it does not appear in any copy. Despite the shifting of arias from scene to scene there are examples of Handel’s care over tonal architecture to establish points of contrast, especially (and typically) in connection with accompagnato and at set changes when two arias follow each other without a break. Pulcheria’s accompagnato ‘Ah padre!’ (II.iv) begins on a chord of F minor immediately after the shock of Isacio’s G minor aria. Costanza’s sad recall of ‘Se m’è contrario il cielo’ in II.vii opens in F after the cheerful E flat of Riccardo’s ‘Nube che il sole’. Part of Act III is carefully structured, as noted above. These tonal shifts can be paralleled in other operas, but in Riccardo they may be linked with Handel’s attempt to leaven the lump of the libretto. 18  See Handel’s Operas I, 552. 19  Handel used it later for the Warlike Symphony in Joshua. 20  See below. 21  ‘Georg Friedrich Händels Oper ‘Riccardo I’, Fakten – Perspektiven – Analysen’, in programme book of 1930 Göttingen Handel Festival, 75–86.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 78

06/10/2006 14:51:31

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

79

John Roberts cites four borrowings from Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst,22 in ‘Per me vendetta’, ‘Atterrato’/‘Alla vittoria!’, ‘Tutte brillanti rai’ and ‘Di me non ti lagnar’ (first version), and one in ‘Se m’è contrario’ from Keiser’s La forza della virtù’. The last is the most memorable; Keiser’s aria ‘Mit einem schönen Ende’ gave birth to a litter of Handelian kittens, including ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan?’

History and Text Handel completed the first version on 16 May 1727. Reinhard Strohm has suggested23 that he intended to honour the Prince of Wales (who in the event received the dedication as King) to balance his dedication of Admeto to George I, but there is no evidence for this. A number of indications suggest that the opera was put together in a hurry, and it is likely that Handel planned to mount it before the end of the season. The decision however was taken out of his hands by the disturbances during the performance of Bononcini’s Astianatte on 6 June, which caused the cancellation of the rest of the season. The death of George I five days later would in any case have had that effect. On 11 November, a month after the coronation of George II, Handel produced his revised version of Riccardo Primo at the King’s Theatre with the following cast: riccardo Senesino (alto castrato) costanza Francesca Cuzzoni (soprano) pulcheria Faustina Bordoni (soprano) isacio Giuseppe Boschi (bass) oronte Antonio Baldi (alto castrato) berardo Giovanni Battista Palmerini (bass) Joseph Goupy, assisted by Peter Tillemans, designed new scenery; no doubt the machinery used for the battering ram and the breached wall in Alessandro saw further service.24 According to the Daily Journal, a rehearsal on 8 November drew ‘a prodigious Concourse of Nobility’; Mrs Pendarves attended another on the 10th and found it ‘delightful’. No other contemporary reactions are recorded. There were eleven performances, the last on 16 December. Handel never revived the opera, but he used many of its arias in pasticcios and revivals of other operas: (1728) Siroe Scipione 1730 Tamerlano 1731 Admeto 1731 Tolomeo 1733

‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ (from the first version of Riccardo, revised) ‘Di notte il pellegrino’, ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso (rewritten) ‘L’aquila altera’ ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’, ‘Ai guardi tuoi’, ‘T’amo, sì’ (duet)

22  ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Telemann: An Inventory’, GHB 1, 153. 23  Essays, 56. 24  See Plate 1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 79

06/10/2006 14:51:31

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

80

Sosarme 1734 ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’, ‘Nube che il sole adombra’ ‘Vado per obedirti’, ‘All’orror delle procelle’ Il pastor fido May 1734 ‘Dell’empia frode’, ‘Quel gelsomino’ Oreste 1734 ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’, ‘Bacia per me la mano’ (with new text ‘Piango dolente’) Mrs [Ann Turner] Robinson sang ‘Ah, padre!’, ‘Quel gelsomino’ and ‘Bacia per me la mano’ at a Drury Lane concert on 26 March 1729. In December 1734 Farinelli lifted two of Pulcheria’s arias, ‘Quel gelsomino’ and ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ to sing in the Opera of the Nobility production of Ottone.25 The overture featured at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 16 April 1745. Two arias from Riccardo Primo, ‘Caro, vieni a me’ and ‘Quel gelsomino’, were sung in the pasticcio Lucio Vero at the King’s Theatre on 14 November 1747. Riccardo Primo was produced almost simultaneously at Hamburg and Brunswick early in 1729. The texts and even the titles were very different. The Hamburg version (3 February NS) was arranged and conducted by Telemann, who added a comic subplot of his own composition to Handel’s unabridged score, creating an entertainment that must have lasted all night.26 Accompagnatos and cavatinas were supported by continuo only. Riccardo was sung by a bass. The Brunswick version, staged in February and revived in the same month five years later, was more orthodox but had some interesting variants. For fuller details of both, see below under Librettos. There have been five modern productions, the first by the Handel Opera Society in London in 1964 with a tenor Riccardo, an unhappy compromise. The English Bach Society production (1991) had its première with geographical exactitude at Limassol. A recording under Christophe Rousset was issued by Oiseau-lyre in 1997. The Telemann version received a concert performance at Magdeburg in 1996.

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 c 2) is extremely confusing, due not only to the intermingling of the two versions but to faulty binding in the late eighteenth century. For example, the initial recitative of Act III in the first version begins on fol. 80 verso, continues on fol. 53 and ends on fol. 117. Handel’s sparse foliation, which seems to reflect at least three different numberings, is little help. Moreover, a heavy damp stain has damaged the top of many pages, rendering some of the writing indecipherable. J. Merrill Knapp in a substantial essay27 did some valuable spadework and printed the texts and incipits of most of the suppressed arias. The notes and tables in Burrows and Ronish disentangle some knotty points. To describe the manuscript in detail would require a volume and is rendered superfluous by Terence Best’s new edition. 25  See Handel’s Operas I, 441. 26  A manuscript score of Telemann’s arrangement is in the Oxenstierna Collection, Royal Musical Library, Stockholm. The text of Telemann’s scenes is reprinted by Emilie Dahnk-Baroffio in 50 Jahre Göttinger Händel Festspiele, ed. W. Meyerhoff (Kassel, 1970). 27  ‘The Autograph of Handel’s Riccardo Primo’, in R. L. Marshall (ed.) Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel (Kassel and Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 331–58.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 80

06/10/2006 14:51:31

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

81

Most of the following notes deal with the first version and its differences from the second. For some of the new recitatives Smith wrote the clefs and words and Handel added the music (fols 15, 31 verso, 32, 49); 68–9 are a Smith copy (modified by Handel), and 116 verso is entirely in his hand, which appears occasionally elsewhere, for example on 11 and 39. Many of the folios in the first column of Table 4 carry alterations to words and music, cancellations (especially of recitatives) and a few additions relating to the second version. Fols 42–3 belong to the autograph of Semele (sinfonia in Act II). Table 4 First Version

Second Version (added folios)

Overture and Act I: fols 1–7, 11–12, 10, 13–14, 16–17, 19–30, 33–8

fols 8–9, 15, 18, 23, 31–2

Act II: [gap], Fitzwilliam MS 258, pp. 81–6: RM 20 c 2, fols 40–1, 44–8, 50–1, 60, 62 (reversed), 63, 52, 54–9, 80 recto

[gap], fol. 39, [gap], Fitzwilliam MS 257, p. 59: [gap], RM 20 c 2, fols 49, 61, 64–79

Act III: fols 80 verso, 53, 117–20, 93–103, 130, 129, 104–16, 145–6

fols 81–92, 121–8, 131–44

Act I. The first version of the initial accompagnato is four bars longer than the second. The last four bars of the latter were altered again (fol. 9 verso), making a third and final setting. ‘Se perì l’amato bene’ (fols 13–14), whose second line of text has minor variants,28 is probably a fair copy made at the time of revision. The original B section text of ‘Vado per obedirti’ described proleptically the jewels Pulcheria would wear at her wedding. The new texts of ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’ and ‘Cessata è la procella’ cancel those of the first version. Corrado has an aria in I.iv later used in Act II. The music of ‘Lascia la pace’ differs from HG in a few short passages that alter the balance of the aria; it too has a rewritten B section on a new text. Handel first sketched the opening of ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ with thinner scoring, but abandoned it after twenty-seven bars. Act II. The first music present is the recitative ‘Seco Isacio’ (HG 34); Costanza’s cavatina and the first two arias are missing. Isacio’s aria (originally ‘Perch’io goda’) came earlier in the first version after a scene with Costanza; by having him address it to Pulcheria with new words (‘Ti vedrò regnar’), provoking her accompanied recitative ‘Ah padre!’ Handel tightened the drama. Its last two bars are on fol. 40 of the autograph; the remainder is in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The scene in Riccardo’s camp contained his aria ‘Nube che il sole adombra’, moved later to II.viii. After Berardo revealed Isacio’s treacherous scheme Oronte had a spirited aria of indignation, ‘Bella già il cor s’accende’ (Allegro 3/4 D major), which Handel did not retain. The manuscript is particularly confused in the middle of the Act (see Table 4 above 28  ‘Fra l’angoscie, in su l’arene’ (Briani), ‘Fra gli affanni e tra le pene’ (libretto and ? Handel’s first version), ‘Fra l’angosce [sic] e fra le pene’ (autograph and HG).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 81

06/10/2006 14:51:31

82

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

for the order of folios). There are three related settings of ‘Cara, torna [vieni] a me’, the first (a cavatina) and second dating from the first version, the third from the revision. Since some of the music is common to all three, Handel did not bother to write it all out. The third has the new parodied text, and so have Riccardo’s ‘Quanto tarda’ and ‘O vendicarmi’, the latter on a Smith copy of Corrado’s ‘Fra poco spero’ in I.iii salvaged from his performing score of the first version. Handel added the tempo Vivace. ‘Quando vieni’ (‘Quanto tarda’) has two postludes on 52 recto, a continuation from 63 verso. The remainder of the Act is much shorter in the first version (see Table 2), though one aria, Riccardo’s ‘Io più soffrir non vo’ (Allegro 4/4 G minor) disappeared. Handel used the material with many changes for Oronte’s ‘Per mia vendetta’ in III.i, but did not retain the spirited ritornello (Ex. 11). The conclusion of the Act is noted twice, on 80 recto for the first version, on 79 recto for the second.

Act III began first with the heading (which survives in more than one copy) Stanza nella Rocca di Limisso. Costanza fuggendo ed Isacio che la segue. Her flight is represented by the first ten bars on HG 77, later applied to a different context. Handel made a false start (Adagio) in ‘Morte, vieni’ and began again after two bars. ‘Bacia per me’ has another parodied B section, Riccardo’s pigeon aria an obbligato for sopranino recorder adapted later for Costanza’s last aria in the same key; Handel rewrote the vocal line, since the first aria was for Senesino, the second for Cuzzoni. Pulcheria’s accompagnato ‘Ah chi? misera’, quoted above (Ex. 9), introduced another weather aria, ‘Nubiloso fra tempeste’, which Briani wrote for Costanza earlier in the Act. Handel used some of its ideas in ‘All’orror delle procelle’. Many stage directions during the assault on the walls of Limissus are not fully legible owing to damp stains. The battle-cry and sinfonia ‘Alla vittoria!’ are expanded from a shorter bellica

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 82

06/10/2006 14:51:32

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

83

sinfonia in the first version, on which ‘Atterrato’ is also based. The timpani part in ‘Atterrato’ was an afterthought, added in the autograph after the performing score had been copied. The scene for Costanza and Berardo within the walls came earlier in the action; instead of ‘Il volo così fido’ Costanza had a despairing aria, ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ (Andante 4/4 A minor, text from Briani), later adapted for Siroe. The aria in which Riccardo shrugs off Pulcheria’s appeal for her father’s life, ‘Di me non ti lagnar’, bequeathed its ritornellos to his last aria, ‘Volgete ogni desir’. This is the context for Pulcheria’s solo with clarinets. The love duet appears here in an earlier form, in G major without the initial Adagio and with other differences, including a change of text. Handel wrote out the words for part of the next recitative (fol. 115 recto) but did not set them. Fol. 116 recto contains a number of sketches (quoted by Knapp) for an aria in E major, not necessarily connected with this opera. It may have survived because the verso carried the clef and words for what was intended to be the final recitative, followed by Segue il Coro, all in Smith’s hand. The coro belongs to the first version; it has both the original (cancelled) and parodied text. In addition to the greater part of Isacio’s first aria, with the first text cancelled and replaced by the second (Mus. MS 258, pp. 81–6), the Fitzwilliam Museum has the autographs of the second version of the recitative ‘Riccardo sospirato’ (II.ii, HG 36–7) and Handel’s keyboard arrangement of the overture29 (Mus. MS 257, pp. 59, 55–7).

Librettos 1727 London. ‘Riccardo I. Re d’Inghilterra. Per La Reale Accademia di Musica ... Sold at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market. iv + 75 pp. Dedicated by Rolli to George II in an Italian sonnet comparing him in exorbitantly flattering terms to his ‘guerriero predecessor’. The drama ‘quasi tutto’ by Rolli, the music by Handel, the new scenery by Giuseppe Goupy. Argument and cast in Italian and English. A slovenly text evidently prepared in a hurry, it omits several scene headings and many important stage directions, especially in I.iv and v. ‘Quanto tarda (II.v) and ‘Morte, vieni’ (III.ii) are printed as recitative. 1729 Hamburg. ‘Der Misslungene Braut-Wechsel Oder Richardus I König von England in einem Sing-spiele auf dem Hamburgischen Schau-Platze fürge­stellet, Anno 1729, Gedruckt mit Stromerischen Schrifften’. The characters include Philippus (= Berardo), Berengera (= Costanza), Formosa (= Pulcheria), Gelasius, an old Stoic philosopher and Isacio’s one-time tutor, and Murmilla, Formosa’s former wet-nurse. Isacio is described as a usurper. Three mid-scene ballets: Cypriot peasants intent on pillaging the cargoes of the wrecked English ships in Act I after ‘V’adoro, luci belle’, Deceit unmasked by genii in Act II after ‘Caro, vieni a me’, swordsmen in Act III after the disarming of Isacio. Italian arias by Handel, German by Telemann, translation and German dialogue by C. G. Wend. The text of the accompagnatos and cavatinas is in German only.

29  Printed in Best, Twenty Overtures, III.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 83

06/10/2006 14:51:32

84

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel’s plot is unchanged in outline but much diluted and interleaved with scenes from Telemann’s subplot. Wend explains in a Preface that the mixture of comic and serious elements, once a fashion, has become almost a necessity. But the Hamburg public seems always to have had a taste for mixed genres, serious drama, satirical comedy (usually with a local reference), pantomime, dancing and farce. All Handel’s set pieces are retained except ‘Di notte il pellegrino’ (replaced by ‘Torrente cresciuto’ from Siroe) and ‘Alla vittoria!’ (replaced by the ballet of swordsmen) and the March. Line 2 of ‘Se perì’ follows the London libretto, not Handel’s score. The scenes for Gelasius and Murmilla are in the manner of contemporary Italian intermezzi, except that they have a stronger satirical bite and are not wholly detached from the main plot. In Act II Gelasius confronts Isacio with an attack on the tyranny of absolute rulers, for which Isacio has him beaten on stage; during this process Gelasius sings an aria. The German insertions consist of eleven arias (four for Gelasius, three for Murmilla, two for Philippus, one each for Isacio and the leader of the peasants30) and three duets (two for Murmilla and Gelasius, one for Berengera and Philippus). All but one of the arias, for Philippus in I.i, come in the additional scenes. Philippus, a marginal character whose role is expanded beyond all proportion, ends Act II with an aria in a new scene after the love duet, pointing a moral and producing a dismal anticlimax. 1729 Brunswick. ‘Riccardus genannt Das Löwen-Herz König in Engelland ... Wolfenbüttel Druckts Christian Bartsch.’ In the main a straight translation, though not made from the London libretto. All recitatives of both types, cavatinas and coro in German only (often fitting the music), arias in Italian with German version alongside. Evidently an ambitious production, with more detailed stage directions, fourteen listed sets, and dances at the end of the first two acts. ‘L’aquila altera’ and ‘Alto immenso poter’ omitted, but two insertions: ‘Prove sono di grandezza’ from Alessandro for Isacio in I.vi (vii) and ‘Benché stringa la spada rubella’ for Berardo in III.v (iv). Pulcheria’s ‘Quell’innocente afflitto’ (III.iii) is transferred to Oronte in II.v (iv). Costanza takes her historical name of Berengaria. 1734 Brunswick. As last except for title page with new date.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1045) is all in Smith’s hand, but belongs to two periods. Smith originally copied the first version from the autograph, leaving a gap for the recitative before the coro, and later grafted on the second. Besides the addition and subtraction of many folios, this process involved scratching out discarded verbal texts and writing in new ones in a number of arias, ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’, ‘Cessata è la procella’, ‘Dell’empia frode, ‘Quanto tarda’, ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’ and ‘Bacia per me’. The original text of ‘Dell’empia frode’ is not known since it does not survive in autograph. The following folios belong to the first copy: 1–10, 15–16, 19–20, 23–4, 26–35, and 38–41 in Act I, 43, 45–9, 52–4, 56–9, 64, 82–3 and 87–90 in Act II, 97, 120–3, 125–7 and 156–9 in Act III. The coro has both texts. 153 is probably not part 30  Telemann set this as a dialogue for solo and chorus.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 84

06/10/2006 14:51:32

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

85

of the first version, but a faulty page from the second, corrected by 152. A paste-over on fol. 47 changes the words but not the music in the last six bars of the recitative in II.ii (HG 37). The cut in the coda of ‘Atterrato’ (HG 104), made during the run, is indicated here. In 1734 Handel (in pencil) marked ‘Quel gelsomino’ and ‘Nube che il sole adombra’ to be transposed to G major for inclusion in revivals of Il pastor fido and Sosarme respectively. The copies, all deriving from the performing score, though not at the same stage, show no major variants in the music but are inconsistent in other respects. As noted in the libretto summary, the scene numbering is erratic in the second and third acts. There are also variants in stage directions, tempo marks and sometimes orchestration. The upper parts in the March are for two trumpets doubling horns and two oboes doubling violins in the autograph and Lennard, two trumpets doubling horns and blank staves in the performing score, Malmesbury and RM 18 c 10 ( Jennens’s supplement to Cluer). Granville omits the horns, Flower and the Shaftesbury supplement to Cluer omit the oboes. Malmesbury (S2, autumn 1727) was copied chiefly from the performing score before the première and before the text of the second version had been finalised. It preserves a number of survivals from the first version, including verbal texts in the recitatives I.iv and v and ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’, the stage directions (already quoted) after ‘Vado per obedirti’ and at the start of Act III, and the inclusion of Corrado in the heading of I.vi, which even Chrysander reproduced. Lennard (Smith, c.1736) is very short on stage directions and takes the lazy course of giving nearly every dal segno a da capo, forfeiting the lead back. It retains Corrado in the headings of II.vi and III.i (abbreviated) but removes the other relics of the first version. Granville (Eg. 2925, S5, c.1743) likewise retains Corrado in II.vi but restores the full nonsensical heading of Act III. Flower (S2, c.1745–6), making use of the libretto, reduces the heading of II.vi (v) to Regia Padiglione and correctly begins Act III with the direction above the third system on HG 77 without specifying the place. It is the only copy to give the longer version of ‘Atterrato’. Berlin (Mus. MS 9053), lacking recitatives and most of the instrumentation, was copied from Cluer by the English miniaturist and annotated at the start by a German. It adds a few minor refinements, Largo on the overture’s introduction and A Tempo obscurely on ‘Ti vedrò regnar’. Many excerpts survive in early copies, chiefly in the British Library and Coke Collection. Probably the earliest (c.1727–28) are Coke 86 (overture, Smith junior), Coke 144, once owned by the Oxford countertenor Walter Powell (HHB 10 and 14, H6/9, and 15, S2), and Oxford Bodleian Mus. MS c 108, fols 1–39 (the duet and arias 11, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 37, Smith Jr., 3, 5 and 30, S2). H6/9 also copied arias 11, 14, 30 and 37 in keyboard arrangement (Coke 140). Jennens asked for everything, and S2 supplied him c.1728–31 with the items missing from the Cluer score (RM 18 c 10, fols 157–84). Presumably by accident he omitted the two versions of ‘Si, m’è contrario il cielo’, but added them in RM 18 c 3, fols 41–2. Later, c.1741–43, he sent Jennens a selection from the abandoned first version (RM 18 c 11, fols 92–123) consisting of two accompagnatos, the four-and-a-half-bar sinfonia in Act III, the original form of the love duet (‘Quanto goda l’alma mia’) and five arias, ‘Bella, già il cor accende’, ‘Io

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 85

06/10/2006 14:51:32

86

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

più soffrir non vo’, ‘Son qual colombo amante’, ‘Nubiloso fra tempeste’ and ‘Di me non ti lagnar’, copied of course from the autograph. S2 also copied a supplement to the Cluer score for Lord Shaftesbury (Coke 156, c.1737–39). They are not identical, however. Whereas for Jennens S2 included ‘Si, già vedo’ (headed Arietta Largo) but omitted ‘Se m’è contrario il cielo’, for Shaftesbury he included the latter in its reduced form but omitted the former. He also took his eyes off the ball and expanded the performing score’s Tr. in the March to Trav. instead of Tromb. There are copies of the overture in Handel’s arrangement in RM 18 c 1 and RM 18 c 2 (both S2) and the Malmesbury Collection (Smith). The Flower parts (S2, c.1743) – cembalo, violins 1 + 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 + 2 including treble and sopranino recorders and traversa bassa – as usual cover an odd selection, omitting the overture, three of the five accompagnatos (the exceptions are ‘Ah padre!’ and ‘Alto immenso poter’), ‘Lascia la pace’, ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’, ‘Per mia vendetta’, ‘Atterrato’, ‘Alla vittoria!’ and the coro. The only movement present requiring the brass is the March, for which trumpet and horn parts (1 and 2 doubling) are included in the violin parts. One aria from the first version, Oronte’s ‘Bella, già il cor s’accende’, is added at the end. The reason for this doubtless is that it is the only one of the ten scrapped pieces that Handel did not adapt for the revised Riccardo or for Siroe. S2 must have used the autograph as well as the performing score. The oboes are given more employment than usual. While generally confined to ritornellos, they range more freely, often accompanying the voice, in ‘Bella, teco non ho’, ‘Ti vedrò regnar’, ‘Nube che il sole adombra’ (bars 38–40, possibly an error, and B section), ‘Quell’innocente’, ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’, and occasionally elsewhere. Except in ‘Ti vedrò regnar’, ‘Quell’innocente’ – where Chrysander might have clarified his score and avoided much stave-hopping by separating them – and the March, they always play in unison. Traversa bassa and flauto piccolo appear in both oboe parts. Chrysander’s bracketed violins in ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ are a mistake: all sources, including autograph and performing score have Tutti unis. Bassoons are mentioned only in the cembalo and cello parts of ‘Cessata è la procella’. S2, subconsciously recalling the first version, has ‘Calmata’ for the initial word. A second set of parts (Coke 143) is earlier, c.1728–31, but eccentric and incomplete. It is an arrangement for flute (the voice part), violins 1 and 2, viola and basso (figured), and covers the duet and nineteen arias. Most movements are in transposed keys for the convenience of the flute. In the duet the lower voice appears in the viola part marked for a second flute. Cluer published the score (Richd ye 1st King of England) on 17 February 1728. Besides recitatives of both types it omits ‘Se m’è contrario’, ‘Sì, già vedo’, ‘Atterrato’, ‘Alla vittoria!’ and the March. Dynamics are few, the orchestration seldom specified except when anything other than strings and oboes is required, but the coro lacks brass and drums. Almost every dal segno aria is given a da capo: doubtless the copy came from Smith. ‘Cessata è la procella’ has its first-version text (‘Calmate le tempeste’, etc.), which suggests that the change was made at a late stage. The traversa in ‘Morte, vieni’ is the regular non-transposing instrument. ‘Lascia la pace’ and ‘Dell’empia frode’ are Allegro. Walsh published a flute arrangement on 9 March 1728, the overture for keyboard (not in Handel’s arrangement) on 28 October the same year and

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 86

06/10/2006 14:51:32

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra

87

in parts on 17 December 1730, and ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’, also in parts, among six horn songs on 26 June 1731. Chrysander based his edition (1877) as usual mainly on the performing score, but made use of the autograph, from which he printed the aria in the Appendix, no doubt on account of the chaloumeaux (but misspelt the instrument and attributed the aria to the wrong scene). He several times follows the performing score against the authority of autograph and libretto. The heading of I.iii should read Padiglione non lontano dalle rive. I.vi should be indicated at Oronte’s entry on HG 24, and II.vi at his entry on HG 52. The Act III heading appears to be Chrysander’s invention, but it is apt enough. A few detailed directions, for example aperta in mano (HG 17) and che grave e superbo sta appoggiato ad un tavolino (HG 27), can only have come from the autograph of the first version. There seems no reason for Chrysander in the March bracketing all the instruments and omitting the horns; they are all named in the autograph and the horns are in the performing score. The HHA score (2005) edited by Terence Best takes account of all available material.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 87

06/10/2006 14:51:32

chapter 5 Siroe, Re di Persia

M

etastasio’s Argument, reproduced in the London libretto, presents the main lines and the background of the plot in reverse order. ‘Cosroes the Second, King of Persia, having an excessive Tenderness for his younger Son Medarses, A Youth of courtly and deceiving Manners, had a great Mind to make him the Partner of his Crown, by defrauding, with apparent Injustice, his eldest Son Siroes, a Prince valiant in Nature, but impatient of Wrong; who was revenged for it, by the Turn that the anger’d People and the Troops took in his Favour, who loved him infinitely, and rose unanimously in his Behalf. ‘Cosroes, in labouring with his Arms to extend the Confines of his Persian Dominions, was so far advanced in his Conquests towards the East, that he at once deprived Asbites, the King of Cambaja, both of his Kingdom, and of his Life. Of all the Royal Family none could escape the Conqueror’s Fury, excepting the Princess Emira, Daughter of the aforesaid Asbites; who, after having travelled a great Way, and being not less induced by Love which she had long since conceived for Siroes, than by the Desire she had to revenge the Death of her own Father, went into the Court of Cosroes, in Man’s Habit, under the Name of Hydaspes: And there always dissembling her Hatred, and unknown to every Body but Siroes, was by him himself introduced; and knew so well how to insinuate herself into the Favour of Cosroes, That she (or he rather under that borrow’d Name) became his most darling and bosom Confident. On these Foundations drawn partly from the Writers of Turkish History, and partly too from Passages probably imagin’d, The Events of this Drama take their proper Turn. The Scene is in the City of Seleucia.’ Act I. A spacious Temple dedicated to the Sun, with an Altar adorned with the Image of that Deity. Cosroe, about to settle the succession, orders both his sons to swear to abide by his decision. Medarse, confident of the prize, does so readily, but Siroe evades the request, pointing to his military feats. Cosroe taxes him with loving Emira, daughter of his deadly enemy. Siroe, looking to Medarses, says he is second in merit as well as in years. Cosroe orders Siroe to revere Medarse as King and departs with menaces. The brothers begin to quarrel, interrupted by the entry of Emira in Man’s Habit, under the Name of Hydaspes (Idaspe). She sends Medarse away and urges Siroe to act at once if he loves her. Cosroe must die this very day. When Siroe shrinks from patricide, she accuses him of cowardice, and of loving Laodice. He says he tolerates Laodice to   The only part of this rigmarole true to history is Cosroe’s attempt to promote his youngest son Merdaza (Medarse) above his eldest, but the outcome was very different. Cosroe (Khosrow II, reigned 590–628), credited with thousands of elephants, camels, horses and women, expanded the Sassanian Empire to its greatest extent, but lost his conquests to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Sheroe II (Siroe) led a conspiracy against his defeated father and had him and eighteen of his sons, including Merdaza, put to death, but reigned for only eight months.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 88

06/10/2006 14:51:33

Siroe, Re di Persia

89

pacify Cosroe, who loves her himself. Laodice enters, and ‘Idaspe’ tells her that Siroe loves her, silencing him in a low voice. When Laodice fears that Siroe will deceive her, Emira agrees that men are often inconstant and departs. Siroe tells Laodice he loves someone else and advises her to do the same. Arasse, General of the Persian armies, Laodice’s brother but a friend of Siroe, urges her to appease Cosroe’s rage and save the hero Siroe. She denounces Siroe as anything but a hero, and declares that to change one’s mind can be true constancy. The set changes to Cosroe’s inner Room, with a Table and Seats. Siroe enters with a Sheet of Paper, an anonymous warning in a disguised hand of danger to Cosroe, with which he hopes to protect his father, his beloved and his own innocence. Seeing Cosroe approach, he lays down the Paper and hides. He overhears Laodice telling Cosroe that Siroe has tried to seduce her and threatened to kill her if she refuses him. Cosroe, his wrath against Siroe multiplied, sits down, sees the Paper, takes it and reads it to himself. He rises in amazement and when Medarse enters reads it aloud: someone he considers a friend means to kill him today. Medarse claims to have written the paper: Siroe is the traitor and tried to involve him (Medarse) in the plot. Siroe discovers himself and asserts his authorship of the paper. Medarse points to his presence in Cosroe’s apartment as proof of guilt. Emira (as Idaspe) enters, ready as she claims to defend Cosroe. He gives the Paper to Emira, who reads it to herself. When Cosroe asks why he did not name the traitor, Siroe replies that he must not; Emira accuses him of dressing his crime in borrowed virtue, and all four denounce his guilt. He denies it: his loyalty has brought this on his head. ‘Idaspe’ promises to watch Siroe, and Cosroe goes. ‘Idaspe’ startles Medarse and Laodice by rounding on them for insulting Siroe behind his back: he can do so, but they should not. She sings an aria about a meadow that produces roses as well as violets. Medarse dismisses this as typical courtier’s ambiguity. Laodice tries to console herself with hope. Act II. A Royal Park. Siroe asks the gods if any heart ever felt such pain as his. Laodice begs his pardon for accusing him, blinded as she was by passion and his contempt, and asks how she can make amends. By ceasing to love him, he replies. She promises to be silent, but she cannot help her feelings. Siroe wishes he could likewise calm Emira’s anger. She enters, and they quarrel bitterly. She claims to have won Cosroe’s favour for his (Siroe’s) sake rather than to further her own revenge. He asks her then to spare his father; she wishes to avenge hers. They conclude that their love, as the children of sworn enemies, is a crime: they must hate each other and part. Siroe draws his sword to kill himself. Cosroe, entering without Guards, thinks Siroe means to attack ‘Idaspe’. Siroe admits it, and other charges, and asks for death. At Cosroe’s summons some Guards appear, but ‘Idaspe’ persuades Cosroe to delay the execution since Siroe has not revealed his accomplices. Siroe warns his father that ‘Idaspe’ too may prove false, and is led away by the guards. Cosroe, shaken by his words, stands pensive. Emira, seeing her chance, draws a Sword to smite Cosroe. Medarse enters; Emira with a quick change of front lays the Sword at the Feet of Cosroe, saying she is too jealous of her honour to remain armed when under suspicion. He promptly gives it back, telling her to choose the most faithful of the guards to defend his person. She feels she is almost home in harbour. Medarse offers to go into exile, leaving the throne to Siroe, if this would bring his father peace of mind. Cosroe is touched, embraces him, promises to make him partner of his throne at once and goes

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 89

06/10/2006 14:51:33

90

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

out (without an aria). Medarse is confident of the success of his plans after the storm has blown over. The set changes to Appartments on the Ground Floor on a Level with the Gardens, and Seats in them. Cosroe calls Siroe before him and orders ‘Idaspe’ to guard the door and tell Laodice to wait in the next room. She retires aside; Cosroe goes to sit, and at his bidding, Siroe also sits. Cosroe makes him promise to hold his peace while he rehearses the charges against him, several times silences his interruptions, and offers, if he will reveal his accomplices, to pardon him and them and open the way to the throne. When Siroe seems on the point of yielding, the listening ‘Idaspe’ interrupts, reminds Cosroe that Laodice is waiting and urges Siroe (aside) not to speak. Cosroe misinterprets Siroe’s agitation and offers him Laodice as well. When Siroe scornfully refuses, Cosroe offers his own life. Laodice is brought in and Cosroe repeats his terms: if Siroe still refuses to speak, prison and a dreadful death await him, and he will have brought it on himself. ‘Idaspe’ continues to taunt the irresolute Siroe, who tells Laodice that ‘Idaspe’ will make the decision for him and goes back to prison. ‘Idaspe’ alone with Laodice declares ‘his’ own passion for her in flowery terms. Laodice says she cannot return it, but if ‘Idaspe’ really loves her ‘he’ should give her Siroe. ‘Idaspe’ refuses, and Laodice turns on ‘him’: Cupid is no more faithful than the wind to sailors. Emira, alone, wishes she were a shepherdess, free from the deceit and fear that haunt those of royal birth. Act III. A Courtyard. Cosroe decides on Siroe’s death, and Arasse goes reluctantly to carry out the order. Laodice reports that a revolutionary mob is calling for Siroe. When Cosroe replies that he is condemned and perhaps dead, she confesses that she bore false witness because Siroe rejected her, and begs Cosroe to countermand the order. This irritates him into greater severity, and she likens him to a Hyrcanian tigress defending its young. ‘Idaspe’, playing on Cosroe’s memories of Siroe as a child, breaks down his resistance. Cosroe gives him the Signet to release Siroe, but Arasse reports that he is already dead. Emira, revealing her identity, denounces Cosroe as a murderer who killed her husband as well as her father: she tried vainly to tamper with Siroe’s allegiance, but he blocked her vengeance and is wholly innocent. Cosroe orders her arrest: Arasse takes Emira’s Sword, and conducts her off, leaving Cosroe a prey to bitter remorse. Arasse returns with Emira, Prisoner without Guards, and tells her he has preserved Siroe’s life. Medarse declares his intention to kill Siroe. Told that he is already dead, he says he must find him, dead or alive. Emira goes ahead to frustrate his design, leaving Medarse to sing a cynical aria about usurper’s luck. The set changes to A Prison within the Castle design’d for Siroes. Siroe reproaches the gods: no one defends his injured innocence. Emira enters with the signet, followed by Medarse. Emira plays for time and the arrival of Arasse and keeps looking thro’ the Scenes. When Medarse draws his Sword to kill Siroe, she asks for the weapon to do the deed herself and gives Siroe the Sword, identifying herself to Medarse. Arasse arrives with Guards, summons Siroe to calm his supporters among the populace, and goes out; the Guards remain. Siroe asks Emira’s pardon for doubting her; she leaves with a tender love song. Medarse, chastened, tells Siroe to take his revenge. Siroe forgives him, gives back the sword, and departs with the Guards. Laodice learns the latest news from Medarse, who suggests they go together and beg pardon for their offences. She draws a moral about conscience, illustrated by a comparison between

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 90

06/10/2006 14:51:33

Siroe, Re di Persia

91

a turbid torrent and a limpid stream. The Great Piazza of Seleucia. At the Opening of the Scene, a Skirmish between the Rebels and the Royal Guards, who are routed and put to Flight. Cosroes, Emira and Siroes, one after the other, with drawn Swords; then Araxes with all the People. Cosroes defending himself against some of the Conspirators, falls. Emira is about to stab him, when Siroe intervenes and saves him. Medarse and Laodice beg for pardon. Siroe persuades Emira to abandon her hatred of Cosroe, who bids them marry and ascend the throne. Emira sings an aria in praise of constancy. Cosroe abdicates and places the Crown on Siroe’s Head. Before addressing this libretto Handel had begun and abandoned work on another, Genserico, which was to leave its mark on the two following operas. We do not know when he worked on it (probably late in 1727) or why it was aborted. It is possible that the directors of the Academy were pressing him to tackle a libretto by Metastasio, whose reputation among London’s Italian residents was already high. The first Genserico libretto, centred on the vandal King Genserich who sacked Rome in ad 455, was written by Nicolò Beregani and set by Cesti and Partenio for Venice in 1669. C. H. Postel reworked it in German for Conradi (Hamburg, 1693), and Telemann revived this version in 1722 with additional music under the title Der Sieg der Schönheit. It is not clear what source Handel used, perhaps a version concocted by one of the London poets, based on Postel with little relation to the Venice original. He broke off after reaching Act I, Scene ix, having composed the overture, an initial coro, and six arias, and prepared the text of the recitatives but not set them to music. The fragment is split between the autographs of Siroe and Tolomeo and Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258: see below under Autograph. Siroe was Metastasio’s second opera seria libretto, set first by Vinci (Venice, 1726) and by four other composers, Giovanni Porta, Porpora, Sarro and Vivaldi, before Handel. Metastasio revised it more than once, including in his Collected Works the version made for Sarro (Naples, 1727). This was the text adapted by Haym and Handel. It was Handel’s first encounter with the leading librettist of his age, then still a young   ‘Temple’ in the libretto, a survival from Metastasio, who has the scene prepared for the coronation of Medarse.   See Riva’s letter to Muratori of 3 October 1726 (Deutsch, 197). Rolli in a letter of 4 February 1729 to Senesino (Deutsch, 237) says that Faustina was the promoter of Siroe – and that Handel detested her. But he is scarcely a reliable witness.   According to Loewenberg, Annals of Opera: 1597–1940 (3rd edn, London, 1978) Mattheson’s review of Telemann’s opera (Critica Musica, July 1722) was the first opera review in the first ­German periodical.   It has nothing to do with Zeno and Pariati’s Flavio Anicio Olibrio, a red herring introduced by Burney (no doubt because it contains a character called Olibrio), echoed by Mann in the Fitz­ william Catalogue and repeated by others. Emilie Dahnk-Baroffio, in the most thorough investigation of the Genserico sources, in the programme book of the 1969 Göttingen Handel Festival, dismisses Zeno and Pariati but retains the title Olibrio, unaware that Handel’s heading on the Tolomeo overture settles the matter.   Strohm (Essays, 58) suggests that Handel used Sarro’s score as a text source, since it contains an aria (‘Amico il fato’) that he included in the pasticcio Ormisda (1730) but did not set himself.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 91

06/10/2006 14:51:33

92

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

man, and the first Metastasio-based opera staged in London. It might be supposed that the conjunction of the age’s greatest opera composer with its most successful librettist, a master of language and a fine poet to boot, would have outstandingly fruitful results. But while all three of their joint operas contain magnificent music, none ranks with Handel’s masterpieces of 1724–25 and 1734–35 (though Poro comes near it). The divergence of temperament was too wide. Metastastio, as befits a cleric, wrote with an edifying purpose. As Caesarian poet at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor for half a century, he was to dictate rules of conduct and lay down standards for public and private life and maintenance of the status quo. Already in his early librettos moral issues are liable to take precedence over human values. He moves his characters like pieces on a chessboard, subject to predictable gambits, so that they run the risk of declining into abstractions. In all this his approach was the antithesis of Handel’s. It is no matter for surprise that after setting three of his librettos Handel abandoned him, just as his reputation was reaching its peak of popularity, for the wilder slopes of Ariosto’s world of magic and romance. The complex plot is so intricately organised and developed in such detail that it reads like a spoken play, such as a Restoration dramatist might have written for London, and could be performed thus without the arias; indeed Metastasio was not averse to such a procedure. The necessary contraction for the London theatre was bound to create distortion. Everything happens far too quickly, like a film run at twice the proper speed. Metastasio’s recitatives are enormously long, amounting to some 1,284 lines. Haym, undoubtedly acting on Handel’s instructions, reduced them by almost exactly half, adding a few short links; even so, what remains is considerably longer than in nearly all Handel’s London operas. Although the plot remained essentially unchanged, some details in the motivation of the characters are blurred or lost. In Metastasio’s original Cosroe is less abrupt and more scrupulous in his treatment of Siroe, Medarse more servile and slippery, and the attitude of the off-stage populace clearer; they are upset by Cosroe’s harsh treatment of the heir to the throne. Handel retained nineteen of Metastasio’s aria texts (one, ‘La sorte mia’, somewhat modified) and replaced three and the coro. Metastasio had given Siroe, Emira, Laodice and Cosroe five each, but it was unthinkable for a bass to share the limelight on a par with two prima donnas and a top castrato. So two of Cosroe’s were cut – even so Boschi received as fair a share of the cake as he can have expected – along with all three of Arasse’s. Handel increased Siroe’s ration by two and that of Laodice (Cuzzoni) and Emira (Faustina) by one apiece; but the ladies’ parts had to be equal in every respect, and Metastasio had ended Act II with an applause-gathering aria for Emira and Act I with an even more potentially spectacular one (‘Fra l’orror’) for the second castrato, Medarse. That was asking for trouble: the ladies had already provoked a monumental rumpus in the theatre. Handel transferred ‘Fra l’orror’ to the middle of Act II – where it is out of place but does little harm – and substituted ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ for Laodice, taking the text from Riccardo Primo and the music from the abandoned Genserico, one of many signs that the composition of Siroe was a rushed job. So keen was he not to favour one prima donna at the expense of the   Medarse lost another crowd-puller, ‘Torrente cresciuto’, a simile aria and therefore transferable, to Laodice.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 92

06/10/2006 14:51:33

Siroe, Re di Persia

93

other that he gave their arias the same mode distribution (four major, two minor) and in four instances identical keys. There is no evidence that this had a pacific effect. As reduced by Haym and Handel, the plot with its political scheming, long-stored vengeance, amorous quadrilateral (A loves B, who loves C, who loves D), repeated tergiversations and insufficiently motivated unravelling in the last chapter, reads like a cross between Scribe and Agatha Christie. It coils like a boa constrictor round the characters and squeezes the life out of them. Partly as a result of the cuts, they react like puppets obedient to the string. When it is pulled, Cosroe abandons his attempt to manipulate the succession, Emira abandons her hitherto implacable vengeance against the killer of her father, Laodice abandons her love for Siroe without accepting Cosroe, who is presumably a widower, and Medarse abandons his evil and conspiratorial ways. Siroe’s problems are solved, and everyone shakes hands on it. Credibility flies out of the window. Admittedly most opera seria plots collapse at the end; but this is an extreme case. It was an essential element in Metastasio’s ethical approach that the wicked should be converted to an acknowledgement of their misdeeds; hence his almost invariable insistence on a lieto fine, however improbable. Another factor is at work in Siroe, though again Metastasio’s practice is that of the period writ large. Many aria texts do not express the character’s personal response to a situation, but are oblique reflections in the form of gnomic pronouncements or similes that throw no light on the character and hold up the action. There are about ten of them in Siroe. Handel could usually supply suitable music and often took special care to make it exciting, but the dramatic impulse is apt to sag. Joachim Eisenschmidt noted long ago that when Handel inserts new aria texts into old librettos, they are nearly always expressions of strong personal emotion. The two that he added to Siroe’s part, ‘Deh! voi mi dite’ and ‘Deggio morire’, illustrate this clearly and are among the jewels of the score. Here may be another reason why he set only three Metastasio librettos at a time when composers on the continent seemed to be setting little else – and, as Dent remarks in connection with Siroe, all in much the same style. If Siroe leaves a lukewarm impression, it is not due to any falling-off in musical invention. Few of the arias lack some subtlety of detail, and each character (except Arasse) has at least one outstanding creation. We are faced with Handel at the height of his powers struggling with a recalcitrant libretto and an ungainly bunch of characters. The two women are liars, Cosroe a foolish dupe, Medarse a scoundrel, Siroe a congenital underdog. They spend so much time deceiving each other, or being deceived, or both, that none emerges in a strong positive light. Siroe’s predicament is typical of the opera seria hero, forced to do the splits between loyalty to his King and father, despite the buffets he receives from him, and love of the vengeful daughter of the enemy Cosroe has killed. He shows some spirit in the recitatives of the first scene (Cosroe accuses him of pride), but thenceforth he is a passive sufferer, never an instigator. True, he refuses through thick and thin to betray his girl, as she repeatedly taunts him in front of other people, but somehow this leaves an impression of obstinacy rather than strength of character. Handel gives him no   Die szenische Darstellung der Opern Georg Friedrich Händels auf der Londoner Bühne seiner Zeit, 2 vols (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin 1940–41), II, 20f.; reprinted in 1 vol. (Laaber, 1987), 90f.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 93

06/10/2006 14:51:33

94

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

fast arias at all, nothing brisker than Andante. His two Act I arias, both in minor keys, scarcely suggest a hero. In ‘Se il labbro’, his rejection of Laodice’s love, the words are emphatic, but the rhythm, a jerky compound of dotted quavers and triplets running through both sections, reminiscent of ‘Consider, fond shepherd’ in Acis and Galatea, suggests hesitation, perhaps even a touch of guilty conscience, though this could be the result of Handel using handy material from Genserico. In ‘La sorte mia tiranna’ he takes refuge in self-pity and the gloomy key of F minor. The contrasted ideas of the ritornello, a high-stepping upward figure with ever-widening intervals and a rush of semiquavers, generally downwards and soon broken into fragments, compete throughout the A section. The voice’s ever-shortening phrases give the music a breathless, almost querulous air; though towards the end Siroe momentarily rouses himself with a few emphatic octaves. The B section, with more broken phrases, sinks from F major to the bleak realm of A flat minor. The cavatina that begins Act II, the first of Handel’s insertions for Siroe, does suggest a more sympathetic character. It is his first utterance in a major key, a serenely beautiful appeal to the gods in E flat, typical of many such movements for suffering heroes at the beginning of an Act. The phrases still droop, but the major key and the smooth vocal line interspersed with the warbling dotted figure that haunts the later stages of Acis and Galatea, sweeten the flavour of self-pity. Siroe is soon back in the toils as Cosroe mistakes his attempt at suicide for an assault on the disguised Emira. ‘Mi credi infedele?’ expresses a complex of emotions. It begins surprisingly with a smooth E major melody (and an echo of Rinaldo’s ‘Vo’ far guerra’), but the chromatic inflection over a dominant pedal in the sixth bar associated later with the words ‘Chi sa chi t’inganna?’ and the gasped phrases of the B section betray his insecurity. This is confirmed in ‘Fra dubbi affetti’ in tripping Minuet rhythm with a strong undercurrent of irony as, in Laodice’s presence, he calls on his disguised lover Emira to decide his fate. The B section brings more broken phrases and no fewer than six fermatas. Burney condemned the aria as ‘without dignity or passion’. Siroe’s Act III prison scene lifts him and the opera to an altogether higher plane. As so often at all periods, from Almira to Theodora, when Handel finds a character seemingly at his last gasp, he bestows on him some of his profoundest music, often (as here) couched in the sepulchral key of B flat minor, which governs both recitative and aria and strikes in well after Medarse’s bouncy F major aria. The words of the accompagnato are in Metastasio, but the aria ‘Deggio dunque, O stelle’ is Handel’s addition. Each has a striking ritornello (Exx. 12a and b). The plunging violin figures of (a) with its abrupt contrasts of pitch and dynamics descend like the crack of doom; the diminished intervals in bar 8 give eloquence to Siroe’s agony. In the aria Handel employs a texture, angular dotted figures in the top instrumental part interlaced with the voice over whispering repeated chords, used elsewhere for very different purposes. In ‘Will the sun forget to streak’ (Solomon) it expresses serene contentment as the Queen of Sheba tells Solomon that she will never forget the wonders of his court. In ‘O rendetemi il mio bene (Amadigi), without the whispering chords, it expresses desolation and longing. In Siroe its message is of fear and horror (Ex. 13). The creeping bass moves like a funeral march, down and then up, beneath a drooping vocal line.   He even slows up two of them: see below, under Autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 94

06/10/2006 14:51:33

Siroe, Re di Persia

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 95

95

06/10/2006 14:51:35

96

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The violins are in three parts, the first and second doubling the top line in the A section, the second reinforcing the third in the B section, whose initial D flat chord is at once thrust aside as the tonality sinks to end in E flat minor. Siroe’s last aria, ‘Se l’amor’, with all tension relaxed, its graceful three-bar phrases poised against a brilliant unison violin part consisting largely of semiquaver turns interspersed with octaves, is far from negligible. But like all that follows the prison scene it runs the risk of seeming a musical as well as a dramatic anticlimax. Emira’s disguise ensures that she can seldom speak in her own person. Her one solo scene, at the end of Act II, tells us only that she would prefer to live as a shepherdess, the conventional reaction of princesses in jeopardy. Until halfway through Act III, when the plot begins to turn topsy-turvy and the bubble is about to burst, only Siroe knows her true identity. Both the scenes in which she is alone with him, I.iv and II.ii, are concerned with her revenge on Cosroe, and in the second she drives him to attempt suicide. On several occasions he expresses his love for her, but they have no duet (that might have irritated Cuzzoni); the aria in which eventually she expresses her love, ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’, is not only in a minor key but curiously flippant in tone. Handel seems to take a rather cynical view of her character: unscrupulous, untruthful, sycophantic. In Act I she plays a game of multiple bluff. Towards Cosroe she is double-faced, contriving to retain his trust while planning his murder. She seeks to deceive Laodice and tease Siroe at the same time, assuring the former in the latter’s presence that he is in love with her, while admitting in the aria ‘D’ogni

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 96

06/10/2006 14:51:36

Siroe, Re di Persia

97

amator’ that men are often unfaithful. The words are cynical; the music borrows its ingratiating melody from a simile aria in Genserico in which the singer likens herself to a small tree buffeted by the wind. It seems irrelevant, except that in the fifth bar Handel inserts a little byplay between strings and oboes, later associated with the faithless lover’s tears and oaths of constancy which he is on the point of breaking. This animal has claws. Emira’s second aria, ‘Vedeste mai sul prato’, is also ambiguous. Medarse and Laodice rebuke her for denouncing Siroe at one moment and defending him the next. She replies with a strained botanical simile that can be read as a defence of double-dealing: whatever her tongue speaks, her heart is unchanged. Handel goes all out for the simile and paints a wonderfully seductive fresco of flowery meadows. There is no irony in the music. A characteristic figure in bars 3 and 4 of the opening ritornello, extended in that after the A section and again in the B section, no doubt encouraged Faustina (as intended) to captivate the audience with her quickfire embellishment of the word ‘germogliar’ (to sprout or bud). ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ is another sycophantic aria. Having just failed to kill Cosroe, Emira professes her loyalty in a burst of 3/8 semiquavers doubled throughout by the violins. Burney tells us that it ‘long enjoyed the public favour for the natural gaiety of the melody’, but it does not seem particularly gay or particularly interesting. At the end of Act II Emira can at last speak from the heart, only to utter a dramatic cliché. But it allows Faustina and Handel to captivate the ear with an exquisite specimen of a familiar type, in serene E major with a haunting flavour of nostalgia. Here one can agree with Burney: ‘one of the most elegant, beautiful, and pathetic, in all Handel’s works’. Among many happy details are the almost Mozartian flavour of the filigree decoration in the violin line of the ritornellos and the touch of subdominant colour over a tonic pedal, after a long stretch in the dominant, at the second statement of the A section text. Handel’s first shot at this aria, quoted below (Ex. 14a), shows him seizing a secondary idea after an indifferent start to create a minor miracle. In Act III Emira can speak with her own voice, but what she says is not particularly striking. ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ is a somewhat muted love song. The little three-note with varied rising intervals, answered by hiccupping figure in the rhythm downward scale figures in the bass, introduced in bars 8–12 of the ritornello and associated later with the word ‘gioco’ as Emira promises not to deceive Siroe, may be designed to take up the flippant phrase in ‘D’ogni amator’. If so, can we believe her? Does Handel intend us to see Emira as a comic figure? That is just possible, but is hardly consistent with the tone of the plot. ‘La mia speranza’ is a happy sign-off for Faustina, who thus gets the last word (or warble). It makes further use of the rhythm, toying with it in ritornellos and voice part like a cat playing with a mouse. Perhaps that is how Handel thought of Emira. He even gives her a solo in the coro, a quick minuet based on the melody of the aria ‘Auretta vezzosa’ in the early cantata ‘Zeffiretto, arresta il volo’ (HWV 177). Laodice (Cuzzoni), though less of a minx than Emira, is equally skilled at being economical with the truth. She wants to believe that Siroe returns her love, but he

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 97

06/10/2006 14:51:36

98

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

soon disabuses her. Her first aria, ‘O placido il mare’,10 shows her as little less cynical than Emira. The ambivalent text is a defence of inconstancy couched in terms of a not very clear marine simile, but the music is interesting. The ritornello is rich in ideas, used with resource in the body of the aria. The A section is chiefly concerned with the image of a calm sea, but a harmonic side-slip in the third bar, a feint towards the minor distantly prophetic of ‘He was despised’, suggests that things may not be what they seem. It is later linked with the words ‘colpa del vento’, but not till the second statement of the text, after which it looms large and even haunts the B section. The events in Cosroe’s study leave Laodice puzzled and in two minds, but ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ (not surprisingly in view of its source) makes a disappointing end to the Act. The tune is pleasant enough, but Handel was not trying very hard. He dubbed a text from Riccardo Primo on an abandoned aria from Genserico. Laodice comes into her own in one of Handel’s loveliest siciliano laments, set to Metastasio’s celebrated lyric ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’. As one might expect, his heart goes out to a woman compelled to recognise that her love can never be returned. The simple violin accompaniment, with detached high notes like sighs preceding many of the voice’s brief phrases, notably on the repeated ‘tacendo’, combined with the spare chromatically tinged melody and contrasted with its gentle rocking motion, pierces to the heart of suffering. It brings Laodice vividly to life and exposes the comparative superficiality of the other characters. Handel develops the material in both later ritornellos and begins the B section with a brief turn to the relative major with fuller accompaniment over a pedal – a common enough device but profoundly moving in context, throwing into relief the sadness of the A section and the uneasy modulations that follow.11 Laodice next takes refuge in a naval simile. The tune of ‘L’aura non sempre spira’, adapted later for the finale of the D minor Concerto Grosso (Op. 6 no. 10), is pleasant enough, and the piece is well composed, with much cross-talk between violins and bass, openings for Cuzzoni to exercise her liquid throat and a delicious surprise in the ritornello after the A section; but little connects it with character or situation. That may be what Burney meant when calling it ‘unmarked by any peculiar form or expression’. ‘Se il caro figlio’, comparing Cosroe’s treatment of his elder son unfavourably with the guardianship exercised by a Hyrcanian tigress, has much the same qualities and limitations. According to Burney it was one of Cuzzoni’s favourite songs. Leichtentritt rather oddly sees it as an expression of distress. ‘Torrente cresciuto’ is even less personal to Laodice (Metastasio wrote it for Medarse). Though undeniably effective as a vehicle for Cuzzoni’s sparkling coloratura, it scarcely merits Burney’s encomium as ‘perhaps the most elegant, fanciful, and pleasing, of all Handel’s dramatic songs of the bravura kind’. With its sententious text and colourful evocation, rather in Hasse’s manner, of cataracts in the A section and placid waters in the B section it would make an excellent concert aria. Cosroe is, or should be, the fulcrum of the plot, which he sets in motion, like King Lear, by a perverse disposal of his kingdom. For two acts he is presented 10  Handel gave this aria no tempo; it is Allegro in Cluer and later copies. 11  Handel borrowed ideas for this aria from ‘Ogni tua bella stilla’, an Allegro in common time added to Rinaldo in 1717, but treated them very differently.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 98

06/10/2006 14:51:36

Siroe, Re di Persia

99

as a credulous dupe, taken in both by the fawning and flattery of his younger son (there is a good deal more of this in Metastasio) and by the disguised Emira (how did she continue to win his blind trust?), so much so as almost to forfeit credibility. He is supposed to be in love with Laodice, but we hear little about that; he has no love music, and is quite willing to give her up to Siroe in Act II. His relegation is doubtless due partly to the convention whereby basses could be tyrants but seldom lovers, unless like Argante in Rinaldo they are both, partly to the need to give the plum parts to Senesino, Cuzzoni and Faustina, and partly to Boschi’s known limitations. The two excluded arias reflect Cosroe’s gentler side, his gratitude to ‘Idaspe’ in I.xii, his hesitation about punishing Siroe in II.v. Their removal lands him with two anticlimactic exits. At least Cosroe’s three surviving arias, all in minor keys, are direct expressions of his feelings. ‘Se il mio paterno amore’ with its prancing rhythms and unison octaves is typical Boschi bluster, like a cross between Polyphemus and Harapha. Neither of those parts was written for him, but one phrase in the B section anticipates ‘Go, baffled coward’; indeed both arias seem to reflect a memory of the duet ‘Il ciel le piante’ in Giovanni Porta’s Numitore, the opera that opened the Royal Academy in 1720.12 ‘Tu di pietà’, in which Cosroe again plays the heavy father, lambasting Siroe after failing to persuade him to betray Emira, begins like Saul’s ‘With rage I shall burst’ and continues with an echo of ‘O voi dell’Erebo’ in La Resurrezione. It threatens to follow the same course, but is enhanced by rhythmic vitality, a vibrating violin figure and vocal leaps up to an eleventh. Act III brings a surprise. ‘Gelido in ogni vena’, the only slow aria in all Handel’s parts for Boschi, does more than redeem Cosroe’s character. It is a superb depiction of bitter remorse, in Streatfeild’s words ‘a thrilling picture of guilty terror’. The music has something of the flavour of a funeral march, founded on a creeping bass figure that droops chromatically downwards and sometimes migrates to the upper strings. The restless counterpoint of the A section seems to reflect Cosroe wrestling with his guilty conscience, breaking into wild cries up to high F# on the words ‘l’ombra’ and ‘in ingombra di terror’. The bass figure persists in the B section like a jangling nerve that refuses to lie still. The libretto depicts Medarse as a contemptible character, a self-serving hypocrite, but the music does not reflect this. Handel seems content to write jolly music and leave it at that. His three arias, all in major keys, could fit almost any cheerful character. ‘Chi è più fedele’, with another marine simile, fails altogether to reflect the irony of the words, perhaps because Handel, unwilling to waste a beautiful tune and euphonious three-part writing, lifted it from Genserico, merely altering the text. ‘Fra l’orror’ is splendid music, full of lively counterpoint launched from a fugued ritornello (Burney ascribed this to the fact that Baldi was ‘a singer of no great abilities’, which may be a libel). But it is out of place. The cataract of downward scales beneath a high-stepping vocal melody paints a picture of a storm just when Medarse is expressing confidence in his future. There are echoes of ‘Già t’amai’ in Rodelinda (in the same key) and ‘Scoglio d’immota fronte’ in Scipione. ‘Benché tinta del sangue fraterno’, a gigue in common time with triplets, could as well be celebrating a hearty breakfast as a path to the throne stained by a brother’s blood. Handel may have 12  See W. Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, 1959), 334.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 99

06/10/2006 14:51:36

100

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

meant it to suggest callous indifference or perhaps a cocky triumph, but one misses a hint of the cloven hoof. Arasse, Laodice’s brother, plays a decisive part at a crucial point in Act III, but deprived of his arias remains a wraith. The G minor French Overture is particularly fine, especially the first two sections; Handel seems to have commanded a limitless supply of these stately introductions and a whippy fugato on unpromising subjects, with in this case a spirited sequence from tonic to tonic over a succession of 4/2 chords at bar 67. The nimble Gigue in a compound of 12/8 and common time does not seem particularly apt. The fourbar Introduzione was added later, perhaps in rehearsal, to smooth the transition from dance to the solemnity of the temple scene. The eight-bar sinfonia in III.xiii, marching from tonic to dominant, fulfils a similar purpose for the finale. In the arias Handel employs almost every available key except C (major and minor). The first two Acts are strongly orientated towards the flat side, a position reversed in the third, but no overall tonal design is apparent. Burney, as usual paying little attention to the drama, considered Act III ‘greatly to surpass, in musical excellency, the rest of the score’. In the Sketch of the Life of Handel prefixed to his volume on the 1784 Commemoration he singled out ‘Non vi piacque’ and ‘Deggio morire’ for a special encomium. ‘By these two Airs it appears that Handel, who had always more solidity and contrivance than his contemporaries, penetrated very far into those regions of taste and refinement at which his successors only arrived by a slow progress half a century after.’13 Siroe suffers from a certain monotony in plan. Alone of Handel’s operas it has no duet and no ensemble of any kind before the coro. All the solos except one cavatina are in da capo or dal segno form. Apart from six routine bars in the first scene there is only a single accompagnato. The scoring too is sober, comprising strings, oboes (in barely a third of the arias, none at all in Act III, and always in a subsidiary role), bassoon (implied) and continuo, without brass or any type of flute. This may represent an economy measure on Handel’s part. The original Academy was on its last legs, and the season is known to have been sparsely attended.

History and Text There can be no doubt that Siroe was composed in more than Handel’s usual haste. He drew on five of the six Genserico arias in Act I (see Plate 4). Siroe’s first three arias use ideas conceived for the earlier opera and develop them in new directions fitted to Metastasio’s texts. The last two in the Act, which may have been an afterthought, have new texts not by Metastasio, parodied directly on the Genserico music, retaining such of the original words as could be fitted in. Handel wasted nothing. He transferred the overture bodily to Tolomeo and used material from the coro in the finale of that opera. The sixth aria is based on ‘Non ha forza’ in the early cantata ‘Care selve’ (HWV 88). 13  His modern editor’s startling statement (History, II, 753) that most of the music in Siroe is adapted from Flavio betrays a multiple confusion. He must have been thinking of Flavio Olibrio, the incorrect title of Genserico, and the statement is not true.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 100

06/10/2006 14:51:37

Siroe, Re di Persia

101

He completed the score on 5 February 1728 and gave the first performance at the King’s Theatre on 17 February, with the following cast: siroe Senesino (alto castrato) medarse Antonio Baldi (alto castrato) emira Faustina Bordoni (soprano) laodice Francesca Cuzzoni (soprano) cosroe Giuseppe Maria Boschi (bass) arasse Giovanni Battista Palmerini (bass) The Royal Family attended the first night in force and at least six further performances in March and April. In addition, according to a document in the Coke Collection, Queen Caroline bought tickets for the second performance on 20 February. Mrs Pendarves attended a rehearsal, probably on the 14th, and reported to her sister: ‘I like it extremely, but the taste of the town is so depraved, that nothing will be approved of but the burlesque. The Beggars’ Opera entirely triumphs over the Italian one.’14 And on 29 February: ‘The Opera will not survive after this winter ... I am certain excepting some few, the English have no real taste for musick; for if they had, they could not neglect an entertainment so perfect in its kind for a parcel of ballad singers. I am so peevish about it, that I have no patience.’15 The Beggar’s Opera undoubtedly damaged the reception of Siroe. The anonymous author of The Touch-Stone16 rebuked London audiences for flocking to ‘the miserable low scenes’ and greedily swallowing ‘the wretched Dregs of MUSICK, which have occasion’d this incredible Run: while Rhadamistus and Siroe are perform’d to almost Empty Benches’. Nevertheless Siroe had eighteen consecutive performances until 27 April (another was cancelled on 5 March), and later in the season things seem to have looked up. Mrs. Pendarves wrote on 19 March: ‘Operas are something mended within this fortnight; they are much fuller than they have been any time this winter.’17 Handel never revived Siroe, but he made good use of its arias, including many in pasticcios and revivals of other operas, sometimes with altered words: ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ and ‘Benché tinta’ in Tolomeo (1730), ‘Se il caro figlio’, ‘Tu di pietà’ and ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ in Oreste (1734), ‘Torrente cresciuto’ in Poro (1736), ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ and the coro ‘Dolcissimo amore’ in Alessandro Severo (1738). ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ and ‘Vedeste mai’ also appeared in Rossane (1743), and ‘Torrente cresciuto’ and ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ with new text, ‘Che questo core vi possa amore’, in Lucio Vero (1747). Towards the end of Handel’s life two arias were adapted, probably by the younger Smith, for new settings of oratorio airs: ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ for ‘To joy he brightens 14  The date of this letter is doubtful; those given by the editor of the Delany Correspondence (19 January; see note 15) and by Deutsch (29 January) are impossible, since The Beggar’s Opera was first produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 January. Siroe was rehearsed on 14 February (see Gibson, 270). 15  Mary Delany (neé Granville, later Pendarves), Autobiography and Correspondence, ed. Lady Llanover, series 1, 3 vols (London, 1861), I, 160; in Gibson (270–1) but not Deutsch. 16  Wrongly attributed to James Ralph; see Lowell Lindgren, ‘Another Critic namely Samber’, in Festa Musicologica, Essays in Honor of George J. Buelow (New York, 1995), 407ff. 17  Delany, Autobiography and Correspondence, I, 165–6; in Gibson (271) but not Deutsch.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 101

06/10/2006 14:51:37

102

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

my despair (Deborah), ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ for ‘Defend her, Heaven’ (Theodora). The operation seems pointless: neither is an improvement. Various items were performed at concerts, especially in earlier years: ‘Mi credi infedele’ by Mrs Barbier at her benefit, Lincoln’s Inn Fields 5 March 1729; ‘Vedeste mai sul prato’ and ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ by Mrs Turner Robinson at her benefit, Drury Lane 26 March 1729; ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ by Kytch on the oboe at his benefit, Hickford’s 16 April 1729; the Overture at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 10 March 1732 for the benefit of ‘a Widow Gentlewoman under Misfortune’ (she received £22 5s 6d) and at the Academy in Chancery Lane on 17 March 1732 in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day; ‘Tu di pietà’ (a bass aria) by Cecilia Young for the benefit of Topham (dancer), Hickford’s 10 July 1734; ‘O placido il mare’ by Casarini at a Musicians Fund benefit, King’s 14 April 1747. Siroe was staged at Brunswick (in Italian) in August 1730 and revived there on 9 February 1735 (NS). The text followed the London production closely, except that Arasse was given an aria in III.i and ballets were introduced between the Acts. ‘Torrente cresciuto’ became popular in Hamburg, where it featured in Telemann’s version of Riccardo Primo (1729) and Schürmann’s pasticcio Hannibal (1735). There have been few modern productions, the first at Gera in 1925; London did not see Siroe again till 1993. A commercial recording of an American studio performance in 1989 is fatally undermined by lugubrious pacing of the recitatives. They are shortened in an otherwise complete Harmonia Mundi recording (2004) under Andreas Spering.

Autograph Handel’s omission of his usual gathering numbers, except in the early stages of Act III, slightly hinders interpretation of the manuscript (RM 20 c 9). The absence of tempo marks for nine arias is another sign of haste. He was evidently concerned to slow down Siroe’s arias: ‘La sorte mia’ was originally Andante without the larghetto, and he changed ‘Se l’amor’ from Allegro to Andante. The ritornellos of ‘O placido’ gave him considerable trouble; the striking plunge to the minor in the third bar was a later thought. The Genserico fragment (fols 29–36) contains three complete arias, ‘Ho nel seno’, ‘Stimo fedele’ and ‘Son come un arboscello’. The first two have their parodied texts, ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ and ‘Chi è più fedele’ written in (see Plate 4). The third was recomposed as ‘D’ogni amator’ (HG 14), using much of the same material adapted to a modification of Metastasio’s words; the recurring phrase to the words ‘piange giura’ was originally part of a long vocal roulade. There is no music for the recitatives on HG 34 and 37. Handel’s V. pianiss at the segno after the B section of ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ (not in HG) suggests that he wanted the repeat to be quieter than the first statement. The autograph contains fragmented drafts of three arias that were at once abandoned. That of ‘Vedeste mai’ (16 bars) employs the same material, but at a higher vocal pitch and with narrower intervals. Handel uses that of ‘Se il caro figlio’ (34 bars), unchanged at the start and in the same key (E minor), for ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ a little later in Act III. That accounts for the unlikely presence of a B major cadence before the A major of the aria’s new setting. It was copied thus in Ham 1, where Handel

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 102

06/10/2006 14:51:37

Siroe, Re di Persia

103

corrected it by transposing the aria. The first ‘Non vi piacque’ (twenty-four-bar ritornello, not all filled up) is more interesting. Handel changed the key, metre, scoring and texture, but retained one of the principal ideas, figure a in Ex. 14a. It threatened to run away with the original ritornello, occurring at various pitches no fewer than ten times. The final version (HG 67) is much more compact (Ex. 14a and b). The arrangement of the latter part of Act III is confusing. ‘Deggio dunque’, which at first carried the place heading for Scene vii and is followed by a blank verso, seems to have been composed out of sequence. Handel marked it Largo e staccato at the top and Largo assai below the bass (S2 distributed these directions impartially among the Flower parts) and noted the dynamics with meticulous care. The B section of ‘Ch’io mai vi possa’ may have been an afterthought. Folios 85–8, on different paper, are probably an insertion, or rather a substitution covering the last two scenes apart from

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 103

06/10/2006 14:51:38

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

104

the coro. It is not clear what the Introduzione (HG 6), a later addition, is doing on 85 recto, unless Handel jotted it down and later used the same folio for a continuation of Scene xiii. It can hardly have been the original opening of that scene, unless it was planned very differently. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258 contains part of the autograph of Genserico, whose four sections can be reassembled as follows. The extensive recitatives have words but no music. 1. 2.

Tolomeo autograph fols 1–4 Mus. MS 258, pp. 61–72

3.

Siroe autograph fols 29–36

4.

Mus. MS 258, pp. 73–80

Overture Scenes i to part of v with coro ‘Applaudi ognuno’ and arias ‘Quando contento’ and ‘Di pur se il cor’. Remainder of Scene v to opening of Scene viii, as described above. Remainder of Scene viii and Scene ix with aria ‘E già stanca l’alma altera’.

Other Fitzwilliam volumes contain a discarded continuation of ‘O placido’ that originally followed fol. 16 of the autograph, and some sketches possibly for ‘La mia speranza’ (Mus. MS 262, pp. 20 and 21); and the autograph of a violin sonata in G minor (HWV 364, first printed as an oboe sonata), whose finale was a possible source for the 12/8 movement of the Siroe overture (Mus. MS 261, pp. 24–5). The fragment of a copyist’s part for Cosroe’s recitatives in Mus. MS 265, pp. 13–14, has nothing to do with Handel’s opera. The text, from II.xii and III.ii of Metastasio’s libretto, includes lines that Handel did not set.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 104

06/10/2006 14:51:38

Siroe, Re di Persia

105

Librettos 1728 London. ‘Siroe, Re di Persia. Drama per Musica ... Sold at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market.’ Dedication by Haym to the Directors and Subscribers of the Royal Academy of Music. Title page and Dedication in Italian only, Argument and cast in both languages. Handel credited, but not Metastasio. 83 pp., 1–9 not numbered. The stage heading for III.xiii agrees with the autograph, not with HG 96. Evidently produced in a hurry: the coro lacks an English translation, and the preceding stage direction is printed as part of Cosroe’s recitative. There are at least three issues, differing only in typographical details. 1730 Brunswick. ‘Drama per Musica Da rappresentarsi Nel famosissimo Theatro di Braunsviga Nella fiera d’Estate L’anno 1730 ... Wolffenbüttel druckts Christian Bartsch ...’. Bilingual throughout, including title and Argument. Handel is named, but no singers. Place headings for Acts slightly elaborated: that of Act II is Cortile nella Reggia di Seleucia con archi aperti e parco Reale in lontananza (Park in Thier Garten in German text) and that of Act III specifies statues. These were stock sets. Act I ends with a Ballo Moresco, Act II with a dance of gardeners of both sexes. These too came from stock. The one significant change is that Arasse is given ‘Doppo il nembo e la procella’ from Floridante (text unchanged) in III.i. 1735 Brunswick. As last except for changed date and a different aria for Arasse in III.i, ‘Tu ben sa, ho un alma in petto’, perhaps a parody on one of Handel’s. The printer forgot to change the season in the Italian text from summer to winter.

Copies and Editions The performing score, Hamburg MA/1053 (Ham 1), is a straightforward Smith copy. Handel added a few tempo indications, Larghetto to the autograph’s Andante on ‘La sorte mia’, Andante on ‘Chi è più fedele’, Andante in place of Allegro on ‘Mi credi infedele’. Five bars at the end of the B section of ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ crossed out in the autograph are cancelled here, evidently a late change. As noted above, Handel marked ‘Se il caro figlio’ for transposition to G and undoubtedly performed it in that key. Nevertheless it is in A in all sources. Early manuscripts of Siroe are surprisingly numerous. The most interesting, in the Fétis Collection at the Brussels Bibliothèque Royale, was copied by S2 from Ham 1 before it was finalised for performance; it contains the five extra bars (cancelled) in ‘Sgombra dell’anima’. Handel used this hitherto unnoticed copy to make very substantial cuts in the recitatives, affecting nearly every scene and shortening the text by well over 200 lines. This involved frequent modifications to the music, especially at cadences (Plate 5). Since he never revived Siroe, and was soon using its arias to ­ reinforce other operas, the cuts probably date from the time attendances fell off during the 1728 run. None of them appears in Ham 1 (or anywhere else), and they may never have been put into practice. Handel marked ‘Se il mio paterno amore’ for transposition to C minor. There is one telling detail: ‘Torrente cresciuto’ is followed by the rubric Subito la Sinfonia. Handel sought a maximum impact from the ­juxtaposition of E major and C major.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 105

06/10/2006 14:51:39

106

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The Malmesbury score (1728) was copied from Ham 1 by S2, except for the Act II aria ‘Mi credi infedele’ (in the same unidentified hand as the Malmesbury score of Tolomeo). It has no major variants. The Malmesbury Collection also has a Smith copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement. A score in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, written by four German copyists, was probably prepared for the 173018 Brunswick production, but does not reflect that or the 1735 revival since it contains no aria for Arasse. Very full bass figuration is added in the arias, but not the recitatives, as far as ‘Benché tinta’, some of it apparently by a fifth scribe who slightly elaborated the bass line in ‘O placido’. ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ is converted from a dal segno to a da capo aria by cancellation of the ritornello after the B section. The Lennard copy (S1, late 1730s) is very short on instrumental and stage directions, and reduces many dal segno arias to da capo form. ‘Non vi piacque’ has some vocal ornaments in a later hand. The copyist slipped up in I.viii by having Siroe enter con figlio instead of con foglio. Neither this nor the Granville copy (Eg. 2926, S5, late 1740s) has any significant variants. Both contain the Introduzione. A second Smith copy in Hamburg, MA/188 (Ham 2), is an aria collection omitting all recitatives, sinfonias and the cavatina ‘Deh! voi mi dite’ but including the overture in keyboard arrangement and the coro. It was evidently made for a soprano client; Senesino’s six arias (but not Baldi’s) are transposed up by a third, fourth or fifth. Nine dal segno arias are fobbed off with a da capo. Berlin Mus. MS 9054, written by the Coke miniaturist in the same volume as Tolomeo and Lotario, likewise omits recitatives and sinfonias (and the Introduzione). It was copied from the Cluer print, but occasionally adds a tempo of its own. All arias and even the coro have a da capo. Four Aylesford volumes, mostly copied by S2, contain excerpts from Siroe (no complete Flower score survives): overture for keyboard, accompagnato ‘Son stanco’ and ‘Deggio morire’ in RM 18 c 1; Introduzione, accompagnato ‘A te Nume’ and the two Act III sinfonias in RM 18 c 10; incomplete rejected settings of ‘Vedeste mai’ and ‘Non vi piacque’ and Genserico aria ‘Son come un arboscello’ in RM 18 e 11; another copy of the overture for keyboard, ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ on two staves (S3) and ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ in C minor (Kappa) with da capo for voice and harpsichord (unidentified scribe) in RM 18 c 2. BL Add. MS 59795 has yet another S2 copy of the overture for keyboard and fifteen arias and the accompagnato ‘Son stanco’ copied by H6/9 c.1728. Most of the arias, which include none for Medarse or Cosroe, are transposed for mezzo-soprano voice, those for soprano mostly down a third. Senesino’s are either at original pitch or up a tone or a third. Several volumes in the Coke Collection contain excerpts, including early copies of ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ (singer’s part with keyboard accompaniment and some ornamentation) and ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ as a da capo aria (not recognised in Catalogue). The supplement to Cluer from the Shaftesbury Collection (S4) contains only the two accompagnatos and the two Act III sinfonias. An almost complete set of parts for the arias, for string quartet with flute substituting for the voice (necessitating a number of transpositions to keep within the flute’s compass) lacks only the three bass arias, ‘Deh! voi mi dite’ and ‘Fra dubbi affetti’. 18  This date appears on an outer page, but in a later hand.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 106

06/10/2006 14:51:39

Siroe, Re di Persia

107

The Flower parts – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2 – were copied by S2 in the mid-1740s. They omit the overture and secco recitatives as usual, together with ‘Se il labbro’, ‘L’aura non sempre spira’ and the sinfonia in III.xiii, but include the Introduzione, both accompagnatos, the coro and ‘Son come un arboscello’, added for good measure at the end. For once the oboes present no problems. They have no solos and are divided only once, for the last three bars of the ritornello after the A section of ‘D’ogni amator’. Elsewhere they are confined to doubling the first violins in ritornellos. In scores they appear in only eight arias, none at all in Act III, where they are confined to the opening sinfonia and the coro; S2 in the parts adds them in a ninth, ‘Se il mio paterno amore’ and (perhaps without authority) in the Introduzione, doubling the first violins. The cello part makes no mention of bassoons. Cluer published the score (Siroe An Opera) on 13 July 1728, omitting the Introduzione, all recitatives and both sinfonias and giving no instrumentation except on the first two movements of the overture. Some tempos are those of the autograph before Handel modified them. ‘D’ogni amator’ is in the longer A version, as in all copies. Fourteen dal segno arias are reduced to da capo. Walsh and Hare were soon on the ball, issuing a flute arrangement on 3 August, eleven Favourite Songs on 14 September, the Overture in eight parts on 17 December 1730 and in harpsichord arrangement in the same year. ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ appeared on a single sheet c.1728. Chrysander’s, the only full score (1878), is faulty in a number of details. It is not clear why he reduced the Introduzione to the ranks of small print; although crossed out in its odd position in the autograph, it is integral to the performing score and nearly all copies, including the Brussels score. The scoring of ‘Deh! voi mi dite’ – both oboes and first violins on the top stave, second violins on the second – is clearly indicated in the autograph. The same arrangement obtains in ‘D’ogni amator’ (Tutti on the top line), but it makes little difference as the parts are doubled almost throughout. Some slurs and dynamics are missing, notably in ‘Sgombra dell’anima’, besides the pianissimo in ‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ mentioned above, and Adagio (twice) in the B section vocal cadence of ‘L’aura non sempre spira’. HG 37 should be headed Scena xiv, and ‘Se il caro figlio’ should be in G major to remove the tonal non sequitur. In the long stage direction for III.xiii (HG 96), the words ‘con veduta del palazzo reale’ to ‘per quella di Siroe’ are not in the libretto or any Handel source; Chrysander introduced them without authority from Metastasio’s Collected Works, where the set is a temple. Perhaps Handel could not stage a coronation scene in 1728.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 107

06/10/2006 14:51:39

chapter 6 Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

A

long and complex Argument gives the historical background as told by Justinus (the date is approximately 89 bc, but incidents of several years are conflated), adding: ‘Upon this Historical Foundation the following Fiction is form’d, according to the Rules of Probability’ – which are considerably stretched. Tolomeo, King of Egypt, ‘depos’d by his Mother, Cleopatra, lived secretly in Cyprus, like a common Shepherd, under the Name of Osmin[o]’. His wife Seleuce, sent by Cleopatra to Syria, ‘suffered Shipwreck, and was believ’d, by every Body, to have been lost in the Sea; but, in reality, saving her self, and knowing her Husband was in Cyprus, she got over thither, dress’d likewise in a Shepherdess’s Habit, under the fictitious Name of Delia, in order to find him out’. (She has had no success when the opera begins.) Cleopatra then sent her younger son Alessandro to Cyprus ‘with a powerful Army, in order to get Ptolomy into his Hands, altho’ it was really his entire Design to save his Brother, and restore him the Crown’. Meanwhile Meraspe, the King of Cyprus, ‘who, together with his Sister Elisa, resided in a delightful Village, situated in a Maritime Country of that Island ... was in Love with the Shepherdess Delia, whose real Name was Seleuca; and just so was his Sister Elisa in love with Ptolomy, the reputed Shepherd Osmin; and this gives Birth to the several Incidents in this Drama’. Act I opens in a Country by the Sea-side, with a misplaced stage direction (Alexander is helped out of the Sea by Ptolomy, and leans, fainting on a Rock). Tolomeo rails against the sea for depriving him of his wife, and against his mother for doing the same and in addition deposing him in favour of his younger brother. In despair he goes to throw himself into the Sea. A voice from within calls for assistance. Tolomeo sees a man swimming from a capsized landing-craft, helps him out of the Sea and supports him on a rock. He is astonished to recognise Alessandro, the brother whom he believes betrayed him, but decides to spare his life: ‘’Twill be a Pleasure to me to tax him doubly with Ingratitude.’ Elisa, ashamed of her love for a mere shepherd (‘Osmino’), encounters Alessandro and invites him to ‘refreshment’ in a cottage. He declares instant love for her, and goes out with two Damsels whom she has placed at his service. She might welcome his love were she not already obsessed with ‘Osmino’. The set changes to a Champion Country [campagna], with a delightful Village belonging to Araspes, and Shepherds Cottages scattered round about it. Seleuce repulses a perfunctory advance from Araspe, who goes out (without an aria) to welcome Alessandro. She longs for Tolomeo but finds him only in her heart. Elisa invites ‘Osmino’ to take a new lover and exchange country life for a court. Tolomeo asks heaven how he can avenge Seleuce, unburied   Ptolemy VIII, who reigned 117–107 and 89–81 bc. Cleopatra was at once his mother and his aunt twice over, his father’s sister and the widow of his father’s brother.   This and other stage directions are missing from the English version of the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 108

06/10/2006 14:51:39



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

109

and neglected, and punish his mother and brother. Feeling tired, he goes to sit down and composes himself to sleep. Seleuce enters and addresses a disconsolate aria to the fountains and breezes. As she is going off, she steps first towards Ptolomy, who lies a-sleep. She thinks she recognises him, but is interrupted by Araspe, who comes in upon them, mistakes the purpose of her approach to Tolomeo, whom he threatens to kill, and denounces her as wanton and worthless. She calls on Tolomeo to wake up and save himself and runs away. Tolomeo, waking, thinks it all a dream and is astonished at Araspe’s anger. He denies that he is Delia’s lover, whoever she may be – he loves someone much fairer. Araspe spares him, but warns him to make himself scarce and beware a lover’s jealousy. Tolomeo, alone, longs for Seleuce’s shade to reappear. The scene of Act II is a Country, with a delightful Village, as above. Elisa asks the breezes where her beloved is. Tolomeo, now desperate, reveals his identity. Elisa is complacently pleased to find him no mere shepherd. Araspe, after rebuking Tolomeo for not clearing out, allows Elisa to convey him to ‘Delia’ to discover if he is telling the truth (presumably about whether he loves her), and tells her to spare him if he is innocent. Elisa begs Tolomeo to confide in her, but he prefers to die and, like Araspe, departs without an aria. Elisa does not know whether to love or pity him and contrasts the happiness of the birds with her own conflicting emotions. It is now Seleuce’s turn to ask assistance of the breezes. As she is going off she meets Elisa and Tolomeo, who greets her by name and tries to embrace her. Fearing for some reason that he will give himself away, Seleuce pretends not to recognise him, rebukes his presumption and goes out. Tolomeo is overwhelmed with confusion. Elisa offers him her hand and assistance in regaining his throne. He refuses: Seleuce, alive or dead, is his only love. Alessandro proposes to Elisa. She tells him to kill Tolomeo first: she sets a high price on her love. Alessandro prefers to restore Tolomeo to his rightful throne, but his attraction to Elisa disturbs his peace of mind. In A Wood Seleuce, searching for Tolomeo and calling him by name, is answered by him within echoing her words, but they miss each other. Araspe meets Seleuce and twice goes to embrace her; she pushes him off. Her cry for help brings in Tolomeo, and both admit their identity. Seleuce begs Araspe’s pity, but he orders her to be conducted to Elisa and Tolomeo to be fettered. He is put in Chains by Araspe’s Guards. Husband and wife say farewell in a duet: though doomed to die, each will never forget the other. Act III. In a Closet in the Apartments of Araspes Alessandro learns from a Letter of Cleopatra’s death and tells Araspe that he and Tolomeo must return to Egypt. Araspe says that Tolomeo is in his power and offers to put him to death. Alessandro prefers him to be kept in custody. Araspe concludes that Alessandro wants Tolomeo dead but not the responsibility of killing him, and decides to plan his death so that the blame falls on Seleuce. Elisa tells Seleuce that she will save Tolomeo’s life on condition that he marries her (Elisa), and that Seleuce conveys this message to him. When she does so, Tolomeo rejects the bargain, and Seleuce feels disconsolate. He hints to Elisa that he would rather die than marry her. She explodes with the rage of a woman scorned and threatens to have Seleuce killed first. Tolomeo invites the guards to kill him. The set changes to a Wood, where Alessandro waits for his Egyptian cohorts, intending to make them swear allegiance to Tolomeo. Seleuce is heard calling from within, and presently appears between two Guards, apparently being led to execution.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 109

06/10/2006 14:51:39

110

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The Guards flee. Alessandro calms Seleuce’s fears, proclaims his loyalty to Tolomeo, hails her as Queen, and goes out to deal with Araspe. She hopes for peace at last. The next scene (no change of set indicated) finds Tolomeo alone, with a Cup of Poison, and Guards. Raging against his mother, brother, Araspe and Elisa, he drinks the poison, given him by Elisa, and throws away the cup. Bidding Seleuce not to grieve for him, he goes to set [sit] himself, and falls down in the middle of an aria. Araspe and Alessandro enter, and afterwards Seleuce and all the others. Araspe proudly displays Tolomeo’s body to Alessandro, who furiously threatens ruin to his kingdom. Araspe, unconcerned, proposes to marry Seleuce. Elisa says she has had Seleuce put to death, but (to atone for this mistake [errore]) substituted a sleeping draught for Tolomeo’s poison. To general astonishment Tolomeo wakes up. Alessandro presents Seleuce to Tolomeo, and they embrace and sing a love duet. Alessandro summons Tolomeo to his throne, and the opera ends with a cheerful coro. Neither Araspe nor Elisa utters a word; their fate is not disclosed. The source of this libretto is C. S. Capeci’s Tolomeo et Alessandro, set by Domenico Scarlatti and produced at the private theatre of Queen Maria Casimira in Rome in 1711. The main lines of the plot and the motivation are much the same, except that Capeci has an additional character, Dorisbe, daughter of the Prince of Tyre, who fell in love with Araspe when he was a refugee at her father’s court. Araspe promised to reciprocate, but on returning to Cyprus to regain his throne fell for the disguised Seleuce. Dorisbe followed him disguised as Clori, a female gardener, but he pretends not to recognise her and then repudiates her (paralleling the situation of Arsace and Elmira in Handel’s Partenope). There are thus three characters in pastoral disguise, and the amorous intrigues and cross-purposes are more complex. It is Dorisbe, set on by Araspe, who gives Tolomeo the ‘poison’, derived from a narcotic vegetable in the garden. Tolomeo drinks it after ‘Stille amare’, a full da capo aria, but before it takes effect he has a long scene with Elisa ending with her repentance. Araspe tries to kill himself on hearing of Seleuce’s reported death. The characters then realign themselves: Alessandro pairs off with Elisa, Araspe with Dorisbe. Haym’s removal of Dorisbe simplifies some of the complexities, but creates a number of awkward transitions. Of Capeci’s forty-six aria and duet texts (Scarlatti omitted one for Tolomeo after ‘Stille amare’ and set another, for Seleuce in the last scene, as a coro) Haym and Handel retained fourteen, four of them with some changes; these include ‘Mi volgo’, which is Capeci’s ‘Amor, che tu lo sei’ with the word order changed. They severely abridged the parts of Alessandro and Araspe, as shown in Table 5. The result – and doubless the intention – was to equalise the roles   Scarlatti’s score, of which a complete copy was discovered at Belton House in Lincolnshire in 1984, is described by Malcolm Boyd in Studies in Music History presented to H. C. Robbins Landon on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Otto Biba and David Wyn Jones (London, 1996), 9–20. Boyd points out that Handel’s response to the texts he retained is very different from Scarlatti’s. For example, Scarlatti’s setting of ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’ is much more elaborate and extroverted than Handel’s cavatina, with frequent alternations between Presto e forte and Adagio e piano, and his ‘Voglio amore’ varies scoring and metre as well.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 110

06/10/2006 14:51:39



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

111

Table 5 Capeci/Scarlatti

Haym/Handel

Seleuce

9(8) arias

Elisa

7 arias

2 duets

6 arias

Dorisbe

5 arias

1 duet

—

Tolomeo

8(7) arias

1 duet

6 arias

Alessandro

6 arias

1 duet

3 arias

Araspe

8 arias

1 duet

3 arias

Total

43 (41) arias

3 duets coro

25 arias

2 duets

7 arias 2 duets

2 duets coro

assigned to Handel’s three star singers, especially the two ladies; but it unbalanced the drama, most conspicuously as it concerns the two brothers. Alessandro’s desire to restore Tolomeo to his throne and his love for Elisa are more central to Capeci’s libretto, as his title indicates. Haym/Handel aided confusion by ruthlessly shortening Capeci’s dialogue: his libretto runs to 1,705 lines against Haym’s 653. Hence the action, sometimes far-fetched in Capeci, becomes inconsequent and occasionally obscure, for example in the early part of Act III, where Haym, besides changing the location from Campagna con villa to a closet in Araspe’s apartments (Capeci’s entire action takes place in the open air), began with a scene for Alessandro and Araspe that occurs later in Capeci’s act. If Tolomeo is the weakest of the librettos in which Haym collaborated with Handel, Capeci was to some extent responsible. The plot falls between the pastoral and the dynastic types of opera. The pastoral setting is a pretence – the characters regardless of their disguises behave just like those in a typical sexual-political imbroglio – but it gives rise to an almost unbroken flow of invocations to nature and simile arias from the natural world. It is perfectly possible, as Handel showed elsewhere, for such texts to contribute to the drama by illustrating a character’s predicament, but too often in Tolomeo they have only an oblique reference to the action and leave it where it stands. Capeci’s libretto is loosely constructed. He makes little attempt to obey the exit convention, perhaps not fully established so early in the century; no fewer than nineteen of Scarlatti’s arias leave the singer still on stage. Handel remedies this in part, but entrances and exits are often casual and unmotivated. Araspe twice and Tolomeo and Seleuce once each depart in the middle of a scene without an aria. The sense of stasis is increased by the fact that the plot’s most dynamic figure (apart from Araspe), the unscrupulous matriarch Cleopatra, who controls the destiny of Tolomeo and Alessandro and is indirectly responsible for Seleuce’s shipwreck, never appears. The Egyptian characters are at loggerheads with a shadow. Handel’s score is uneven. He seems to have given less thought than usual to concentrating the dramatic conflict, and is not wholly successful in differentiating the roles of his two leading ladies. Both address breezes, birds or flowers on the slightest provocation. The four inserted arias (as distinct from replacements) – ‘Quell’

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 111

06/10/2006 14:51:39

112

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

onda’ in I.ii, ‘Voi dolci aurette’ in II.i, ‘Quanto è felice’ in II.ii and ‘Aure, portate’ in II.iii, the first three for Faustina, the fourth for Cuzzoni – tell us little about the characters. Rarely does the tension build up from scene to scene. There are numb passages in Act II. Act III, with the notable exception of Araspe’s aria near the beginning and Tolomeo’s last scene, falls off in quality. The conclusion is more than usually perfunctory, leaving Alessandro, Elisa and Araspe in the air. Nevertheless, if inspiration elsewhere is fitful, when a promising situation catches his attention Handel responds with his usual panache. Tolomeo contains three superb scenes, one in each act, from Tolomeo’s ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’ to the end of Act I, from ‘Dite, che fa’ to the end of Act II, and Tolomeo’s suicide attempt in Act III, that would be the making of any ordinary opera. Tolomeo is a damp hero. He begins and nearly ends the opera by attempting suicide and does a fair amount of complaining in between, besides dozing off on stage. Unable to confront the agent of his misfortunes, his mother, he appears as the plaything of a malignant fate. Of the ten movements in his part (other than his contribution to ‘Dite, che fa’) – six arias, two accompagnatos and two duets – all but two, ‘Torna sol’ at the end of Act I and the final love duet, are in minor keys, and the great majority in slow tempos. He has only two fast arias, neither of which represents Handel at his best. Elsewhere, however, he rises very high. He makes a good start. The exuberant F major overture lacks the usual dance movement, leading in a sudden switch to the tonic minor of his despairing accompagnato. The voice’s diminished intervals, starting with a minor seventh, set up a fine tension, unfortunately dissipated by a long stretch of explanatory secco and a routine aria. The cavatina ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’ as Tolomeo composes himself for sleep is such a beautiful example of the Scarlattian siciliano that one wishes it were longer. The violins’ first two phrases, upward leaps of an octave and an eleventh followed by a weary descent to tonic and dominant, echoed each time by the bass, are a perfect symbol for his depression. At the end he falls silent on a deceptive cadence, leaving the strings to regain the tonic, by which time (as the autograph’s direction makes clear) he is asleep. ‘Torna sol’ at the end of the act, addressed to the shade of his lost wife, is perhaps the most beautiful aria in the opera, in that mood of mingled sadness and serenity so often sounded by Handel in such a situation. A chromatic touch in the ritornello hints at the ache in Tolomeo’s heart, and exquisitely interwoven string parts in murmuring slurred semiquavers support his brief appealing phrases. ‘Se un solo’ in Act II, sung in Elisa’s presence after Seleuce’s refusal to recognise him, reasserts his love for his wife, accompanied by a florid violin part. The first phrase is firm enough, but the situation would seem to require a more emphatic, less plaintive response. No sooner have husband and wife been reunited after the echo scene than Tolomeo is clapped into chains by the jealous Araspe. The situation replicates that at the corresponding point in Rodelinda, and Handel ends the act with a duet in the same mood, tempo and key (F sharp minor) so similar to its predecessor that he was able to exchange them in revivals. It is difficult to decide which is the finer: both share the same rich but pellucid texture, vocal imitations and bitter-sweet suspensions, avoiding excessive resource to honeyed thirds and sixths. Happy details include a new viola part in the ritornello after the A section. There

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 112

06/10/2006 14:51:40



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

113

is a flavour too of another outstanding movement in the same key, Cleopatra’s ‘Se pietà’ in Giulio Cesare. Tolomeo appears to be free from his chains by III.iii. After a scene in Araspe’s apartments with each lady in turn he summons the guards and lets off a rocket of an aria, proclaiming himself as firm as a rock. ‘Son qual rocca’ goes through the motions of defiance, with long ritornellos (twenty-four bars at the start), stamping crotchets and bursts of low-pitched coloratura; but it is too obviously a display piece for Senesino, not convincing as music or drama. Handel dropped it after the original run. Tolomeo’s final scene on the other hand is one of the most profound in any Handel opera. It has all the markings of a prison scene, couched in the ‘prison’ key of B flat minor (compare Almira III.xv, Rodelinda III.iii, Siroe III.vii, Lotario II.iv and the first two versions of Tamerlano III.i) but apparently takes place in the ‘remotest part’ of a wood. In many details it anticipates Orlando’s mad scene and recalls Bajazet’s suicide in Tamerlano – aptly, for Tolomeo is convinced that he is dying. The accompagnato, denouncing each of his tormentors in turn in jagged declamatory phrases and diminished intervals over hammered string chords, ranges far and wide in tonality, launched by an abrupt drop from C major to B flat minor, and including an enharmonic modulation towards the end. The shift from G to E major (Adagio) as his thoughts turn to the wife he thinks he is leaving, is a wonderful moment. The aria ‘Stille amare’ is even more impressive. The long ritornello has a grisly flavour, the detached quaver chords over a creeping bass illustrating perhaps the slow working of the drug (Ex. 15). Its many ideas recur in various modified forms in a different order during the aria in unrelieved minor tonality and continue to supply material for the F minor passage that does duty for a B section. The written-out da capo collapses after nine bars as Tolomeo struggles for breath and falls silent on an alien note in the middle of a phrase, leaving the strings, as in ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’, to supply a lingering cadence. After this the love duet seems merely verbose and the coro in minuet rhythm, despite the reappearance of the horns, more than usually perfunctory. One detail is perhaps worth noting: for four bars the soprano line is divided, Seleuce (Cuzzoni) alone taking the top A. Handel seems to have had difficulty in balancing the parts of the two ladies. They generally sing one after the other, and their tendency to draw comparisons with some element or inhabitant of the natural world produces a certain sameness where a more positive reaction to their predicaments might have quickened the drama. Several arias in both parts not only lapse into the conventional but leave an impression that Handel was thinking more of his obligations to the singer than to the plot. Seleuce (Cuzzoni), the more passive, is endowed with the more characteristic music. Like Tolomeo she has little to do except suffer the slings and arrows; her one positive action, her refusal to recognise her husband in II.iv – she has no reason for this, since Araspe is not present – is little more than a device to prevent the plot runnning out too soon. She has two lovely arias in Act I, both reflecting personal response combined with glances at her assumed profession as a shepherdess. The short drooping phrases and lilting rhythm of ‘Mi volgo’ with pedal points in both sections and a flute doubling the strong violin line, evoke her loneliness, not without a touch of self-indulgence. ‘Fonti amiche’ looks deeper into her aching heart,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 113

06/10/2006 14:51:40

114

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

thanks partly to the minor key and partly to the delicious scoring, especially in the opening bars. Violins and recorders in thirds echo the voice and each other over a bass that alternates between cellos alone and tutti, with repeated changes of texture and register and a false cadence towards the end of the A section. The aria strongly foreshadows ‘Verdi piante’ in Orlando; the situation and the material are similar, the key and scoring the same, and the recorders make a late first entry with an identical phrase in thirds. Seleuce’s one Allegro aria (as against Elisa’s four), ‘Aure, portate’ in II.iii, has little character and was a late substitution, no doubt as a counterweight to Elisa’s appeal to the same breezes at the beginning of the act. But ‘Dite, che fa’ is an aria of striking originality, not only attractive in itself but an action piece that advances the plot. In the A section, introduced by a long ritornello in which muted upper strings in three parts engage pizzicato cellos and basses (without bassoons or continuo) in amiable conversation, Seleuce appeals to the sylvan deity to reveal the whereabouts of her beloved. The B section develops into a duet manqué as Tolomeo’s voice off-stage echoes her phrases (with subtle variations). For a time they play a game of involuntary hide and seek in the darkness of the wood. In a few bars of excited recitative Seleuce recognises his voice, and they finally meet. The episode closes with a brief reference to the A section, varied and differently scored, sung by the ‘wrong’ voice in the ‘wrong’ key, the action continuing in recitative with Tolomeo’s arrest. The fascination of the piece is increased by the scoring; only in the contracted ritornello after the A section is the full orchestra employed, including oboes and bassoons and

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 114

06/10/2006 14:51:41



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

115

unmuted bowed strings. There is a faint suggestion, in the warbling string figures and the flexibility of form, of a very different scena in F, ‘Dall’ondoso periglio’ in Giulio Cesare. Handel seems to have lost interest in Seleuce in Act III. ‘Senza il suo bene’ is a limp simile aria in which she likens herself to a turtle-dove, scarcely redeemed by the cross-rhythms of the ritornello. ‘Torni omai’ has more vitality, thanks to the flipping rhythm of the main theme (the dawn of hope?) and a nicely varied ritornello after the A section, but suffers from an excess of sequences. Elisa’s first four arias are strangely impersonal, invoking waves, leaves, flowers, breezes and birds – but it is not she who is pretending to be a shepherdess. They might almost be concert pieces designed to feed Faustina’s dexterity in dealing with trills, intricate rhythms and ornamental flourishes. ‘Quell’onda’ is certainly a contrast to Seleuce’s music in Act I, but Elisa’s reflections about murmuring waves leave no clear picture of her character. ‘Se talor miri’, turning the simile to a flower, with which she caps Seleuce’s ‘Mi volgo’, is equally unresponsive, though the music, based on sharp dotted rhythms and copious trills, is pretty enough. It replaced a direct address to Osmino which survives in the autograph. The same features permeate ‘Voi dolci aurette’, the long cavatina with which Elisa begins Act II. The hesitant rhythm, hauntingly deployed in arias like ‘O caro mio tesor’ in Amadigi, gives the piece a certain charm, aided by occasional interrupted cadences. In ‘Quanto è felice’ the constant resort to avian trills and warbling divisions threatens to become tiresome. Elisa comes to life in ‘Il mio core’, where she can give direct expression to her feelings and reveals something of her unamiable character. The B section takes up the rising sixths of the ritornello, inverts them, varies the intervals, and adorns them with trills. The aria recalls at a distance the temper of Alceste’s ‘Gelosia, spietata Aletto’ in Admeto, in the same key of G minor. It is not clear why Handel doubles the voice with the violins almost throughout, an expedient he more often used to support weaker singers. Faustina surely did not need it. ‘Voglio amore’ in Act III declines into otiose triplets and sequences. ‘Ti pentirai’ is Elisa’s best aria, an outburst of thwarted passion, all threats and vocal gymnastics, making great play with the word ‘crudel’, first to rising fifths, then to rising octaves. The rushing semiquaver figuration of the violin part, though conventional in angry pieces, is very effective. Elisa is more convincing as a woman scorned than as a commentator on the natural world. Alessandro plays a more prominent part in Scarlatti’s opera, where his anxiety to support his brother is more fully realised. Handel cut him down, presumably to make more room for his three principals, and he emerges as a rather spineless figure. On first catching sight of Elisa, and scarcely out of the sea, he declares his love in ‘Non lo dirò col labbro’ in a catchy little aria (Burney called it ‘an elegant ballad’) that won later fame in a sentimental arrangement as Silent Worship. Though written out in full, it is in effect a monothematic da capo aria with a B section of only four bars on the same material venturing as far as the dominant. The tune, which Handel plugs by doubling the voice with most of the violins in unison or at the octave, haunts   Heinichen in Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728) gives three settings of this text, without mentioning the source, to illustrate different styles of composition. They do not include Handel’s or Scarlatti’s; presumably he composed them himself.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 115

06/10/2006 14:51:41

116

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the memory, but there is no depth of emotion – aptly enough, since Alessandro’s feelings can only be superficial at this stage. They fail to develop during the opera, and finally fizzle out. The jolly tune of ‘Pur sento, O Dio’ is quite inadequate as an expression of his alarm when Elisa tells him to kill Tolomeo if he wants her love; the chromatic dotted figure in the third and fourth bars is too weak a counterweight. His accompagnato at the start of Act III has an expressive introduction (Largo, G minor) on which Handel might have built; but Alessandro’s reaction to his mother’s reported death is casual, even if he had no high opinion of her. His following aria is negligible. The conflict between his attraction to Elisa and his desire to support his brother is never given full expression. Araspe at least is a positive figure. Villain he may be, but he has the courage of his convictions – or rather his emotions. This is a typical Boschi part, rumbustious in style with a leaning towards flat minor keys. All three of his arias have a sinewy power that gives ballast to the score. ‘Respira almen’, almost all in two parts with the voice doubling the instrumental bass, is the least distinguished, though it prefigures ‘Presuming slave’ in Samson. ‘Piangi pur’ is a splendid aria, full of cunning resource, combining a gruff main theme in stalking octaves, elements of ground bass, and a simultaneous set of near-variations for unison violins in furious semiquavers. The B section on the same material increases the pressure by varying and expanding the span of the voice’s menacing upward leaps in the A section. Araspe’s jealousy grows by what it feeds on. ‘Sarò giusto e non tiranno’, on a text of cynical casuistry, is scarcely inferior. In key (A major), metre (alla breve) and rhythmic energy it bears a strong resemblance to Lotario’s ‘S’egli ti chiede’ in Flavio. The voice is more independent of the bass than in most of Handel’s arias for Boschi. The spirited two-movement overture, which Dent considered ‘by far the best item’ in the opera, was composed not for Tolomeo but for the aborted opera Genserico, which began like Scipione with a Roman triumph. The fugue, on an exceptionally long subject whose bounding triadic gait resembles the movement in the F major organ concerto (Op. 4 no. 4) also used for a chorus in Alcina, is full of contrapuntal ingenuity and makes light of the difficulties presented by the inability of the horns to venture far from F major. Handel also drew on the chorus that followed the Genserico overture, with changes in words and music, for the coro at the end of Tolomeo, returning to the key and instrumentation of the overture. Otherwise, except in ‘Fonti amiche’ and ‘Dite, che fa?’, the scoring calls for no special mention. The figuring of the bass in bar 44 of ‘Dite, che fa?’, an aria in which the harpsichord is silenced, may indicate the use of a lute. Although there is no firm tonal plan, the choice of keys is balanced; all those in regular use except C major appear at least once, including eight in the minor mode. John H. Roberts cites borrowings from Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst in ‘Se talor miri’, ‘Quanto è felice’, ‘Son qual rocca’, ‘Torni omai’ and ‘Tutto contento’, and more questionably in ‘Se un solo’ and ‘Dite, che fa?’ All are either incipits or other brief phrases.

  ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Telemann: An Inventory’, GHB 1, 154–5.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 116

06/10/2006 14:51:41



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

117

History and Text It is likely that both the libretto and the score were put together in a hurry. The printed libretto contains an unusual number of anomalies (see below). With the Royal Academy tottering towards closure Handel was under great pressure. In the early months of 1728 he created two complete new operas, Siroe and Tolomeo, after composing a good deal of music for a third, Genserico, and abandoning it during the winter. Not surprisingly, fragments from that torso reappear in the two later operas. Handel may have chosen the subject of Tolomeo because it would require little expense on scenery; a couple of old sets would meet the case. Handel completed the score on 19 April 1728 and produced it at the King’s Theatre on 30 April; there were seven performances. He revived it twice, on 19 May 1730 ‘with several Alterations’ (seven performances; ‘the Opera being short, it will not begin till Seven o’clock’ in place of the usual 6.30) and on 2 January 1733 with further alterations (four performances). The casts were: 1728 1730 1733 Senesino tolomeo Senesino (alto castrato) Antonio Bernacchi (alto castrato) Strada seleuce Francesca Cuzzoni Anna Strada (soprano) (soprano) elisa

Faustina Bordoni (soprano) alessandro Antonio Baldi (alto castrato) araspe Giuseppe Boschi (bass)

Antonia Merighi (contralto) Francesca Bertolli (contralto) Annibale Pio Fabri (tenor)

Celeste Gismondi (soprano) Bertolli Antonio Montagnana (bass)

The new cast in 1730 necessitated a number of changes, but Handel went far beyond the essential minimum, making drastic cuts in the recitatives and turning the last two acts into a pasticcio: of their nineteen numbers only four remained intact, ‘Quanto è felice’, ‘Se un solo’ and ‘Dite, che fa?’ in Act II and Tolomeo’s final scena in Act III. Four arias were cut, ‘Dolci aurette’ (except its initial ritornello, retained as an introduction to Act II), ‘Voglio amore’, ‘Senza il suo bene’ and ‘Son qual rocca’, the three weakest items in Act III. Recitatives apart, Act I suffered only one substitution, necessitated by the tenor Araspe. Fabri sang ‘Prigioniera ho l’alma’ from Rodelinda in place of ‘Respira almen’, ‘Io già t’amai’, also from Rodelinda, in place of ‘Piangi pur’, and ‘A suoi piedi’ from Tamerlano in place of ‘Sarò giusto’. The tenor voice also required a substitute coro, ‘Doni pace’ from Flavio. For the alto Elisa Handel wrote a shortened version of ‘Se talor miri’, down a fourth in C major, and replaced ‘Il mio core’ with ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ from Siroe and ‘Ti pentirai’ with ‘Già che morir non posso’ from Radamisto, changing the first line to ‘Giacché sprezzata io sono’. Merighi sang ‘Quanto è felice’ down a tone in D major, and no doubt ‘Quell’onda’ too at lowered pitch. The other three characters could have retained their original music.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 117

06/10/2006 14:51:41

118

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

However Bertolli sang only one of Alessandro’s three arias, ‘Non lo dirò col labbro’. ‘Pur sento’ was replaced by ‘Bella gara che faranno’ from Tamerlano, ‘Se l’interno’ by ‘Benché tinta del sangue fraterno’ from Siroe with the first word changed to ‘Se vien’. Strada as Seleuce sang ‘Io vò di duolo in duolo’, composed for her benefit in Giulio Cesare a month earlier, in place of ‘Aure, portate’, and ‘Parmi che giunta in porto’, a 1727 insertion in Floridante, in place of ‘Torni omai’. Strangely she was allowed only the A section of ‘Fonti amiche’. Seleuce and Tolomeo had two substituted duets, ‘Io t’abbraccio’ from Rodelinda in Act II and ‘T’amo, sì’ from Riccardo Primo in Act III. In all Handel imported twelve pieces from eight different operas. The duets fit the context well enough, but many of the new arias are barely appropriate and ‘A suoi piedi’ makes no sense at all. In 1733 the voices returned to their 1728 pitch, but Handel restored only three of the original numbers, ‘Piangi pur’, ‘Ti pentirai crudel’ and the coro, while retaining the 1730 additions ‘Io vo di duolo’, ‘Parmi che giunta’ and the two duets. He introduced five alien arias, all with considerably greater verbal changes than the 1730 changes. In place of Araspe’s first and last arias Montagnana sang ‘Ti prepara, ardito amante’ and ‘Core si generoso’, both from Scipione (‘Tutta rea’ and ‘Braccio si valoroso’ respectively). Bertolli again sang Alessandro, but with two different arias, ‘V’adoro, O luci belle’ in II.v and ‘S’è ristretto fra catene’ (= ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’) in III.i, both from Riccardo Primo. Gismondi as Elisa had one substitute aria, ‘Ai guardi tuoi’, also from Riccardo Primo, in II.v. The 1730 recitative cuts were maintained and even increased: III.ii and iii, already deprived of their arias, were omitted altogether. Neither revival involved the composition of new music, apart from a line or two of recitative. The veteran Jane Barbier sang ‘Se un solo’ and ‘Tiranni miei pensieri’ at her Lincoln’s Inn Fields benefit on 5 March 1729, when the programme also included ‘the Eccho’ (i.e. ‘Dite, che fa’); the other singers were Mrs Wright and Mrs Chambers. ‘Mi volgo’ was sung by Mrs Turner Robinson at her Drury Lane benefit on 26 March 1729, and by Susanna Arne (the future Mrs Cibber) at the Little Haymarket on 13 and 15 October 1733. Kytch, ‘First Hautboy to the Opera’, played ‘Fonti amiche’ at his Hickford Room benefit on 16 April 1729. Philip Rochetti’s benefit concert at the same venue a fortnight later included ‘Non lo dirò col labbro’ and “No, no, my Heart”, from an Italian song out of Ptolomy’. The overture featured at both these concerts, at the Academy in Chancery Lane on 17 March 1732, ‘Being the Anniversary of St. Patrick, Patron of Ireland’, at the Little Haymarket on 4 February 1734, at the King’s Arms on 11 October 1756, and in a Castle Society concert at Haberdashers Hall on 16 February 1758. Mrs Wright included ‘Non lo dirò’ at her joint benefit at Drury Lane on 19 April 1732. Late in the century ‘Dite, che fa?’ and ‘Torna sol’ were published separately as favourite songs sung by Miss Abrams and Tenducci respectively. Handel planned to introduce ‘Dite, che fa?’, without the echoes, as a da capo aria in the first Act of the pasticcio Jupiter in Argos in 1739, but subsequently omitted it. He (or more probably the younger Smith) adapted ‘Piangi pur’ to the text of ‘Cease, ye slaves’ in the 1755 revival of Theodora, and to ‘Hateful man!’ in Deborah the following year.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 118

06/10/2006 14:51:41



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

119

Unlike most of Handel’s Royal Academy operas Tolomeo received no contemporary production in Germany. There have been about a dozen revivals in modern times, starting at Göttingen in 1938. The first in Britain, by the pioneer Alan Kitching, was at Abingdon in 1973, the first in the United States at College Park, Maryland, in 1987. The opera has been recorded twice, conducted by Richard Auldon Clark (1996, not quite complete) and Howard Arman (the Halle 1996 production).

Autograph (RM 20 d 1) Handel foliated the gatherings of the first two Acts in separate series till near the end of Act II. The first gathering (fols 1–4), lifted from the abandoned Genserico, contains the overture as transferred to Tolomeo, a sketch of a dance movement, and the opening of a chorus modified for the Tolomeo finale. Insertions are fols 17–19 (‘Se talor miri’), 37–8 (‘Aure, portate’), 51–4 and 73 (fragment with the last three bars of the ritornello of ‘Stille amare’). ‘Se talor miri’ replaced a complete aria, ‘Addio, Osmino addio’ (Andante 3/8 F major); it is difficult to see why Handel discarded a direct expression of feeling in favour of a convoluted simile aria. It cannot be restored, since he used the material in ‘Dite, che fa?’ Similarly ‘Aure, portate’ replaced an untexted aria for Seleuce (A section only, 3/8 A minor) adapted at once for Elisa’s G minor ‘Il mio core’ in the next scene. There are signs of considerable rearrangement at the end of Act II and beginning of Act III (fols 51 et seq.). The duet ‘Se il cor’ replaced something now lost. Act III began originally with Araspe’s recitative ‘Se non era’ and aria ‘Sarò giusto’. Handel added or substituted Alessandro’s accompagnato and aria and the intervening secco (HG 57–9) at the same time as the duet. ‘Torna sol’ (HG 29) has an extra eight bars in the middle of the B section, found elsewhere only in RM 18 c 3, the Flower parts and the Walsh prints. Handel changed the tempo of ‘Quell’onda’ from Andante to Allegro, and that of ‘Quanto è felice’ from (?)Allegro to Andante. The recitatives in the autograph differ from HG in a number of details, since Chrysander gave preference to the performing score, altered for revivals. The autograph of a modified setting of ‘Se talor miri’ in C major for alto (Merighi in 1730) is in RM 20 d 2 (fols 57–8). It is shortened and simplified, the initial ritornello reduced to four bars, and followed by a contracted version of Tolomeo’s recitative ‘Conosco ben’ dating from the same occasion.

Librettos 1728. ‘Tolomeo, Re di Egitto. Dramma per Musica. Da Rappresentarsi Nel Regio Teatro d’Hay-Market ... Sold at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market’. 63 pp. Title and Dedication in Italian only. Argument and cast in Italian and English. Haym’s fulsome Dedication to the Earl of Albemarle laments the decline in the popularity of Italian opera in London and hopes that his Lordship, one of the Academy’s directors, will use his influence to stem it. The text of the libretto has a number of anomalies. The aria ‘Aure, portate’ (II.iii), a late substitution, has no English translation. ‘Torni omai’ (III.v) is faced by a translation not of the words set by Handel but of the aria ‘Stelle, vi credo o no?’ in the corresponding place (III.viii) in Capeci’s libretto. The

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 119

06/10/2006 14:51:41

120

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

English version of the dialogue in III.iii and iv translates two passages from Capeci that do not appear in the Italian and were not set by Handel. On the other hand Handel did set seven lines from Capeci’s I.x (‘E voi sempre’ – ‘stelle voi siete’ I.v., HG 24) that are in no London libretto. Nor are the words ‘Per sollevarti’ in I.iv (HG 19, version A), also from Capeci. Of eight passages printed in virgole, one in Act I, seven in Act III, Handel set two: in I.ii (‘E con armate navi’ – ‘trovai nell’onda’, not in HG, cut before performance), and III.iv (‘Sia ricondotto’ – ‘empio spietato’ (HG 68). 1730. Title in English and Italian, preceded by English half-title. Wording as 1728 but ‘Per Tomaso Wood in Little-Britain’ in place of last line. viii + 39 pp. The substituted numbers, listed above, have no English translation. An added line of recitative, ‘Così vuole, e t’impone un Rege amante’ (for which no music survives) is printed as if it were the beginning of the Rodelinda aria ‘Prigioniera’ in I.vi. Heavy cuts in the recitative, affecting I.i–v, II.ii and iv, and III.ii and iv, are scarcely calculated to clarify the plot. ‘Fonti amiche’, without its B section, retains a superfluous da capo. 1733. For this revival the 1730 libretto was reissued with an eight-page insertion, ‘Additions and Alterations in Ptolomy, King of Egypt’, including the new cast. The changes are carefully cued in and an English translation supplied. III.ii and iii, which lost their arias in 1730, are cut completely. A line for Alessandro, ‘Alle proposte tue gelo d’orrore’ is added in II.v before Elisa (misprinted Cli) sings ‘Ai guardi tuoi’. Alessandro replies with ‘V’adoro, luci belle’, omitting the recitative ‘Affetto che ragione’. The words ‘S’hai pure vita ancora’ are inserted after ‘consorte amata’ in Tolomeo’s accompagnato ‘Inumano fratel’; they are in no musical source. The two lines before ‘Torni omai’ in III.v, omitted in 1730 (?by mistake), are restored.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1059) was copied in the first instance by Smith after Handel had added ‘Se talor miri’ and ‘Aure, portate’ in the autograph but removed the eight additional bars in the B section of ‘Torna sol’. It was used again in 1730 and 1733, on both occasions acquiring many insertions and modifications. Its present condition is something of a palimpsest. The items substituted in 1730 and not retained in 1733 were subsequently removed, but all the 1733 additions are present as well as survivors from 1730. The numerous cuts made in 1730 are indicated by cancellations or paste-overs and sometimes by stitching. Many joins and cadences in recitatives were altered for the revivals, sometimes more than once. Occasionally changes made in 1733 have obliterated the 1730 text; for example, at the end of the recitative on HG 27, where the 1730 version with its new line is not to be found. Some markings on fol. 75 recto appear to refer to the conversion of ‘Dite che fa’ for Jupiter in Argos. The insertions, written by Smith except where otherwise stated, fall into three groups: (i) Before performance: fol. 11, shortened recitative in I.ii, replacing a version with the nine-bar setting of the lines in virgole in the libretto, and possibly 85–7, the duet ‘Se il cor’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 120

06/10/2006 14:51:41



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

121

(ii) 1730: fols 50–2 (Hb 1), the recitative ‘E pur così in un giorno’ and aria ‘Io vo di duolo in duolo’ (HG Appendix 89 version A and 90–1) lifted from the performing score of Giulio Cesare, the recitative replaced on a paste-over by a new setting of the recitative ‘S’io potessi sperare’ (HG Appendix 89 version B) written by Smith; 81–4 (S1) the Rodelinda duet ‘Io t’abbraccio; 127–32 (S1), the Riccardo Primo duet ‘T’amo, sì’; 141–6 (unidentified copyist) misplaced, ‘Parmi che giunta in porto’ (HG Appendix 92–5) lifted from the performing score of Radamisto, where it ended Act II in 1728, though composed for Floridante the previous year. (iii) 1733: fols 36–8, ‘Ti prepara, ardito amante’ = ‘Tutta rea’ in Scipione transposed from B flat to A; 60–4, ‘Ai guardi tuoi’ from Riccardo Primo with a rewritten end to the preceding recitative taking in the new line for Alessandro; 67–9, ‘V’adoro, luci belle’ from Riccardo Primo, transposed from F to G; 91–4, ‘S’è ristretto fra catene’ (S1) = ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’ in Riccardo Primo; 95–8, ‘Core si generoso’ (Smith and H6/9) = ‘Braccio si valoroso’ in Scipione with a modified version of the previous recitative ending in D major. The new text for Tolomeo is written above the notes in the Scipione autograph. The copies, except Lennard, follow the 1728 version. Malmesbury (hand unidentified, early 1728) was copied from the performing score before it received its final touches. The nine extra bars of recitative in I.ii and the eight extra bars in the B section of ‘Torna sol’ had already been eliminated, but the words ‘Per sollevarti’ are missing from the recitative in I.iv (HG 19, version A) and the recitative ‘E dove, e dove mai’ in I.v (HG 24) consists of only the first three lines (four bars) as they appear in the 1728 libretto; the longer version was never performed. A score in the Naples Conservatorio, attributed in an old hand to Porpora, was copied by S2 as far as bar 8 of Tolomeo’s accompagnato ‘Inumano fratel’ (III.vi, misprinted iv in HG) and from bar 9 to the end of the opera by Smith junior. It gives the same text as Malmesbury, copied from Ham perhaps in 1728. Royal College of Music MS 904 (S2) gives the 1728 version complete except for ‘Orgoglioso elemento’ and the secco recitatives and may date from the same year, or a little later, perhaps early 1730s. Portions of three Aylesford volumes in the British Library RM 18 c 3, fols 43–110, RM 18 c 10, fols 189– 204, and RM 18 c 1, fols 64–76 (all S2, c.1732–38) together constitute the complete score except the secco recitatives and one aria (‘Il mio core’). The items however are in no sort of order. They are copiously annotated by Jennens, possibly in connection with the preparation of the Flower parts, which appear to derive from this source. Jennens supplied cross-references for each piece from one volume to another (they were clearly already bound) and supplemented the scoring, which S2 seems often to have guessed; he marked for strings only many movements that require oboes in all main sources. But he must have used the autograph, for ‘Torna sol’ has the eight extra bars in the B section. Shaftesbury (c. 1737–39), a collaborative effort by S4 (Acts I and II) and S2 (Act III), has links with both autograph and performing score. It is very sparing of stage directions. Although the text is that of 1728, one or two details reflect revivals. The recitative ‘V’è ancor’ (HG 29) begins with an odd mixture of the 1728 and 1730 versions, and the recitative of II.vii cadences in E to introduce the 1730

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 121

06/10/2006 14:51:42

122

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

substituted aria ‘Io già t’amai’. The complete Flower score (S2) has the appearance of an early source (it includes the extra bars in the recitative of I.ii from the autograph and those in ‘Torna sol’), but is dated by paper and watermark to the late 1740s. It has fuller stage directions than other copies. S2 evidently used the 1728 libretto as well as the autograph. Jennens as usual added some corrections and bass figures. Lennard (Smith, late 1730s) is the only copy to include music from the revivals. It contains many but by no means all of the shortened and modified recitatives (none of the substituted arias) and must derive ultimately from the performing score. Most of the dal segno arias have a da capo, omitting the return bars, a lazy habit found in other Smith copies and Walsh prints. ‘Voi dolci aurette’ is Andante, as in the Flower parts and a copy in a miscellaneous volume in the Coke Collection. A volume in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Mus. MS 9054, c.1735) contains a copy of the 1728 score without recitatives (apart from ‘Madre, pagasti’) in the microscopic English hand found in other volumes in Berlin, the Coke Collection and elsewhere. It has a few minor variants; ‘Stille amare’ is Andante, the bass of the coro is marked for organ. Some dal segno arias have a da capo, but the source was not the Walsh print. BL Add. MS 59795, with the bookplate of Edward Stephenson, has an aria collection in the hand of H6/9 (active 1726–34) preceded by a keyboard arrangement of the overture (Smith junior). It was copied for a client with an alto or mezzo-soprano voice. The arias, seven of which are missing, carry the names of the original singers, but all those in the parts of Seleuce and Elisa are transposed down by a third or fourth. The one Araspe aria present, ‘Respira almen’, is in the original key with the voice part up an octave. The two duets are in their original keys and clefs. Add. MS 31564 has ‘Madre, pagasti’ and III.vi, voices and bass (omitted in the HughesHughes Catalogue). Miscellaneous volumes in the Coke Collection include ‘Voi dolci aurette’, ‘Senza il suo bene’ and ‘Non lo dirò’ in A (two copies, one in the hand of Martin Smith), all in short score, mostly dating from the mid-1730s. The Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland has S5 copies of the two duets (c. 1744). Keyboard transcriptions of the overture as published by Walsh are in RM 18 c 1 (S2), RM 18 c 2 (H4) and a Malmesbury volume (S2), as well as in Add. MS 59795. The Flower parts (S2, c.1741–43) – violin 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboe 1 and 2 (including flute and recorder), and cembalo (the two movements with horns are omitted) offer an odd selection. Besides the overture, coro and secco recitatives, four arias (‘Il mio core’, ‘Se l’interno’, Voglio amore’ and ‘Senza il suo bene’) and the accompagnato ‘Madre, pagasti’ are missing. The source was not any of the surviving complete scores, but S2’s composite RM 18 c collection, before Jennens supplemented the scoring. This accounts for the presence of the extra eight bars in ‘Torna sol’ and the peculiarities of the instrumentation. The oboe parts are meagre and often demonstrably wrong. In six arias (‘Torna sol’, ‘Pur sento’, ‘Piangi pur’, ‘Sarò giusto’, ‘Ti pentirai’ and ‘Torni omai’) they are silent where the autograph or performing score or both require their presence. In ‘Aure, portate’ S2 guessed wrong again, supplying oboe parts where the autograph specifies unison violins. These are all movements in which Shaftesbury gives no instrumentation. In ‘Voi dolci aurette’ the oboes double the first violins throughout; they should fall silent while the voice

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 122

06/10/2006 14:51:42



Tolomeo, Re di Egitto

123

is singing. Otherwise they are confined as usual to ritornellos, and always play in unison with the first violins except in bars 75–82 of ‘Dite, che fa?’ where they are divided, another error. Both flutes double the first violins in ‘Mi volgo’. There is no part for violin 3 or reference to it in the viola part. The bassoon is mentioned only in ‘Dite, che fa?’ and by implication in ‘Fonti amiche’. An incomplete set of parts (flute and string quartet) in the Coke Collection covering twelve arias and the two duets (two unrecognised copyists) was no doubt intended for domestic use. The flute takes the voice part, generally at pitch but sometimes in the higher octave. A number of arias are transposed to suit its capacity. The second flute in the duets is in the viola part. Add. MSS 34074–5 contain first and second violin parts of the overture with an extra final movement, a minuet arrangement of the final coro in Siroe. Walsh issued twelve Favourite Songs in September 1728 and a slightly different selection three years later. The scoring is often incomplete, and most dal segno arias have a da capo. Some arias are followed by a flute part in a transposed key. ‘Torna sol’ includes the extra eight bars and must have been taken from a pre-performance copy. ‘Ptolomy an Opera As it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden’ (which it was not) appeared about 1737 but was probably issued earlier with a different title page. It contains all the set pieces, including the overture and coro but no recitatives of either type. The old plates were used for items in the Favourite Songs. The duet ‘Se il cor’ is Largo. Walsh published a flute arrangement in November 1728 and the overture in keyboard transcription in October 1728 and in parts in December 1730, the latter with the addition of a short Largo sinfonia (used in the 1730 revival of Scipione) and the March HWV 346, later known as ‘the March in Ptolomy’. They are not to be found in any score of Tolomeo, but may have been used to supplement the overture in one or both of the revivals. The Lennard Miscellanys volume (Mus. MS 798) contains a Smith copy of the March. A French edition of the overture in four parts appeared in Paris about 1749. Chrysander’s score (1878) is based almost exclusively on the performing score, with unfortunate results. When introducing new arias for revivals Handel altered not only the preceding cadence but sometimes the opening of the next recitative, for example in II.iv (‘Delia, attendi un momento’, HG 38) and I.vi (‘V’è ancor’, HG 29). While rightly omitting the substituted pieces, Chrysander printed the revised versions from the performing score. This produces such anomalies as an aria in B flat following a cadence in D major (HG 44; the cadence dates from 1733). His treatment of the 1730 cuts is eclectic in the extreme. He sometimes prints the uncut original, sometimes the cut passages in brackets, and sometimes omits them altogether. In II.ii (HG 33–4) Handel cut three passages in 1730; Chrysander omits the first two and brackets the third. The recitative ‘Veggio che m’ama’ (HG 12) was three bars longer in 1728, cadencing in C sharp (minor); Chrysander prints the 1730 version. He omits many slurs and dynamics, for example in ‘Respira almen’ and ‘Quanto è dolce’, and a number of significant stage directions. He sometimes brackets the names of the instruments as conjectural when they are explicit in the autograph, for example in ‘Pur sento’ and ‘Se il cor’. The nonsensical parte on HG 65 comes from the performing score and belongs to the 1730 revival, when Seleuce’s aria was omitted.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 123

06/10/2006 14:51:42

124

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Since this chapter was written Tolomeo appeared (in 2000) in the new HHA edition, edited by Michael Pacholke. Two massive Appendices enable the complete scores of the 1730 and 1733 revivals to be viewed or performed without recourse to those of the many operas from which Handel then borrowed. This, however, results in the displacement of one autograph source (RM 20 d 2) from its expected position in the list of sources at the head of the Critical Report (it appears thirty-six pages later). Some of the dates given for secondary manuscripts are not in accordance with the paper evidence, which, for example, places the Flower score in the late 1740s.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 124

06/10/2006 14:51:42



chapter 7 The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734

S

trictly speaking, there was no Second Academy – or if there was, the Opera of the Nobility when it occupied the King’s Theatre in 1734 had a greater right to the title. The original institution was still functioning in early 1729, when a general meeting was held on 18 January ‘in order to consider some Proposals that will then be offered for carrying on Operas; as also for disposing of the Effects belonging to the said Academy’. Lord Percival (later Earl of Egmont), one of the few who attended a hurried assembly, wrote in his diary that, in addition to pursuing members who had not paid their subscription, they agreed ‘to permit Hydeger and Hendle to carry on operas without disturbance for 5 years and to lend them for that time our scenes, machines, clothes, instruments, furniture, etc’. Burney mentions a contract and says that Handel ‘entered into an engagement with Heidegger to carry on the musical drama at their own risk’, and that they each put up £10,000 – which is beyond belief. Mainwaring confuses the issue, and some later writers, by saying that the engagement was for three years; but his information, unlike Egmont’s, came to him at second hand. Lord Shaftesbury, a long-time friend and patron of Handel, also gives the figure as five years; and the Handel–Heidegger management did in fact run for five years, until the end of the 1733/34 season. Robert D. Hume, while dispersing some hot air, chastises Reinhard Strohm among others for assuming a binding contract between the Academy on the one part and Handel and Heidegger on the other. All the evidence, considered in the course of this chapter and Chapter 15, suggests that this was indeed the case, though no such document has been discovered. According to Rolli, Lord Bingley, a previous Deputy-Governor of the Academy, was at the head of the project; he may have been one of the six or seven subscribers mentioned, but he was soon out of the picture for he died in 1731. The meeting was in favour of engaging Farinelli as a priority and Cuzzoni if available, and called in Heidegger, granting him £2,200 for the hire of the theatre, scenery and costumes, Handel £1,000 for the composition of an opera (‘by himself, or by whomsoever he may choose’), and £4,000 for singers, two at £1,000 plus a benefit. Heidegger had for commercial reasons wished to retain the two queens, whereas Handel opted for a fresh (and cheaper) company ‘if only to have the opportunity of composing new works for new performers’. Lord Shaftesbury, who must have known the facts, says that the enterprise was under the patronage of the Princess Royal, Anne, the eldest daughter of George II. She had been Handel’s pupil and was always a strong supporter. Her name crops up constantly in this connection, for example in Lord Hervey’s Memoirs   Deutsch, 845.   ‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, M & L 67 (1986), 347–50 and note 17.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 125

06/10/2006 14:51:42

126

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

and Zamboni’s correspondence. It is possible that she, and perhaps other members of the Royal Family, contributed financially as well. The King continued to pay the £1,000 bounty with which he had favoured the Academy. On 4 February 1729 Handel left London for Italy ‘with a Commission from the Royal Academy of Musick’ to hire singers. His full itinerary is not known, but he visited Venice, Siena, Bologna, Rome and Naples, and probably Parma and Florence. Wherever he went, he would have attended opera houses, and he certainly collected scores and librettos for future use. We learn something of his negotiations from Rolli’s letters to Senesino and Riva and Swiney’s to Richmond. He went first to Venice, where he tried to engage Farinelli, whom he must have heard in Leo’s Catone in Utica. But Farinelli, who ‘has more than once express’d an unwillingness to go to England, for fear our Air should hurt his Voice’, refused to see him or return his visits, though Handel called on him three times. Swiney, however, did not think that Farinelli would please ‘people of True Taste’ in London: ‘He is certainly a very valuable man, but he wou’d be much more so, were he to moderate his Manner’. Handel left Bologna for Rome on 29 March (NS), having engaged the tenor Annibale Pio Fabri, who according to Swiney ‘sings in as good a Taste as any Man in Italy’, and a soprano called Somis. Swiney reported that there were hopes of Bernacchi (‘the very best Singer in the World’), Carestini and the contralto Antonia Merighi, and if Handel got either of the castratos and Merighi he would ‘make a formidable Company’. Sure enough (27 May) he made a company which ‘(taken in the Lump) will far exceed your late one and cou’d The Faustina creep into it ... cou’d exceed in Worth any other company assembled from all the Singers in Italy put together’. Not many took this view of the Lump. In the event Bernacchi replaced Carestini, who was to have his innings later, and Somis fell out. In Rome Handel revived some old acquaintances. Cardinal Ottoboni ‘received him with the greatest marks of Friendship and Esteem’ (Shaftesbury), but according to Mainwaring Handel refused a cordial invitation from Cardinal Colonna and the offer of ‘a very fine picture of his Eminence’ on learning that his Eminence was harbouring James Stuart, the Old Pretender. After probably visiting his mother in Halle and passing through Hanover he reached London on 29 June. Three days later the Daily Journal listed the singers and gave them a hearty puff (their salaries come from other sources): Bernacchi £1,200, Merighi £800, Strada £600, Fabri £500, Bertolli £450, Riemschneider £300, Fabri’s wife Anna Bombaciara (who did not appear in the operas) perhaps £150. Tenors were still on the cheap   Lowell Lindgren, ‘Musicians and Librettists in the Correspondence of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni’, Research Chronicle of the Royal Musical Association 24 (1991), letters 317, 324, 328. See also R. G. King, ‘Two New Letters from Princess Amelia’, HJb 40/1 (1994/95), 170–1.   Strohm (Essays, 170–1) gives a probable list.   Deutsch, 242–6; Gibson, 380–2.   Colonel E. Burges, English Resident in Venice, to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State 9/20 January 1730 (Gibson, 282–3).   Cristina Antonia Somis, sister of the violinist-composer G. B. Somis. See Lindgren, Zamboni, letters 369f.   There is no firm evidence that he went to Hamburg to engage Riemschneider.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 126

06/10/2006 14:51:42

The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734



127

side, and Strada, said later to have improved greatly under Handel’s tuition, was not yet a star. In October they sang in private for the Royal Family, accompanied by Handel on the harpsichord, and were approved. The eighteen-year-old Princess Amelia described the audience as ‘mightily satisfied’ and said of Strada: ‘It is a charming voice and [we] think her beyond all her predecessors’. Rolli was typically sarcastic: ‘If everyone were as well satisfied with the company as is the Royal Family, we should have to admit that there has never been such an Opera since Adam and Eve sang Milton’s hymns in the Garden of Eden’. He admitted that Merighi sang intelligently, and Bernacchi was quite exceptional, but described Strada as ‘simply a copy of Faustina with a better voice and better intonation, but without her charm and brio’ (6 November). He also supplied a useful piece of information by telling Riva (3 September) that [Giacomo] Rossi was now ‘Handel’s poet’,10 the only known reference to any of Handel’s literary assistants at this period. The season opened on 2 December 1729 with Lotario. The new company inspired two detailed responses. Except for disagreement about the bass, they are easily reconcilable and they offer as vivid a picture of a Handel opera in contemporary performance as we are likely to encounter. Mrs Pendarves to her sister after attending the final rehearsal: Bernacchi has a vast compass, his voice mellow and clear, but not so sweet as Senesino, his manner better; his person not so good, for he is as big as a Spanish friar. Fabri has a tenor voice, sweet, clear and firm, but not strong enough, I doubt, for the stage; he sings like a gentleman, without making faces, and his manner is particularly agreeable; he is the greatest master of musick that ever sung upon the stage. The third is the bass, a very good distinct voice, without any harshness. La Strada is the first woman; her voice is without exception fine, her manner perfection, but her person very bad, and she makes frightful mouths. La Merighi is the next to her; her voice is not extraordinarily good or bad, she is tall and has a very graceful person, with a tolerable face; she seems to be a woman about forty, she sings easily and agreeably. The last is Bertol(l)i, she has neither voice, ear, nor manner to recommend her; but she is a perfect beauty, quite a Cleopatra, that sort of complexion with regular features, fine teeth, and when she sings has a smile about her mouth which is extreme pretty, and I believe has practised to sing before a glass, for she has never any distortion in her face. Rolli to Riva after the third performance (9 December): Bernacchi failed to please on the first night, but at the second performance he changed his method and scored a success. In person and voice he does not please as much as Senesino, but his great reputation as an artist silences those who cannot find it in them to applaud him. The truth is he has only one aria in which he can shine ... Strada pleases mightily, and Alto [Handel] says that she sings better than the two who have left us, because one of them [Faustina]   King, ‘Two New Letters’. 10  ‘Poeta’, fancifully rendered as ‘accredited bard’ in Deutsch.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 127

06/10/2006 14:51:42

128

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

never pleased him at all and he would like to forget the other [Cuzzoni]. The truth is that she has a penetrating thread of a soprano voice which delights the ear, but oh how far removed from Cuzzona! Fabri is a great success. He really sings very well. Would you have believed that a tenor would have such a triumph here in England? Merighi is really a perfect actress and that is the general opinion. There is a certain Bertolli, a Roman girl, who plays men’s parts. Oh! my dear Riva, if you could only see her perspiring under her helmet – I am sure you would fall in love with her in your most Modenese fashion! She is a pretty one! There is also a bass from Hamburg, whose voice is more of a natural contralto than a bass. He sings sweetly in his throat and nose, pronounces Italian in the Teutonic manner, acts like a sucking-pig, and looks more like a valet than anything. Oh! he is fine, I can tell you!

Handel now had to supply all the operas. While he composed at least one fresh one every season (seven in this five-year period), he mounted more revivals, often three or four to start the season and run in new singers, a practise he had begun in 1727/28. There had been eighteen revivals during the nine seasons of the Royal Academy; the five Handel/Heidegger years saw twenty; one pasticcio, one old opera each by Ariosti and Bononcini and seventeen by Handel: Giulio Cesare and Tolomeo twice, Scipione, Partenope, Rinaldo, Rodelinda, Tamerlano, Poro, Admeto, Flavio, Alessandro, Floridante, Ottone, Sosarme and Il pastor fido once. They were all altered in one way or another, some of them very considerably, and not only to accommodate different voices.11 Another resource of which he made more frequent use was the pasticcio. Pasticcios of course were nothing new, either in London or on the Continent, but hitherto Handel had uttered only one, Elpidia in 1724. Now he was to supply seven more: Ormisda in 1729/30, Venceslao in 1730/31, Lucio Papirio Dittatore in 1731/32, Catone in Utica in 1732/33, and no fewer than three, Semiramide riconosciuta, Caio Fabricio and Arbace, in 1733/34. They have been taken to pieces, digested and reconstituted in a remarkable study by Reinhard Strohm.12 Handel’s method in constructing them varied, but he based them all on familiar librettos by Zeno or Metastasio, made up of the work of many contemporary composers – chiefly Vinci, Hasse, Porpora, Leo, Orlandini and Giacomelli – and composed or adjusted the recitatives. Very occasionally he rewrote an aria, generally when adapting it for a different voice: Strohm quotes a striking example from Semiramide riconosciuta where he adjusted an alto castrato aria for a bass (octave transposition was not an option for Handel13). Where possible he introduced arias already in the singer’s repertory. The process often involved transposition, shuffling around of arias from one act or singer to another, and parodying of new texts. The results did not always make perfect sense; the object was to show off the singers rather than to produce a coherent drama. Apart from Ormisda, the first and the only one other than Elpidia to be revived, Handel’s pasticcios were not particularly popular 11  See Handel’s Operas I, for the operas described there. 12  ‘Handel’s pasticci’, Essays, 164–211. 13  Except in dire emergency, for example the 1736 Ariodante and Cyrus in Belshazzar.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 128

06/10/2006 14:51:42



The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734

129

– Venceslao and Lucio Papirio Dittatore, which according to the Colman Diary ‘did not take’, had only four performances; but like revivals they required less work than new compositions, and could be used to begin a season or serve as stopgaps when a new opera, such as Partenope in February 1730 and Ezio in January 1732, failed to draw the public. They did have one important feature in common. The sources were all contemporary and often represented the composer’s most recent work, employing the new ‘Neapolitan’ style, now fashionable all over Europe. Handel had introduced this from Vinci in Elpidia, and gradually fused it with his earlier more contrapuntal manner in a unique blend that was to permeate all his later operas. Writing to Riva in December 1729 about the production of Lotario, Rolli (after damning the opera) reported that Heidegger ‘has won great praise for his dresses and not a little for his scenery’. It is noticeable that the operas of these years showed more care for the visual aspect than those in the Academy period, when the vast outlay on star singers undoubtedly abridged the element of spectacle.14 Of the thirty-four operas produced by the Royal Academy, only four – Handel’s Radamisto, Admeto and Riccardo Primo and Porta’s Numitore, with which the Academy opened – were advertised as with new scenery and decorations, whereas four of Handel’s seven in 1728–34 – Lotario, Poro, Ezio and Orlando, together with the 1731 revival of Rinaldo and the serenata Parnasso in festa – were so equipped. Another possible influence was the growing popularity of the elaborate pantomimes mounted by Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Elizabeth Gibson identified the one scenic designer associated with this period whose designs have survived, John Devoto. Two by him were lost ‘between the Opera House and the Middle of St. Martin’s Lane’ on 14 February 1728.15 Heidegger offered a guinea reward for their recovery ‘and no Questions ask’d’. As Gibson notes, they could only have been intended for the next season, which turned out to be 1729/30. Both Lindgren and Gibson reproduce some of Devoto’s designs from a sketchbook containing ninety-two drawings in the British Museum (see Plates 3b, 6 and 7), many of them copied from Italian originals by Filippo Juvarra and Pietro Righini. They could have been intended for Handel’s operas of the early 1730s. Indeed, Lindgren ties six of them to the six sets required in Ezio. The 1729/30 season was only moderately successful. The King’s bounty on 27 July was ‘to be applied ... towards enabling the undertakers of the opera to discharge their debts’. Mrs Pendarves was not impressed by Ormisda (‘very heavy [compared] to Mr. Handel’s’) and in the same letter (4 April): ‘Operas are dying, to my great mortification’. Rolli as usual struck a sour note, writing to Riva on 12 June: ‘I shall barely answer you on the matter of that Coppia eidegrendeliana and their worthless operas. Because in truth they succeed no better than they deserve.16 The musicians will be 14  See L. Lindgren, ‘The Staging of Handel’s Operas in London’, Handel Tercentenary ­Collection, ed. S. Sadie and A. Hicks (London, 1987), 93–119. 15  Gibson, 263–6. 16  Riva had thanked Zamboni on 12 April for his full report on ‘the pitiable operas. Marquis Orso [Handel] merits what he is getting! ... He is a guitarist who always plays the same chord’ (Lindgren, Zamboni, letter 245) – a truly startling judgement.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 129

06/10/2006 14:51:43

130

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

paid, and that is all that can be done. I perceive besides that either there will be no operas in the new season or there will be the same Company, which is most certainly going from bad to worse. Strada is liked by the very few who wish to forget Cuzzona.’ In the summer Handel negotiated with Colman17 and Swiney, asking for one man (to replace Bernacchi) and one woman, a soprano equally ­proficient in male and female parts. No such woman appeared. They tried again for Carestini, but were forced to go back to Senesino, offering him 1,200 guineas as their final offer. He played hard to get and pushed them up to 1,400. Riemschneider was replaced by Commano, who was no improvement. Handel, after perhaps angling for Montagnana, had picked him up in London as a last resort.18 Handel had no luck with basses at this time; unfortunately this damaged the integrity of Poro. According to Shaftesbury the Town had expressed a desire for Senesino, and welcomed him ‘with the greatest applause’ when he appeared in the Scipione revival on 3 November, the first night of the 1730/31 season. Poro was a considerable success, but the most spectacular production was the Rinaldo revival on 6 April ‘With New Scenes and Cloaths’ and so many ‘Great Preparations being required to bring this Opera on the Stage’ that there was no performance on the previous opera night. The 1731/32 season saw a gradual expansion in theatre activity. Handel and Heidegger mounted six revivals, including Ariosti’s Coriolano, one pasticcio and two new operas, of which Sosarme was much more popular than Ezio. The new singers were the indifferent castrato Campioli, the tenor Pinacci with his useful contralto wife Bagnolesi, and the bass Montagnana, whose cavernous voice made an immediate impression and coloured the scores of Ezio and Sosarme. Perhaps the most prophetic event, though it had nothing to do with the opera house, was the staging of Esther by the Chapel Royal choir under Bernard Gates at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on 23 February, Handel’s forty-seventh birthday.19 This stimulated a pirated production of the same work at the Great Room in Villars Street on 19 April; whereupon Handel revised and greatly expanded the score and performed it at the opera house without action on 2 May. It was played six times, and according to the Colman Diary was very full. Acis and Galatea then underwent a similar process. Perhaps inspired by the reception of its first public stage performance a year earlier (13 March 1731), a new English opera group20 brought it to the Little Haymarket on 17 May as an 17  Francis Colman, British Envoy Extraordinary in Florence. The so-called Colman Opera Diary in the British Library is wrongly attributed to him. 18  Ominously Commano was to sing the part of Discord in Lampe’s Britannia at the Little Haymarket in November 1732. He appeared in other English stage pieces in the next year or two. 19  See W. Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, 1959), 203–4. 20  According to the traditional account, stemming from Burney, the group was led by the haberdasher Arne and his son the composer. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘J. F. Lampe and English Opera at the Little Haymarket in 1732–23’, M & L 78 (1997), 502–31, give the credit to Lampe, who had tried to get Amelia staged by Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields a year or two earlier and doubtless conducted his own opera. This does not exclude the possibility that the Arnes were involved. Susanna Arne (later Mrs Cibber) sang the leading role; and the lawsuit (after Arne senior’s death) that inspired the Milhous–Hume article proves that the younger Arne was Lampe’s partner a year later, in May 1733.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 130

06/10/2006 14:51:43



The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734

131

English Pastoral Opera. Handel again retaliated, expanding the score with additions from his Naples serenata of 1708 and some new material, and gave four macaronic performances in the opera house at the end of the season – as a serenata without action but before a strikingly picturesque backcloth. Bononcini then entered the lists by announcing his own Pastoral Entertainment at the King’s Theatre for 24 June, whereupon Aurelio del Pò, Strada’s husband, refused permission for her to appear in it, and it seems to have been a failure. Probably in late May an anonymous author published an often quoted pamphlet, See and Seem Blind ... 21 comparing Italian opera unfavourably with English and poking fun at oratorio and the Italian singers’ struggle with the English language.22 ‘I left the Italian opera, the House was so thin, and cross’d over the way to the English one,23 which was so full I was forc’d to croud in upon the Stage, and soon that was throng’d.’ This can only have been on 25 April, when Lampe’s Amelia clashed with the third performance of Handel’s Flavio revival. The oratorio he heard was Esther. He was a Handel supporter, ravished by the two duets in Sosarme, and confessed that he liked ‘one good Opera better than Twenty Oratorio’s’. In a passage not quoted by Deutsch he wrote: ‘As for Lincoln’s Inn Play House I am inform’d her Grace the Duchess of Marlborough has advanc’d very largely towards a new Subscription for Italian Opera’s, to be there under the direction of Bononcini and Arrigoni; and a new set of Singers, are to be sent for from Italy, for that purpose.’24 This did not ­materialise, but it was a portent of what was to come. The author may have been Aaron Hill, taking pains to disguise his identity. It was on the following 5 December that Hill sent his eloquent but abortive appeal to Handel, begging him ‘to deliver us from our Italian bondage; and demonstrate, that English is soft enough for Opera.’ The company responsible for Acis in May (when they announced themselves as ‘the Proprietors of the English Opera’) had been launched on 13 March with J. F. Lampe’s Amelia, and lasted only for a season and a half, but it was a genuine attempt to ­capitalise on the appeals by John Hughes, Defoe, Hill and others to establish serious opera in the vernacular.25 Amelia and the six works produced in the next season had secco recitatives ‘after the Italian manner’. At first the venture prospered; Amelia was a success, as the author of See and Seem Blind indicated. Then, according to the traditional view, which Milhous and Hume are inclined to scout, it cut its own throat by splitting into two at the start of the next (1732/33) season, when the Arnes moved to Lincoln’s Inn Fields while Lampe remained at the Little Haymarket where, besides reviving Amelia, he produced three new operas, Britannia, Dione and The Opera of Operas, 21  Reproduced in facsimile by the Augustan Reprint Society (Los Angeles, 1986) with an Introduction by Robert D. Hume; excerpt only in Deutsch. 22  See Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios, 123 and 206–7. 23  i.e. from the King’s Theatre to the Little Haymarket. 24  The younger Duchess of Marlborough was Bononcini’s patron, but he had recently been compromised by passing off a madrigal by Lotti as his own. Carlo Arrigoni (1697–1744), composer, lutenist and singer, worked in London from 1732 to 1736, composed one opera (Ferdinando) for the Opera of the Nobility, and took part in the first performance of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast. 25  Hughes in the preface to Galliard’s Calypso and Telemachus (1712), Defoe in the pamphlet cited in Chapter 1, Hill in the preface to Rinaldo (1711).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 131

06/10/2006 14:51:43

132

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

or Tom Thumb the Great.26 Meanwhile Arne put on J. C. Smith’s Teraminta and Ulysses and his own Rosamond, a setting of Addison’s old libretto for Clayton (1707). Except for Amelia and Lampe’s Opera of Operas, a burlesque rather than a serious drama, they were all failures (Ulysses had a single performance), and both enterprises folded and left the field open to ballad opera – not aided by the fact that, like Handel and the Opera of the Nobility later, they sometimes insisted on playing on the same night. Personal rivalries may have played a part, for some singers switched between the two groups, and Arne and Lampe married sisters. Nevertheless Arne’s sister Susanna and his future wife Cecilia Young laid the foundation of future reputations. The 1732/33 season was crucial in many respects. In December Rich opened his new theatre in Covent Garden, which soon succumbed to the irrepressible Beggar’s Opera. Handel, with a new light soprano in Celeste Gismondi but without Campioli, Pinacci and Bagnolesi, opened on 4 November with another pasticcio, Catone, which Lord Hervey found ‘long, dull, and consequently tiresome’ and misattributed to Handel, ‘whose genius seems quite exhausted’. He nevertheless had a striking success with Orlando, and began increasingly to use the opera house and the subscription for unstaged performances: revivals of Esther and the macaronic Acis and Galatea, and on 17 March the new oratorio Deborah, for which, encouraged by the Princess Royal, he charged double prices and excluded the subscribers unless they paid again, though for the first night only.27 The subscribers refused to accept this, forced their way in and won their point; otherwise there were only some 120 persons in the house. Three days earlier Walpole, the Prime Minister, had introduced a highly unpopular Tobacco Excise Bill in the House of Commons, and the two events were linked in a scurrilous letter to The Craftsman, ostensibly by Rolli but probably by some political hack.28 The scandal did Handel’s cause no good, and undoubtedly contributed to the convulsions that followed. On 2 June The Bee and The Craftsman reported that in the previous week Handel informed Senesino ‘that He had no farther Occasion for his Service’ and that Senesino replied with ‘a full Resignation of all his Parts in the Opera, which He had performed for many Years with great Applause’. The season ended a week later with a performance of Bononcini’s Griselda (chosen earlier perhaps to keep Senesino in play), after which the singer told the audience ‘that he had now perform’d his last Part on that Stage, and was henceforward discharg’d from any Engagement’.29 Then things moved fast. On 13 June the Daily Post published a notice summoning ‘the Subscribers to the Opera in which Signor Senesino and Signora Cuzzoni are to perform’ to a meeting on the 15th ‘in order to settle proper Methods for carrying on the Subscription’. Next day (16 June) Lord Delaware in a letter to the Duke of 26  Often erroneously attributed to Arne, who set the libretto as a one-act afterpiece a few months later. 27  Shaftesbury says it was for his own benefit, but this is not mentioned in press announcements. 28  George E. Dorris, Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London 1715–1744 (The Hague and Paris, 1967), 110, argues for Rolli’s authorship since an Italian version exists, but that does not follow. As Dorris admits, the English version is highly colloquial, whereas the Italian is oddly awkward. 29  Daily Advertiser, 11 June 1733; not in Deutsch.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 132

06/10/2006 14:51:43



The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734

133

Richmond30 gave further details of what was afoot. ‘There is a Spirit got up against the Dominion of Mr. Handel, a subscription carry’d on, and Directors chosen.’ They had contracted with Senesino, sent for Cuzzoni, Farinelli and Porpora (as composer and conductor) and could approach any singer except Strada, who was probably excluded because she had refused to sing for Bononcini. By the 22nd the Daily Advertiser had heard ‘that Subscriptions are actually in great forwardness for having two different Operas next Winter’. The Duchess of Leeds was delighted: ‘I am at present in top spirits with the certainty of having a very good opera here next winter in opposition to Handel.’31 Hostility to Handel had clearly been simmering for some time and now come to the boil. Of the thirteen directors named in Delaware’s letter, nine had been directors or subscribers to the Royal Academy, which though in abeyance had not been officially wound up. The Charter of 1719 had several years still to run. Delaware implied that Heidegger too, as lessee of the opera house, would be glad to get rid of Handel, but the five-year agreement made in 1729 stood in the way. Otherwise the Opera of the Nobility, as it came to be called,32 would undoubtedly have evicted him. Instead it betook itself to Lincoln’s Inn Fields for one season, leaving Handel in charge at the Haymarket. Refreshed perhaps by a successful visit to Oxford and a change of air, Handel opened his 1733/34 season on 30 October, two months before the Nobility, with Semiramide riconosciuta, the first of a barrage of pasticcios intended perhaps, as Strohm suggests,33 to outmanoeuvre Porpora, and the audience, with superior specimens of his own kind of music. Lady Bristol thought Semiramide ‘a dull empty opera’, though the first-night audience filled the theatre to hear the new castrato Carestini, who was judged ‘an extream good singer; the rest are all scrubbs except old Durastanti, that sings as well as ever she did’. The rest were the soprano castrato Scalzi, the sisters Caterina and Rosa Negri, both mezzo-sopranos or altos at this stage, though Rosa later shone as a soprano, the local bass Waltz, and of course Strada, the one member of his preceding company who had not defected to the Nobility.34 Even before the Nobility entered the fray Handel was doing badly. Charles Jennens wrote on 13 December: ‘How two Opera Houses will subsist after Christmas, I can’t tell; but at present we are at some difficulty for the support of one; & Mr. Handel has been forc’d to drop his Opera three nights for want of company.’35 After a rehearsal on 24 December in the house of the Prince of Wales, a clear indication of his support, the 30  Misdated in Deutsch, 304, and HHB 4, 208; correct date in Jacob Simon (ed.), Handel: A Celebration of his Life and Times 1685–1759 (London, 1985), 145–6. 31  Letter of 4 July, in Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 187. 32  At the time it was generally known as Senesino’s Opera. 33  Essays, 183. 34  During the summer Handel had tried to engage the castrato Porporino (Giovanni Bindi), possibly as an antidote to Porpora; but the King of Poland would not release him (Lindgren, Zamboni, letters 317 et seq.). 35  Letter to John Ludford (Sotheby’s sale catalogue, 17 May 1990; see also A. Hicks in GHB 4 (1991), 254–7). The cancelled performances were on 27 November, 1 and 11 December. Handel also did not perform on 18 and 29 December and 2 January, all usual opera nights.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 133

06/10/2006 14:51:43

134

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Nobility opened on the 29th with Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso, featuring all Handel’s singers of the previous season except Strada, plus Maria Segatti substituting for Cuzzoni, who did not arrive till the spring. Then the cut-throat struggle began in earnest. In the rumpus that followed, the Royal Family played a not insignificant part, socially and financially. The notorious warfare of the early Hanoverians between father and son and later brother and sister became entangled with the feud between the opera companies. According to Lord Hervey, ‘The King and Queen were both Handelists, and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket Opera, while the Prince [of Wales] with all the chief of the nobility, went as constantly to that of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ At the same time their two eldest children were at daggers drawn. Handel’s champion the Princess Royal quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for taking a neutral stance and denounced Lord Delaware in no uncertain terms, whereas ‘the Prince, in the beginning of his enmity to his sister, set himself at the head of the other opera to irritate her’. The King endeavoured to remain aloof while continuing his annual bounty to the Haymarket and privately leaving no doubt of his opinion ‘that he did not think setting oneself at the head of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable occupation for people of quality; or the ruin of one poor fellow so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not; but the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would have reason to be ashamed of it’.36 Hervey’s account may be prejudiced and biased, but there is certainly some truth behind it, at least as regards the years 1734–36. Where he is at fault is in giving the impression that Handel and the Prince were permanently at loggerheads. Thomas McGeary’s endeavour to prove that the Prince was Handel’s patron throughout this period needs qualification.37 In 1731/32 and 1732/33 when there was no serious rival in the field he had subsidised Handel. In 1733/34 he gave equal support (his regular £250) to both companies, perhaps waiting to see which way the cat would jump. In the next two seasons, however, he supported only the Nobility and attended none of Handel’s performances, although they included eight of Atalanta, the opera designed to celebrate his own wedding; indeed he took care to command a performance at another theatre on the first night.38 As early as 1734 he had been pressing Lady Betty Germain ‘earnestly to go to Lincoln’s Inn Fields opera as if it had been a thing of great moment to the nation’.39 On 13 May 1736, the day after Atalanta’s first night, Sir John Buckworth wrote that ‘our Theatrical Warr is as furious as ever. 36  A. Sedgwick (ed.), Lord Hervey’s Memoirs (London, 1963), 42–3. 37  ‘Handel, Prince Frederick, and the Opera of the Nobility Reconsidered’, GHB 7 (1998), 156–78. Hume also takes this line (‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, M & L 67 (1986), 359). They are right of course to dismiss Flower’s novellettish account. See also C. Taylor, ‘Handel and Frederick, Prince of Wales’, MT 125 (1984), 89–92. 38  His hostility to the King doubtless played a part. In 1733/34 and in 1734/35 the King and Queen attended nineteen of Handel’s performances but only three of the Nobility’s (figures from McGeary’s Appendix). In later seasons they tended to play Box and Cox: if the King patronised one company, the Prince might patronise the other, and vice versa. 39  Lady Betty Germain to the Duke of Dorset (Deutsch, 343–4).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 134

06/10/2006 14:51:43

The ‘Second Academy’ 1729–1734



135

We [the Nobility] have much the advantage for next year, having near a hundred subscribers already, and the Subscription in the Prince’s Hands, who labours hard for our Interest. Handel has not begun his yet.’40 It is very likely that Atalanta was, at least in part, an attempt to regain the Prince’s favour, and in due course it succeeded: they were reconciled at the start of the next season, when the Prince paid his toll to both companies but attended only Handel’s (see Chapter 15). By that time his sister was married to the Prince of Orange and out of the country. As from 5 January 1734, when Handel produced his third pasticcio of the season (Arbace), the two companies played on the same nights no fewer than forty times. Handel released his Arianna in Creta on 26 January; the two Ariadnes coincided six times, and on 20 April the town had a choice of three, when Marie Sallé danced in a pantomime entertainment, Bacchus and Ariadne, at Covent Garden. All three achieved some success. Porpora’s opera, with a head-start but in a smaller theatre, received twenty-four performances, eight more than Handel’s. Nevertheless, as the Abbé Prévost reported in February, ‘there are now some fears for Mr. Handel’s faction, since Signora Cuzzoni has made a move to reinforce that of Senesino’.41 Cuzzoni replaced Segatti as Porpora’s Arianna on 20 April. Meanwhile the Nobility extended the challenge with a revival of Astarto, Bononcini’s most successful Royal Academy opera, and an oratorio by Porpora, Davide e Bersabea, timed to anticipate Handel’s next move by one day. This was Parnasso in festa on 13 March, a serenata in honour of the Princess Royal’s wedding with a spectacular scenic background in the manner of the 1732 Acis and Galatea. Porpora put on two new operas, Arrigoni’s Ferdinando and his own Enea nel Lazio, and a pasticcio, Belmira; but Handel had the last word with a much expanded Il pastor fido, which enjoyed thirteen performances, six of them after the Nobility closed their season on 15 June. The outcome was predictable; both companies made losses, Handel’s the greater. The Nobility had been confident of victory; as Lord Delaware wrote in the letter quoted above, ‘It is thought Handel must fling up’. The author of the ‘Rolli’ letter to The Craftsman ended with the sentence: ‘It is much question’d whether he will recover; at least, if he does, it is not doubted but He will seek for a Retreat in his own Country from the general Resentment of the Town.’ That is surely what the Nobility desired and expected, underrating Handel’s obstinacy and courage and ignoring his British nationality. Towards the end of the season Rolli, the Nobility’s poet, declared: ‘Things are changing here in theatrical terms. We have not prospered this year because of the two opera houses and because of our carelessness. But next year we will be masters of the field, and all will be well.’42 He can only have been referring to the expiry of Handel’s five-year tenure of the King’s Theatre. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, working from inevitably fragmentary evidence, have made a valiant attempt to penetrate the financial intricacies of these years, and 40  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 229. 41  In his periodical Le Pour et Contre (Deutsch, 359). 42  Letter to Antonio Cocchi, 27 April 1734 (Lindgren, Zamboni, letter 345).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 135

06/10/2006 14:51:43

136

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

indeed of the whole period.43 This is no place to go into balance sheets, but some general points can be made. For the 1729/30 season Handel and Heidegger hoped, by retrenching on exorbitant singers while keeping ticket prices at half a guinea and 5 shillings (the first night of Deborah excepted), to attract 200 subscribers at 20 guineas. They were soon forced to lower the subscription price. In 1731/32 they reputedly had 170 subscribers, in 1732/33 122, who paid 15 guineas, in 1733/34 very few (Shaftesbury), whereas the Prussian Minister in London informed his monarch in January 1734 that more than two hundred paid twenty guineas to the Opera of the Nobility. Milhous and Hume estimate the Handel–Heidegger management’s income in 1732/3 as coming 23 per cent from subscribers, 20 per cent from the Royal Family, 50 per cent from ticket sales, and 7 per cent from box-holders, who were allowed to pay by credit. Box-office receipts are known for six nights at the Haymarket: Flavio (25 April) in 1731/32, Floridante (19 May) and Griselda (5 and 9 June) in 1732/33, Semiramide (30 October) and Parnasso in festa (13 March) in 1733/34. The first four, all revivals, drew respectively £65, £54, £59 and £90 (the last night of the season when Senesino abdicated). The last two, both first nights (always popular) – and Parnasso in festa celebrated a royal occasion – drew £267 and £347. These figures take no account of subscribers, box-holders and the Royal Bounty. The Earl of Essex’s agent Thomas Bowen heard that Handel’s loss in 1733/4 was £3,000, the Nobility’s £1,500.44 This was probably an exaggeration; but the Royal Bounty for that season, paid in October 1734, was specifically addressed, like that for 1729/30, ‘towards enabling the undertakers of the Opera to discharge their debts’. Moreover, as recorded in the Treasury Minute Book on 29 October, ‘the King intends that the £1,000 for the undertakers of the Opera shall be paid to Mr. Hendell and not to the Academy of Music, as the last £1,000 was’ – an indication not only of George II’s support for Handel but that the Academy, though dormant, was not dead.

43  ‘Box Office Reports for Five Operas Mounted by Handel in London, 1732–34’, Harvard Library Bulletin 26 (1978), 245–66; ‘Handel’s Opera Finances in 1732–3’, MT 125 (1984), 86–9; ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674–1738’, JAMS 37 (1984), 567–92; ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS 46 (1993), 26–83; and the article cited in note 2 above. 44  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 205.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 136

06/10/2006 14:51:44



chapter 8 Lotario

T

he background to the plot is complex and not made much clearer by the Argument in the printed libretto. Adelaide, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy and King of Italy, succeeded her father as Queen Regnant and married Lotario, son of the Count of Arles. Despite their paternal rule the people rebelled, led by Berengario Duke of Spoleto. Lotario voluntarily shared his kingdom, reigning at Pavia, Berengario in Milan. Berengario, fired by ambition to possess the whole kingdom, had Lotario poisoned and schemed for his son to marry the widowed Adelaide. She refused the match and was besieged by Berengario in Pavia. Her uncle the Marquis of Tuscany sent for help from Ottone King of Germany (the future Emperor Otto I). Confusingly Handel changed the name of Ottone to Lotario halfway through the composition (on fol. 66 of the autograph), presumably because he had already composed an Ottone. The period is the middle of the tenth century. Matilde, Berengario’s wife, and her son Idelberto are the same persons as Gismonda and Adelberto in Ottone; the Ottone Matilde has no counterpart here. Act I. A Garden outside the city of Pavia. Berengario with Attendants meditates on a ruler’s hopes and fears. Idelberto, though he loves Adelaide, feels no hope of winning her. Berengario brusquely orders him to storm the city. Clodomiro, Berengario’s general, reports that Lotario has crossed the Alps with a large army to support Adelaide. Berengario orders the assault to begin before he can arrive. Matilde says Pavia is already theirs; she has bribed enough of its defenders. Idelberto, shocked at such underhand proceedings, kneels before his father, who sends a herald to Adelaide: he will return her kingdom if she consents to marry Idelberto, otherwise let her fear his vengeance. Idelberto appeals to his mother, who tells him to go and make love to Adelaide, explaining the alternatives. He would rather die than force a hated marriage on her. In an Audience Chamber with a Throne in Pavia Adelaide with Attendants laments the precarious state of her throne and the treacherous murder of her husband. Turning to the Guards, she orders the admission first of the warrior who asked for a private audience, and then of Berengario’s envoy. One of the Guard withdraws. The Guards introduce Lotario and retire. He explains who he is, how he fell in love with her at her father’s court before her marriage, and how her present plight inspires him to rescue and avenge her; but he wishes his identity to be kept secret. She promises him her hand if he is victorious. Adelaide ascends the Throne as the Guards return and Clodomiro with his Retinue is admitted. He repeats Berengario’s terms (‘the Son’s Affection, or the Father’s Rage’), which she rejects with contempt. He sings a nautical simile aria and retires with his Attendants. Lotario returns with news   Stage directions are quoted by preference from Handel’s autograph. They sometimes differ in the printed libretto.   Presumably because he has entered the city incognito, but this is not made clear.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 137

06/10/2006 14:51:44

138

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

that traitors are opening the city gates to Berengario. He wants to die with Adelaide, but she tells him to go and fight. He rejoices at her spirit and eagerly anticipates victory. The set changes to a Square in Pavia with a Triumphal Arch. A chorus of Captains and Soldiers salutes Berengario as King of Italy. He intends to tame Adelaide with ‘Acts of mild Humanity’, but her proud and contemptuous air as she enters outrages Matilde. Adelaide denounces Berengario for depriving her of husband, liberty and kingdom and again rejects his terms. Clodomiro enters, and he and Berengario retire and discourse apart. Learning that Lotario has reached the Ticino river, Berengario entrusts Adelaide to Matilde’s care and goes off with Clodomiro and the puzzled Idelberto. Matilde taunts Adelaide with her reduced state and arrogant refusal of a generous offer, comparing her with a wild bird caught in a net. Adelaide, alone, changes the simile to a wrecked ship and resolves to triumph by dying. Act II opens in a Spacious Country, with a Bridge over the Ticinum. Berengarius in a disorderly Flight. Defeated in battle, he resolves to perish like a king. Lotario enters and demands his sword. Berengario puts himself in a Posture of Defence, but yields to fate and delivers his Sword; he has lost his throne and his greatness, but not his courage. Lotario, having conquered one tyrant, feels subdued by another and fairer, and compares himself to a moth destined to perish in a flame. The set changes to a Prison, where Adelaide prays that she may be reunited with her dead husband. Clodomiro enters followed by two Pages that carry two Basons cover’d. In turn he discovers a Bason with a Dagger, and a Cup of Poison in it, and discovers the other, upon which is a Crown and Scepter. She must choose one or the other. She takes the Bason with the Dagger and Poison, despite a warning from Clodomiro. As she is about to take the Poison, Matilde enters and, impatient of delay, tells her to drink up. As she prepares to drink the Poison, Idelbert rushes in with his drawn Sword, driving back one of the Guard that opposed his Entrance. Matilde rebukes him: though her son, he is her subject. Determined to die with Adelaide, he gives the Dagger to Matilde, and presents his Bosom to her. Matilde angrily rebukes him and again orders Adelaide to ‘drain off that Cup’. Idelberto tries to snatch it, then as she offers to drink the Poison, he presents the Dagger to his Breast with an Intent to stab himself. This is too much for Matilde, who snatches the Poison from Adelaide in a Rage, and throws it on the Ground, as also Idelberto’s Dagger, denouncing one as a sorceress, the other as an unworthy lover. At this point Clodomiro brings news of Berengario’s defeat and unknown fate. Matilde orders him to collect his forces and convene the senate, and in a biting ironical aria tells Idelberto to make love to the haughty woman and be snubbed for his pains, and Adelaide to ponder her imminent fate. Adelaide apologises to Idelberto for being unable to return his love. He is content to love her without hope of reward. She thanks providence for sending two such noble characters to her side. The set changes to The Walls of the City of Pavia, with a Draw-bridge, Towers, and a Ravelin, and a distant Prospect of Lotharius’s Camp. Lotharius with his Army, and afterwards Matilde appears upon the Walls with Soldiers. After trite reflections on the power of love Lotario looks up to the Walls and calls on Matilde to free Adelaide, in which case he will pardon her misdeeds; otherwise he will let loose ‘Death, Havock, and Revenge’. Matilde, insulted at being addressed as Woman, not as Queen, orders Adelaide to   Cabinetto in the libretto. But see Plate 3b.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 138

06/10/2006 14:51:44

Lotario

139

be brought forward (with Guards) and threatens to strike her unless Lotario agrees to withdraw his forces. Lotario angrily orders the Guards to fetch Berengario and furiously threatens to kill him before Matilde’s eyes, but hesitates pacified and is moved to tears when Adelaide begs him not to consider her safety. Idelberto surrenders to Lotario as surety for Adelaide, while Matilde seems in suspense. Lotario and Adelaide say a tender farewell, and she is conducted back to prison (evidently accompanied by Matilde). Lotario sends Berengario, still rumbling with defiance, to Matilde to demand the surrender of Adelaide and the city: if he does not return, Idelberto shall die. Lotario orders his troops to prepare the assault, confident that with Idelberto and Berengario he is two pawns up on Matilde. He likens himself to a nocturnal traveller anticipating the dawn of a new day. Act III opens in A Gallery. Matilde, with Berengario, orders Adelaide to be brought in unfettered and tells the Guards to retire. Berengario sits on Adelaide’s right Hand, and Matilde on her Left. Adelaide suspects a trap; when they suggest that she writes to Lotario guaranteeing their freedom and that of their kingdom as a condition of peace, she refuses on the ground that it is not for her to dictate to the victor. She will make such a request if they first restore her to the throne of Italy. When they resort to threats, she rises disdainfully and returns to her fetters, confident that she will not be long unavenged. Despite Matilde’s confidence Berengario begins to fear danger to their son and goes back to Lotario in a mood of mingled anger and remorse. Matilde is confident of outwitting Lotario by betraying him into negligence when he thinks he is safe. The set changes to The Camp of Lotharius under the City of Pavia, with military Engines to batter the Walls. Berengario has returned, but since Matilde is still obdurate Lotario orders his army to attack. The Assault follows, the Engines batter the Walls, which after some Opposition are partly demolish’d (see Plate 1); and upon the Breach, Clodomire and Adelaide appear before several Soldiers of the City. Appalled by the sight, Lotario makes his Soldiers desist and gives orders to one of the Guards, who immediately unfurls a white Ensign. At his command The Guards conduct Berengarius in and Lotario makes him look towards the Breach: Matilde shall lose both husband and son unless she removes Adelaide from the front line. Father and son dispute as to which is to protect her. Lotario tells Idelberto to go unarmed and then return, or his father dies. Idelberto enters the Breach, and causes Adelaide to retire. Lotario orders Berengario to his tent and leaves. The Guards conduct Berengario out. In A Retreat adjoining the outside of the city walls Clodomiro regrets that Matilde is doomed to join Berengario in chains as Pavia is about to open its gates to Lotario. Lotario enters, drawn by love, and advances towards Clodomire, who without revealing his identity compares the fall of a tyrant to a lofty tree struck by lightning. A Messenger ... delivers a Letter to Lotario, in which the people of Pavia make their submission. He looks forward to union with Adelaide. A Great Royal Apartment (see Plate 6) discloses Matilde with a drawn Sword in   Parla in atto di ferir Adelaide in the Italian text and Handel’s autograph, In a menacing Air in the English version.   The Italian text and Handel’s autograph have Galleria d’Armi. The last two words were cancelled in ink before the libretto was issued (see below).   The libretto has Ritiro in the Italian text, A Solitude changed in ink to A Gallery in the English.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 139

06/10/2006 14:51:44

140

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

her Hand, and Idelbert interposing to prevent her Design. She is determined to expose herself in Adelaide’s place, disowns the name of mother, damns Idelberto as a coward and declares that a brave free soul like hers cannot be diverted by fear or temptation. As she is going she meets Clodomire, who detains her. He tells her Pavia has fallen. She blames everything on Idelberto and orders Adelaide to be brought in so that he can see her die. Idelberto has already released her: let Matilde punish him if she thinks it a crime, embrace him if it is an error forced by love. Alone, she summons the Furies to steel her heart, but hesitates between vengeance and love for her husband and son. She remains in Suspense, with her Eyes fix’d on the Ground, when Lotharius enters with Guards and orders her to be fettered. She recovers herself in a Rage, and prepares to kill herself. He tries to prevent her, but she remains defiant. Berengario enters and points out that suicide shows a poor spirit, whereupon she throws down her Sword, and suffers herself to be chain’d. Adelaide enters, embraces Lotario, and asks and obtains permission to decide the prisoners’ fate. Idelberto begs her to spare his parents. She agrees, since she owes her life to him, removes the chains of Matilde and Berengario, and expresses a wish that Idelberto be raised to his father’s throne. Adelaide and Lotario sing a love duet, and all crave a blessing from Cupid and Bellona. The source of this libretto was Antonio Salvi’s Adelaide, written to celebrate the wedding of the Bavarian Electoral Prince to an Austrian Archduchess at Munich in October 1722 and set by Pietro Torri. As a festal piece it had an allegorical prologue featuring Olympian gods, much spectacle including elaborate ballets, and some political allusions. The subject soon became popular: operas based on it were produced at Rome (1723, set by Porpora with the young Farinelli as the heroine), Palermo (1724), Bologna (1725, G. M. Buini), Florence (1725, ? Orlandini), Livorno (1725), Genoa (1726), Venice (carnival 1729, Orlandini) and many other places up to 1744. Handel was in Venice early in 1729 and must have seen Orlandini’s opera and acquired a copy of the libretto, which became his immediate source. By that time Salvi’s original had lost its festival trappings, the recitatives had been considerably trimmed, and many aria texts changed. Giacomo Rossi probably assisted Handel in the adaptation; the results are not impressive. They removed Adelaide’s uncle, here called Everardo, but retained the framework of the plot, all the sets and the great majority of the aria texts. Salvi’s libretto is not a bad specimen of the dynastic type; the manoeuvres of the characters are clear and convincingly motivated, but only the early scenes of Act III preserve   For Salvi see Handel’s Operas I, 80, 574. His literary source for Adelaide was a prose comedy of the same title attributed to G. A. Moniglia and published in Florence in 1689.   See Francesco Giuntini, I drammi per musica di Antonio Salvi (Reggio Emilia, 1994), 15 and 73–5. Bernacchi sang the part of Idelberto in Munich.   The libretto, dated 6 February 1729, is dedicated to the Jacobite Duke of Hamilton with a list of his titles running to seventeen lines on the title page. Adelaide was sung by Faustina Bordoni, Ottone (= Lotario) by Senesino, Clodomiro by Domenico Annibali, Everardo (omitted by Handel) by Antonio Baldi. The great tenor Giovanni Paita sang Berengario. There is a score of this version of Orlandini’s opera at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 140

06/10/2006 14:51:44

Lotario

141

some vestiges of his skill. The reduction of a thousand lines of recitative to about 560 obscures the motivation and, especially in Act II, produces something like the scenario of a pre-war Hollywood movie (sudden tergiversations, few words, much action). There was also some clumsy patchwork in Act III, where Scene viii contains a mere four lines of recitative covering two exits followed by a set change and an irrelevant simile aria for a secondary character, a multiple anticlimax. Neither the Venice libretto nor the first version in Handel’s autograph has a set change here, and Lotario does not leave the stage. The muddle resulted from the transference of Everardo’s aria ‘Alza al ciel’ to Clodomiro (a partisan of Berengario, who has no reason to be in Lotario’s camp) and its placing before Lotario’s ‘Vedrò più liete’, perhaps to give the singer of Clodomiro an extra aria. Exceptionally Handel’s opera contains more set pieces than Orlandini’s, thirty against twenty-seven. He kept nineteen aria texts, with a few minor changes, the B section of another (‘Arma lo sguardo’), and the first two lines of the coro in I.ix. His additions however are characteristic, the cavatinas for Berengario at the start of the opera and Lotario in II.xi, and three pieces for Matilde, ‘Orgogliosetto’ (I.x), ‘Impara, codardo’ (III.xi) and the accompagnato ‘Furie del crudo Averno’ (III.xiii). Apart from Idelberto, who has one extra aria, ‘Bella,non mi negar’ in II.xi (where Porpora in 1723 had a duet for Idelberto and Adelaide), she is the only character whose ration is increased. The substitutions are Clodomiro’s ‘Se il mar promette calma’ in I.vi, Adelaide’s prison aria ‘Menti eterne’ in II.iv, a love duet (predictably) in place of Adelaide’s last aria, and a new final coro. Handel was clearly pulling out all the stops to launch his new company,10 much as he had done with Radamisto in 1720. There are obvious resemblances between the two operas, in the librettos and the music. Both are concerned with dynastic and amorous rivalry, involving scenic spectacle, a small army of supers and much military activity, including an attack on a city with characters on the walls confronting a besieging army. No doubt the elaborate machinery used at the King’s Theatre in Alessandro and Riccardo Primo was brought out again,11 despite the claim that seven sets were entirely new, but the effects were already called for in the Venice libretto. Many of the arias in Lotario, as in Radamisto, are brilliant affairs with long ritornellos and much florid writing for voices and instruments. Both feature an important and intransigent tenor. But there the resemblance ends. Whereas the characters of Radamisto are fully developed, those of Lotario, except in a few individual scenes, are by comparison cardboard figures. Rather than flowing easily, the action proceeds in a series of jerks, thanks partly to the cut-down libretto and partly to the profusion of simile arias. Too many arias advance neither plot nor character, and their very length compared with the brevity of the recitatives accentuates the disproportion. Most are fast extrovert pieces; slow arias that reveal the inner thoughts and emotions of the 10  Dent speaks of the new singers necessitating a considerable change in Handel’s style. This did not emerge till the next opera, Partenope. 11  See Plate 1a and b.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 141

06/10/2006 14:51:44

142

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

characters are exceptionally few, two Largos, three Larghettos and one (‘Vi sento’) without a tempo mark. Nevertheless the score contains fine music, not only in a handful of superb arias but in many details, such as the interlacing of voices and instruments. Several arias begin with a striking phrase – for example Clodomiro’s ‘Non t’inganni’ and Adelaide’s ‘Non sempre invendicata’, both based on cross-rhythms and rising thirds and fourths – but what follows is often routine. Nearly every aria carries the material of the A section into the B section, often developing it in unexpected directions through adventurous modulation. Burney seldom comments on the drama, but his judgement on the music is fair: ‘Upon the whole, though this [opera] has many agreeable songs, it abounds with fewer airs on great and masterly subjects than many of his preceding operas; ... his invention seems to have been less fertile than usual, to which the success of the songs seems to have been proportioned; as no one of these seems to have ever been in general favour throughout the nation.’ Lotario is a conventional hero, made up in equal portions of the amorous and the bellicose, with little sign of inner conflict. With the exception of ‘Già mi sembra’, a characteristically fiery alla breve piece driven by a canonic initial gesture, his entire part (six arias and a duet) is in major keys, which predominate in the opera as a whole. His entrance aria, ‘Rammentati’, Bernacchi’s first on the London stage for twelve years, is not particularly distinguished, though the treatment of the first word as an Adagio in the A section but not the da capo makes its point. Of his two love songs, both soliloquies, ‘Tiranna ma bella’ has great charm, but ‘Vedrò più liete’ bounces along with an excess of otiose triplet decoration for both voice and violins. The cavatina ‘Quanto più forte’ despite its full orchestration is oddly colourless, but Lotario has the finest aria in the opera at the end of Act II. After the frantic activity of the preceding scenes ‘Non disperi peregrino’, though it contributes nothing to the drama, supplies a contrast of reflective and haunting beauty in typical E flat mood. The spare opening ritornello, which never returns, first and second violins, viola and voice entering in succession and the bass withheld till the voice’s third bar, when it takes up the first violins’ initial phrase, establishes a mood of hushed anticipation (Ex. 16). The texture is wonderfully rich, with slowly interlacing string parts against long vocal phrases. The circuitous approach to the dominant by way of feints into F minor and G minor and the lovely touch of E flat minor towards the end of the A section give the piece an almost Romantic flavour. The ritornellos are neatly varied, the return after the B section effected by the contraction of the initial ritornello to two bars of full harmony. Burney adduces a parallel with ‘Return, O God of Hosts’ in the same key. Adelaide was Strada’s first London part, and the fact that she is the only soprano in a cast of six (three altos) throws her into relief. She makes a good start with an accompagnato full of searching progressions as she apostrophises the throne of her murdered husband, but her first aria, ‘Quel cor che mi donasti’, is more remarkable for vocal gymnastics, designed as Burney suggests to show off her brilliant shake, than for insight into character. The ideas propounded in the thirty-four-bar ritornello are unmemorable; the best moment is the turn from B flat to C minor when a second violin part enriches the texture. Her aria concluding the act, though not the equal

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 142

06/10/2006 14:51:44

Lotario

143

of Lotario’s in Act II, is a fine piece. A nautical simile little related to the drama, it has a good tune and a striding gait that recalls Cleopatra’s ‘Da tempeste’ and anticipates the brilliant arias in the Vinci style that Handel wrote later for Carestini. Like Lotario’s aria it moves nicely into the tonic minor towards the end of the A section. Whenever Handel finds a hero or heroine in prison he tends to reach for the key of B flat minor and writes an aria of intense emotional expression. ‘Menti eterne’ is no exception. The drooping phrases with prominent falling fourth and anguished upward leaps (a tenth in bar 31, foreshadowed in the ritornello) strike as deep as anything in the opera. The smooth opening of the B section in A flat brings only momentary relief. Adelaide’s second accompagnato ‘Sommo rettor del cielo’ (II.x) is as powerfully dramatic as her first, but let down by the commonplace aria that follows. The tired simile of the fountain is barely redeemed by the high-pitched tinkling of the violins. ‘Non sempre invendicata’ in Act III is far finer, with a trenchant three-bar first phrase, spirited cross-rhythms and a sudden gearchange into the minor after a silent bar, as she denounces the guile of her enemies. Except in the B section, which settles unexpectedly in D flat, her breathless anger leaves most of the exuberance to the orchestra. Adelaide and Lotario finally come together in a graceful duet, but she is not among Handel’s most captivating heroines. The usurper Berengario was Handel’s first major tenor role since Grimoaldo in Rodelinda, a similarly neurotic figure undone from within but more convincingly realised. Fabri was a fine singer, and Handel tested him with three energetic arias demanding great dexterity and breath control but not throwing much light on Berengario’s character. It is otherwise with his two slow pieces. The initial cavatina ‘Grave è’l fasto’ might have been designed to illustrate the line that Shakespeare put in the mouth of another usurper, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’. The bare ritornello with its jumpy rhythm and angular line culminating in a headlong plunge down the scale to land on the leading note, followed by a pianissimo cadence, evokes a vivid picture of his mind as he broods over the pomp and cares of sovereignty (Ex. 17). The ‘cabaletta’, ‘Non pensi quell’altera’, based on a contrast between the menacing first phrase in crotchet octaves with every note stressed and

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 143

06/10/2006 14:51:45

144

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

a helter-skelter rush of violin semiquavers, is effective without quite fulfilling the promise of the initial gesture. Berengario’s defeat at the start of Act II gives rise to an accompagnato with a striking interrupted cadence, but the following aria ‘Regno e grandezza’ is a mass of empty gestures. The humbled usurper does not need an aria here, least of all one overflowing with triplet roulades inappropriate to the despairing words. A curiosity is the appearance in embryo avant la lettre in both sections of the fugue subject in the F major concerto grosso (Op. 6 no. 2). ‘D’instabile fortuna’ too is misplaced. Defeated once more and in chains, Berengario fires off another showpiece designed to exploit Fabri’s command of lengthy divisions and not at all typical of its key (E major, unusually prominent in this opera). Berengario’s Act III aria, ‘Vi sento’, is a different matter. The fallen tyrant’s courage has begun to fail; fears for his son’s safety are crossed with a troubled conscience. His inner turmoil is expressed through the opposition of two principal ideas, the creeping dotted motive at the start and the upward triplet scale followed by a plunge of a seventh, first heard in bars 4–5 and later varied to a sixth and a tenth. These elements are skilfully worked together not least in the ritornello after the A section, where they appear in reverse order. The B section on the same material soon lurches into E flat minor; the plunging figure reappears towards the end but is excluded from the lead-back ritornello. It is a most impressive aria. Handel gave it no tempo mark, either in the autograph or the performing score; it is Largo in one early manuscript, Larghetto in the Cluer score. The libretto portrays Matilde as a veritable dragon without a redeeming feature, but the quality of her music is strangely uneven. She has nothing like the potency of her alter ego Gismonda in Ottone. Only one of her five arias shows her at full throttle. It is strange that Handel should have failed to rise to the occasion, especially as he gave Matilde two extra arias; the fault may lie in the sameness of the emotion she has to express. Her first aria, ‘Vanne a colei’, wheedling Idelberto into pressing his

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 144

06/10/2006 14:51:46

Lotario

145

love on Adelaide, is wanting in venom; her second, ‘Orgogliosetto’, is trivial, full of short-breathed choppy phrases and otiose twitterings suggested by the avian simile. She first reveals her full stature (outside recitative) in ‘Arma lo sguardo’, a genuine action piece packed with biting sarcasm addressed to Idelberto and Adelaide in turn. She urges her son contemptuously to make advances to Adelaide, who will only laugh at him, and denounces Adelaide in the B section with equal pungency. The climbing sequences in the A section develop a powerful charge; the opening ritornello, exceptionally in this opera, is very short – shorter than that at the end of the section – and bespeaks her impatience. Handel returned to this material years later in Jephtha, not as might be expected in Storgè’s part but in Jephtha’s ‘Open thy marble jaws’. ‘Quel superbo’, Matilde’s response to Berengario’s remorse, does not lack fire but is weak in invention and inclined to be sequential. In ‘Impara, codardo’, yet another denunciation of her son, the sequences become tiresomely mechanical. But she redeems herself at the last with a magnificent accompagnato invoking the Furies. The abrupt changes of mood and tempo – concitato ma non furioso, furioso, adagio and concitato (alternating three times) in a mere twenty-five bars – hint at a mind on the verge of madness, not unlike Dejanira’s final scene in Hercules. The piece seems to demand consummation in an aria, but coming so late in the opera that would no doubt have upstaged Lotario and Adelaide. Idelberto, browbeaten by his mother and rejected, quite gently, by the object of his love, is a passive figure. He makes positive gestures in recitative, but is allowed no opportunity to translate them into arias. His music, all slow or slowish in tempo, is however welcome as contrast. The ritornello of ‘Per salvarti’ deploys several ideas, of which the yearning phrase in bars 9 and 10 over a bass entrusted to a single cello, prominent in both sections, is the most eloquent. The B section passes through a series of bold modulations based entirely on A section material. ‘Bella, non mi negar’ employs to good purpose the conventional device of an Adagio voice entry after a long ritornello, but is otherwise dull with a surfeit of triplet decoration. Whereas Idelberto’s first two arias have enormously long ritornellos, his third is the only one in the opera with none at all; indeed the voice enters before the orchestra after an imperfect cadence. It is a touching appeal to his mother, very lightly scored, with a neat return to the da capo; but he goes out perforce without an answer, another piece of awkward dramaturgy. Clodomiro’s three arias are all extraneous to the drama, in which he plays the part of a mere messenger, but not without musical distinction. ‘Non t’inganni’ in Act II is the best and the only one to engage at all with the action, with a muscular first phrase and great rhythmic vitality thanks to the emphasis falling repeatedly on the second beat of the bar. The other two are simile arias. ‘Se il mar’, in which buzzing strings conjure up a vision of a heaving seascape, has another strong theme and subtle details in the contrapuntal writing, the voice part far less tied to the instrumental bass than in the arias written for Boschi. ‘Alza al ciel’ is the most awkwardly placed and scarcely redeemed by chromatic touches in the ritornellos. Lotario has a splendid overture that stretches the conventional French pattern in an Allegro of great contrapuntal and rhythmic ingenuity combining elements of double fugue and ground bass with striking economy of material, varied by a lightly scored

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 145

06/10/2006 14:51:46

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

146

episode in the subdominant minor. An interrupted cadence leads to a return of the mood but not the material of the spacious opening. The final dance has a graceful melody, beautifully extended in the second half, but little apparent connection with the opera. The three military sinfonias make their point; the last of them, for the assault on the city wall in Act III, offers a lesson in what can be done with the chord of D major. The Act I coro, though sung by the soloists (with Adelaide and Lotario batting against their own side) is a fine festive piece, more substantial than usual on such occasions and richly scored with pairs of horns, oboes and bassoons. The slighter coro at the end has a good tune in gavotte rhythm with the top note on an off beat and a distinct resemblance to the gavotte in the overture to Ottone. Was Handel alluding to the historical connection between the subjects of the two operas? While there is nothing exceptional in the scoring, Handel produces a marvellously rich four-part texture in the two nautical arias in Act I and Lotario’s at the end of Act II. A single trumpet leads the two D major sinfonias; horns make only the one appearance. Oboes are rather more independent than usual at this period and not always silenced when the voice is singing. In ‘Non sempre invendicata’ Handel employs differential dynamics, marking the voice piano against pianissimo strings and forte against the piano of the full orchestra including oboes. The opera has no overall tonal plan, though the sharp major keys tend to dominate, not surprisingly in view of the military context. There are several examples of key switches to make a dramatic point, especially before accompagnatos: G sharp minor following E flat major (‘Sommo rettor’), E minor following F sharp minor (‘Furie del crudo Averno’), B flat minor following F major (‘Menti eterne’).

History and Text Handel completed the score on 16 November 1729 and gave the first performance at the King’s Theatre on 2 December, allowing little more than a fortnight for copying, learning and rehearsal. The cast was: lotario Antonio Bernacchi (alto castrato) adelaide Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) matilde Antonia Merighi (contralto) idelberto Francesca Bertolli (contralto) berengario Annibale Pio Fabri (tenor) clodomiro Johann Gottfried Riemschneider (bass) On 22 November the Norwich Gazette published a puff dated the 18th from London, mentioning Lotario: ‘We hear the Operas will be brought on the Stage ... with great Magnificence, the Cloaths for the Singers, Attendants and Soldiers being all embroidered with Silver, and seven Sets of Scenes entirely new’. Nevertheless the reception was lukewarm. According to Rolli12 ‘The great public failed to appear on the first night.’ While praising Heidegger for scenery and costumes, he declared that ‘everyone considers it a very bad opera’. He was, however, prejudiced by the fact that Handel 12  Letter to Riva, ?13 December 1729 (Deutsch, 249).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 146

06/10/2006 14:51:46

Lotario

147

had heard Faustina and Senesino in Orlandini’s setting in Venice and not engaged them for London (‘the faithless wretch!’). Even Mrs Pendarves, who had attended a rehearsal, was disappointed. She was unsure whether ‘the opera really is not so meritorious as Mr. Handel’s generally are, but I never was so little pleased with one in my life’. The new singers drew a good deal of comment; both Mrs Pendarves and Rolli described their performance in detail.13 By common consent Strada was a success, despite Mrs Pendarves’s animadversions on her person. Rolli agreed that she ‘pleases mightily’, and the author of the Colman Opera Diary recorded that she ‘was the Cheife & best the rest little esteem’d’. However, Rolli and Mrs Pendarves praised Fabri, Merighi’s acting and Bertolli’s physical attributes. According to Mrs Pendarves Bernacchi, though a good singer, ‘does not suit the English ears’. Rolli agreed that he did not please on the first night, but ‘at the second performance he changed his method and scored a success’. In a second letter to her sister (20 December) Mrs Pendarves put her finger on one reason for the cool reception. ‘The present opera is disliked because it is too much studied, and they love nothing but minuets and ballads, in short the Beggars’ Opera and Hurlothrumbo are only worthy of applause.’ Lotario was ‘too good for the vile taste of the town’ and was to be taken off after 20 December, though in fact it had three more performances. Lotario was performed ten times, and had to wait 245 years for its next stage production. Handel probably never intended to revive it; he used it, like Riccardo Primo, as a pool from which to draw arias for insertion in revivals of other operas. No fewer than eight were so endowed: Scipione 1730 (‘Non t’inganni’), Rinaldo 1731 (‘Per salvarti’, ‘Quel cor che mi donasti’, ‘Arma lo sguardo’, ‘D’instabile fortuna’, ‘Vedrò più liete’), Rodelinda 1731 (‘Non pensi quell’altera’, ‘Vi sento’), Poro November 1731 (‘Se il mar’), Ottone 1733 (‘D’instabile fortuna’), Il pastor fido May 1734 (‘Quel cor che mi donasti’, ‘Scherza in mar’), the pasticcio Oreste 1734 (‘Orgogliosetto’, ‘Non sempre invendicata’, the overture’s dance movement and the sinfonias in II.i and III.i), and Arianna in Creta November 1734 (‘D’instabile fortuna’). Arias from Lotario also found their way into Hamburg pasticcios. ‘Scherza in mar’, ‘Arma lo sguardo’ and ‘Vedrò più liete’ appeared in Judith, Telemann’s arrangement of Chelleri’s L’innocenza difesa (1722, a version of an opera first performed in 1711), staged at Hamburg on 27 November 1732 and later. The duet ‘Sì, bel sembiante’ appeared in the Keiser pasticcio Circe (1734), ‘Non pensi quell’altera’ in Conti’s pasticcio Issipile (1737). The overture was played at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 5 February 1745 and at a Castle Society concert at Haberdashers Hall on 21 December 1757. The pasticcio Lucio Vero, produced at the King’s Theatre on 14 November 1747, included ‘Quel cor che mi donasti’. Two numbers, the Act I coro and ‘Non, t’inganni’, were used in The Triumph of Time and Truth (1757). The main theme of the latter also appears in the last movement of the Concerto a due cori no. 1 in B flat. Of Handel’s operas only the incomplete Silla has had fewer modern revivals than Lotario. It was first staged in Germany in 2006. An abridged recording conducted by Alan Curtis was issued by Harmonia Mundi in 2004. A single CD of ‘highlights’ conducted by Paul Goodwin appeared in OEHMS Classics in the same year. 13  See Chapter 7, also for Lord Shaftesbury’s later comments on this season.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 147

06/10/2006 14:51:46

148

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Autograph The Autograph (RM 20 b 6) has no foliation by Handel, who seems to have used detached pages at some points. Most of the insertions (fols 36, 41, 42, 46, 68–9) carry expansions or revisions of material already present. The exceptions are ‘Impara, codardo’ (fols 94–5), added after the score was copied, and probably ‘Quel superbo’ (fols 83–4). Handel was evidently impressed by Fabri’s capabilities, for he expanded ‘Regno e grandezza’ in three places, adding twenty bars of roulades (fol. 46) and rewrote the A section of ‘D’instabile fortuna’ (fols 68–9); the original setting had a shorter ritornello and much less coloratura. The latter part of ‘Orgogliosetto’ from bar 45 (fol. 36) replaced a passage removed from the autograph. ‘Scherza in mar’ was extensively rewritten more than once, especially towards the end of the A section (fols 41, 42; the opening originally lacked the drumming bass in bars 5 and 6). Handel’s first attempt at ‘Già mi sembra’ was written with unbarred C in notes of half the value (see HHB 1, 329, no. 9a). He began ‘Arma lo sguardo’ by setting the Venice text of the A section, beginning ‘Vesti la gonna’, which may have been thought indelicate. Berengario’s exit in III.viii was followed without a set change by different settings of the recitative ‘Inclito Re’ (HG 106) and the aria ‘Vedrò più liete’ in 6/8 time, abandoned after thirteen bars (HHB 1, no. 31a), conforming to the order in the Venice libretto. The decision to change the set and interpose ‘Alza al ciel’ for Clodomiro threw the episode into confusion. Handel’s note for the transposition of ‘Non t’inganni’ up a tone to G probably refers to the use of the aria (as ‘Non m’inganna’) in the 1730 revival of Scipione. It is in F in all Lotario sources. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 257, p. 61, has the first page of a Scena aggiunta for Adelaide consisting of an eight-bar recitative, ‘Ombre di vil timore’, and the first twenty-six bars of an aria in G major, 3/8 time, ‘Io vedo, sì, non piu torbida la face’. It must have been intended for Act III, perhaps after Scene xii. Handel used the material of the aria, which may once have been complete, for Partenope’s ‘Sì, scherza, sì’ in his next opera.

Libretto London 1729. Title page, Argument and cast in English and Italian, with an English half-title. ‘Lotharius, an Opera [Lotario, Drama] As its [sic] performed at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market ... Printed by T. Wood, in Little Briain [sic].’ viii + 69 pp. The Italian Argument is reprinted from the 1729 Venice libretto. There were two issues. The first, and commoner, has an unnumbered Errata page at the end with the text of the coro ‘Viva, e regni fortunato’ in Italian and English, accidentally omitted from I.ix, and two changes to scene headings in ink. In III.i d’Armi is crossed out after Galleria in the Italian text; in III.ix Gallery is substituted for Solitude in the English text. In the second issue the coro is restored to its place on pp. 14 and 15 (and a misprint, ‘Flame’ for ‘Fame’ on p. 15 corrected). There was an attempt to rectify the scene headings. D’armi has disappeared, but Gallery is still in ink with Solitude faintly visible. Cabinetto in II.iv should have been changed at the same time to Prigione. The

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 148

06/10/2006 14:51:46

Lotario

149

British Library has copies of both issues. The mistakes reflect the haste with which the opera was brought to the stage. An Adelaide libretto with text by one Michelangelo Boccardi of Turin and dedication dated 1 June 1730 to the Elector of Bavaria, claiming production at the Haymarket Theatre with Handel’s music, seems to have been a crude attempt to win favour with the Elector. The names of the characters and singers do not correspond to those of Handel’s opera, though Strada, Bernacchi, Merighi and Fabri are listed.14

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1028) was copied by Smith and Hb 1 after Handel had made all amendments to the autograph apart from the addition of ‘Impara, codardo’, the single insertion (fols 30–3). Smith copied the first two acts, the recitative of III.xi and all III.xii, Hb 1 the remainder including the insertion (apart from the clefs etc. at the start). The modified violin parts in ‘Non t’inganni’ and the higher vocal alternatives in ‘D’instabile fortuna’ printed in HG were added by Handel in pencil. They are not in the other copies, parts or prints. The insertion of ‘Impara, codardo’ left the stage direction Mentre vuol andarsene, etc. (HG 113) before the aria, an error repeated in the Malmesbury, Lennard and Granville copies. The copies show no major variants. Malmesbury (S1, ?1730), Lennard (S5, c.1737) and Granville (S5, early 1740s) were copied from the performing score, though Malmesbury has a few details (for example the scene heading in II.xi) apparently from the libretto. Flower (S2, c.1745–48) on the other hand was copied from the autograph, with which it shares a reading, a downward scale link from the B section of ‘D’una torbida sorgente’ to the segno, that is not in the performing score or the other manuscript copies. S2 also used the libretto, retaining the erroneous heading Cabinetto for Prigione in II.iv and omitting d’armi in the heading of III.i. A copy by the English miniaturist in Berlin Staatsbibliothek Mus. MS 9054 was taken largely from the Cluer print, with the same omissions but a few tempo variants. Excerpts in RM 19 a 5, fols 1–16 (S2, three accompagnatos, three sinfonias and ‘Alza al ciel’) and RM 19 c 9, fols 92–102 (Hb 1, coro ‘Viva!’, one accompagnato and ‘Quanto più forte’) supply the gaps in the Cluer score for Jennens’s library. An identical collection (Coke MS 202, S2 again) performs the same function for Lord Shaftesbury. RM 19 a 5 also contains an S2 copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement; there is another (Hb 1) in the Malmesbury Collection. RM 19 d 12, fols 18–21, has an early S1 copy of ‘Vi sento’, marked Largo. Hamburg MA/175 contains six arias, ‘Vanne a colei’, ‘Per salvarti’ and ‘Quel cor che mi donasti’ copied by S1, ‘Scherza in mar’, ‘Menti eterne’ and ‘D’una torbida sorgente’ (B section as HG) copied by Smith. All these excerpts date from the 1730s, mostly early in the decade. The Flower parts (S2, c.1743–45) – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, cello + bassoon, oboe 2 and tromba (oboe 1 is missing15) – were copied from the autograph (the same six arias lack a tempo mark, and ‘D’una torbida sorgente’ has the B section 14  See Deutsch, 257. 15  Horns 1 and 2 of this set are in the library of the University of Maryland; likewise an S5 copy (c.1744) of the duet ‘Si, bel sembiante’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 149

06/10/2006 14:51:46

150

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

variant), but differ from the Flower score at several points, though S2 copied both from the same source. He evidently misread the autograph at the voice entry in ‘Rammentati’, in bars 59–67 of ‘Scherza in mar’ and in bars 68–81 and 92–3 of ‘Non t’inganni’. In each case, confused by Handel’s corrections or insertions, he reproduced a rejected version. The parts omit the overture, sinfonia in III.v and the arias ‘Grave è’l fasto’, ‘Orgogliosetto’, ‘Menti eterne’ and ‘Alza al ciel’, but include all four accompagnatos and both cori. The oboe parts (that of the missing first can be deduced) are less problem­atic than usual, since autograph and performing score are generally specific. In addition to their usual appearance in ritornellos they play throughout the A section of ‘Vi sento’ and both sections of ‘Impara, codardo’, and occasionally while the voice is singing in ‘Non sempre invendicata’. They are omitted erroneously in ‘Quel superbo’. The cello part contains two separate bassoon parts in the Act I coro, ­omitting the cello and sometimes the true bass; otherwise bassoons are mentioned only to be silenced at bar 13 of ‘Scherza il mar’. At the end of the cembalo part S2 copied in score the fragmentary first setting of ‘Vedrò più liete’ from the autograph. The Cluer score (13 February 1730), the last to be published by that firm after Cluer’s death, omits all sinfonias, recitatives of both types, the Act I coro, ‘Quanto più forte’ and ‘Alza al ciel’ but includes the final coro. The scoring is almost complete, but the instruments are seldom named except in the overture, where the oboes are divided with the violins (as also in the Malmesbury copy). All but five dal segno arias are given a lazy da capo. ‘D’una torbida sorgente’ has the autograph/Flower variant in the B section. ‘Vi sento’ is Larghetto, the duet Ad[agi]o, an error. In the same year Walsh and Hare, at first anonymously, published a group of Most Celebrated or Favourite Songs, comprising the duet and seven arias, five of them in transposed keys: ‘Non pensi quell’altera’ and ‘Vanne a colei’ in C, ‘Scherza in mar’ and ‘Vedrò più liete’ (ascribed to Fabri) in G, ‘Arma lo sguardo’ in A minor, together with ‘Quel cor che mi donasti’ and ‘Vi sento’. The scoring is complete and the dal segnos correct. A Walsh publication of the following year, The Additional Favourite Songs in the Opera of Rinaldo (21 April 1731) – none of them composed for that opera – reprinted three arias from the 1730 group with the addition of ‘Per salvarti’ and ‘D’instabile fortuna’. Walsh advertised a flute arrangement of Lotario (March 1730) and the overture in parts (December 1730), in score (October 1740) and arranged for keyboard (December 1750). Chrysander’s edition (1879), based on the performing score which he sometimes annotated, is accurate. It omits one stage direction in the autograph, Scende dal trono at the end of Adelaide’s recitative in I.vi (HG 26). The HHA score, edited by Michael Pacholke, appeared in 2003 after this chapter was written. He lists a set of parts for the overture in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden, with many trills added by the Kapellmeister J. G. Pisendel. ‘Se in mar’ was sung in Poro first in November 1731.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 150

06/10/2006 14:51:46

chapter 9 Partenope

T

he background of the opera is the (mythical) foundation of the city of Naples. According to the Argument in the printed libretto ‘Parthenope, the Daughter of Eumelius, King of Phera in Thessaly, departed from Calcis [sic] in the Isle of Euboea, now call’d Negropont, to follow the Augury of a Dove, and upon the shore of the Tyrrhene Sea, founded the City Parthenope, now call’d Naples. This is mention’d in the Eleventh Chapter of the first Book of the History of the City and Kingdom of Naples, by Gio. Antonio Sumonte. The rest of the Drama is fictitious.’ Act I. Sunrise. Part of a City near the Sea, adorned with great Solemnity; in the Middle an Altar, with the Statue of Apollo. Priests and Nymphs with Basons in their Hands full of Laurel Leaves. Parthenope on a Throne, Arsace and Armindo. Partenope invokes Apollo to favour her new city; the chorus call down a blessing on her. The Fire kindles suddenly on the Altar, and on Partenope’s command they burn the Laurels. To them Rosmira in the Habit of an Armenian (she is described in the cast list as ‘Princess of Cyprus, in love with Arsace, and promis’d to him, but afterwards forsaken by him’). She kneels and tells Partenope that she is Eurimenes King of Armenia, shipwrecked off the coast. Partenope promises hospitality. Ormonte, Captain of Partenope’s Guards, introduces a Messenger and reports that the hostile people of Cumae have captured ‘the neighbouring Mountain and the Plain’ and their prince Emilio asks for conference. Partenope seems pensive, though Arsace, ‘Eurimene’ and Armindo, Prince of Rhodes, try to encourage her. She sends the messenger to summon Emilio and goes out with Ormonte, followed by Arsace, who as he retires, looks at Rosmira, puzzled and disturbed by her appearance as Eurimenes. Armindo tells Rosmira that he loves Partenope, but has not told her since she and Arsace have sworn eternal fidelity. Rosmira, concealing her indignation at Arsace’s treachery, urges Armindo to speak out in his own interest. He resolves to do so. In a Royal Hall Rosmira confronts Arsace: she abandoned all to follow him. He seems confus’d and embarrassed, first claims to love her, then confesses he loves Partenope. Rosmira, after a short suspense, assumes a resolute Air, denounces him as a traitor, and orders him, if he wishes to regain her favour, to swear ‘by Heaven, and all the Gods’ never to reveal her identity or her sex. He does so, whereupon his affections begin to move back to his first love. Ormonte assures Partenope that her army is ready to fight, and guesses that her resolution is fortified by love. She asks Armindo the cause of his sorrow. He begins to tell her, draws back afraid of her displeasure, looks tenderly at her, and when he sees Arsace coming blurts   Hence the title of the Parthenopean Republic, established by a revolution in 1799 but ­suppressed the following year, when the Bourbons returned.   This detail (from the source libretto) is in Handel’s autograph, but not in the London libretto.   Si vedono girare intorno d’altare aquile e cigni (stage direction in Handel’s autograph).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 151

06/10/2006 14:51:47

152

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

out that he is his rival and runs away (without an aria). Partenope tells Arsace of Armindo’s love; he forgets Rosmira and they embark on a love duet, soon interrupted by the entry of ‘Eurimene’. Partenope insists on an open avowal of her and Arsace’s mutual love. ‘Eurimene’ offers to retire to mourn ‘his’ woes, and Arsace thinks he is discovered; but when Partenope asks for an explanation ‘Eurimene’ pretends to love her and makes double-edged remarks about Arsace: if ‘he’ (Eurimene) were a woman ‘he’ would never trust him. Partenope however assures Arsace of her love and leaves. Rosmira denounces Arsace and exit disdainfully. Arsace asks heaven which of his loves he should abandon. In a Royal Apartment Ormonte introduces Emilio to the other four characters. Emilio offers Partenope his love and throne, to general consternation. She refuses to buy peace with her heart. When he kneels, and lays his Sword at Parthenope’s Feet, she tells him his conduct is contemptible: he should govern and defend his people. He accepts the challenge and resolves to prove himself worthy of her in battle. Partenope gives command of her forces to Arsace. Rosmira throws his falsehood in his face; all are surprised at his failure to retaliate and indignant at being asked to serve under him, whereupon Partenope proclaims herself an Amazon and assumes personal command, assuring Arsace that her heart is unchanged. Arsace tries to dissuade ‘Eurimene’ from fighting, claiming to be moved by love and pity. ‘Eurimene’ assures Armindo that ‘he’ is not a false friend: ‘he’ only pretends to love Partenope in order to restore her to Armindo and bring Arsace to himself. ‘He’ has another love, preferring to follow the huntress Diana rather than heartless Cupid. Act II. A Camp with the Army of Emilius drawn up in Battalia, to which with their Squadrons advance Parthenope, Arsaces, Rosmira, Armindo, and Ormontes. Emilio addresses his troops, whereupon Parthenope advances, attended as aforesaid, and halts with her Army, fronting the Troops of Emilius. Emilio orders none of his men to harm Partenope. After a short ensemble the Battle ensues, and Parthenope retreats from one Quarter, pursu’d by the Enemy, at which Time Armindo arrives to her Relief ... An Engagement follows, and Rosmira is attack’d, and almost overcome by Emilius; but Arsaces arriving with his Soldiers, delivers her, and takes Emilius Prisoner ... Parthenope and Arsaces return with several [molti in the Italian text] of their Soldiers. Arsace and Rosmira argue as to which of them captured Emilio. Emilio makes his submission to Partenope and is led off by guards. All celebrate their victory in a coro and Exeunt to the Sound of Military Instruments. In a Street in the City, corresponding to one of the Gates, Emilio, guarded by Soldiers, laments his ill-luck in love and war. Partenope enters with a numerous Retinue bearing Trophies, which she dedicates to her dear city. The others break into a lively dispute as to who was responsible for the victory. Rosmira sets out, on her own behalf and Armindo’s, to provoke Arsace and challenges him to single combat. She interrupts so often that Partenope takes it as a sign of bad breeding and cannot understand why Arsace submits to it. Eventually she orders Eurimene’s arrest, reaffirms her love for Arsace, and goes out with Ormonte and Attendants, leaving the Soldiers that guard Rosmira. Emilio and Armindo are contemptuous of Arsace’s evasion of the challenge. In a duet, partly aside (since Emilio and Armindo are present), Arsace begs Rosmira to relent, but she continues to upbraid him. When Arsace has gone ‘Eurimene’ astonishes Emilio and Armindo by telling them that Arsace is a better man than they are and ordering them to speak of him   Angrily might be a better translation.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 152

06/10/2006 14:51:47

Partenope

153

with more respect. Left alone, she gives vent to her contrary emotions of love, rage and jealousy. In a Garden Partenope asks Arsace why he tolerated Eurimene’s insults. He cannot explain; to gratify him she orders one of the Guards, who withdraws, to release Eurimene on condition that ‘he’ never approaches her again. Arsace is relieved but unable to reveal the source of his anxiety. Partenope asks Armindo whom he sighs for (knowing the answer perfectly well). He bids her continue to wound his heart. She admits his merit, but she loves Arsace and compares herself to a moth burning itself in the flame. Rosmira, determined that Partenope shall accept Armindo and see through Arsace, sends a depressed Armindo to her to crave an audience: ‘he’ has an important secret to impart. Arsace renews his vows to Rosmira, but she refuses to believe him and goes out. He compares the tumult in his heart to the fury of the wind. Act III. In a Garden Partenope grants Armindo’s request that she give audience to Eurimene. She tries to calm Arsace’s agitation, which Armindo and Emilio, misinterpreting its cause, would be happy to share (quartet). ‘Eurimene’ enters and repeats the challenge to Arsace, claiming to act on behalf of the wronged Rosmira. Arsace is forced to admit his breach of promise. When ‘Eurimene’ explains how Arsace first stole Rosmira’s heart and then abandoned her, Partenope resigns her interest in Arsace and orders the combat to proceed, thereby reviving the hopes of Armindo and Emilio. In an aria addressed to each in turn she encourages Armindo and excoriates Arsace. Rosmira seems to retire, but stops a little aside to observe Arsace’s conduct. Emilio is now converted to the support of Arsace and tries to encourage him. Arsace and Rosmira renew their wordy warfare. He asks for compassion; she first dismisses him (he retires slowly), then, her love returning, calls him back (he returns hastily), then once more sends him away. She wants to love and forgive him, but is still not sure of his fidelity. In a Champaign Country [Campagna] Partenope appoints Ormonte judge in the duel. Armindo is to be Eurimene’s second, Emilio Arsace’s. She promises her love to Armindo, who enlarges on the virtues of constancy. Arsace, alone, summons oblivion to bring him peace. A melancholy Symphony is heard; he welcomes it as an invitation to sleep. Rosmira finds him asleep and is overwhelmed by loving thoughts. Seeing Partenope approach she shakes him and wakes him up and pretends to threaten him with her sword. He addresses her repeatedly as Rosmira and offers her his sword, which she refuses. Partenope, who has overheard, comes hastily from the Place of her Concealment and asks Arsace why he calls so constantly on one whom he has betrayed. In a trio Partenope and Rosmira say Arsace’s guilt must be punished, while he laments that he must suffer in silence. Left alone, he denounces love as a god of hell and invokes the stars to relent or give him more than one heart. In a brief interlude Emilio declares that only for a moment can love disturb the calm content of glory. The scene changes to An Inclosure with Scaffolds erected for the Combat; Parthenope on a Throne on the one Side, and Ormontes on the other, with a Table before him, and two drawn Swords upon it, and a Paper containing the Challenge. To them the duellists and their seconds. Ormonte reads the Challenge. The Trumpets flourish, and Drums beat; enter Rosmira and Armindo on the one Side, Arsaces and Emilius on the other. Arsace is dejected, Rosmira sprightly [tutta allegra]. Directed by Ormonte, Armindo presents a Sword to Arsaces, and Emilius another to Rosmira; after which Armindo retires to Rosmira, and Emilius to Arsaces. ‘Eurimene’ is so impatient for

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 153

06/10/2006 14:51:47

154

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

action that Armindo warns ‘him’ against over-confidence; Arsace, despite Emilio’s urging, hesitates so long that Partenope, not for the first time, orders the combat to proceed. Arsace at last agrees to fight, provided the combatants are stripped to the waist [‘a petto ignudo’]. Ormonte and Partenope rule that ‘Eurimene’ must comply. Rosmira seems pensive and confused, as Arsaces was before. Arsace is now all for action, and the others begin to taunt ‘Eurimene’. Partenope says ‘his’ conduct has released Arsace from suspicion. Rosmira is forced to reveal her identity and kneels to Partenope, who descends from the Throne. Partenope asks Arsace to explain his silence; he replies that it was imposed by Rosmira, who says she wished to test his faith. Partenope declares that love would soon die if it were not mingled with pain. She accepts Armindo as her husband, gives Rosmira to Arsace, and sends Emilio back to Cumae not as a lover but as a friend. For once the lieto fine does not strain credulity. This libretto was written by Silvio Stampiglia for Naples in 1699, when it was set by Luigi Mancia. It was one of the most popular librettos of the period, and inspired at least twenty-three productions before Handel’s and thirty-six in the first half of the eighteenth century, in settings by Caldara, Predieri, Sarro, Vinci and Vivaldi among others. As was to be expected, it underwent numerous changes. Handel based his opera not on any of the most recent versions, but on that set by Caldara for Venice in the carnival season of 1707/8, which he probably saw in the theatre. Apart from the customary elimination of two comic intermezzo characters, Handel’s version is remarkably close not only to Caldara’s but to Mancia’s, retaining eighteen of Mancia’s aria texts, an exceptionally large number for the date. The plot remained virtually intact, in outline and detail, and the balance of arias only marginally altered. By comparison with Caldara, Handel reduced Rosmira’s quota from ten arias to six (in Caldara’s opera she was the prima donna, a soprano) and Arsace’s from eleven to nine; he increased Emilio’s by one, at the expense of Armindo, and added one for Ormonte. Partenope’s quota remained the same (eight). Of Handel’s thirty-one arias, twenty-two were taken from Caldara’s libretto, a few with minor changes; one, ‘Sento amor’ in I.v, is more remotely related to it (according to Freeman it originated at Bologna in 1710); eight were new. Of Caldara’s eight ensembles Handel retained the texts of all but the final coro. Typically most of his substitutions come at the end of acts; he regularly strengthened the finales of intermediate acts with powerful or deeply emotional arias for principal characters, and with increasing frequency (though not in this opera) that of the last act with a   Robert Freeman, in a painstaking article full of tables, symbols and statistics, ‘The Travels of Partenope’, in Studies in Music History, Essays for Oliver Strunk, ed. Harold Powers (Princeton, 1968) subjects thirteen librettos to close analysis, but frustratingly omits to identify the singers and the first lines of the arias, and, apart from a couple of footnotes on Handel, only goes as far as 1720.   As Reinhard Strohm has shown (Essays, 200ff) he also knew Vinci’s 1725 setting (Rosmira fedele), for he used seven arias from it in his pasticcio Elpidia the same year.   In Caldara’s opera Partenope was sung by Diamante Scarabelli (Handel’s Poppea in Agrippina), Arsace by Nicolini, Armindo by the tenor Antonio Borosini (father of Francesco, Bajazet in Handel’s Tamerlano), Emilio by the bass Antonio Francesco Carli (Claudio in Agrippina).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 154

06/10/2006 14:51:47

Partenope

155

composite movement combining solos and ensemble. In Partenope the last aria in Act I, the last two in Act II, and the last three movements in Act III are new. The only other new texts are the added arias for Ormonte in I.vi and Emilio in III.iii (‘La speme ti consoli’) and Armindo’s ‘Nobil core che ben ama’ in III.v. Stampiglia was a member of the Roman Arcadian Academy from its foundation in 1690, but his librettos have a very different flavour from those of the most celebrated members of that body, Zeno and (later) Metastasio, who sought to give the opera a more elevated and edifying tone by banishing the comic, grotesque and supernatural elements prominent in the seventeenth century. Stampiglia’s work was notable for its mixture of the serious with the comic and even farcical; hence perhaps its popularity with audiences as well as composers. Within these terms the excellence of his Partenope libretto scarcely requires emphasis. Dent called it ‘perhaps the best libretto that Handel had to set’ and found ‘something quite Shakespearian about the atmosphere of it’. The characters are distinctive and consistent, the plot clearly managed without loose ends or non sequiturs, and unencumbered with a subplot. The opening scenes of the first two acts and the final scene of the third bring all the characters together in effective conflict. Particularly notable is the manner in which the arias move smoothly out of the recitative and carry the action forward instead of breaking it up with jerks or bringing it to a full stop. The whole drama is so well organised that one or two of Handel’s insertions, for example Rosmira’s hunting aria at the end of Act I, tend to loosen the structure. One or two modern writers have denied Partenope’s status as a comedy. In the light of several episodes, notably the undignified squabble as to who was responsible for the victory in Act II and the calculated anticlimax by which Arsace finally turns the tables, approached by an elaborate build-up through the minutely specified preparations for the duel – not to mention the witty stichomythia of the recitatives almost throughout – such a claim seems perverse. By retaining so much of Stampiglia’s text Handel’s opera deliberately glances back towards the seventeenth century and its mixed genre. (Partenope is by no means unique in this respect; Flavio, Giustino and Serse are other examples, and the spectacular magic operas likewise defy Arcadian principles.) Indicative of the same tendency are the brevity of many of the arias (hence their greater number: Partenope has more arias than any of Handel’s London operas except Giulio Cesare and Serse) and the exceptional number of ensembles; Partenope resembles Agrippina, an avowedly ‘seventeenth-century’ opera, in containing both a trio and a quartet. All Handel’s previous London operas, especially since the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1720 (with the single exception of Flavio), had been serious, most of them in the grand heroic mode. This seems to have been in accord with the Academy’s policy; in 1726, after Faustina joined Cuzzoni in the company, they had considered but rejected Partenope. When Owen Swiney, who was acting as the Academy’s agent in Italy, heard of this from Senesino, he was horrified. ‘He put me   ‘The Operas’, in Handel a Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (London, 1954), 44. He may have had As You Like It or Twelfth Night in mind.   For example, ‘with the elimination of the comic characters there is nothing intrinsically funny about Partenope’ (Ellen T. Harris (ed.), The Librettos of Handel’s Operas, vol. VI, p. xx).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 155

06/10/2006 14:51:47

156

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

in a Sweat in telling me that Parthenope was likely to be brought on the Stage, for it is the very worst book (excepting one) that I ever read in my whole life: Signor Stampiglia (the author of it) endeavours to be humourous and witty in it: If he succeeded in his attempt, on any stage in Italy, ’twas, meerly, from a depravity of Taste in the audience – but I am very sure that ’twill be received with contempt in England.’ Faustina evidently fancied herself as Rosmira,10 ‘but if she’l take my advice, she shou’d never attempt it – she is, in it, a little part [sic] coquette ... Then there’s the part of Parthenope (I suppose for Cuzzoni) which is only fit for Merighi or The Diana Vico or some He-She-thing or other.11 I’ll say no more of it, but that if ’tis to be done, ’twill bring more scandal & lesse profit, than any opera, that has been, yet, acted to the Hay-Market Theatre’.12 Handel did not agree, and his Partenope did not bring scandal; it enjoyed a fair measure of success – eighteen performances in three different seasons, whereas he never revived Lotario, Ezio or Orlando. After the grandiose gestures of Lotario, Partenope represented a striking change of style, though only a temporary one. It was also new in another respect. Apart from Rodelinda it is the only one of Handel’s first twenty-five London operas to carry the title of the heroine, not the hero. This is no accident. It would be possible to present Partenope as a feminist opera. Not only is Partenope herself the Queen and sole ruler of Naples; she and Rosmira are far stronger characters than the two leading men, the guilt-ridden Arsace who is under Rosmira’s thumb throughout, and Armindo who is too timid to declare his love. This affects the whole climate of the opera, which can be viewed as a psychological study of relations between the sexes seen largely from the woman’s point of view. Subtle characterisation is an outstanding feature of the score, though that of course was nothing new in Handel. As in all his lighter operas, comedy does not inhibit profundity or near-tragedy. This comprehensive vision of human nature as matter for laughter and tears, often in the same situation, is a quality that Handel shares with Mozart. Partenope’s part, which amounts to eight arias, a trio and a quartet, is, with the exception of the trio, entirely in major keys commonly associated with extrovert moods (F, B flat, G and A). She is an uncomplicated outgoing character, spirited, capable of love and anger and not without pride, but free from psychological hangups. Her first aria with its lively coloratura and cunningly placed top C (a note very seldom written by Handel, and never again for Strada) establishes her carefree character and sets the tone for the opera. Her little duet with Arsace, ‘Per te moro’, is so captivating that one longs for more, but it is cut off after five bars – necessarily so, since this is a passing attraction. The comparative triviality of her love song ‘Sei mia gioja’ confirms this. ‘Io ti levo’ goes deeper and tells us more. The music with its broad melody (all the oboes doubling first violins in the ritornellos), swinging gait and rich encrustation of ornament in both sections, has a regal splendour as befits an Amazon set on leading her troops into battle. This and ‘Voglio amare’ in Act II are 10  She had sung the role in at least two operas, Sarro’s Partenope at Naples in 1722 and Vinci’s La Rosmira fedele at Venice in 1725. 11  Merighi and Vico often played male parts, though Handel always cast Merighi in female roles, including Rosmira. 12  Swiney to the Duke of Richmond, 13 August 1726 (Gibson, 369–70).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 156

06/10/2006 14:51:47

Partenope

157

the only arias in the opera to reflect the influence of the Neapolitan school (Vinci, Sarro, Hasse) with its emphasis on a powerful melodic line supported by a predominantly harmonic accompaniment. ‘Voglio amare’ in particular, its noble melody expanding and contracting in varied phrase-lengths against a flowing counterpoint on the violins over a bass marching steadily in quavers, anticipates the magnificent arias Handel was to write for Carestini in Arianna and Ariodante. It is the apex of a double aria, preceded by the lovely little cavatina ‘Care mura’ with which Partenope dedicates the trophies of victory to her city. Burney was impressed: ‘This air [‘Voglio amare’] is so smooth and free from wrinkles that it is difficult to imagine it to be near sixty years of age’, than which he could have paid it no higher compliment. ‘Qual farfalletta’, the opera’s only simile aria, offers an ambivalent response to Armindo’s declaration of love: admitting his merit but still loving Arsace, Partenope compares herself to a moth attracted by light. The music is full of little fluttering figures; the uneasy harmony of the B section suggests an inner doubt.13 By ‘Spera e godi’ that doubt is resolved. Learning of Arsace’s desertion of Rosmira, she addresses Armindo and Arsace in turn, encouraging the one in a genial cross-rhythm that Handel employed in many contexts, excoriating the other in staccato crotchets. It is a curious but strongly dramatic piece, especially the B section, in which her alternate phrases are punctuated, not quite symmetrically, by rests of a full bar with fermatas. Partenope’s last aria, ‘Sì, scherza, sì’, winds up the story appropriately with a return to the carefree mood of her first, now in a dancing 3/8. Rosmira is perhaps the most interesting character, though she has fewer arias than Partenope or Arsace. An avenger still in love with her betrayer, determined to make him suffer for his inconstancy, she has strong emotions and a strong will – and a mischievous sense of humour. While teasing Arsace repeatedly, she is increasingly at war with herself. Her first aria, ‘Se non ti sai spiegar’, addressed to Armindo, is a lovely 12/8 movement in E major, a key generally invested with more emotion than the other major keys, especially in slow arias. It is full of pedals and violin thirds, the ritornello after the A section enriched by suspensions in a mood that foreshadows the King of Scotland’s ‘Al sen ti stringo’ in Ariodante (likewise in E major) and the pifa in Messiah. As usual in first arias, it is crucial to her character, suggesting a fundamental serenity beneath the agitated surface. After that, apart from one untypical aria, she is confined to minor keys. Burney had high praise for ‘Un altra volta ancor’, in which, after forcing Arsace to swear to keep her secret, she points to the oath he has broken, but it is perhaps the least striking in her part. ‘Io seguo sol fiero’ on the other hand is very striking indeed, but has little connection with her character. It is one of Handel’s most irresistible hunting songs, with bounding horns and chortling oboes, from the world of Acis and Galatea or the open-air scenes in L’Allegro (Ex. 18). Rosmira cannot intend to go hunting at this stage, nor does the music suggest that she is putting on an act; Handel may have added the piece for variety, or simply to bring the act to a rousing conclusion, which it certainly does.14 The initial ritornello is severely abridged in Chrysander’s edition. 13  But this aria was not originally composed for Partenope; see below. 14  David Vickers offers the ingenious suggestion that it was intended as a metaphor for Rosmira’s hunting down of Arsace. (Personal communication.)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 157

06/10/2006 14:51:47

158

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

In Act II, after challenging Arsace to single combat (and being arrested by Partenope for ill manners), Rosmira continues to humiliate him. In a duet he begs her to desist, twice in the B section pleading piano tra loro due (quietly aside to him); she is implacable, merely repeating the words ‘Infido! ingrato!’ throughout both sections. It is a rare duet of opposition, and highly dramatic; one thinks of the lovers’ quarrel in Act III of Serse. Left alone, Rosmira for the first and only time gives vent to her inmost feelings: in the impassioned C minor aria ‘Furie son dell’alma mia’ the abrupt contrasts of rhythm, texture and phrase-length illustrate her confused emotions of love, rage and jealousy. Burney’s reaction too seems confused: he found the aria ‘spirited and masterly’ and at the same time ‘somewhat rude and uncouth’. The cavatina in which Rosmira, without revealing her identity, informs Partenope of Arsace’s betrayal, ‘Arsace, O Dio’, is all the more moving for its brevity and utter simplicity – a mere eight and a half bars without ritornello, with a Purcellian discord at the cadence. Rosmira’s last aria, ‘Quel volto mi piace’, her E minor reply to Arsace’s E major ‘Ch’io parta’, is not distinguished as music (the violins double the voice almost throughout) and gives no more than adequate expression to her increasingly divided emotions. Handel’s sympathy by this time seems to have moved to Arsace. When Rosmira finds Arsace asleep and is overcome with love she has an eloquent accompagnato (one of only two in the opera), with the upper strings muted and the basses con l’arco ma piano, but no aria. In the last scene too she is confined to recitative. Partenope’s three suitors are contrasted in vocal timbre as well as character: Arsace a castrato, Armindo a travesti mezzo, Emilio a tenor. Arsace is an unusual part for a primo uomo. If he has a heroic side we never see it,15 except momentarily and not in 15  Stampiglia may have been poking fun at the convention of the castrato hero.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 158

06/10/2006 14:51:48

Partenope

159

musical terms in the Act II battle. He is presented throughout as a weak man carrying a load of guilt, but his character is defined with increasing subtlety during the course of the opera. In Act III his music is so expressive of his sufferings, his love for Rosmira and his penitence that we accept the happy conclusion as artistically satisfying: he has purged his contempt. His first aria expresses only puzzlement at the resemblance between ‘Eurimene’ and Rosmira; he has not begun to realise his danger. The accompaniment – continuo only except for a two-bar introduction for violins and bass and an equally terse coda in four parts with added oboes and viola – reflects a design common at the start of the century. There is a touch of self-indulgence in his E major aria ‘Sento amor’, the A section encrusted with trills and ornaments, when Rosmira’s firmness begins to tempt him back to his former allegiance. The modulating B section with plain chordal accompaniment hints at uneasiness, but little more. In ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’ he is more deeply involved. Uncertain which of his loves he should obey, he begins to feel the bite of conscience. This is the most emotionally tense aria in the opera so far, and the most richly scored. The introduction of a flute and the doubling of bassoons and viola in the ritornello add a flavour at once plaintive and sombre to a beautiful aria, in which Burney detected ‘the stamp of a great master’. ‘È figlio il mio timore’, Arsace’s second consecutive aria in G minor, is less striking, but the undercurrent of anxiety, caused now by fears for ‘Eurimene’s’ safety in the battle, is reflected by the avoidance of major keys throughout the A section. ‘Poterti dir vorrei’ in Act II rather marks time, but Arsace, once more rejected by Rosmira, ends the act with a stormy weather piece, ‘Furibondo spira il vento’, the raging winds reflecting the turmoil in his heart – a much stronger aria than Stampiglia’s at this point. Handel wrote many such pieces – the rushing scales in octaves punctuated from time to time by angular ejaculations from the voice are typical – and they seldom fail if decently sung. Act III raises Arsace almost to tragic status. A new note of pathos appears in his reply to Rosmira’s next dismissal. ‘Ch’io parta?’ also belongs to a type, a slow aria in which the singer submits to a brusque command with a heavy heart. The prime example is ‘Tu vuoi ch’io parta?’, Polissena’s gentle reply to her brutal husband in Act I of Radamisto, where the situation is identical; the key (E major), the absence of initial ritornello and the spare string accompaniment are the same in both arias, as they are in Emilia’s ‘Parto, sì’ in Flavio, except that there a flute is added. The haunting phrase with a falling sixth in bars 7–8 of Arsace’s aria occurs first in Rodrigo (‘Egli è tuo’), where Esilena offers to surrender her husband and her happiness to a rival if it will bring the country peace, and was to reach its apotheosis in ‘Comfort ye’ in Messiah.16 All these arias have a simple heart-stopping beauty. Arsace’s next solo, the cavatina ‘Ma quai note’ as he falls asleep, is equally remarkable. The long ritornello, marvellously scored for two flutes, muted upper strings and a continuo line for theorbo and pizzicato basses with the harpsichord and bassoons silenced, corresponds to the ‘melancholy symphony’ of the stage direction (omitted by Chrysander). The whispered violin thirds, the imploring flutes, the broken phrases of the voice drooping ever downwards, and the key (G minor again) paint a picture of desolation and despair. The end, with the voice 16  ‘Egli è tuo’ is in E flat, whereas all the parallels are in E. Was this due to a difference in pitch between Italy and London? Handel’s ear was acutely susceptible to questions of key and pitch.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 159

06/10/2006 14:51:48

160

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

repeating G for several bars and the instrumental cadence falling to a monotone in the octave below, has the bleakness of unalloyed tragedy. No wonder Rosmira is moved to express her love in accompanied recitative. But she still does not relent, and Partenope joins her in saying Arsace must be punished. This is the context for the trio (C minor), in which he can only lament his inability to speak. Left alone, he denounces love as a god from hell in the tragic key of F minor. The obsessive descending scales of the A section are relieved from monotony by the contrasted B section, a Larghetto in triple time in which he prays to be rescued from his pains. This is his lowest point. The minor mode is banished for the remainder of the opera as the comic muse resumes control. Armindo is a much simpler character, too timid at first to declare his love for Partenope but rewarded at the end for his modest demeanour. The first two of his three arias are in minor keys, both concerned with unsatisfied love, but Handel takes care to keep the emotional level near the surface. ‘Voglio dire’ makes nice use of hemiola, and the violins echo Armindo’s plaintive ‘piango e moro’ attractively without attempting to plumb the depths. His exit without an aria at the end of I.vii is eloquent of his inarticulacy: an aria here would be out of place. In the source libretto Partenope has an aria in this scene, but not Armindo. ‘Non chiedo, O luci vaghe’ in Act II is a gentle appeal to Partenope to go on wounding his heart. Burney calls it a jig, but a faint Scarlattian flavour brings it closer to a siciliano. ‘Nobil core’ on the other hand is uninhibitedly cheerful: Partenope has given him grounds for hope. The attractive swinging melody is set off by a happy counterpoint of metre: while the lower instruments for the most part march in common time, the first violins, doubled by a flute in the ritornello, and the voice carol away in triplets as if in 12/8 (compare the alternative setting of ‘Rejoice greatly’ in Messiah). Emilio, except in the scene following his capture in the battle, is a bluff extrovert figure.17 The part was designed to display the talents of the tenor Fabri, who commanded an athletic and taxing coloratura. ‘Anch’io pugnar saprò’ is launched by a sinewy contrapuntal ritornello, whose constituent elements are later split up and treated with much resource. In ‘Barbaro fato, sì’ the voice enters with quite different material from the ritornello, whose initial phrase reappears at irregular intervals to punctuate both sections of the aria. Emilio appears in a more conciliatory light in Act III, consoling Arsace in an aria, ‘La speme ti consoli’, that begins with another foretaste of Messiah (‘Every valley’). ‘La gloria in nobil alma’ is strictly superfluous but very effective, marked by intense energy, varied phrase-lengths, and exuberant cross-rhythms. There is, however, something in Burney’s complaint that its lengthy divisions are more suited to the harpsichord than to the voice. Ormonte’s single aria is more interesting than many of those written for Boschi, since the voice is not tethered remorselessly to the instrumental bass. The ensembles are all short, the four cori being sung by the soloists, though there must have been supernumeraries in the battle scene. The texture here is well varied, both ensembles beginning with dialogue for the soloists and ending with substantial 17  This was less apparent in Handel’s original scheme. ‘Qual farfalletta’ was written for Emilio, with a B section text expressing a lover’s despair, before being transferred to Partenope. Handel evidently wanted a more virile counterweight to the other two lovers.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 160

06/10/2006 14:51:48

Partenope

161

sections for orchestra alone. The sequence of movements – sinfonia, march, coro, sinfonia, coro, punctuated by short recitatives and coloured by the trumpet, the first coro returning to the music of the initial sinfonia – provides a basis for spirited action on the stage. As usual on such occasions the harmony is very simple, but there is one memorable stroke, the unprepared incursion of the March in B flat, after a cadence in A major. This was theatrically motivated: it marks the point where Partenope’s army enters.18 The quartet and trio make for variety in Act III, and the trio in particular skilfully differentiates the characters, but they are not fully developed ensembles like the quartet in Radamisto and the trios in Tamerlano, Orlando and Alcina. The characters never sing all together, and there is little sense of conflict in the quartet. Burney had a poor opinion of the overture, especially the fugue (‘on a convulsive and unpleasant theme’); it is certainly not one of Handel’s best, and may not have been written for this opera. The most unexpected thing about it is the key, D minor. The principal tonality is F major. Act I begins and ends firmly in that key, and it concludes the opera with a coro in gavotte rhythm that recalls the mood of the opening. Elsewhere the sharp major keys are prominent, with five movements in D (four of them conditioned by the trumpet), five in G, four in A and E. The scoring, especially in the early scenes, is light. Nearly half the arias (fifteen out of thirty-one) are supported by only a top line and bass, though now and then the violins are briefly divided. Horns appear in the opening coro and one aria, the only movement with eight instrumental parts, a single trumpet in the battle sequence, transverse flutes in three arias (two of them perhaps solo parts, though not so marked). The sinfonia at the start of the final scene was a later addition. The mention of the theorbo is unusual; it is used for special effect is ‘Ma quai note’, but doubtless supported the continuo in other movements, including secco recitatives.19 There is nothing ­ exceptional about the oboe and bassoon parts.

History and Text Handel finished Act I on 14 January 1730, the whole opera on 6 February, and produced it at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket on 24 February, with ‘the Scenes and Dresses all entirely new.’ The cast was: partenope Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) rosmira Antonia Merighi (contralto) arsace Antonio Bernacchi (alto castrato) armindo Francesca Bertolli (contralto) 18  The historian Charles de Brosses (1709–77) in his Lettres familières écrites d’Italie en 1739 et 1740 left an amusing account of this scene in a revival of Sarro’s opera at Naples in November 1739: ‘Il y avait une action de cavallerie effective, qui me plut infiniment. Les devise mestres de camp, avant que d’en venir aux mains, chantèrent à cheval un duo contradictoire d’un chromatique parfait et très capable de faire paroli aux longues harangues des héros de l’Iliade’. 19  Fougeroux specifically states that Handel used a theorbo in recitatives in 1728: see W. Dean, ‘A French Traveller’s View of Handel’s Operas’, M & L 55 (1974), 172ff; reprinted in Essays on Opera (Oxford, 1990).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 161

06/10/2006 14:51:49

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

162

emilio Annibale Pio Fabri (tenor) ormonte Johann Gottfried Riemschneider (bass) There were seven performances. Nothing is known of the reception, but it must have been fairly favourable, for Handel revived Partenope in his next season on 12 December the same year, again for seven performances. There were two changes of cast, Senesino replacing Bernacchi as Arsace and Giovanni Commano replacing Riemschneider as Ormonte. Handel cut the arias ‘T’appresta forse amore’ (Commano was thought capable only of recitative), ‘Fatto è Amor’, ‘La gloria in nobil alma’ (these two with their introductory recitatives) and ‘Sì scherza sì’, but gave Senesino a new aria, ‘Seguaci di Cupido’ in the last scene. The preceding recitative was altered to a form intermediate between Chrysander’s A and B versions. The opening ritornello of ‘Io seguo sol’ was reduced from eighteen bars to four, and the sinfonia on HG 115 added before the last scene. Arsace’s arias ‘O Eurimene’, ‘Sento amor’, ‘Poterti’ and ‘Furibondo’ were transposed down a tone for Senesino; only the last of these transpositions is noted in HG. Handel’s second and last revival was at Covent Garden on 29 January 1737, when according to the London Post and General Advertiser of 1 February there was ‘a great Disturbance’ in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. There were four performances, with a new cast except for Strada and Bertolli, who was promoted from Armindo to Rosmira. Arsace was sung by the alto castrato Domenico Annibali, Armindo by the soprano castrato Gioacchino Conti, Emilio by the tenor John Beard, and Ormonte by the contralto Maria Caterina Negri. Apart from the need to cater for the altered pitch of Armindo and Ormonte, Handel had two objectives, to shorten the opera and to provide a substantial part for Conti. This involved reordering the balance of the work, promoting Armindo to equal prominence with Arsace, both parts being played by leading castratos. No fewer than forty-five further passages of recitative were cut, some of considerable length: twenty-five in Act I, thirteen in Act II, seven in Act III, necessitating many new transitions. Four more arias disappeared: Arsace’s ‘Sento amor’ and ‘È figlio il mio timore’, Rosmira’s ‘Io seguo sol’ and Armindo’s ‘Nobil core che ben ama’. ‘T’appresta forse amore’ and ‘Sì, scherza sì’ were restored, the latter now sung by Armindo in II.iv. Arsace’s ‘Furibondo’ was transferred to Ormonte in III.iv with a new B section text, and Emilio’s ‘La speme ti consoli’ to Armindo, likewise in III.iv, with changed pronouns and modified text (‘La speme mi consola’). Armindo received an extra aria, ‘Bramo restar’, in I.vii (where previously he had gone out without an aria), the music taken from Muzio Scevola (‘Come se ti vedrò’) with parodied words. He probably sang Emilio’s ‘Barbaro fato’ in A minor at the end of Act II; the autograph contains a note to that effect, and the reassigned aria is in the performing score, but not in the libretto. Otherwise Act I ended with ‘Io ti levo’, Act II with ‘Qual farfalletta’. Armindo’s two surviving 1730 arias were transposed up for Conti, ‘Voglio dire’ from E minor to B minor, ‘Non chiedo’ from D minor to F sharp minor, and higher alternatives added for him in the quartet. Whereas at the first performance Arsace had nine arias to Armindo’s three, now each had six. Emilio retained only one of his original four arias. Ormonte with two fared better as a contralto than as a bass.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 162

06/10/2006 14:51:49

Partenope

163

Partenope enjoyed considerable if temporary success in Germany. First performed at Brunswick in February 1731, it was revived there and at neighbouring Salzthal and Wolfenbüttel a number of times in the two following years, and seems to have been considered particularly suitable for royal occasions. It graced the birthdays of the Dowager Duchess of Brunswick (Salzthal, 12 September 1731 NS) and the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI (Wolfenbüttel, 1 October 1732), and the marriage of the future Frederick the Great of Prussia (the Crown Prince) to a Brunswick princess (Hamburg, 15 June 1733). These performances were in Italian. A production at Hamburg, on 28 October 1733, the arias in Italian, the recitatives translated by Christian Gottlieb Wendt and set by Keiser, remained in the repertory for four seasons, reaching twentytwo performances by 1736. Partenope seems to have made no contribution to the current concert repertory. Handel incorporated three arias (‘Io ti levo’, ‘Non chiedo’ and ‘La gloria in nobil alma’) with parodied texts in his pasticcio Oreste (December 1734), and Conti sang the last-named in the December 1736 revival of Poro. ‘Io seguo sol fiero’, equipped with a second pair of horns, reappeared as the finale of the Concerto a due cori no. 3 in F (the ‘Concerto in Judas Maccabaeus’) in 1747. The overture featured in a Manchester Subscription Concert on 28 May 1745. There have been fifteen modern productions (to 2004), the first at the 1935 Göttingen Festival. The first in Britain was at Abingdon in 1961, the first in the United States at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1988. There is a good complete recording (1979) by La Petite Bande under Sigiswald Kuijken. A second recording under Nicholas McGegan, taken from the 2001 Göttingen Festival, was released to members of the Göttingen Händel-Gesellschaft. A third by the Early Opera Company under Christian Curnyn appeared in 2005.

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 b 11) shows a number of interesting changes. Handel foliated each act separately, but gave up before the end of Acts II and III. His first draft did not contain the arias ‘O Eurimene’, ‘Sento amor’ (with its introductory recitative), ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’, and ‘Sì scherza sì’, the March and second sinfonia (HG 55) in the battle scene, or the quartet (with the six preceding bars of recitative). These were all inserted before performance; ‘O Eurimene’, ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’ and the quartet are, however, in the source libretto. The sinfonia before the last scene (HG 115), also missing, was not added till December 1730. The overture, which seems a misfit, may have had an independent origin; it is not included in Handel’s foliation, the verso of its last page (fol. 4) is blank, and the title of the opera was added in different ink. The place of ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’ was occupied by an unpublished aria, ‘Io son ferito da doppio strale’ parodied on a rejected aria in Scipione, ‘Son pellegrino’ (HG 103); Handel then used its main theme for the quartet. (He adapted left-over material from Scipione in two further arias, ‘T’aspetta fuor dell’onde’ (HG 132) for Ormonte’s ‘T’appresta forse amore’,20 ‘Generoso chi sol brama’ (HG 131) for ‘Nobil 20  He took the initial motive from the duet ‘Liebliche Sonne’ in Keiser’s Claudius.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 163

06/10/2006 14:51:49

164

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

core’, greatly improving the latter.) ‘Qual farfalletta’ was composed in the tenor clef for Emilio in II.v (after the duet recitative, HG 72) with an abject B section text: ‘Alla diletta/Soccorso aita/Sospiro e grido/Ma incrudelità/Morte mi da’. Partenope may originally have had a different aria after the recitative on HG 81 (she has one in the source libretto); no exit is indicated for her, and Handel’s foliation in this act had broken down. Another point where something may have been removed is between Scenes iii and iv of Act III (HG 99): Handel’s foliation is erratic here, fol. 84 has a blank verso, fol. 85 a blank recto, and according to Burrows and Ronish fol. 84 is a separate leaf. Handel shortened a number of arias (‘Anch’io pugnar’, ‘Cade mura’, ‘Non chiedo’, both sections of ‘Ch’io parta?’), generally to tighten up a more leisurely harmonic movement. The end of the recitative before Rosmira’s ‘Un altra volta ancor’ (HG 20) was also shortened by three bars (after being copied in the performing score) to make Arsace’s oath more emphatic. The last eight bars of the B section of ‘Fatto è Amor’ (HG 112) have a violin countermelody marked NB (Ex. 19). This was evidently added after the performing material had been copied; it is not in either of the Hamburg scores (or that of the 1731 Rinaldo, to which the aria was transferred) or in the Malmesbury and Lennard copies, and may have been simply forgotten. ‘Io seguo sol’ has its long eighteen-bar ritornello. The insertion of a leaf (fol. 18) with an altered passage for ‘Sento amor’ has accidentally preserved sketches for ‘Io seguo sol’ and ‘Voglio amare’ on the verso; Handel generally destroyed his sketches when writing out the full score. The B section of ‘Furibondo’ (HG 86–7) has the text printed between the staves; the alternative belongs to 1737, when the aria was sung by Ormonte in Act III. Chrysander overlooked some details of tempo and orchestration and a great many stage directions. The interrupted duet in I.viii is Andante, the ensemble ‘Con valorosa mano’ Allegro. The scoring of the March is given in full; Violin 1, Oboe 1 and 2 on the top line, Violin 2 on the second. In bar 9 of ‘Cade mura’ the piano on the top two upper staves is for violins, countermanding the previous tutti. The bass of ‘Ch’io parta?’ is senza basons [sic]. Most, but not all of the omitted stage directions (very numerous in this opera, even during set pieces) are in the libretto. They are included in the plot summary at the beginning of this chapter. The autograph of ‘Seguaci di Cupido’ is in RM 20 d 2, fols 24–5. The original words, beginning ‘Amanti, voi ch’andate’ and heavily cancelled throughout, come from the Venice source libretto, where they are sung by Arsace as the last aria in Act II. It is not clear why they were changed, for the meaning is the same. An autograph of the alto version of ‘T’appresta forse amore’ (1737), voice and bass only, is in Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 257, pp. 53–4, ascribed by Mann to Scipione.

Librettos 1730 (February). ‘An Opera as it is Perform’d at the King’s Theatre in the HayMarket Printed by T. Wood, in Little Britain’. 77 pp. No dedication and no name of librettist or composer. The brief Argument is quoted above. The text contains many passages of recitative and many stage directions omitted in HG.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 164

06/10/2006 14:51:49

Partenope

165

1730 (December). A reissue of the February text with an extra page at the end giving changes.21 ‘N.B. The lines in Act III from the two last Verses at the End of Page 67, to the End of Page 68, are not to be performed’ (i.e. the trio was followed immediately by Scena Ultima). The text of ‘Seguaci di Cupido’ follows, headed ‘An Additional Song [for Arsace]. In the last Scene (page 76) after the following Verse, Ros. Idolo mio, non mi tradir mai più’. Line 6 ends ‘il cor’, not ‘il petto’. As noted above, these were not the only changes in this revival. 1731 Salzthal, 1732 Brunswick, 1732 Wolfenbüttel, n.d.? Brunswick, 1733 Hamburg, 1736 Hamburg. All six German librettos give the same basic text, omitting the ensemble ‘Vi circondi’ and the aria ‘Qual farfalletta’ in Act II, the quartet and trio in Act III, cutting the battle scene in II.i back to ‘Con valorosa mano’, and introducing dances of priests and nymphs after the first scene, ladies and knights at the end of Act I and gardeners of both sexes (aptly enough) at the end of Act II, but none at the end of the opera. (It is surprising how often dancing gardeners crop up in the continental librettos of the period.) All six equip the hall in I.x with Greek statues, indicate a new scene (another part of the garden) in II.viii, 21  Though mentioned in Ellen T. Harris’s facsimile edition, this page was accidentally omitted. Colin Timms quotes it in full in ‘Handelian and other Librettos in Birmingham Central Library’, M & L 65 (1984), 145.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 165

06/10/2006 14:51:50

166

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

locate III.i in a Gran Sala in place of Handel’s Garden, and introduce Vesuvius as part of the landscape in III.v. All acknowledge Handel but name no singers. The first four are bilingual throughout with Italian and German texts on opposite pages. Salzthal and Wolfenbüttel have flowery mythological prologues honouring the birthday beneficiaries and elaborate title pages crammed with their titles. Salzthal and Brunswick 1732 give the same, more detailed, scene headings than the others. The undated libretto lacks its title page. It has the same text as 1732 Wolfenbüttel (differing slightly from the two previous issues) with minor variants and corrections to the typesetting, and was probably issued for one of the 1733 productions (see Appendix C). The Hamburg librettos print only the arias in Italian (with a German crib), the rest in German. Hamburg 1733 has a substantial Vorbericht supplying background details of the plot and naming Keiser and Wend(t) as well as Handel as contributors. Keiser evidently gave Partenope’s opening speech orchestral support: it is headed Accompagnement in both Hamburg librettos. 1737 London. ‘An Opera; As it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in CoventGarden, The Third Edition, with Alterations and Additions ... Printed for the Author, by T. Wood, in Little-Britain; and Sold at the Theatre in Covent-Garden ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 51 pp. The many cuts and changes have been listed above. The libretto does not include ‘Barbaro fato’ for Armindo at the end of Act II, though it may have been sung there, possibly in place of ‘Qual farfalletta’. The mistake in line 6 of ‘Seguaci di Cupido’ (now in the body of the text) is corrected.

Copies and Editions There are two performance copies in Hamburg, MA/1039 and MA/1040. The latter, classified by Clausen as a cembalo score, i.e. intended for the second harpsichordist, is a complete full score originally copied from MA/1039 before the first performance. It now differs from it in a number of particulars, since it was used for the first revival (December 1730) but not for the second (1737). It thus helps to establish the changes introduced in December 1730, for example the suppression of Ormonte’s aria ‘T’appresta forse amore’. The overture as far as fol. 4 recto (two bars before the Lentement) was copied by Hb 2, the remainder, including insertions, by S1. The insertions (fols 14, 26–7, 98–9, 109–12 and 158–60) are the four arias in transposed keys for Senesino and his new aria ‘Seguaci di Cupido’. The sinfonia on HG 115 however is only in MA/1039. The long ritornello of ‘Io seguo sol’ was pasted out in December 1730 and partly concealed by a leaf with the four-bar version, since misplaced as fol. 61 of MA/1039 (Clausen, 193). MA/1039, the principal performing score, is more complex. It was copied by Smith, probably before Handel had finished the autograph. (According to Clausen ‘Io son ferito’ and the tenor setting of ‘Qual farfalletta’ were copied but subsequently removed.) Smith wrote all but three of the numerous insertions. Each act has a separate foliation, but that of Act II is confused by the inclusion, between fols 47 and 48, of the original fols 19–23 of Act III; fols 20–3 were correctly transferred (though the second set of words in the B section of ‘Furibondo’ were for Ormonte in Act III in 1737), but fol. 19 is an insertion in Act III. If Clausen is correct, fols 45–7 in Act I

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 166

06/10/2006 14:51:50

Partenope

167

and fols 5–7(?) and 28 in Act II were inserted before performance. The December 1730 insertions were fol. 62 in Act I (shortened ritornello of ‘Io seguo sol’), 44–5 (Sinfonia on HG 115, S1), 46, and 50–2 (‘Seguaci di Cupido’) in Act III. It is not clear why the transposed arias for Senesino appear only in MA/1040; perhaps they were accompanied by the second harpsichord. The recitative in III.ix (fol. 39, HG 112) was originally a dialogue for Emilio and Armindo, as in the libretto; Handel cut out Armindo and wrote a shortened version below (as printed in HG) before omitting the whole scene in both revivals. The Malmesbury score (S1, text Hb1) was probably copied in 1730 before the December revival, of which it shows no trace. It gives the complete text of the first performance, including all A alternatives in HG. ‘Io seguo sol’ has the full eighteenbar ritornello. In ‘Nobil core’ the flute takes the violin part, not colla parte. The Gigue in the overture and ‘Voglio amare’ are Allegro, the trio Andante only. The Lennard score (S3, words by Smith, c.1735) also gives the original version, except that ‘Io seguo sol’ has the shortened ritornello and the recitative before ‘Poterti’ ends in C major, as if to introduce Senesino’s transposed aria in F, but ‘Poterti’ follows in G. As usual in this series of copies, scene headings, stage directions and instrumental indications are sparse, and many arias have da capo for dal segno, omitting lead-back ritornellos. The ensemble ‘Con valorosa mano’ (HG 53) is missing, but cued in (coro militare). The recitative in III.ix has the autograph version. The Flower score (S2, mid-1740s) was copied from the autograph, including Handel’s date at the end, and thus has no independent authority. It contains the eighteen-bar ritornello of ‘Io seguo sol’, the added violin part in the B section of ‘Fatto è Amor’, and the original form of the recitative in III.ix, but not the sinfonia before the last scene. The parts (S2, also mid-1740s) lack first oboe (with flute); the horn parts are at the University of Maryland. They were probably not extracted from the Flower score, though they share many of its readings, including those mentioned above. One main source was certainly the autograph, for the suppressed aria ‘Io son ferito’ is included, and the fact that the Act II March and ‘Qual farfalletta’ are misplaced, as they are in the autograph, suggest that the Flower score was not available, or at least not used, for its order of movements is correct. In any case, another source would have been required for ‘Seguaci di Cupido’, the only revival item included. The overture and the cori in the first and last scene, as well as the secco recitatives, are omitted, but the other ensembles are present. Four arias – ‘Poterti’, ‘Non chiedo’, ‘Arsace, O Dio’ and ‘Nobil core’ – are missing. The first two may have been omitted by accident, if S2 was following (and misreading) the order of the autograph. Except in the arias where the oboes have separate staves (‘Io seguo sol’ and ‘Furie son’) the second oboe is confined to the ritornellos. It takes the top line in the March (as directed in the autograph but not in HG) and ‘Cade mura’, the second violin line only in ‘Vi circondi’. It includes a second flute part in ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’ and ‘Ma quai note’. The cello + bassoon part mentions the latter instrument only once, to exclude it from ‘Ma quai note’. A group of excerpts in the Aylesford volume RM 19 a 5 (S2, c.1731–32) contains all the instrumental movements (the overture and sinfonia on HG 115 in keyboard arrangement), the initial coro, the two ensembles in the battle scene, the accompagnato

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 167

06/10/2006 14:51:50

168

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

‘Contro un pudico amor’, and ‘Seguaci di Cupido’. This may have been intended as a supplement to the Walsh print, before Jennens acquired his complete score. The Coke Collection has a similar group ex-Shaftesbury (S4) and a number of arias in short score, some in transposed keys, including several copies of ‘Poterti dir vorrei’ (one of them in the hand of Maurice Greene). There are several detached copies of ‘Seguaci di Cupido’, in RM 18 b 4 (S1, ?early 1730s), the Fitzwilliam ‘Miscellanys’ (S5, c.1740), and RM 19 d 11 (RM 5/6, probably 1760s). The last copy is associated with a keyboard arrangement of the sinfonia on HG 115, both pieces added in the December 1730 revival. There are copies of ‘Io ti levo’ in BL Add. MS 24307 (fol. 8, copyist not identified), ‘Voglio dire’ in Berlin Mus. MS 9062, and the overture arranged for keyboard (Hb 1) in the Malmesbury Collection. Walsh is reported to have paid Handel 25 guineas for the score. He published ‘Parthenope an Opera as it was Perform’d at the Kings Theatre for the Royal Academy’ on 4 April 1730. The score, fully figured throughout, contains all the arias of the first version in original keys, the Act II duet, trio, quartet, and final coro, but omits all instrumental movements except the overture, as well as the initial coro, the two ensembles of the battle scene, all recitatives of both types, and the duet fragment ‘Per te moro’. ‘O Eurimene’ lacks its two-bar instrumental codetta. Otherwise all movements have complete scoring, but the instruments are seldom specified. Most arias have da capo instead of dal segno. ‘Dimmi, pietoso ciel’ and ‘Voglio amare’ are Allegro. ‘Io seguo sol’, laid out on eight staves with all instruments named, has the original eighteen-bar ritornello. ‘Fatto è Amor’ has no violin part in the B section. On 2 January 1731 Walsh advertised a second edition (‘as it was Perform’d at the Kings Theatre in the Hay Market’) as ‘lately publish’d ... with the additional Song’. He had already (11 July 1730) issued ‘Parthenope For a Flute’, containing the overture and fifteen numbers together with ten items from the pasticcio Ormisda, and the overture in two forms: in eight parts in a collection of twenty-four overtures (17 December 1730) and arranged for keyboard in his fourth collection the same year. No arias were published separately, but ‘Io seguo sol’ was included in Six Celebrated Songs made on purpose for French Horns (parts, 26 June 1731). The March appeared, also in parts, in a pirated collection mistitled The Famous Water Peice [sic], advertised by Daniel Wright on 12 May 1733. Chrysander’s edition (1879) is incomplete, omitting sixteen passages of recitative belonging to the first version, some of them amended later by Handel, and arbitrary in its treatment of the 1737 recitative cuts, printing only seven in brackets. As noted above, a great many stage directions are also omitted, especially in the last scene; on p. 119 two are miscopied. ‘Sede’ in the final coro should be ‘tede’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 168

06/10/2006 14:51:50



c h a p t e r 10 Poro, Re dell’Indie

T

he Argument briefly summarises the plot. Act I. A Field of Battle on the Banks of Hydaspes, with [overturned tents and chariots, soldiers, scattered arms, banners and other] Remains of Porus’s Army, defeated by Alexander. Poro and his general Gandarte with their Swords drawn. Poro after a vain attempt to rally his troops offers to kill himself. Gandarte stops him, and seeing soldiers at a distance urges flight and takes off his helmet. On his suggestion they exchange their Helmets. Timagene, Alessandro’s general and favourite, enters with his Sword drawn and attended by Macedonians. Poro endeavouring to defend himself, drops his Sword. Alessandro enters and sends Timagene away. Poro, recognising Alessandro, gives his name as Asbite. Alessandro, claiming to be fired not by ambition but by the search for virtue equal to his own, enquires about Poro. On hearing of his worth as King and warrior, he sends ‘Asbite’ to him: let Poro confess that Alessandro has defeated him and then return in peace to his Kingdom. Offering ‘this precious Spoil of great Darius’, he takes a Sword from his own Side and gives it to Porus, a Soldier presenting another to Alexander. Poro says it will deal destruction on the donor and departs. Timagene brings in Poro’s sister Erissena in Chains; two Indians and a Retinue of Grecians. Alessandro rebukes the Indians for trying to gain his favour by chaining a woman and orders them to be fettered and dragged to Poro. He frees Erissena: he did not come to India to subdue ‘defenceless Damsels’. She is surprised to find Greeks so mild. Timagene offers her his love, remarking aside that Alessandro killed his father. She replies that she loves no one. The set changes to An Inclosure form’d by Palm and Cypress Trees [with a small temple dedicated to Bacchus] in the Palace of Cleofida. She sends her Attendants to look for Poro; he enters and tells her bitterly that Alessandro is victorious and will soon lay his trophies at her feet. She rebukes him for jealousy: she is pretending in order to save him (Poro). When, going, she threatens to ‘abandon this detested climate’, he promises to forget his suspicions. She makes him swear it by the sacred God of India. Erissena enters attended by Macedonians and, to Poro’s fury, declares herself charmed by Alessandro. Cleofide sends the Macedonians back with a friendly message: Alessandro will soon see her at his feet. When Poro exclaims in horror, she promises never to be false to him, her first and only love. Unbelieving, he is about to follow her to the Greek camp, when Gandarte brings the information that Timagene is Alessandro’s mortal foe and offers them hope. He too warns Poro against jealousy. Poro admits it; but let those who make sport of love once feel it themselves. Erissena’s praise of Alessandro’s personal charms makes Gandarte jealous in his turn. She replies that he will never   The words in square brackets in this summary are not in the libretto; they are translated from the autograph. It seems that Handel first planned to reproduce some of Metastasio’s ­elaborate scenic effects, but by the time the libretto was printed had been compelled to make reductions. There were further reductions later.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 169

06/10/2006 14:51:50

170

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

succeed in love if he thinks himself the only pebble on the beach. [Alessandro’s grand pavilion near the Hydaspes with a view of Cleofide’s palace on the other side of the river.] Alexander in a thoughtful Posture, [with guards behind the pavilion. Many boats are seen coming along the river, from which Indians disembark carrying many gifts. Cleofide lands from the principal boat and is met by Alessandro.] Smitten with her beauty, Alessandro tells Timagene to give back the presents. They sit, while Timagene retires, giving orders to the Indians to return on to the boats with the gifts. Cleofide sets out to captivate Alessandro with fair words and weeps. He is on the point of succumbing when Timagene returns to announce that ‘Asbite’ craves audience on behalf of Poro. In a dialogue full of asides and cross-purposes ‘Asbite’ declares that Poro refuses to submit to Alessandro, orders a resumption of the war, and denounces Cleofide as faithless to her King. Angry at his renewed jealousy she invites Alessandro to her palace and, looking tenderly on him, asks who could resist his charms. But Alessandro renounces her – he came to India not as lover but as warrior – and leaves. Poro and Cleofide are left alone; in a bitter duet each quotes the other’s oath in a mutual charge of broken faith. Act II. A Champion Country (Campagna) [dotted with ancient buildings] with Tents and military Lodgments, prepared by Cleofida for the Grecian Army. A Bridge over the River Hydaspes. The Camp of Alexander in Martial Array [on the other side of the river, with elephants, towers, chariots and military machines]. A warlike Symphony is heard, during which a Party of Grecian Soldiers marches over the Bridge, succeeded by Alexander and Timagenes, and afterwards Cleofida advances to meet them. She bids Alessandro rest from his exertions, whereupon A Noise of War is heard within – the Indian army led by Poro. Alexander and Timagenes draw their Swords, and advance towards the Bridge at the Head of the Army. Cleofide slips away with a prayer for Poro. The Indians attack the Macedonians in the Flank, and are by them suddenly put to Flight, and Timagenes disappears in the Crowd, none remaining but Porus and Alexander, who encounter. Alexander obliges Porus to retreat within the Scene. At the first Attack of the Indians, Gandartes with a Troop of Pioneers mounts upon the Bridge, and causes it to be broken down at both Ends, where it joins to the two Shores; after that, throwing his Sword and Helmet into the River, he then casts himself into it, follow’d by the Pioneers. Poro returns without his Sword. Cleofide holds him. Poro, breaking from her, tells her to go back to Alessandro. She says she only feigned to save his life and kneels to him. Afraid of weakening, he is going, when she rises hastily, and attempts to throw herself into the River, but is prevented by Poro. This   Libretto has only A Garden ... Cleofide with Slaves bearing Presents.   This is the direction in the libretto, autograph and performing score. Chrysander appears to have concocted the version in HG (p. 40) – which occurs in this form in no Handel source – from (a) the libretto/autograph text, (b) the very different direction substituted at Handel’s first revival (for which see below), derived from Metastasio’s libretto for Vinci, and (c) some words from this source that Handel did not adopt: surely a strange editorial procedure. It is not easy to follow the military manoeuvres. In version A the Indians are defeated, Timagene slips away, and Alessandro fights a duel with Poro and drives him out. Meanwhile Gandarte and company break down the bridge at both ends (why? one would be enough) and are forced to jump into the river, having seemingly cut off their own retreat. In version B the Indians make a better showing, they are not defeated, Poro is not driven out, and Gandarte and company cause part of the bridge to collapse, frightening away the Macedonians on the far bank and leaving Gandarte in charge. Only then (after an inserted recitative) do he and his pioneers jump into the river, apparently in pursuit.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 170

06/10/2006 14:51:51

Poro, Re dell’Indie

171

at last convinces him; he takes her hand, and they renew their pledges in a duet. As the battle is resumed he draws a Dagger and seeing the Enemy approach, offers to stab her; at which Alexander comes upon him, seizes and disarms him. Poro is about to reveal his identity but Cleofide suddenly interrupting prevents him. Timagene brings news that the Greek squadrons, believing Cleofide guilty of treachery, are demanding her blood. Poro lays the blame on himself. Alexander orders him to be held prisoner. As Cleofide is being escorted to the palace, she asks Timagene to tell Poro (still present as Asbite) not to give himself away and that she remains faithful. Poro reproaches Timagene for not keeping his promise to win over a party to their cause. In reply Timagene sets him free; he will tell Alessandro that Asbite is dead or has escaped. He gives him a letter confirming his support. Poro, alone, likens Alexander to a pilot who sleeps at his post. Apartments in Cleofida’s Palace: Cleofide is worried about the danger to Gandarte. At her suggestion he conceals himself on Alessandro’s approach. Alessandro tells Cleofide that the only way he can defend her from his army’s demand for her death is to marry her himself. She stands in suspense and begs him to seek a better resource. Gandarte, discovering himself, claims to be Poro and offers to die in her place; he, not Asbite or Cleofide, planned the treacherous assault. Alessandro, refusing to be outdone in generosity by a barbarian, tells him to marry Cleofide and departs. Erissena enters in tears to announce that Poro is dead: in escaping from the Greeks he was drowned in the Hydaspes. Cleofide longs for her own death. Gandarte begs Erissena to flee with him, but she tells him to go alone since India’s safety now depends on him. He sees no hope for the future without her. Erissena, unable to grieve and visited by ‘fallacious hopes’, dismisses them as delusions. Act III. [Porticos in the Palace Gardens.] Erissena is astonished to find Poro alive. He says the report was a stratagem of Timagene to deceive Alessandro, but refuses to let her inform Cleofide. He bids her tell Timagene to lead Alessandro to the garden, where he (Poro) intends to kill him, and – to prove that Timagene will not play false – pulls out a letter from him proposing the deed and gives it to her. Cleofide enters weeping and, believing Poro dead, astonishes Erissena by asking Alessandro to marry her. While Alessandro goes to prepare the ceremony Cleofide indicates that appearances may be deceptive. Alessandro returns in a fury with two of his Guards: Timagene has told all. The Guards go to fetch him. Erissena, thinking Timagene has charged ‘others with his own Offence’, gives Alessandro Timagene’s letter to Poro, which Alessandro reads. Timagene appears, and Alessandro gives him the letter, damning evidence of guilt, but spares him: let the memory of his crime be his punishment till he can wipe out the dishonour by some noble deed. Poro, conceal’d behind a Colonade, overhears ’em, laments the destruction of his hopes and prepares to die. As he retires with a furious Mien, he meets Gandarte and orders him to draw his sword and kill him. Gandarte draws his Sword, but As Porus turns from Gandartes, this last retires a little Distance from him, and then offers to kill himself. Erissena enters and holds him, then announces that all is ready in the temple for the marriage of Cleofide and Alessandro. Poro explodes in furious   Deliziosa (A Garden of Pleasure) in the libretto.   The words are in the libretto, but Handel did not set them.   A Grove of Palm and Cypress Trees in the libretto; no scene change in autograph or performing scores.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 171

06/10/2006 14:51:51

172

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

rage at her faithlessness just when he believed her true. Erissena tells Gandarte to follow and look after Poro. He begs her to remember him should he not survive. She compares herself to a rural nymph lost in a forest at night. A magnificent Temple dedicated to Bacchus, with a Pile in the Middle, which is afterwards kindled. Poro with a Dagger in his Hand ... seeing Cleofida advance, conceals himself. Alessandro and Cleofida enter with Guards, Bacchanals, and Ministers of the Temple. At Cleofide’s command, The Ministers kindle the Pile with two Torches ... Alexander approaches to her, and offers her his Hand; Porus advances unperceiv’d with his Dagger, and then stops. Cleofide halts the proceedings: this is a time for death, not love. Poro retires again. Cleofide, advancing to the Pile, declares herself the consort of the dead Poro; it is her duty to die. Alessandro tries to stop her. She seizes a dagger and threatens to stab herself, calling on Poro’s shade to receive her last sighs. Timagene enters, conducting Poro as a Prisoner, with Erissena and Gandarte. Cleofide, astonished, throws away the dagger. Poro asks her pardon and offers to kneel, then begs Alessandro that his sentence may be worthy of a king. Alessandro agrees, and since Poro has preserved a royal soul through all vicissitudes of fortune gives him freedom, queen and kingdom. Gandarte shall have Erissena and the kingdoms beyond the Ganges conquered by Greek arms. All salute Alessandro as a magnanimous hero, and Poro and Cleofide join in a love duet. Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie, one of the most popular librettos of any age, was first set by Leonardo Vinci for Rome (2 January 1730), by four other composers – Porpora (Poro), Predieri (Alessandro nell’Indie), Handel (Poro) and Hasse (Cleofide) – within a period of twelve months, and by some sixty more before the end of the century. The background of the plot (love interest as usual excepted) is historical, as related by the first-century writers Arrian, Plutarch and Quintus Curtius Rufus, but Cleofide (Cleophis) is the heroine of a different though parallel episode. Alexander the Great after his conquest of the Persian Empire invaded India in 327 bc, defeated the Indian King Porus in three battles, forced the river Hydaspes (the modern Jhelum, a tributary of the Indus) and captured Porus. Impressed by the courage and proud spirit of his prisoner, he asked him how he wished to be treated. ‘As a King’, replied Porus; whereupon Alexander released him and gave him back his kingdom. Porus was treacherously killed by Eudemus, the Macedonian governor of a neighbouring province, a few years after Alexander’s death in 323. Metastasio’s immediate source, like that of many other operas of the period, was a French tragedy, Racine’s Alexandre le Grand (1665), supplemented by Domenico David’s libretto L’amante eroe, set by M. A. Ziani for Venice in 1691. The battle in the first scene, Poro’s disguise and reported death, and the courage and fidelity of his wife come from David. Metastasio himself contributed the jealousy motive, surely the main attraction for Handel, Timagene’s conspiracy with the compromising letter, and the suttee scene.   A funeral pyre.   The impresario dedicated Vinci’s libretto to ‘Giacomo III, Re di Gran Bretagna’, the Stuart Old Pretender, with a flattering hint of a resemblance to Alexander.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 172

06/10/2006 14:51:51

Poro, Re dell’Indie

173

Handel was remarkably quick off the mark. He returned from Italy in late June 1730, less than six months after Vinci’s première (which he missed, having already left Rome), but was at work on Poro by December, after presumably receiving a copy of the libretto from a contact in Italy or perhaps a visiting singer. It was the most recent libretto he used, and the one to which he kept most faithful. Of the twentysix set pieces in his opera (counting the composite Act III finale as one), all but two, including all the arias, retained Metastasio’s texts, with occasional adjustments. While as usual taking a scythe to the recitatives, he cut Timagene’s three arias, one each from Alessandro, Poro, Erissena and Gandarte, and a chorus and dance of Bacchanals in the last scene. His only substitutions were the Cleofide–Poro duet in Act II and the Act III finale. Curiously both are based on music he had composed long before in Italy. If Rossi arranged the libretto, he had very little to do; Handel may have done the job himself. There are two possible reasons for the change of title: he had already composed an Alessandro four years earlier, and he shifted the focus from Alexander to the Indian King. Anyone casually reading this libretto might be forgiven for dismissing it as a preposterous farrago with improbable incidents piled one on top of another, five suicide attempts on stage by three different characters, a conjugal near-murder, and a tissue of conspiracies and disguises so confusing that it is difficult for a reader to remember who is disguised as whom at any particular moment and which of the others knows what about anybody else. In charge of the whole contraption is a king, presented as not only a mighty conqueror but a model of all the virtues, a moral paragon who repeatedly pardons enemies, however treacherous, yet is not above attempting to blackmail Cleofide into marrying him, on the ground that that is the only way he (of all men) can control his army. Such, however, is by no means the impression the opera makes in the theatre. The piling-up of incident, caused by the contraction of Metastasio’s seemingly interminable recitative, is a good deal less apparent when stretched by music, provided the motivation is clear. Metastasio’s libretto has theatrical qualities, quite apart from its literary merits. It is full of strong situations and confrontations, as opposed to reported action (the ruin, for example, of Faramondo) and rich in opportunities for spectacle, including two battles and a temple scene built up for suttee – perhaps the eighteenth-century equivalent of a Hollywood thriller, but no less exciting for that. It is easy to see why so many composers were attracted. It inspired from Handel two of his most memorable characters and some superb music. A serious defect in the libretto as Handel set and first performed it (he was partly to remedy this later) is the virtual eclipse of Timagene, who plays an important part in the plot. In addition to recitatives that clarify his motives, Metastasio gave him three arias, one in each act. Vinci set only the first two, but Handel allows him none at all, reducing him to a musical nonentity and leaving one aspect of the opera lopsided. The reason was that he had saddled himself with a dud bass, who was all but confined to recitative throughout the season. To make matters worse, he almost suppressed the motive for Timagene’s treachery, the fact that Alexander had killed his father. Timagene mentions it only as an aside in the middle of a   Two of them admittedly simile pieces, but exceptionally apposite.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 173

06/10/2006 14:51:51

174

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

scene in which he pays court to Erissena. It seems likely that Handel’s intended bass (possibly Montagnana) fell out at a late stage and he was obliged to engage a substitute, perhaps without hearing him. Nevertheless, Poro only narrowly fails to make the grade as one of Handel’s greatest operas, thanks to his vivid projection of the two central figures and their troubled relationship. By concentrating on them he pulls Metastasio’s conception, centred on Alexander as ‘a verray parfit gentil knight’, slightly out of shape; but he more than justifies the enterprise. The exceptionally terse E minor overture in two movements without the relaxation of a closing dance signals that serious business is afoot. The Allegro in gigue rhythm merges the functions of fugue and dance. Handel plunges straight into the action with Poro’s accompagnato, the only one in the score. One half expects a rousing aria or a battle sinfonia to follow; but Poro’s troops are beaten, and he addresses them as cowards (‘codardi’).10 There is no battle music here; Handel reserved the thunder for the next Act. Poro’s first aria, ‘Vedrai con tuo periglio’, illustrates his fiery nature; he knows that Alessandro loves his adored Cleofide. But it is awkwardly placed, since he replies to Alessandro’s gift of Darius’s sword with explicit threats of how he will

10  This is the reading of the autograph and all sources, but Handel at some stage changed it to the emollient ‘compagni’ in one of the performing scores.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 174

06/10/2006 14:51:52

Poro, Re dell’Indie

175

exercise it on the person of the monarch, and the monarch takes not the slightest notice. Perhaps he sings it aside while Alessandro, who is ignorant of his identity, consults his lieutenants, or his exit cuts off Alessandro’s chance to reply. Scene 5 at once screws up the tension. The parts of the lovers are so closely interwoven that they must be considered together. The recitative is important, illustrating Poro’s abrupt mood-swings and Cleofide’s constancy. When she assures him that she is playing a part, he refuses to listen until her threat to leave the country forces him to swear an oath of fidelity. ‘Se mai più saro geloso’11 is a cavatina, since he must remain on stage. The configuration of the melody, with its heavy appoggiaturas in the ritornello, jerky motion, short phrases beginning low on the voice, and upward leaps in ever widening intervals, while emphasising Poro’s oath, vividly depicts his state of mind, at once agitated and imploring (Ex. 20). Cleofide’s response to his rekindled jealousy, ‘Se mai turbo il tuo riposo’, a full da capo aria in sarabande rhythm, is calmer and smoother; its longer phrases tend to fall rather than rise, as if offering reassurance (Ex. 21). A particularly striking feature is the introduction in the 22nd bar, after the first of three statements of the text, of a flowing melody in

11  Queen Caroline is said to have sung or quoted these words when Lord Hervey raised the question of George II’s latest mistress being brought over from Hanover (Deutsch, 420).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 175

06/10/2006 14:51:53

176

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

arpeggiated quavers with a chromatic tinge (Ex. 22). It adds a touch of yearning, of emotion lying too deep for words, and assumes more and more importance, reappearing at bars 43 and 65 and dominating the rest of the A section, which it crowns by extending the initial ritornello from four to twelve bars. It continues to haunt the B section, where a related quaver figure carries the tonality from G minor to A major before returning via D minor to the tonic B flat. The wonderful E major aria ‘Se possono tanto’, as Poro, confessing the jealousy he cannot control, appeals for sympathy, illustrates the depth of Handel’s penetration of the human heart. The music seems to link the Baroque with the Classical period, represented by the two halves of the ritornello, the second accompanying the first violins’ melody with hushed string chords over a thrumming bass with the harpsichord silenced. It is difficult to decide what merits most praise, the haunting melody in gently rocking rhythm, the yearning sequences at the second statement of the text, or the modulation to F sharp minor in the B section, which develops the

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 176

06/10/2006 14:51:54

Poro, Re dell’Indie

177

same material. Both alternatives for the voice in bar 18 are in the autograph, but the lower octave is surely preferable if the singer can reach it. Act I ends with one of Handel’s greatest soprano–alto duets, as remote as possible from the usual congruence of lovers in thirds. Metastasio, whose treatment of the jealousy motive is masterly, gave Handel the opening. The movement emerges without preamble from the angry exchanges of the recitative (the sight of Cleofide making eyes at Alessandro having once more inflamed Poro’s jealousy) via a halfclose on the dominant. First Poro, then Cleofide, quotes back the words and music of the other’s vow. As they reproach one another with growing bitterness and irony Handel weaves a subtle web from fragments of the two melodies in continuous development along with new material. Most of the A section is braced by the dotted figure derived from the jerky gait of Poro’s melody, first heard in the bass of bars 20–1 (Ex. 23). The entire duet is rich in subtleties, melodic, contrapuntal and especially harmonic, too numerous to mention.12 Most memorable perhaps is the B section’s long concluding ritornello, in which Example 23 expands into a derivative of Example 22 (not heard since Cleofide’s aria), shorn of its chromatic touch but retaining its emotional pregnancy, over a dominant pedal with suspensions added by the hitherto reticent oboes. In the B section the voices argue in alternation and imitation (originally at much greater length) before pausing on a discord and at last agreeing on the third of the scale. A contracted version of the previous ritornello brings back the da capo (Ex. 24). The Example 22 derivative thus has the last word in both sections, and seems to encapsulate the union and the disunion of the lovers at the same time. Handel’s

12  For a detailed account, see Graham Cummings, ‘Reminiscence and Recall in Three Early Settings of Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie’, PRMA 109 (1982–83), 80–104. Cummings’s Ph.D. Dissertation, ‘A Study of Handel’s Opera Poro and its History’ (Birmingham University, 1991, unpublished), a rare attempt to come to grips with a Handel opera, contains valuable material, some of it included in ‘The London Performances of Handel’s Opera Poro’, Halle Konferenzbericht June 1981 (Halle, 1982), 62–81, and ‘Handel, Telemann and Metastasio, and the Hamburg Cleofida’, HJb 46 (2000), 335–73.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 177

06/10/2006 14:51:54

178

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

duet is a musical and dramatic tour de force for which it is difficult to find a parallel anywhere, and all the more impressive for its occurrence in the restricted form of opera seria. It is instructive to compare Vinci’s and Hasse’s treatment of this duet. Vinci, having employed the same melody at the same pitch for both earlier arias, can do little more than deploy the voices in thirds, though with one dramatic interruption. Hasse begins Cleofide’s aria with Poro’s main theme, making further interconnections later, and concludes the duet with a Presto on fresh material, the voices galumphing along in thirds as if it were the climax of a love scene. Neither does justice to the irony, tension and bitterness of Metastasio’s text, and the individuality of the ­characters is compromised.13 The Act II duet in which the lovers are reconciled after Cleofide’s first suicide attempt is remarkable in a different way. In Metastasio it is a simple prayer to the gods. Handel raises the emotional temperature by dramatising the reconciliation. Remarkably he took both words and voice parts from a trio in his 1708 Naples serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo,14 in which the lovers renew their troth while the giant threatens and rages. He omits Polifemo and adds rich interlacing string parts full of dissonant suspensions and wholly independent of the voices, retaining the tragic key of F sharp minor. It works perfectly, the situations being comparable: both pairs of lovers face extinction at the hands of overwhelming force. Poro’s single aria in Act II, ‘Senza procelle ancora’, is glorious music, but as relevant as the flowers that bloom in the spring. There is no conceivable reason why Poro should wax soulful about the likelihood of his enemy Alessandro sleeping at his post. (The situation in Metastasio is the same, though the aria occurs in an earlier scene. Handel tightened the action by omitting the first four scenes in Metastasio’s second act.) If anything, he should gloat. Together with Erissena’s ‘Son confusa pastorella’ in Act III, it is the exception that proves the rule, defying the generalisation that simile arias block the development of the action and confuse if not contradict the characterisation while releasing composer and singer to display their various skills. Yet no one in his senses would want to sacrifice these two arias, which Handel may have included as relief in a very turbulent opera. The gentle opening of ‘Senza procelle ancora’s’ long ritornello (twenty-two Andante bars) for strings without double basses or bassoons could stand for the pilot dozing off, and the answer with its evocative horn and recorder calls over a tonic pedal represent his dreams or thoughts of home (Ex. 25). That may be fanciful, but there is a strong flavour of nostalgia here, made manifest through the rising fourths and sixths, the upper and lower pedals, and the 13  For a fuller comparison, see Cummings, ‘Reminiscence and Recall’. Handel composed an earlier setting of Cleofide’s ‘Se mai turbo’ which has no trace of the expressive Example 22. Cummings suggests (‘A Study of Poro’, 149 ff.) another plausible reason for its rejection, the jerky rhythm it shares with Poro’s ‘Se mai più saro geloso’ rendering it unsuited to treatment in the duet. But his claim (ibid., 349–50 and 531–2), also suggested by Strohm (Essays, 241ff), that Handel was forced to differentiate his characters in order to make things clearer for a non-Italian audience, is unfortunate, to say the least. Handel’s supreme quality as a dramatic composer lay in exploring and interpreting the niceties of human character. He needed no external stimulus. 14  He had reused the opening bars to launch the duet ‘Addio, mio caro ben’ in Teseo (1713).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 178

06/10/2006 14:51:54

Poro, Re dell’Indie

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 179

179

06/10/2006 14:51:56

180

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

exquisite euphony of the eight-part orchestra mostly paired in thirds. It is almost as if Handel were thinking of his remote youth in the German countryside. The B section with its flowing three-part texture (no wind or harpsichord), touching on many keys, is sufficiently extended to make a full da capo necessary and welcome. Poro’s actions in Act III are increasingly desperate. In ‘Risveglia lo sdegno’ he is the impatient man of action, barking at his sister in short elastic phrases, urging her to fulfil her destiny and rescue India, and emphasising his point in the B section by chromatic scales and an abrupt plunge from B flat to E flat minor, followed by further adventurous modulations breathing urgency, if not desperation. ‘Dov’è? s’affretti’ is Poro’s finest aria; Burney indeed calls it ‘not only the best air in this opera, but equal, at least, to any of Handel’s best dramatic productions’, and Leichtentritt considered it unrivalled in the whole dramatic literature. In the gloomy key of F minor, it is Poro’s reaction to the news that Cleofide is about to marry Alessandro. He explodes out of the recitative, without waiting for the instruments, in ejaculated fragments, as if too upset to order his thoughts, while the upper strings embark on a steady accompaniment of widely spaced crotchet chords, like the pendulum of some vast cosmic clock, over a bass figure that persists inexorably throughout both sections. The direction of voice and orchestra is ever downward, the harmony packed with diminished intervals. The sole contrast is a running semiquaver figure confined to the two ritornellos, apart from a failed attempt to break through in one bar of the B section. The A section comes to the boil on a Neapolitan sixth, and the B section breaks down completely after a single bar in an unrelated key. After this outburst, having shot his bolt, Poro has only to skulk around, dagger in hand, until the finale. The portrait of Cleofide is equally memorable. Where Poro is unstable and frenetic, besotted with love and jealousy, she is resolute and calm, but by no means lacking in passion or in cunning, and fully capable of leading Alessandro by the nose. All her attempts to hoodwink him occur in the recitatives, never in the arias. The most notable is the little arioso passage in I.ix (HG 29) where by musical means – the Adagio tempo (not in HG), the pauses, the staccato quaver bass, the tentative rising chromatic scales in both voice and continuo15 – Handel makes it clear that she is playing a part. Her sterling courage and passionate nature are never in doubt: she is as gallant a heroine as Rodelinda or Beethoven’s Leonora. She has no flashy music; her entire part contains nothing faster than Andante, and after Act I all her set pieces, four arias and two duets, are in minor keys, different in each case (f sharp, g, a, e, c, b). ‘Digli’ begins by quoting the opening of ‘S’egli chiede affetti’ in Flavio16 – suggested perhaps by the similarity of word and rhythm – but continuation and mood are very different. Cleofide dictates to Timagene a message of love and loyalty to Poro, knowing that he is listening in disguise. She is of course addressing him; the situation is rich in irony, of which the music takes full advantage. The long twenty-two-bar ritornello places two sharply contrasted ideas in juxtaposition: the two minims set to the first word (‘Tell him’) and a unison melody in flowing quavers 15  Cummings (‘A Study of Poro’, 339) suggests that this could be an ironical reference to the descending chromatic ground basses typical of seventeenth-century laments. 16  The autograph of Flavio contains an aria on the same plan as ‘Digli’: ‘Dille ch’il core’, of which Handel made two settings, both discarded. Was there a subconscious link here?

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 180

06/10/2006 14:51:56

Poro, Re dell’Indie

181

that permeates most of the A section. The minims haunt both sections, rising sometimes by a semitone, sometimes by a tone, inverted in the B section, popping up at unexpected intervals, as if to make sure that Poro – and the audience – get the message. The music reveals her strength of character, with perhaps an undercurrent of anxiety in the harmonic changes from bar 61. The later ritornellos are shortened, but that after the A section is fortified by the detachment of the oboes to add an inner part. ‘Se il ciel’, Cleofide’s reaction to Poro’s reported death, Burney found ‘a little passée’. He may have considered the solo violin obbligato, played by Castrucci, more decorative than penetrating. But the aria with its alternation of major and minor tonality and interlacing of voice and violin is worthy of the context. Leichtentritt thought it too beautiful for the situation (is that possible?). Cummings draws attention to its chamber cantata style and justly points out that it gains much from the suppression of Metastasio’s long introductory recitative. Handel added the ad libitum to the A section cadence in both performing scores. The aria bears a strong resemblance to Morgana’s ‘Ama, sospira’ in Alcina, with a similar violin obbligato and in the same key (A minor). Nor does Burney show much enthusiasm for ‘Se troppo crede’ in Act III, at least for its A section. It is another simile aria – indeed a double one – and might be defended on the ground that Cleofide is marking time. The B section, in the tonic major and nearly as long as the A section, is full of good touches, for example, the unexpected entry of the upper strings in full harmony over a pedal and the genial warbling of voice and violins to represent a fountain; but it contributes nothing to Cleofide’s character. ‘Spirto amato’ on the other hand expresses her devotion to Poro and, as she believes, her farewell to life, with extraordinary intensity in a mere seventeen bars. In employing a descending ground bass Handel seems to look back to Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and the seventeenth century; but the same device was to inspire the tremendous chorus ‘Envy, eldest born of hell’ in Saul. Alessandro must have confronted Handel with problems, a world conqueror who wins military victories but loses those of the heart and is in danger of losing his dignity as well. Handel had already addressed his character in Alessandro, where he gave him a splendid start by showing him in victorious action, but failed to make it convincing. In Poro he is a tenor, an advantage in our day though not necessarily in Handel’s. Metastasio projected him as the opera’s central figure and a model for contemporary despots (not always renowned for clemency), just as Racine, whose play reeks with talk of honour and glory, was doubtless aiming to flatter Louis XIV. Although his pardon of Poro is historical, it is difficult to take him seriously when he casually gives away the sword of Darius to an enemy, lets Timagene off with a caution after administering a dressing-down worthy of a headmaster admonishing a disobedient schoolboy, and says he can only pacify his army by marrying Cleofide, especially as we never see anyone stating the army’s demands. Handel does not exactly fail with him, but he is far from dominating the opera. His two arias in Act I are both on the slow side, Larghetto Andante and Andante. In ‘Vil trofeo’ he behaves like a gentleman, releasing Erissena since one does not fight women (though he can hardly know that she is ‘innocente’). It is a mild but not inept start, gracious and relaxed with a much ornamented melody in which a

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 181

06/10/2006 14:51:56

182

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

strong violin line trades ornaments with the voice. A similar scheme of decoration and repartee colours his second aria, ‘Se amor a questo petto’, which is awash with triplets in 3/8 time, a pattern that easily becomes a mannerism, though Handel may have intended it as a character trait. While not a particularly interesting piece, it is remarkable for being the only movement in Act I, apart from the overture, in a minor key. It expresses his regret that the pursuit of glory limits his opportunities for love, a human but not very heroic motive. With ‘D’un barbaro scortese’ Handel evidently felt it was time for something more dynamic, though the words of the A section, addressed to Cleofide, speak only admiration. For the first time we encounter a strong character. The swinging gait and urgent repeated notes, which also penetrate the B section, give it drive and power. The ritornello has a distinctive cadence figure marching firmly down the scale, with which Handel makes much play in the A section, even alluding to it slyly in the middle of its closing ritornello. ‘Serbati’ is even more powerful, one of Handel’s most trenchant tenor arias. The emphatic opening, exploiting the rhythm of the first word, propels the music forward in an irresistible surge, reappearing unpredictably at different pitches and dynamic levels, either in the voice part or the orchestra, to renew the pressure. The lengthy divisions must have tested Fabri’s technique and breath control. The treatment of the second pair of lovers throws the central conflict into relief. Erissena, Poro’s sister, the least inhibited of the cast (all her arias except ‘Son confusa pastorella’ are Allegro) is beautifully characterised, especially in her two Act I arias. She is impressed by Alessandro, but not too deeply, and refuses to take Timagene’s advances seriously. The ritornello of ‘Chi vive amante’ with its carefully marked crescendo (languishing? complaining?) and short phrases turning impudently upwards is neatly varied when the voice enters, and the whole aria is full of witty touches. The scene (I.viii) in which she provokes Gandarte’s jealousy and then teases him about it provides both a parallel and a contrast to the passionate episode for Cleofide and Poro that immediately precedes it. ‘Compagni nell’amore’ confirms her status as a coquette, but not so flippantly as to undermine her seriousness when the plot darkens. A downward scale in crotchets underlines her little lecture, and the B section turns the opening phrase upside down. ‘Di rendermi la calma’, however, is a miscalculation. Handel may have thought it advisable to follow two consecutive laments with something cheerful or at least neutral, and he needed to give Erissena an aria in Act II. But the music is superficial and fails to interpret the sense of the text. It is a rare instance of him ending an intermediate Act with an anticlimax, a lightweight aria for a secondary character. Erissena rather loses her purpose in Act III, except to react to events. Both her arias here are simile pieces, of which the opera contains a superfluity. ‘Come il candore’, the second in succession, is very simple, consisting largely of little phrases in rhythm, like a catch in the throat, with the violins, the only upper instruments, doubling the voice at the octave. It has a certain plaintive charm, but says nothing of importance. ‘Son confusa pastorella’ on the other hand is a treasure, and became an immediate hit with the public (and, according to Burney, with flautists).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 182

06/10/2006 14:51:56

Poro, Re dell’Indie

183

Erissena’s comparing herself to a shepherdess lost at night in a dark forest gave Handel an opening for a dreamy pastoral, a congenial form that seldom failed to draw from him music of haunting beauty. He found the idea for the principal melody and one episode in Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, but improved both beyond measure. The key (D major), the flute and the long pedals also came from Telemann.17 The texture in itself is ravishing, and so are the modulations, described by Cummings as almost Schubertian, when the music in both sections wanders off into remote keys, apt metaphor for the plight of the shepherdess or Erissena’s wandering wits, or both. Each return of the opening brings an extra touch of magic. The aria too makes an excellent contrast with the last scene. Gandarte’s ‘È prezzo’ also borrows its main theme from Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst and improves it. Burney dismisses it rather sniffily as ‘fit for a singer of limited abilities’, but as the first aria in the opera it gets Act I off to a brisk start. Gandarte clearly has less humour than Erissena, but he proves his devotion in the exquisite Siciliano ‘Se viver non poss’io’, the finest of his three arias, saluted by Burney as ‘the best of Handel’s innumerable songs in that style’. As Gandarte’s response to the prospect of parting from Erissena it strikes a deeply personal note associated more with Poro and Cleofide. A single flute doubling the voice at the octave spreads an additional layer of melancholy over a harmonically rich texture dipping in and out between minor and major (a particularly lovely move to the latter in bar 27), marked by chromaticism, suspensions, internal pedals and the whole panoply of the early Neapolitan style: indeed almost more Scarlattian than Scarlatti. The soothing start of the B section in the relative major offers relief, but it proves a false dawn; after four bars a sudden bold progression over a plunging bass restores the mood of ­ despondency. In his Act III aria, ‘Mio ben, ricordati’ Gandarte pays Erissena a sad farewell in sarabande rhythm, touching in its simplicity and spare accompaniment, the voice this time doubled by violins. Handel drew on this aria for ‘Love ever vanquishing’, the B section of the chorus ‘Smiling Venus, queen of love’ in the 1732 bilingual Acis and Galatea. The opera culminates in a compound finale, consisting of four linked movements, two solos, a duet and a coro. Handel had used the first two (solo) segments twice before in different keys, in the 1708 cantata Amarilli vezzosa and the first draft of Agrippina, though he subsequently discarded them from the latter. The scoring adds variety: Cleofide is accompanied by a flute in unison, Poro by violins in the upper octave, the voices in the duet by oboes and violins respectively, the coro by the full orchestra, to which a trumpet contributes an exuberant upper dominant pedal and most of the violins a paroxysm of semiquavers. This finale is unified not only by theme and tonality but by an agile bass in quavers that continues uninterrupted throughout. It is surprisingly terse, even if all the repeats are taken. Handel may have opted for simplicity as a contrast to the hectic emotional turmoil of the last two acts. A second surprise is the key, B minor. Handel ended several operas and oratorios in minor keys, when for example his sympathies (and by extension those of the audience) 17  Handel was captivated by Telemann’s piece, which became the model also for the Musette in the Concerto Grosso Op. 6 no. 6 and the aria ‘Beneath the vine and fig tree’s shade’ in Solomon. Vinci’s setting is also in 3/8 with long pedals (an almost automatic response to shepherds or shepherdesses at this period) but has less individuality.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 183

06/10/2006 14:51:56

184

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

remained with the losing side. Here the mode carries a flavour of ambiguity. Cleofide and Poro are happily united (it is unlikely that Handel is implying that their marriage might be precarious). Alessandro, however, who loves Cleofide and has just seen his hope of marrying her snatched away, is left with nothing except some reinforcement of his reputation, which he scarcely needs. Was Handel making the point that in a clash between two worthy opponents there must be a loser as well as a winner, while at the same time paying respect to Metastasio?18 Four of the six characters are Indians, but there is no attempt at local colour, unless a mild exoticism can be extracted from the sinfonia that begins Act II. The four sinfonias are by no means routine. That which introduces Cleofide’s embassy to Alexander’s camp, with horns on stage according to the autograph, is delightfully mock-solemn. That for the battle, played twice, of a type that generally clatters along without venturing far from D major or its dominant, takes startling harmonic turns at bars 9 and 23; it would be interesting to know what stage actions were envisaged at these points. The two G minor sinfonias in Act III, while suitably solemn and ceremonial, carry a hint of a tragic outcome. The quality of invention throughout, whether melodic, harmonic, rhythmic or instrumental, is very high, with scarcely any slack. Dynamics are indicated with particular care, for example in ‘Digli’, and the secco recitatives are far from perfunctory, especially in the scenes for Cleofide and Poro. Solo trumpet and horns are used sparingly but with great effect; the woodwind players are required to switch between oboes, flute and recorders. No other Handel opera has three duets for the same characters so widely different in temper and structure. The tonal scheme is a little loose. Although the opera begins and ends in related minor keys, Handel seems more interested in balancing the modes than the tonalities. Act I after the overture is solidly major except for a single aria; Act II is evenly poised with the weightiest arias in the minor; Act III, as the action grows ever more tense, leans heavily towards the minor till the end. Cleofide, the embattled heroine, has nothing in a major key after Act I and no carefree and joyful music at all. Handel’s opera must have seemed old-fashioned to continental ears, as even a glance at the contemporary settings by Hasse and Vinci makes clear. Both wrote in the new Neapolitan–Venetian style based on brilliant writing for strings and voices over harmonically static drumming basses19 that was presently to develop into the galant-classical idiom of the mid-century. Hasse’s Cleofide, on a libretto considerably modified from Metastasio, is fluent, beautifully written for voices and instruments and full of graceful lyricism but almost devoid of counterpoint. It is not without a feeling for drama and character, but by comparison with Handel the temper of the score is bland and its procedures predictable, especially in fast arias. The schematic layout, each aria preceded and followed by immensely long secco recitatives, inhibits the build-up of tension; Hasse’s vision seldom seems to extend beyond the individual 18  Such a bitter-sweet conclusion was imaginatively suggested in the 1985 Birmingham production, where the curtain fell on Alessandro, alone on stage, sorrowfully turning his back to the audience. 19  Handel, who had performed Vinci’s music in Elpidia in 1725, had a perfect command of the idiom but preferred to incorporate it rather than capitulate to it.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 184

06/10/2006 14:51:57

Poro, Re dell’Indie

185

number. (Handel too could write long arias, but they generally contain more internal variety, more contrapuntal friction, and more adventurous harmony.) Hasse perhaps succeeded better with Alessandro – his setting of ‘Vil trofeo’ is broad and stately, not unlike Handel’s music for Carestini in Ariodante – and Cleofide’s last aria is very fine, but she seldom wrings the heart, and the final scene is a sad anticlimax. We seem to be closer to the world of J. C. Bach or even the juvenile Mozart than to Handel.20

History and Text Handel completed the opera on 16 January 1731, and gave the first performance at the King’s Theatre on 2 February, with the following cast: poro Senesino (alto castrato) alessandro Annibale Pio Fabri (tenor) gandarte Francesca Bertolli (contralto) cleofide Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) erissena Antonia Margherita Merighi (contralto) timagene Giovanni Giuseppe Commano (bass) According to press advertisements, ‘The Scenes and Habits are all intirely new’. Poro was an instant success, attaining sixteen consecutive performances up to 27 March, most of them attended by the Royal Family. As the Colman Opera Diary noted, ‘It took much son confusa Pastorella, etc.’. Rochetti sang that aria, ‘being the Favourite Hornpipe in the Opera of Porus’, at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre on 26 March. It became known as ‘the Merighi Song’, and was sung by Miss Raftor (Mrs Clive) at Drury Lane on 26 and 27 April and 6 May, by Mrs Wright at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 April, and at the same theatre on 17 May by Papillion as ‘a Drinking Song [!] to the Bagpipe Tune’. There were performances of ‘The Grand Chorus from Porus, accompany’d with Hautboys, Trumpets and Kettle Drums’ at Bartholomew and Smithfield Fairs on 24 August and 8 September. Unless the whole finale was included, this must have been a somewhat tenuous entertainment, for the Grand Chorus without repeats contains only twenty 3/8 bars. For her benefit at Crow Street Music Hall in Dublin on 4 December Mrs Barbier with Master Mott sang what Faulkner’s Dublin Journal called ‘Evano Chorus in Porus’, presumably the finale. She included ‘Se possono tanto’ at the same concert, and Master Mott offered ‘the 1st Part of the Duet of the Chorus’ on 16 December. The overture was played at a Lincoln’s Inn Fields benefit concert on 10 March 1732, ‘Se mai turbo’ ‘on the Flute Traverse’ at the Little Haymarket on 1 December 1733, repeated on the 3rd with an unidentified aria from the opera sung by Roberts, and sung by Miss Jones at Goodman’s Fields on 22 April 1735. Two later Haymarket pasticcios included items from Poro, the finale with solos by Casarini and Galli as the finale to Lucio Vero on 14 November 1747, and ‘Dov’è? s’affretti’ by Potenza in Solimano on 31 January 1758. 20  One of Cleofide’s arias in Act III contains a startling but of course fortuitous anticipation of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. Hasse’s Italian overture might almost be an early Haydn symphony.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 185

06/10/2006 14:51:57

186

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel revived Poro twice, for the first time on 23 November 1731. There were four performances, all attended by the Royal Family. Senesino and Strada retained their parts; Bertolli moved from Gandarte to Erissena; Alessandro was sung by the tenor Pinacci, Gandarte by the alto castrato Campioli, and Timagene by Antonio Montagnana, who had taken the same part in Porpora’s opera earlier in the year. Having acquired a powerful bass, Handel gave him three arias. But instead of setting Metastasio’s texts or devising new ones, he resorted to his own earlier works. Timagene became a composite, drawing upon characters in three different operas: Clodomiro in Lotario (‘Se il mar’ down a tone to F with a new recitative) after I.iv; Tiridate in the second version of Radamisto (‘Colla strage de’ nemici’) after II.vi; and Cosroe in Siroe (‘Gelido in ogni vena’ with a new recitative) after III.vi. The last two also were probably transposed down. None of them fits particularly well, and the unchanged B section of the third becomes incomprehensible. The balance of the plot is improved, but Timagene scarcely comes to life. The only other change in this revival was the insertion of Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ in II.i (HG 41) and a clarification of the tactics in the battle scene. The new stage direction runs: At Cleofide’s entrance the Indians are seen to rush out from the sides of the stage near the river. They attack the Macedonians, and Poro attacks Alessandro. Gandarte with a few followers runs to the middle of the bridge to block the passage of the Greek army. And while the struggle continues on the plain, some pioneers set about demolishing the bridge. When the combattants have left the stage, part of the bridge is seen to shake and then fall. Those Macedonians who were fighting on the other bank retreat, frightened by the collapse, and Gandarte remains with some of his companions on top of the wreckage. Handel’s second revival, at Covent Garden, was unfortunate on several counts. The first night, planned for 1 December 1736, was postponed till the 8th because Strada was ‘taken violently ill of a Fever and Sore Throat’ (flu no doubt), and a second performance on the 11th, commanded by the King and Queen, was cancelled when news arrived that their daughter Anne, Princess of Orange, had suffered a miscarriage. Handel also ran into difficulties over the casting, and confusion in the librettos leaves one or two details in doubt. The evidence suggests a last-minute scramble. All the singers who appeared in the 1731 performances except Strada had left England or enlisted with the Opera of the Nobility. The soprano castrato Conti had joined Handel’s company in April 1736, and the press reported in June that Handel had engaged a new alto castrato, Domenico Annibali, for the following season. But Annibali, cast for Poro, was engaged at Dresden until the autumn, and Handel, apparently uncertain of his arrival, decided to adapt the part for Conti. This plan, of which traces remain in the principal performing score, involved upward transposition of ‘Se mai più saro geloso’, ‘Senza procelle’ and ‘Dov’è? s’affretti’ by a tone, ‘Vil trofeo’ and ‘Se possono’ by a minor third, and the replacement of ‘Vedrai’ by ‘La gloria in nobil alma’, a tenor aria in Partenope. However Annibali duly appeared in early October, and Poro reverted to him – but not in its original form. For whatever reason – Annibali’s laziness or vanity, or perhaps his own doubtful health,21 which culminated in a breakdown the following year – Handel allowed Annibali to replace three arias in Poro by three 21  He had composed Alexander’s Feast and three new operas, Atalanta, Giustino and Arminio, since the beginning of the year. This was hard slogging, even by his standards.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 186

06/10/2006 14:51:57

Poro, Re dell’Indie

187

others already in his repertoire.22 Thus ‘Tiranna la sorte’ (originally ‘Tiranna, tu ridi’) and ‘Mira virtù’, which he had been singing in Dresden in August as Ruggiero in G. A. Ristori’s Le Fate, an opera on the Alcina story, and ‘Per l’Africane arene’ from Vinci’s Flavio Anicio Olibrio (Naples, 1729) displaced ‘Vedrai’, ‘Senza procelle’ and ‘Risveglia’, respectively. All are flashy and platitudinous specimens of the latest style. Even with modified texts they are a poor fit for their new contexts. A plum part had now to be found for Conti (or there would be trouble, if not from Conti himself, then from his partisans). Handel therefore adapted and enlarged the tenor part of Alessandro (probably intended for Beard). Conti received three new arias, ‘Torrente cresciuto’ from Siroe at his exit in II.viii (after Handel had toyed with an aria from Ariodante), Erissena’s ‘Come il candore’ transposed from B minor to E minor at his exit in III.iii, and a filleted version of Ariodante’s ‘Dopo notte’ in place of ‘Serbati’ in III.vi. The first two had new B section texts. Beard, shifted to Gandarte, was compensated with ‘Serbati’, fitted with appropriate words, in place of ‘È prezzo’. He retained ‘Mio ben, ricordati’, transposed from G minor to B minor, but there are signs that ‘Se viver’ was cut, perhaps during the run. Erissena lost ‘Compagni nell’amore’ as well as ‘Come il candore’ and was left with three arias. Timagene, sung now by Reinhold, retained only the first of the three additions of November 1731. Cleofide’s part (Strada again) was unchanged. It goes without saying that none of this strengthened the opera, which sank towards the status of a pasticcio. There is some doubt about the singer of Erissena. The librettos list Maria Caterina Negri, but one copy also has a second cast replacing her with Bertolli, who returned to Handel at an unknown date after the collapse of the Opera of the Nobility. Handel evidently preferred her for a part she had sung before, but it is uncertain whether this happened before the first performance or during the run. There were four performances, after which Poro slept for nearly two centuries. The only known response to the 1736 revival came from the young Lady Anne Wentworth, reported by her sister in a letter of 8 January 1737: she preferred Annibali to Conti, ‘who she does not at all aprove of’ [sic]. Poro’s initial success in London inspired two German stagings, at Hamburg and Brunswick, in the following year. The Hamburg production (14 February 1732) was arranged and conducted by Telemann. His score survives (Hamburg MB 1610, entitled Cleofide). It was evidently based on the Walsh print, likewise omitting the four sinfonias and the string accompaniment to Poro’s opening recitative. Telemann kept far more closely to the original score than in his earlier dealings with Handel’s operas,23 omitting nothing and adding only three items, a recitative and aria, ‘S’appresti omai la vittima’ (the text, but not the music, taken from Hasse’s Dresden Cleofide), for Timagene in I.iv, a March in D major, of which only the bass survives, for Cleofide’s embassy in I.x, and a chorus in praise of Alessandro immediately before the finale. Timagene’s aria, a demand for vengeance that makes his motives clear, remedies a weakness in all Handel’s versions. As usual at Hamburg, the arias were sung in 22  Only the second (and last) occasion on which he permitted this. Perhaps significantly the first had been earlier the same year in the April revival of Ariodante. He also added a little foreign material to his pasticcio Jupiter in Argos in 1739. 23  See Handel’s Operas I, 443–4, 557.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 187

06/10/2006 14:51:57

188

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Italian, the recitatives in German, translated by C. G.Wend. The voice parts, except some of Timagene’s, are written in treble or soprano clef. A number of transpositions are indicated: all Erissena’s arias up a fourth, some of Poro’s up a third. The cast, named in the score, was: Poro – Johann Gottfried Riemschneider senior (bass), Cleofide – Margaretha Susanna Kayser (soprano), Alessandro – Gebhard Julius Riemschneider junior (tenor), Erissena – Madame Eisentraut (soprano), Gandarte – E. C. L. Westenholz, replaced by Schieferlein (basses), Timagene – Schieferlein, replaced by Heller (basses). The sound with four natural male voices must have been bottom-heavy. Cummings observes that Telemann tended to quicken Handel’s tempos: he added an Allegro at bar 20 of Cleofide’s ‘Se mai turbo’ and gave the same tempo for ‘Son confusa pastorella’.24 The production remained in the repertory for four years, receiving twenty-six or twenty-seven performances up to 1736. Six months later Poro was staged at the Brunswick Summer Fair (August 1732) under the title Poro ed Alessandro. It was sung in Italian and probably arranged by Schürmann, who added three arias; ‘Crudel, aspetta la mia vendetta’, with a new recitative for Timagene in I.iv which, as at Hamburg, greatly strengthened plot and character; ‘Soave venticello’ for Alessandro at the end of II.vii, and ‘Fonti amiche’ from Handel’s Tolomeo for Gandarte at the start of III.vii. One copy of the libretto, in the Hanover Royal Library, has a cast in manuscript: Poro – Schneyder, Cleofide – Leplahn (?Leplat), Alessandro – ‘der neuer italiener’, Erissena – [Catherine Elisabeth] Reinecken, Gandarte – Graue (?Graun), Timagene – Krist. The first modern revival was also at Brunswick, in a German arrangement in 1928, the first in Britain by the Kitchings’ Abingdon group at Bagnor (near Newbury) in 1966. There have been scattered productions since, notably at Birmingham in 1985, when the opera proved gripping in the theatre. Poro was one of the first Handel operas to be commercially recorded, by a Halle Festival cast in 1959, in a heavily romanticised and re-scored version with three basses. It has a certain antiquarian interest as an example of what befell Handel’s operas during the first half-century of German revivals. A later recording (Opus 111) from a concert performance in Paris in 1994 does the opera only partial justice.

Autograph There is no date at the start of the autograph (RM 20 b 13). Handel ended Act I on 23 December 1730, Act II on 30 December (both probably in first draft), and the complete score on 16 January 1731. Abandoning his usual practice, he set the arias of Act I before the recitatives, mostly on separate gatherings, then the recitatives in succession with cues for the arias, then perhaps the overture and sinfonia in I.x, and finally the foliation, which is irregular since many gatherings contain only two folios. The first (fols 1–4) carries the overture, the sinfonia in I.ix in its original longer form, marked le Corni di caccia sul Teatro, reduced in pencil from thirty-eight to twenty-two bars, and the string parts of ‘Fermatevi, codardi’, squeezed in when Handel decided to treat the recitative as an accompagnato. There is no Scene viii, an 24  He probably took this from the Walsh score, which makes the same mistake.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 188

06/10/2006 14:51:57

Poro, Re dell’Indie

189

omission carried into the performing scores and the Malmesbury copy. The reason for Handel’s unusual approach may be that he received the arias (?in Vinci’s setting) before the printed libretto. Handel wrote the title as Poro on the overture, but Alessandro nell’Indie on the first page of the recitatives. ‘Vedrai con tuo periglio’ is on different paper from the rest of the autograph. ‘Chi vive amante’ is probably a slightly later insertion. The little Adagio towards the end of I.ix was much altered; the repeated quavers in the continuo replaced minims. A number of other passages show Handel introducing improvements by contradicting his first thoughts. The later stages of the B sections of both the aria and the duet ‘Se mai turbo’ were substantially shortened. He rewrote what became bars 22–39 of ‘Se possono tanto’, using an inserted folio (24) for the replacement, and slowed the tempo from Larghetto to Largo. He also reduced the tempo of ‘Se amor’ from Allegro to Andante and that of ‘Digli’ (which he began in notes of half the value) from A tempo giusto to Larghetto. Like the arias in Act I, ‘Se il ciel’ and ‘Se viver’ in Act II were composed without reference to the recitatives that encompass them. The A section of the latter has an alternative final cadence in the upper octave for the voice. In most instances where HG gives alternative voice parts the autograph contains both, but the higher alternatives in bar 9 of ‘Vedrai’ and bars 5–6 of the duet ‘Caro, vieni’ were temporary additions to one or other performing score not found elsewhere. The recitative before ‘Risveglia’ (HG 68) cadences in F major; Chrysander prints only the B flat cadence leading to ‘Per l’africane arene’ in 1736. In bar 14 of ‘Dov’è? s’affretti’ (HG 84) Handel wrote the voice’s note as middle C, then cancelled it and substituted the C an octave above (but the performing scores and most of the copies ignored the correction). ‘Mio ben, ricordati’ is marked up a tone to A minor, but does not appear to have been sung in that key. The autograph of the first setting of ‘Se mai turbo’ is in RM 20 d 2, fols 26–7. No autograph survives for Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ and the revised directions for the battle in II.i. Handel’s autograph instructions to a copyist in Fitzwilliam MS 258, pp. 89–91, mentioning arias sung in Poro in 1736, refer to a later plan, probably a pasticcio that never came to fruition.

Librettos 1731 February (Handel). ‘Poro, Re dell’Indie. Drama. Da Rappresentarsi Nel Regio Teatro di Hay-Market. Done into English by Mr. Humphreys ... Printed for Tho. Wood, in Little-Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s Theatre in the HayMarket ... [Price One Shilling.]’ pp. [5]–67. Short Argument in Italian and English, likewise the cast, divided into Indians (Orientali) and Grecians. The long stage direction for the battle in II.i agrees with the autograph, not with HG 40. 1731 November (Handel). Two issues. The first is identical with the February 1731 libretto except that four pages headed ‘Alterations and Additions in Porus’ are added at the end. They give the new cast and four insertions cued into the text: the three arias for Montagnana as Timagene, each with a preliminary recitative, and Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ in II.i, without the new stage directions for the

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 189

06/10/2006 14:51:57

190

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

battle. The second issue has these additions incorporated into the main text and ‘The Second Edition’ added to the title page. 1732 Hamburg. ‘Triumph der Grossmuth und Treue oder CLEOFIDA Königin von Indien ... gedruckt mit Stromerschen Schrifften’. The list of characters states incorrectly that Erissena is secretly in love with Alexander. Recitatives in German, arias and duets in Italian with German translations alongside. In a long Preface the translator C.G. Wend claims to have combined the London and Dresden (Hasse) librettos, but the only pieces taken from the latter are Timagene’s recitative and aria ‘S’appresti omai la vittima’ in I.iv and Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ (though this is in Handel’s November 1731 libretto). Wend lays great stress on moral issues, hence the change of title and the extra chorus (in German only) in the last scene. The translation is mostly accurate, but Wend expands the rather cramped Temple scene with extra dialogue and dancers as well as the chorus. Some of the scene locations are varied. In the duet ‘Se mai turbo’ the printer, no doubt meaning well, gave the singers their original texts, not each other’s – or was this Telemann’s idea?. 1732 Brunswick. ‘Poro ed Alessandro Drama per Musica ... Wolfenbüttel druckts C. Bartsch’. In Italian and German throughout, the Italian text set up from the first London libretto. Several changes in location were probably due to the use of old sets. III.i seems to be placed in a zoo (‘Parco delle Fere indiani’), inherited perhaps from Act II of Giulio Cesare, III.vii in ‘Strada di verdura con Statue bianche’. In addition to the three extra arias, two of Alessandro’s, ‘D’un barbaro scortese’ and ‘Serbati’, have modified texts that do not fit Handel’s music. This may be connected with the fact that the part was sung by an Italian, who perhaps fitted the words as closely as he could to arias already in his repertoire. 1736 Hamburg. Identical with 1732 Hamburg apart from the omission of Wend’s Preface. 1736 Handel. There are at least three different librettos with this date, reflecting the confusion over the revival. (i) ‘Porus. An Opera; as it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. The Fourth Edition, with Additions ... Printed and Sold by T. Wood, in LittleBritain; and at the Theatre in Covent-Garden.’ pp. [1]–67, but 18–19 and 54–5 are missing without any loss of text. Argument in both languages, casts in English only, with note ‘The Songs mark’d thus “ in Page 8, and in the Leaf of Alterations, were not composed by Mr. Handel’. Unfortunately this leaf is nowhere to be found. The cast includes Maria Negri as Erissena and ‘Mr. Reynold’ (i.e. Reinhold) as Timagene. Only the first of Annibali’s extra arias, ‘Tiranna la sorte’, is present, together with the first two but not the third of those added for Montagnana. ‘Serbati’ with altered words replaces ‘È prezzo’ in the first scene, but also appears with its original text in III.vi. The whole of I.vii and ‘Come il candore’ with the three previous lines of recitative are omitted. This odd libretto seems to represent a halfway stage in Handel’s preparation, with Act I in its ultimate form but the remainder revised only in part. If it was a preliminary shot at the fourth edition, what was the missing third? (Deutsch’s reference (p. 419) to a 1734 edition appears to be a mirage, and his ‘fourth song’ is the text of the letter in III.v that Handel did not set.) It is just possible that this was intended for the third edition and a new title page prefixed later.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 190

06/10/2006 14:51:57

Poro, Re dell’Indie

191

(ii) Title page, Argument and cast unchanged but ‘The three Songs mark’d thus (“) were not composed by Mr. Handel.’ pp. 1–65, but 31–2 missing without loss of text. Poro now has all three of Annibali’s extra arias; Timagene loses his second as well as his third recitative and aria; Alessandro loses his opening line in I.ix, but his part is expanded with ‘Torrente cresciuto’ after II.vi and ‘Come il candore’ (exErissena) after III.iii, both as exit arias with adapted texts, and ‘Dopo notte’ in place of ‘Serbati’. The added arias are summarised, not translated in the English text. (iii) As last, with a second cast list bound in before the first, Bertolli replacing Negri as Erissena. Note begins ‘The 3 Songs mark’d thus (“) ...’ the figure entered in ink. In (i) the set headings are retained from 1731, but in (ii) and (iii) they are simplified, especially at the start of Act II, where Alessandro’s camp and army are omitted altogether, leaving only the bridge, over which a party of Greek soldiers enter to the sinfonia, followed by Alessandro and Timagene. The ancient buildings, elephants, towers, chariots and military paraphernalia had disappeared in 1731, if they ever existed. The set for I.v becomes a Royal Garden, that for III.vii a Grove. Evidently Covent Garden was short of palms and cypresses.

Copies and Editions The two performing copies, MA/1042 and MA/1042a (henceforth Ham 1 and 2) are both full scores in the main text, but Ham 2 qualifies as a cembalo score because most of its 1736 insertions contain only a bass part. There was some interchange between the two, since Ham 2 contains twelve bars in the B section of the duet ‘Se mai turbo’, cancelled as in the autograph, which are not in Ham 1. In ‘Vedrai’ too Ham 2 precedes Ham 1. Scrutiny of the bass parts in Ham 2 shows that the second harpsichord, like the oboes as a rule, played only when the voice was silent, and never in B sections. The ten insertions, covering the same ground in both manuscripts and accurately noted by Clausen, do not include all the extra music. As already mentioned, two – Timagene’s recitative ‘Se dunque’ and aria ‘Se il mar’ in I.iv (not in HG) and Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ with a new battle direction25 in II.i – date from November 1731, the remaining eight – the three imports for Annibali, ‘Serbati’ for tenor, ‘Torrente cresciuto’, ‘Come il candore’ in E minor (for Alessandro, not Cleofide), ‘Dopo notte’ and ‘Mio ben, ricordati’ in B minor – from 1736. In Ham 1 ‘Serbati’ and ‘Dopo notte’ lack second violin and viola parts, and ‘Tiranna la sorte’ is misbound at the end of the score. Erissena’s line ‘Scaccia un vano timore’ in I.vii (HG 22) is crossed out in both copies, perhaps because it was no way to address a king. So are the B sections of ‘Senza procelle’ and ‘Serbati’. Both copies contain many changes to recitative cadences, sometimes one superimposed on another. Ham 1 was copied by Smith except for the two November 1731 insertions in S1’s hand. It contains Handel’s abortive transpositions for Conti as Poro including the note substituting ‘La gloria’ in Partenope for ‘Vedrai’. In Poro’s initial accompagnato, almost certainly in 1736, Handel changed the third word ‘codardi’ to the emollient 25  The insertion places this immediately after the original direction, which however is not cancelled.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 191

06/10/2006 14:51:57

192

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

‘compagni’, but Ham 2 and all copies retain ‘codardi’. The sinfonia in I.ix is reduced from the longer to the shorter form by means of paste-overs. In II.viii (HG 59) Handel noted in the margin Con Atto di Cost. (i.e. ‘Con ali di costanza’ from Ariodante) before abandoning it in favour of ‘Torrente cresciuto’. There is an indication that ‘Se viver’ was cut, perhaps during the 1736 run, though it is in all librettos. Ham 2 was copied mostly by Smith, with assistance from his son (fols 106–9), Hb1 (fols 118–22) and S1 (all insertions except ‘Seguitemi’). The sinfonia in I.ix was reduced after the longer version had been partly copied. Scratching out has reduced the set heading for this scene to its first four words and the stage direction at the top of HG 27 to its first eight. Evidently at some time, perhaps at Covent Garden in 1736, the view of Cleofide’s palace across the river and that of the Indian party approaching in their boats and landing on the near bank was abandoned. The Act II sinfonia is missing. On the bass line of the aria ‘Se mai turbo’ violoncello and contrabasso are both in the singular. The Malmesbury copy (Hb1) gives the score of the first performance before the November 1731 revival and almost certainly dates from earlier that year. It derives mainly from Ham 1, and confirms the F major cadence before ‘Risveglia’. Lennard (S1, 1735 or later) includes Gandarte’s recitative ‘Seguitemi’ in II.i but not the three Montagnana arias or the new directions for the battle. It seems to have been copied from Ham 2 and the Walsh print; a dozen arias have da capo instead of dal segno. Flower (S2, c.1747) was copied from the autograph with assistance from the 1731 libretto, and gives the first-performance version. Coke (the miniaturist) was written as early as October 1731 according to a note at the end, but contains numerous errors and omissions. All recitatives and sinfonias are missing, and the upper voice parts are in the treble clef. It was copied from Walsh, but in a curious order: the overture, seven arias and the finale first, then the remainder in sequence. These nine items form the contents of Walsh’s Favourite Songs, which the copyist evidently encountered before the rest of the score. The success of the opera gave birth to a number of early copies of excerpts and individual movements. RM 19 a 5 has the overture for harpsichord, followed by Poro’s accompagnato and the four sinfonias, copied by S2 for Jennens as a supplement to Walsh. S4 did the like for Lord Shaftesbury (Coke Collection, Harvester 211), omitting the overture and the first two sinfonias. Coke also has an interesting copy of ‘Vil trofeo’ (S1, from Walsh) with easier alternatives for the voice in the B section and, in a later hand, first- and second-time vocal cadenzas for the end of the A section; also ‘Se possono’ in G for harpsichord and ‘Caro, vieni’ for voice and bass in the hands of Boyce and Greene respectively (c. 1736). The Fitzwilliam Museum has the duet ‘Caro amico’ (MS 56, copyist unidentified) and the finale (MS 145, S2); RM 19 d 11 the sinfonias in I.ix and III.xii (RM 5/6). There are copies of the overture for keyboard in the Malmesbury (Smith) and Coke (Harvester 83, unknown copyist) Collections. The Edward Weld manuscript in the Flower Collection has harpsichord arrangements of ‘Come il candore’, ‘Mio ben, ricordati’ and ‘Son confusa pastorella’ (Allegro, copied from Walsh) in a neat unknown hand.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 192

06/10/2006 14:51:58

Poro, Re dell’Indie

193

The Flower parts – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboe 2 + flute 2 and traversa, horns 1 and 2,26 trumpet – were copied by S2 from the Flower score c.1747. They are more complete than usual, omitting (besides the overture and secco recitatives) only ‘Se viver’ and ‘Risveglia’. Oboe 1 is missing, but can generally be supplied. In the first two acts both oboes nearly always play in unison with the first violins in ritornellos and tutti and occasionally elsewhere, for example in bar 41 of ‘Digli’ and bars 13–27 of ‘D’un barbaro scortese’ (? to add weight to Alessandro’s words); they are a little more independent in Act III. S2 omits oboe 2 in ‘Se amor’, taking Handel’s Unis on the top line in its usual sense of unison violins, but Handel’s Viol. later indicates that oboes should be included. ‘Se il ciel’ has three violin parts, the first taking the solo line. The only mention of the bassoon silences it in ‘Senza procelle’. Thomas Cobb, who had married Cluer’s widow, advertised the overture and Favourite Songs with a flute arrangement on 17 February 1731, a pirated edition. Walsh, who paid Handel 25 guineas, retaliated on 2–3 March with ‘The whole Opera of Porus in Score ... Engraven in a fair Character, and carefully corrected’, together with his own collection of Favourite Songs. The score omitted all recitatives and sinfonias, supplied ten dal segno arias with a lazy da capo (but printed ‘Vil trofeo’ and ‘Risveglia’ correctly) and gave complete scoring only in ‘Senza procelle’, ‘Son confusa pastorella’ (perversely marked Allegro) and perversely the finale. Walsh followed up with ‘Porus for a Flute’ on 13 March, parts for ‘Senza procelle’ in a set of French Horn Songs on 26 June, and the overture in seven parts and arranged for harpsichord on 22 June 1734. The two most popular numbers, ‘Caro, vieni’ (‘The favourit Minuet’) and ‘Son confusa pastorella’ (‘Ye Bagpipe Song’) soon appeared on single sheets with an English translation by Thomas Brerewood junior. Chrysander’s, the only full score (1880), omits Timagene’s three arias added in November 1731 (no doubt because they were taken from earlier operas, but so were ‘Torrente cresciuto’ and ‘Dopo notte’ in 1736, and at least two of them were introduced by new recitatives), the Adagio at Cleofide’s ‘Tu non mi gardi’ in I.ix (HG 29) and some segnos. He does not print all the second harpsichordist’s basses in Ham 2. As noted above, the recitative before ‘Risveglia’ (HG 68) should cadence in F, and ‘Come il candore’ in E minor (HG 115) is for Alessandro in 1736, not Cleofide. The long stage direction on HG 40 needs to be disentangled.

26  The horn parts are at College Park, University of Maryland.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 193

06/10/2006 14:51:58

c h a p t e r 11 Ezio

T

he Argument in the libretto outlines the tangled plot. ‘Aetius [Ezio], an illustrious General of the Imperial Forces under Valentinian the Third, returning from the famous Victory of the Catalonian Fields, where he defeated and put to Flight Attila King of the Huns, was unjustly accused by the jealous Emperor, and by him condemned to die. The Author of this Treachery against the innocent Aetius, was Maximus a Roman Patrician, who being displeased before at Valentinian for attempting the Chastity of his Wife endeavoured, though ineffectually, to engage the Assistance of Aetius to murther the Emperor, artfully concealing his own Desire of Revenge; but knowing that the Loyalty of Aetius was the greatest Obstruction to his Design, he fix’d upon him the Imputation of Treason, and sollicited his Death, intending (as he afterwards did) to make the Populace mutiny against Valentinian, by accusing him of the Ingratitude and Injustice, to which he himself had induced him. All this is historical, and the rest within the Bounds of Probability.’ The date is ad 451, the year in which Aetius won his victory at Châlons-sur-Marne. Act I. Part of the Roman Forum with the Imperial throne on one side. A view of Rome lit up at night, with triumphal arches and other festive decorations prepared to celebrate the ten-year festivals and to honour the return of Ezio, the conqueror of Attila, who is seen to come forward preceded by warlike instruments, slaves and ensigns of the vanquished, and followed by his victorious Soldiers. Valentinian upon the Throne, Maximus, Varus with the Pretorian Band, Aetius and the Populace. Ezio reports his victory. Valentiniano descends from the Throne, and embraces him, looking forward to his empire rivalling Jove’s. He goes out, attended by Varus and the Pretorians. Massimo embraces Ezio. His daughter Fulvia, promised in marriage to Ezio, enters with Pages and Slaves. Ezio, meeting her, is shocked by the coolness of her greeting. Massimo explains that the Emperor, growing ever more tyrannical and unjust, is now his rival for Fulvia’s love, and suggests that Ezio and his army should overthrow him. Ezio is appalled by the idea of treason. Massimo, dissembling, embraces him again. Fulvia, weeping, asks Ezio if he is willing to resign her to another’s arms. He is confident of deflecting the Emperor and goes out with Attendants. Fulvia asks her father why he encouraged her first to accept Ezio and then to soothe the Emperor’s passion. He says marriage with Caesar is not the worst of evils, embraces her, and further shocks her by suggesting that after marrying him she might kill him or allow him (Massimo) to do so. He dismisses her scruples: let her remember that he is her father. She replies that his words are scarcely those of a father. Alone, Massimo looks forward to revenge before dawn: Emilio shall stab the Emperor, and if he fails the blame can be laid on Ezio. The set changes to Imperial rooms adorned with historical paintings, where Varo, ‘a Praefect of the Pretorian Bands’, and the Emperor’s   The set descriptions in this summary are translated from Handel’s autograph. In the ­London libretto they are altered and simplified: see below under Libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 194

06/10/2006 14:51:58

Ezio

195

sister Onoria discuss Ezio, whom she too loves. She envies rural nymphs (‘innocenti pastorelle’) who can express their love openly. Varo reflects sceptically on the mingled pain and pleasure of love. Massimo advises Valentiniano to watch Ezio’s fame before it gets out of control like a river in spate. The Emperor summons Ezio and orders him to marry Onoria. Taken aback and pressed for an explanation, Ezio says he loves another, Fulvia. Valentiniano asks if she knows this; Ezio replies ‘I do not think so’. The Emperor says her feelings probably do not correspond with his, and asks about a possible rival. Ezio replies that the arm that delivered Rome from bondage would brook none. ‘Even Caesar?’ ‘Caesar would not be so ungrateful.’ Valentiniano rebukes his impudence and leaves. Fulvia has guessed the subjct of the conversation; Ezio assures her that she need not fear, since he did not reveal her love. Onoria has heard that Ezio considers himself unworthy of her hand, and brings a message that Fulvia is to marry the Emperor. Ezio angrily declares that if Valentiniano is to command his loyalty he must not thwart his love. The two women exchange angry words, each suspecting the other’s love for Ezio. Fulvia determines not to flinch before the coming storm. Act II. The Palatine gardens, facing the imperial apartments, with avenues, espaliers of flowers and fountains playing. At the back a waterfall, and in front grotesques and statues. It is dawn; Massimo awaits news of Emilio’s attempt on Valentiniano’s life. Fulvia enters, saying that the Emperor has been attacked, soon followed by Valentiniano himself without his Robe and Laurel; his Sword drawn, and an Attendance of Pretorians. Speaking to some of his Attendants, who withdraw, he orders every passage to be guarded and says that persons he thought dearest have planned his death. Fulvia fears for her father, Massimo for himself. Valentiniano has recognised and wounded his servant Emilio but believes that Ezio was the instigator. Fulvia defends him; Massimo pretends to do so, declaring himself ‘the Friend of Aetius ... but the Subject of Augustus too’. Varo reports that Emilio has escaped. The Emperor orders Massimo to seek him out, and asks the father for help, the daughter for love. Fulvia taxes her father with conspiracy and treachery: he tells her to publish her charge and kill him. Uncertain whether to speak or be silent, Fulvia bids Ezio fly at once. He refuses, trusting in his innocence and reputation. Varo entering with Pretorian guards asks for Ezio’s sword on Valentiniano’s orders. Ezio gives him his Sword, bids Fulvia not to grieve, and goes out guarded by Pretorian Guards. Fulvia asks Varo’s help as Ezio’s friend. He will do what he can, but the remedy is in her hands: let her accept Valentiniano, or ‘make him at least believe that you regard him’. In such a case dissimulation is permitted, and all women are adept at it. She says she was never one for such behaviour; her words and looks reveal her true feelings. Varo thinks only a fool would trust fortune, which exalts the shepherd but demotes the ruler. The set changes to a Gallery with statues and mirrors, with seats round it, among them one in front on the right capable of holding two persons. A great open balcony, from which there is a view of Rome. Massimo congratulates Onoria on her virtue in wishing to save a traitor whom she has every reason to condemn. Offering to go, she is called back by Valentiniano, who again raises the question of her marriage. Assuming that Ezio has repented, she bids her brother dispose of her affections as he pleases. When he says that it is Attila who asks for her hand, she promises to give him her answer when she is assured of his safety. The Emperor orders one of the Guards to bring

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 195

06/10/2006 14:51:58

196

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

in the prisoner, but Fulvia enters first and (playing her part) expresses anxiety for Valentiniano’s welfare. He bids her sit by his side and ‘begin to be familiar with the Throne’. Ezio enters disarm’d; as he comes in he sees Fulvia and stops, appalled to find her sitting beside the Emperor. When Valentiniano says she has agreed to marry him, she does not deny it. He accuses Ezio of plotting against the throne. Ezio contemptuously rejects the charge, accusing the Emperor of stealing his bride. Fulvia rises to retire, but is detain’d by Valentiniano. On his command she admits coldly that he is her first and last love. Ezio denounces her perfidy, whereupon she takes out an Handkerchief. Rises weeping, and offers to retire. When Valentiniano orders her to tell Ezio that she loves the Emperor, she denies it: she only pretended in order to please him. No threats or terrors can cancel her love for Ezio. Valentiniano furiously orders the guards to imprison Ezio, and he and Massimo depart in a Rage. Ezio welcomes his chains and perhaps death, convinced that he has won a greater victory over the Emperor than over Attila. Act III. The courtyard of a prison with a view of iron grills leading to different cells, guards on duty at the entrance of the grills. Onoria orders a guard to fetch Ezio; his misfortunes only increase her love. She tells him the Emperor at her request has forgiven him, provided he ‘disclose this Treason’. He takes this as a sign of a guilty conscience. She begs him to ‘appease Augustus with submissive Language’, and when he refuses asks him to have some feeling for her since she loves him; if he must die, let him choose a worthy death. He faces death, however it comes, with serenity, and re-enters the prison accompanied by the guards. Onoria, though inclined to believe Ezio innocent, urges Valentiniano to make him confess by playing on his love and offering him Fulvia. Let him, like her, sacrifice his own love: they are both suffering the same pains. He agrees, with reservations: if Ezio remains obdurate, he shall die. He tells Varo that if Ezio is not with him when he returns, he is to be killed, and orders the Guards at the Prison-Gates to bring in the prisoner. Massimo reports that he has quelled popular tumult aroused by Ezio’s arrest: it is now safe to execute him. When Ezio is brought in in chains, Valentiniano horrifies Massimo by greeting him (Ezio) as a friend and offering him Fulvia; the one condition is that he reveals the treason. Ezio says farewell to Fulvia and offers to go back to prison. Fulvia calls for vengeance to fall on herself, whereupon the Emperor orders Ezio’s release. The Chains are taken from Ezio, who promises to win more laurels for the empire and departs. Fulvia tries to kiss Valentiniano’s hand. Varo enters and says he has obeyed orders and killed Ezio. Fulvia leans against the Scene covering her Face. Onoria brings happier news: Emilio with his dying breath declared Ezio innocent; the traitor was the person Caesar holds most dear, and who was wronged by him in love, but Emilio died before he could give a name. Fulvia furiously accuses the Emperor of being responsible for Ezio’s death. Onoria, horrified to hear of this, reminds Valentiniano of his treatment of Massimo’s wife, denounces him as a tyrant and leaves. Valentiniano angrily orders Massimo to clear himself, but Fulvia (‘Let the World perish, so my Father lives’) says it was she   This direction is only in Handel’s autograph.   This and a number of other directions in this Act are in the autograph but not the ­libretto.   Humphreys in his translation of the London libretto takes this for a man. The Italian text leaves the sex open.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 196

06/10/2006 14:51:58

Ezio

197

who engaged Emilio to murder him. Valentiniano, shattered, prefers death to life without love or friends, peace or hope. Massimo tries to thank and embrace Fulvia, but she repulses him and bids him leave her: he is the cause of all her troubles. He offers to embrace her a second Time, but is repulsed by her. Weeping, she bids him kill her. He hopes to appease her with a throne and the blood of an ungrateful tyrant. Alone, she abandons herself to grief. The set changes to the ancient Capitol with people. Massimo without his Robe stirs up the people, calling on patriots to avenge the hero Ezio, killed by ‘a murtherous Wretch and Caesar’s Envoy’. Pointing to the Capitol, they all draw their swords. Massimo advances towards the Capitol, followed by all the rest. Varo is horrified by this treachery. Hearing the Sound of Trumpets and Drums, he asks why he lingers and departs. The Imperial Guards descend from the Capitol, and combat with the Mutineers. A Battle ensues; after which Valentiniano enters without his Robe, and his Sword broken, defending himself against two of the Conspirators, and afterwards Maximus enters with his drawn Sword, and Fulvia. Massimo twice tries to kill Valentiniano, but each time Fulvia interposes and saves him. Ezio and Varo enter with drawn Swords. Populace and Soldiers. Massimo curses fortune and throws away his Sword. Varo, pointing to Ezio, says he pretended to kill him. Valentiniano embraces Ezio and bestows Fulvia on him, applauded even by Onoria. Ezio asks and is granted pardon for Massimo and Varo. Metastasio took the story from the Historiae of Procopius, with more than a nod towards Racine’s Britannicus and perhaps Thomas Corneille’s Maximien. His libretto was first set in full by Pietro Auletta for Rome, where it was staged in the last days of December 1728 with a cast of six castratos owing to the Papal ban on women in the Roman theatre. This was the version Handel used. He undoubtedly picked up a copy of the libretto during his visit to Italy in the winter of 1728–29, though he may have reached Rome too late to hear Auletta’s opera. He treated Metastasio’s work with unusual respect, making no changes in the plot and very few in the text, apart from reducing nearly 1,500 lines of recitative to just over 600. He transcribed Metastasio’s six scene settings (as described above) almost word for word. He omitted four arias, one of them printed in virgole in the Rome libretto, and slightly changed the order in two scenes. Apart from a modified B section in ‘Se un bell’ardire’ the single new text was that of the finale. He scarcely needed the assistance of a local poet. Metastasio’s work is admirably engineered, and firm and dignified in its language. It adheres rigidly to the convention, which he did much to standardise: a careful liaison des scènes (with one exception, at I.vii in the opera), exits tied to arias (again one exception, Onoria’s exit in III.ix), never more than one aria to a scene. His approach is   In Metastasio’s original Valentiniano tells Onoria to get ready to marry Attila.   The sequel to this murky story perhaps merits a note. Valentinian, who reigned from 425 and lost much of the Roman Empire, murdered Aetius in 454 and was himself killed by Petronius Maximus (Massimo) in the following year. Maximus then seized the throne, but was killed by a band of mercenaries as he tried to escape from the Vandal Genseric’s troops sacking Rome. Valentinian’s sister Honoria supposedly offered herself to Attila as a bride.   Porpora had set an altered version for Venice a month earlier.   They included Scalzi as Valentiniano and Berenstadt as Massimo.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 197

06/10/2006 14:51:58

198

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

leisurely, almost as if he were writing a stage play with songs. He explores the motives of the characters in the extensive recitatives; while the arias sometimes advance the action, they not infrequently halt it in its tracks with moral pronouncements or ­parallels drawn from nature or the predicament of steersmen, nymphs or shepherds (for example, both Massimo’s Act I arias, Onoria’s ‘Quanto mai felice siete’ and Varo’s ‘Nasce al bosco’). This of course was not peculiar to Metastasio, but it stands out more in a tightly drawn and poetically powerful context. His tendency to place the dramatic meat, such as it is, in the B section of an aria after a generalised statement in the more prominent A section was not helpful to a composer concerned with dramatic development rather than mood-painting, however skilful he might be in the latter respect. Metastasio often pauses to meditate where Handel’s instinct is to push on, so that the music (as in Act I of Ezio) runs the risk of becoming unhinged from the drama. There is too a certain stiffness, an air of contrivance in Metastasio’s treatment of the characters, as if he were subjecting them to a preordained plan. Instead of spinning the plot through the conflict of their inner natures and emerging as consistent and credible figures built up during the course of the action, they are pushed this way and that to create a specific number of aria-bearing situations (another regular feature that would not call for comment in less organised surroundings). Hence frequent changes of direction, chiefly but not exclusively in Fulvia’s part. She more than once comes close to denying her love for Ezio – the key to her character – and her claim to have planned Valentiniano’s murder, in an attempt to shield the father who has been abusing her throughout the opera and whom she knows to be a traitor, strikes a false note. Inevitably this is accentuated by Handel’s abbreviation of the recitatives, exposing the strings by which Metastasio manipulates his plot. At one point in Act III it produces an absurdity: only three lines of dry recitative (twenty in Metastasio’s original) intervene between Ezio’s exit after ‘Se la mia vita’ and Varo’s report that he is dead. If the quality of musical invention were the sole criterion, Ezio would take a high rank among Handel’s operas. The dislocation between music and libretto could explain the comparative failure of the opera to attract attention in modern times. It may well account for the fact that Handel, despite using Metastasio’s librettos for four subsequent pasticcios assembled from the music of other composers, never again set a text by the most successful librettist of the age. There is, however, another factor. In one sense the formalism of the libretto finds its counterpart in the music. Ezio is unique among Handel’s operas in containing neither a cavatina nor a duet nor an ensemble of any kind apart from a few bars at the end of the finale after four of the soloists have had an innings in turn. Every aria is in da capo or dal segno form. This restriction seems to have inspired Handel to compensate by introducing an exceptional amount of subtle detail within the aria in harmony, rhythm, scoring and the treatment of ritornellos and B sections. As usual he is quick to spot a dramatic opportunity. He gives the opera an initial boost by omitting Metastasio’s introductory first scene altogether and beginning with the victorious Ezio’s entry to a rousing march, which links the overture to the action, replacing the customary dance movement. Each of the later acts is introduced by a sinfonia in a minor key that sets the mood for what follows. The F minor opening

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 198

06/10/2006 14:51:58

Ezio

199

of Act II, as Massimo in the cold light of dawn awaits the outcome of his murderous plot, is a superb evocation of suspense, poised over an insistent creeping figure in the bass, and leads into the first of the opera’s four accompagnatos. Three of these are among the finest in any of the operas. Many of the secco recitatives too, especially in II.ii and xii and III.ii, are sensitively composed. Although nothing can redeem the perfunctory conclusion, with the odious Massimo pardoned in a casual line of recitative – it is no more convincing in Metastasio – Handel’s vaudeville, based on a gavotte melody he had often used before, usually in a minor key, at least has the merit of being unexpected. Ezio, presented as a soldier-lover sans peur et sans rapproche, his sole weakness perhaps an unbending pride, is one of Handel’s more wooden heroes. Handel introduces him, very much as he introduced Senesino in Floridante and Tamerlano, with a simple lightly accompanied love song. ‘Pensa a serbarmi’, opening unaccompanied after a half-cadence on the dominant, is a charming piece with its climactic top note in the ritornello after the A section. In ‘Se fedele’ Ezio proclaims his defiance of the Emperor – but to his sister, not to his face – in a sombre C minor. His two arias in Act II are more interesting. ‘Recagli quell’acciaro’ is a subtle piece. The key, E flat, and the calm opening, the voice doubled by upper strings without ritornello or bass, are surprising at first glance; no doubt they bespeak a simple dignity and self-confidence. The A section regains the tonic after an eloquent excursion through flat minor keys, but the most expressive moment is the opening of the B section, not in the expected minor mode but in C major with an enriched accompaniment in slurred semiquavers over a pedal as he turns to address Fulvia. For the moment we might be in the world of Mozart or Schubert. ‘Ecco alle mie catene’ at the end of the act is one of the opera’s great moments, a hauntingly beautiful siciliano in F sharp minor differing from most movements of this type in the spare accompaniment and the absence of Neapolitan colouring. For most of the A section the strings keep up a rocking rhythm in detached chords, seasoned with upper and lower pedals. The words claim a victory: the music counts the cost, breathing a desolate loneliness with a sad echo of ‘Pensa a serbami’ in the same lilting rhythm. The B section, gravitating to C sharp minor, brings no consolation. Handel lifted the words from an earlier scene to throw his leading character (and leading singer) into relief and, as on many similar occasions, to give emotional weight to the end of an act. Metastasio ends less strikingly with a scene for Massimo and Valentiniano. In Act III, though for much of the time in fetters, Ezio is the extrovert hero; both of his arias are bravura pieces in major keys. ‘Guarda pria’ in C major, a comparatively rare key in Handel’s operas, begins like ‘I’ll to the well-trod stage’ in L’Allegro (in the same key) with marching staccato crotchets. Again voice and upper strings enter in unison without bass support, hinting perhaps at Ezio’s uncomplicated nature. Whirling semiquavers on violins and oboes supply contrast. The B section on new material is more impassioned and ranges as far as B major as a heavily stressed dominant before settling back to E minor and a full da capo. ‘Se la mia vita’, an instant   In the cantata ‘Qual ti riveggio’, Agrippina (‘Non ho cor’), Amadigi (unscripted aria, unpublished), Flavio (‘Di quel bel’); also two sonatas and two organ concertos. It goes back to one of Georg Muffat’s concertos.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 199

06/10/2006 14:51:59

200

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

reaction to Valentiniano’s sudden change of front, is a resounding paean of devotion to the Emperor and one of Handel’s most elaborate deployments of concerto grosso texture. The twenty-four-bar ritornello sets the scale with a succession of contrasted motives: a deceptively quick opening led by solo violin and cello with a rhythmic variant of the favourite melody used in the trio sonata in A major (Op. 5 no. 1) and the finale of Belshazzar, echoes between pairs of horns and recorders in thirds, a syncopated downward striding figure for violins that anticipates the exhilarating alla Hornpipe chorus in Semele, and an extension for full orchestra in which the horns chip in with a new phrase. The main body of the aria juggles with these ideas in a kaleidoscopic variety of changing colours, featuring solos for almost every instrument in the orchestra, including violas and double bass, and a pair of bassoons operating first with the recorders, then with the horns. The B section exploits the syncopated violin figure moving upwards and downwards in contrary movement with the bass. This gorgeous display of pageantry brings the action to a stop, to be resumed almost at once by a report of Ezio’s death, a deliberate if improbable coup de théâtre. Perhaps Handel was relying on applause to cover the hiatus. Fulvia is pulled in three different directions, by Ezio, Valentiniano and Massimo, and is in some danger of emerging as a shuttlecock, though every one of her five arias is of excellent quality and she has two of Handel’s most soul-searching accompagnatos. She begins none too confidently by giving Ezio the cold shoulder at the behest of her father, but when Massimo reveals his traitorous plans she answers in the aria ‘Caro padre, a me non dei’, a dignified compound of sadness and reproach, a little reminiscent of Asteria’s ‘Se non mi vuol amar’ in the same key, E minor. The scoring is delicate, the bass in the first statement of the A section text taken by the violas and then by a solo cello without continuo, answering an eloquent phrase from solo flute. The second statement gains urgency from an insistent three-note figure derived from the opening and is crowned by a fresh ritornello extending the intermediate, not the initial ritornello, which never returns. The lead back to the dal segno is further enriched by a Neapolitan sixth, taking up a similar chord in the B section at ‘rimorso del tuo cor’. ‘Finché un zeffiro’ is an amiable example of the leisurely simile pieces with which Handel sometimes ends an act (for example both intermediate acts of Lotario). It overflows with pretty devices, triplets and trills and phrases of varied length; but burblings about breezes and contented steersmen, however attractively presented, strike an odd note after Fulvia’s slanging match with Onoria. Fulvia’s first sustained utterance in Act II, the accompagnato ‘Che fo?’, is a very different matter. There is an interesting change here in the autograph. Metastasio gives the recitative seven lines, the London libretto only two. Handel first wrote out the opening words for a secco recitative, then decided on Metastasio’s full version posing Fulvia’s dilemma in detail: if she speaks, she is a parricide; if she is silent, she condemns her lover to death. Handel set this to superb music in the sepulchral key of E flat minor, rich in searching progressions and a chromaticism that challenges comparison with some of the recitatives in the Bach Passions. ‘Quel finger affetto’, her reply to Varo’s suggestion that she should at least pretend to love the Emperor – that dissimulation is against her nature – is a beautifully spacious lyrical aria in a favourite lightly syncopated rhythm which with a B section on the same material

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 200

06/10/2006 14:51:59

Ezio

201

constitutes a single huge paragraph. It is, however, a trifle bland, if not self-indulgent; she might be hailing the dawn of a new day. ‘La mia costanza’, though equally uninhibited, makes a more positive statement: after horrifying Ezio by seeming to accept the Emperor’s hand she proclaims her true allegiance in an unclouded A major that shines in happy contrast to the minor key arias that precede and follow it. It is a supreme example of Handel’s manipulation of the Vinci-Hasse style, launched by a thirty-bar ritornello, the melody propelled by all the oboes and two-thirds of the violins in unison. The busy chordal accompaniment over a thrumming bass leaves the voice, sometimes doubled by violins, free to take flight in extended melismas of varying length. Burney astonishingly calls this ‘not one of Handel’s happiest effusions’. Fulvia’s one lyrical scene in Act III strikes the profoundest note in the opera. Slighted by the Emperor, repelled by her odious father and believing her lover dead, she gives vent to despair in another tense accompagnato, launched on the chord of G sharp minor after Massimo’s B flat aria and collapsing from indignant repeated chords to a pathetic Adagio, followed by the remarkable B minor aria ‘Ah! non son io che parlo’. The bleak ritornello presents two brief contrasted ideas, a lilting fragment high in the violins (the rhythm of ‘Pensa a serbarmi’ again) and a scurrying scale figure in the bass (Ex. 26). The former, barely able to struggle beyond its first bar, soon moves to the bass and recurs as a fitful ostinato, a lurking obsession, while the latter, suggested perhaps by the image of thunder, grows ever more insistent, twice breaks suddenly into the voice part, transforms the ritornello after the A section, and monopolises the B section. Almost every bar contains some subtle detail; a strange outburst of syncopated trills suggests near madness (Ex. 27).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 201

06/10/2006 14:51:59

202

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Valentiniano is proud, capricious and gullible, and since he has no love music (apart from a couple of short phrases in the B section of ‘Vi fida’) the sincerity of his love for Fulvia remains unproven. His first aria, after an overture with a flavour of Roman pomp and ceremonial and perhaps a sinister touch in the fugue’s woodwind episodes, has a suitably imperial gait, depicting the public figure rather than the inner man. The seventh chord as early as the second bar gives it a certain cachet, and the triplet arpeggios, bounding through both sections, betoken an easy confidence: his general, after all, has beaten the Hun. He is soon plunged into personal conflict. He reacts to Ezio’s firm expression of love for Fulvia in the snappish aria ‘So chi t’accese’, where snatched one-bar phrases, tossed to and fro between treble and bass and between

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 202

06/10/2006 14:52:01

Ezio

203

voice and orchestra in unpredictable sequence, reflect impatience and irritation. The curt opening bar and the bristling arpeggio figure in notes of half the value supply the material for both sections. A similar layout governs ‘Vi fida lo sposo’, in which another short-breathed initial phrase over a creeping bass is answered by a more flowing violin figure. The ritornello (eighteen bars) is exceptionally long in proportion to the aria, and the texture thin. The words of the A section are not very expressive, being a simple statement of fact. The significance of the two motives becomes clear in the B section, addressed to Massimo and Fulvia in turn. ‘Per tutto il timore’ in Act III is the most deeply felt of Valentiniano’s arias. Horrified equally by Onoria’s implied incrimination of Massimo, her denunciation of him as a tyrant and would-be adulterer, and Fulvia’s assumption of guilt, he sees no future in his life. It is a splendidly impassioned outburst, richly scored with unison violins striding up and down their compass and violas and bassoons, for once detached from the bass, buzzing angrily in the middle of the harmony. But though he is upset by the apparent treachery of the girl he has been pursuing, there is no suggestion of heartbreak, as there is in Ezio’s ‘Ecco alle mie catene’. Valentiniano is a shallow self-centred monarch. Massimo is a character without redeeming feature, a hypocrite and a bully who toadies to the Emperor and the national hero while plotting the ruin of both and browbeats his daughter whenever she shows signs of resisting his nefarious plans. His malignancy is not quite motiveless, but its ostensible cause, Valentiniano’s assault on his wife, is underplayed and barely mentioned before Onoria’s denunciation in Act III. His recitatives and his habit of bestowing sycophantic embraces on anyone he wishes to placate (Ezio in I.ii, Fulvia in I.iii and III.xi) point to his shifty nature, but his two Act I arias do nothing to fill in the picture; indeed they smudge it. Both are simile pieces that neither forward the action nor illustrate the character. ‘Il nocchier’ is colourless; ‘Se povero il ruscello’ has a charming A section that concentrates on the image at the expense of the context. The graceful main theme evokes a vision of amorous turtles for those familiar with the repertory. Murmuring string figures, dotted and slurred as in Galatea’s ‘Heart, the seat of soft delight’, depict the stream as it meanders across the plain, contrasted in the B section with rushing downward scales and arpeggios as it overflows its banks on its way to the sea. ‘Va dal furor portata’ does hit off the nastiness of Massimo’s character as he berates his daughter. Biting dotted rhythms on the strings dominate the twelve-bar ritornello and the entire A section but never occur on the voice. Both sections cling to the minor mode, and the suppression of the ritornello after the B section adds venom to the attack. ‘Tergi l’ingiuste lagrime’ strikingly unites form and content. The extreme contrast in mood and dynamic between the smooth opening phrase and the eerie chromatic response from violins pianissimo e staccato surely suggests the cloven hoof behind Massimo’s appeal to his now disillusioned daughter. His wheedling persists throughout the A section, answered each time by variants of the chromatic response. The B section moves restlessly through a string of minor keys to the opening via a shortened ritornello that omits the chromatic figure altogether. For a moment anxiety is stilled; but the variants creep back with double force in the da capo. It is a masterly touch. Massimo does not deserve his ultimate reprieve; at least he is not allowed a solo verse in the vaudeville.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 203

06/10/2006 14:52:01

204

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Onoria too is introduced by an ill-placed aria. After confessing her unrequited love for Ezio she thinks enviously of innocent shepherdesses in a delicious genre picture, ‘Quanto mai felice siete’. Violins and flutes indulge in playful echoes, then unite with two violette in double thirds over a drone bass. More ideas follow, a two-part episode for running violins still over the drone, transferred to the violette with the parts inverted, before a new cadential figure brings the twenty-eight-bar ritornello to a close. The aria plays with, extends, reorders and combines these ideas with great resource and some nice harmonic touches towards the end of the A section, where a string of suspensions changes the perspective to the tonic (D) minor with a glimpse of F major. The B section deploys the same material in F sharp minor with the drone settling on C sharp and B and the violins’ thirds changed to sixths and tenths. It is delightful music, but it casts no light on Onoria. Her later arias, both in minor keys, are more personal. She is thrown into confusion when Valentiniano tells her that Attila seeks her hand. Her first plaintive phrase, ‘Finché per te’, extended for eleven bars, precedes the ritornello, doubled by violins at the octave, as is her voice throughout the aria. The surprise is the B section, in the relative C major throughout, beginning over a long pedal and enriched by an additional part for second violins and violas, mostly in unison and lying between the voice and the first violins. The effect after the spare texture of the A section is of a sudden, almost Romantic excess of emotional warmth. In ‘Peni tu’ Onoria offers sympathy to her brother, in the same boat as a disappointed lover, but the yearning in this D minor aria is surely her own. It begins on a first inversion of B flat and harps repeatedly on that chord, reflecting perhaps an undercurrent of uneasiness and erotic tension. Violins again double the voice at the octave, perhaps as a precautionary measure. Onoria is potentially a more individual character than her first aria might lead one to expect. Varo stands on the side-lines, the recipient of confidences on which his comments are drily cynical. His three arias are all irrelevant to the plot, and one of them obstructs it. ‘Se un bell’ardire’, a unison aria later popular as ‘Droop not, young lover’, might have been written for Boschi (or even for Polyphemus); the voice is tied strictly to the instrumental bass. But Varo was the first part Handel wrote for Montagnana, who came into his own in the later acts. ‘Nasce al bosco’ is one of Handel’s grandest bass arias; the splendid tune of the ritornello is extended by the voice, via a swaggering far-flung phrase over a tonic pedal, into a mighty paragraph, adorned with pedals and scales in both directions and, in the second statement of the text in the subdominant, by huge vocal leaps such as only Montagnana could negotiate. The A section cadence embraces two octaves from the top to the bottom F with a final drop of a twelfth. ‘Già risonar’ is scarcely less exhilarating. The trumpet obbligato – that instrument’s single appearance and therefore all the more striking – links ‘Desterò dall’empia dite’ in Amadigi (the same echo effects between trumpet and oboes) with ‘The trumpet shall sound’. The scoring is full throughout, the B section reaching a climax with a sudden fermata on a Neapolitan sixth chord in the penultimate bar. Despite its spectacular éclat this aria qualifies as the locus classicus for an operatic convention parodied in The Pirates of Penzance. Hearing the clash of arms and sensing the Capitol in danger, Varo exclaims ‘Why do I linger?’ and fires off an aria of massive proportions before leaving the stage.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 204

06/10/2006 14:52:01

Ezio

205

The scoring is fuller and more varied than in most operas at this period, not only in the exceptional elaboration of ‘Se la mia vita’. Treble recorders and flutes each appear in two movements, brass in three. Few arias exclude the oboe, and only one the violas. It is possible that the violette in ‘Quanto mai felice siete’ were the violette marine played by the Castrucci brothers in Orlando. Except in this aria Smith and S1 in the two performing scores never wrote anything but viola against the alto string part. Smith wrote violette here, S1 ‘volette’, as if the instrument were unfamiliar. In the autograph Handel first wrote Viola e Violin 3, but crossed out Violin 3; he might then have decided to use the Castrucci instruments. If this conjecture is correct, Ezio may have seen its first public outing; Pietro Castrucci is first known to have played it at a concert in Hickford’s Room on 28 February 1732. The tonal design is built round B flat and F. As elsewhere, Handel reinforces the dramatic impact of the accompagnatos by jumping to a distant key: E flat minor from F minor (‘Che fo?’), A minor from G major (Varo’s ‘Folle è colui’), G sharp minor from B flat major (‘Misera, dove son?’). ‘Finché un zeffiro’ follows the mediant major, ‘Va, dal furor’ the subdominant minor, neither a common progression. An exceptional proportion of the arias are in slow or moderate tempo; only five (including ‘Va, dal furor’) have an unqualified Allegro. John Roberts cites four borrowings in Ezio from Keiser’s Claudius and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Pompeo, but they are not very striking and might even be coincidental, except that Handel certainly borrowed from these works elsewhere.

History and Text No dates of composition are known; the closing pages of the autograph, which doubtless included the date of completion, are missing. Ezio’s history begins with an earlier opera, Titus l’Empereur, for which Handel composed an overture and two scenes and wrote out the recitative text of a third, probably early in the 1731/32 season. The opera, like Ezio, began with a big open-air scene in Rome, a Piazza Imperiale with the Emperor enthroned. The three-movement overture is followed by a chorus in praise of the Emperor, ‘Numi eccelsi’, Allegro 3/4 F major, scored for a large orchestra including horns, oboes and violins in three parts. When he abandoned the project, Handel transferred the first gathering of the manuscript bodily to Ezio, crossing out the title and retaining all three movements of the overture, though he rejected the third, A tempo di gavotta, an orchestral version of the finale of the recorder sonata in C, Op. 1 no. 7 (HWV 365), before performance. Titus l’Empereur is derived from Racine’s Bérénice (1670), but no source libretto has been found. The fact that it has a French title suggests that there was no intermediate Italian version. Strohm10 may well be correct in his conjecture that the opera was abandoned because the London poet (Rossi?) proved unequal to the task of adaptation. The remainder of the fragment,11 in RM 20 d 2, 53–6, contains two arias, ‘Altra legge nell amare’ (for Titus) and ‘Mi restano le lagrime’ (Antioco, alto, 10  Essays, 63. 11  The verbal text is printed in the Festschrift of the 1970 Göttingen Festival.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 205

06/10/2006 14:52:01

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

206

Plate 8a). Handel used the material of the latter for Onoria’s aria ‘Peni tu per un’ ingrata’ in the same key in Act III of Ezio, and ‘Altra legge’ bears some resemblance to Valentiniano’s ‘Se tu la reggi’. The text of ‘Mi restano le lagrime’ comes from Broschi’s L’isola di Alcina (Rome, 1728), and Handel was to set it again in his Alcina in 1735. The music is quite different, but Handel’s memory must have gone back, consciously or not, to Ezio when he composed the later setting, which strikingly echoes Ezio’s ‘Ecco alle mie catene’ in the same key, metre and tempo. The first six notes of the ritornello over a sustained tonic chord are identical. The unusual ­distribution of voices in Titus (SAAAATB) is the same as in Sosarme. The first performance of Ezio took place at the King’s Theatre on 15 January 1732, after a rehearsal on the previous day ‘before several Persons of Distinction,12 with the following cast: ezio Senesino ( alto castrato) valentiniano Anna Bagnolesi (contralto) massimo Giovanni Battista Pinacci (tenor) varo Antonio Montagnana (bass) fulvia Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) onoria Francesca Bertolli (contralto) The opera was a failure, attaining only five performances, the lowest total for any of Handel’s London operas before Berenice. The press advertisement claimed that ‘the Cloaths and Scenes are all intirely New’, but this is questionable (see below, under Libretto). The Colman Register repeated the claim, adding ‘but did not draw much Company’. The Royal Family in force attended all performances except the first, but the only favourable comment (‘most Masterly’) came from the author of the proHandel pamphlet See and Seem Blind.13 Handel never revived Ezio, but he found new homes for some of its best arias: ‘Finché un zeffiro’, ‘Quanto mai felice siete’, ‘Finché per te’ (with a new text), ‘Ah! non son io’ and the Act III sinfonia in the May 1734 revival of Il pastor fido,14 ‘Nasce al bosco’ in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo (February 1738), and ‘Ah! non son io’ again in Jupiter in Argos (May 1739). None of the songs seems to have featured in contemporary London concerts. ‘Finché un zeffiro’ found its way into two German pasticcios, Semiramis in Ascalon (Caldara–Schürmann, Brunswick 1736) and Issipile (Conti, Hamburg 1737), and ‘Già risonar’, shortened with a new text and modified scoring, appeared in Vivaldi’s pasticcio Rosmira (1738). The first modern revival was at Göttingen in 1926, two years after Leichtentritt had described it as one of the most stageworthy of Handel’s operas. Since then Ezio has enjoyed considerable success in Germany, generally in distorted editions with Ezio and Valentiniano sung by basses. Elsewhere it has had single productions in 12  A. H. Scouten, The London Stage, Part 3: 1729–1747, 183. 13  See Chapter 7, note 21, for details of modern facsimile. 14  Handel also earmarked ‘Se povero il ruscello’ for Mirtillo in Il pastor fido I.v. and wrote a new B section, the autograph of which was sold at Sotheby’s on 18 December 1936 but has since disappeared (it is reproduced by William C. Smith in MT 78 (1937), 314). It seems likely from the text that Handel had by then transferred it to Silvio in I.viii. In the event he did not use it.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 206

06/10/2006 14:52:01

Ezio

207

New York (1959), London (1977), Paris (1995) and San Francisco (1997). Two recordings, conducted by Richard Auldon Clark (clumsily cut) and Brynmor Llewelyn Jones (in German) were issued in 1995.

Autograph The stage directions in the autograph (RM 20 a 12) are full of detail; most, but not all, are in HG. As mentioned above, the first bifolium was lifted from Titus l’Empereur. Handel’s original draft did not contain the arias ‘Se tu la reggi’, ‘Se un bell’ardire’ and ‘Se povero il ruscello’; all are insertions in the autograph (fols 6–9, 21–5) and both performing scores. The last two and their introductory recitatives replaced the bracketed recitative on HG 29; it is not clear why Chrysander included this rejected passage. The F minor sinfonia and Massimo’s accompagnato in Act II are another insertion (fols 37–8), replacing a weaker, less dramatic sinfonia in G major (incipit in HHB 1, 357, no. 12a) and a shorter (secco) recitative; here Handel reverted to Metastasio’s fuller text. There are a number of revealing second thoughts. Handel tightened ‘Quanto mai felice siete’, removing further passages for flutes and violette in tenths in the ritornello and A section; improved the contour of the dotted instrumental figure in ‘Va, dal furor’ (clearly marked Allegro); rewrote most of the A section of ‘Nasce al bosco’ on the same material (fols 54–5);15 and added the Adagio in bar 9 of the accompagnato ‘Misera, dove son?’ where he first continued the repeated semiquaver chords. ‘Ma non troppo’ was a later qualification of the Allegro in ‘So chi t’accese’; in ‘Peni tu’ Allegro was changed to Andante allegro. The autograph breaks off ten bars before the end of the B section of ‘Già risonar’ as printed in HG; this aria must have contained the two extra bars cancelled in the performing scores. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 263 (p. 73) has a sketch for the first two phrases of the voice part of ‘Quanto mai felice siete’, in 3/2 time with a different bass.

Libretto 1732. ‘Drama ... Done into English by Mr. Humphreys ... Printed for T. Wood in Little-Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market ... [Price 1s.]’ 63 pp. Argument, taken over from Metastasio, and cast in Italian and English. The set descriptions differ from those in the autograph and HG, which are taken almost word for word from Metastasio, and greatly simplified. I.i is an indoor scene in A Royal Hall with a Throne; there is no mention of special decorations, but Ezio’s train is retained. I.v is simply A Closet (Cabinetto), II.i A Garden of Pleasure (Deliziosa). II.ix is another Closet with the same seating arrangements but no mention of statues, mirrors, a balcony or a view of Rome. III.i is A Court Yard, and Prison, III.xiii The Capitol. These are all standard sets. Despite the claim that the scenery was all new, it looks very much as if old stock was used for reasons of economy. The libretto omits five important lines in Fulvia’s ‘Che fo?’ (II.v).

15  See Chrysander’s article in the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 14 (1879), 641ff.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 207

06/10/2006 14:52:01

208

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Copies and Editions The principal performing score (Hamburg MA/167, copied by Smith while Handel was still working on the autograph), was much annotated by Chrysander, who used it in preparing his edition, to the extent of noting where the page turns were to come. He expanded some intrumental details, not always correctly, for example in ‘Caro padre’, where both flutes should double the first violins at bar 38 as at bar 54, and in ‘Se un bell’ardire’, where both oboe parts in bars 5–8 and 55–8 should be solos. The bracketed recitative on HG 29 is cancelled in both scores. The two cuts in ‘Se povero’ (HG 27–8), marked here but not in the other copies, must have been made during the original run. On the other hand, a two-bar cut duplicating the cadence in the B section of ‘Già risonar’ (not in HG) probably antedates the first performance; the bars are in some copies but not the Walsh print. In most of Valentiniano’s recitatives on HG 88, 95–6 and 113 Handel added higher alternatives for the voice in pencil. Chrysander for no obvious reason printed them only in one phrase on HG 96 and two on HG 113. Clausen is doubtless right in suggesting that similar changes earlier in the opera were entered in the singer’s part. Both alternatives are present, as in the autograph, in Onoria’s ‘Ah inumano!’ (HG 96). MA/1015, the copy for the second harpsichordist, is another full score. It was copied from MA/167, mostly by S1 but a few folios (1–5, 11–14, 62–3 recto) by Smith and the last two, 146 and 147 (beween which two leaves are missing) by the scribe who wrote Act III of the Sosarme cembalo score (MA/185). Another Hamburg copy, MA/168, written by Smith at an early date, is primarily an aria collection for a private patron, preceded by a keyboard arrangement of the overture. It contains all the arias except ‘Già risonar’ plus one accompagnato (‘Che fo?’) and the complete finale. It is the only source to give ‘Quanto mai felice siete’ a tempo (Andante). Massimo’s first aria is in the tenor clef, the other three in soprano up an octave. The characters are generally named, but ‘Nasce al bosco’ is attributed to Altomaro, presumably a slip. The later copies show no important variants. Malmesbury (dated 1732 by the copyist, H8) and Flower (S2, c.1740–45) derive from MA/167. Lennard (S1, ?late 1730s) is closer to the Walsh print; nearly all dal segno arias are given a da capo, suppressing the modified return to the A section. There is one oddity. In Lennard bars 32–42 of ‘La mia costanza’ have a part marked Violonc. pianiss. on the bass stave, doubling the viola at the lower octave. This occurs nowhere else, but the cello in the Flower parts has a solo here, doubling not the viola but the third violin. Someone must have felt that the texture needed reinforcement. Jennens evidently performed ‘Tergi l’ingiuste lagrime’, for he figured the bass in the Flower score in full and at two points corrected the verbal text. RM 19 a 5, fols 50–61 (S2, late 1730s) contains the overture in keyboard arrangement, including the gavotte subsequently suppressed, the March, two sinfonias and the four accompagnatos, evidently as a supplement to the Walsh score. RM 19 a 7, fols 5–8, has a copy of ‘Già risonar’ for voice and unfigured bass by an unknown hand.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 208

06/10/2006 14:52:01

Ezio

209

The Flower parts (S2, early 1740s) – violins 1 and 2, alta viola [sic], cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2 including flutes and recorders, trumpet and cembalo (the horn parts are at the University of Maryland) – omit the overture and three Act II arias (‘Va, dal furor’, ‘Quel finger’ and ‘Finché per te’). Except in ‘La mia costanza’ they show no irregularities. The oboe parts, which play in the arias only in ritornellos and intermediate tutti, are less problematic than usual since the directions for them are unusually explicit. Bassoons are included in the cello part only in the three arias where they appear in HG. On 7 February 1732 the Cluer firm, now owned by Thomas Cobb, who had married Cluer’s widow, advertised ‘The Complete Score of the Overture, Favourite Songs, and Chorus in the new Opera call’d Aetius’ containing six of the most striking arias. Next day Walsh denounced this as ‘a spurious Copy ... with many Faults’ and promised ‘the Originals, finely printed and correct, where the whole Opera is sold’. His score Aetius an Opera published on 14 February presumably had Handel’s authority since he paid the composer 25 guineas. It omits the March, sinfonias and all recitatives of both types, is erratic in instrumental and tempo indications, and has da capo instead of dal segno in most, but not all, of the same arias as Lennard. ‘Se povero’ is complete, but the two extra bars in ‘Già risonar’ are not present. Walsh issued his own selection of Favourite Songs, printed from the plates of ‘Aetius an Opera’, as well as a flute arrangement (20 May 1732) and the overture in seven parts and ‘curiously set for the Harpsichord’ (22 June 1734). Arrangements of the vaudeville theme ‘Stringo al fine’ appeared in several single-sheet publications with three different sets of English words. Chrysander’s score (1880) muddles the scene numbering in Act I. Handel did not give Varo’s recitative and aria (HG 23) a new number and had already scrapped Chrysander’s second Scene vii (HG 29). His first Scene vii (HG 25) should be vi, his viii should be vii, and so on. This is clear in the autograph and all copies, including the performing scores, which Chrysander altered. Giving preference as usual to the performing score, he omitted the tempo mark on ‘Va, dal furor’ but supplied that on ‘Il nocchier’ from the autograph. Two modern vocal scores have been published in Germany. The first (1928), arranged by Frank Notholt for the 1926 Göttingen production, includes every number, but each aria is mutilated, generally by the omission of B sections and da capos and the reduction of ritornellos to four or eight bars or their complete omission (for example in ‘Se la mia vita’). A sections too are often reduced by half. Pantomimes and dances are introduced at various points, and the finale is recomposed, using Handel’s material. Ezio’s and Valentiniano’s arias are transposed for basses. The second score, arranged by Heinz Rückert for Halle in 1954, was published by Bärenreiter in 1956 with an inaccurate preface as part of the HHA edition before its reorganisation. It is a straight transcription from HG with one or two corrections from the autograph (for example Allegro on ‘Va, dal furor’) and additional errors, notably the printing of Ezio’s and Valentiniano’s music in the bass clef.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 209

06/10/2006 14:52:02

ch a p t e r 12 Sosarme, Re di Media

T

he background is difficult to grasp without the aid of the Argument in the libretto. ‘Sosarmes King of Media falling in Love with Elmira, Daughter of Haliates King of Lydia, at the Report he heard of her Beauty, demanded her in Marriage of her Father, who readily assented: But about the Time that Elmira was preparing for her Departure to her Husband, a cruel Rebellion broke out in Lydia, which obliged the Princess to defer her Journey. The Author of this Rebellion was Argones, the eldest Son and Successor of Haliates, prompted to it by a Jealousy he entertained, that his Father intended to advance his natural Son Melus, whom he tenderly lov’d, to the Throne. When Argones had openly declared himself a Rebel against his Father, the latter was obliged to take up Arms, and besiege the City of Sardis, where his Son and the Rebels had shut themselves up, and by Treachery made themselves Masters of the Palace itself. Both the Besiegers, and those they besieged were equally obstinate ...’. We learn in the course of the opera that Melo’s mother was Anagilda, daughter of Haliate’s trusted but treacherous old counsellor Altomaro. Elmira and her mother Erenice, Haliate’s Queen, are prisoners in the palace seized by Argone; Sosarme and his forces are with Haliate’s besieging army. Act I opens in the great Square of Sardis, with Soldiers drawn up in Battalia. The city has withstood every assault, but is in danger of succumbing to famine. Argone proposes a sortie to seize supplies from the enemy. He draws his Sword, the Soldiers doing the same, and after a brief military chorus all depart. In an Appartment in the palace Erenice tells Elmira of a dream in which Hecate told her to cease weeping, since the war shall be ended this day by ‘royal blood shed by a son’. Erenice fears the death of husband or son. Elmira tries to reassure her and leaves, but returns at once with an afflicted Air: Argone is preparing a sortie. Erenice’s fears are reinforced, and Elmira goes off to try to dissuade her brother. Erenice follows: if Argone will not yield to her tears, he must kill her first. The set changes to an Incampment outside the city. Altomaro encourages Melo’s hopes of the throne, telling him that Haliate has proclaimed him heir in Argone’s place. Melo is repelled by the thought of succeeding by dishonest means. Altomaro compares his grandson’s mental confusion to that of a moth when the light has gone out. Melo discusses the political situation with Sosarme, who finds him more worthy of the throne the more he scorns it. Melo supports Sosarme’s mission to reconcile the warring parties, but this receives an immediate setback from Haliate, who swears to exact condign vengeance on Argone and his supporters without respect for sex, consanguinity, age or innocence. In that   This and many other stage directions in the libretto are omitted in HG. Most of them are in Handel’s autograph.   Humphreys in the printed libretto translated this as ‘by thy Son’, removing the ambiguity characteristic of oracles.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 210

06/10/2006 14:52:02

Sosarme, Re di Media

211

case, Sosarme replies, he will no longer be Haliate’s son-in-law but his mortal enemy. Haliate’s rage against Argone’s insults and pride continues unabated. The next scene reverts to Sardis: a Royal Court-yard. Argones armed with Soldiers and Officers. He is still planning his sortie. As he retires he meets with Erenice and Elmira, who both beg him to abandon the enterprise. When Erenice bids him trample on the bosom that gave him life, he continues in Suspense until a repetition of the military chorus in the first scene recalls him to his resolution and he departs in haste. Erenice is desolate: whoever slays the other will rob her of half her happiness. Elmira asks Hecate how the shedding of royal blood can bring reconciliation: if that is the way the fates announce peace, how would they predict war? Act II. Elmira in A Royal Hall dreads the loss of father, brother or husband. She describes to Erenice the sortie from Sardis and the fight with Sosarme’s soldiers, but dust and smoke prevent her seeing the result. A warlike Symphony is heard; Argone enters, his sword stained with blood. He says it is royal, and Sosarme’s; Elmira swoons in the arms of Erenice. Erenice charges Argone with three murders, ‘one with thy cruel Sword, and two with Grief’, and blushes ‘to have a Monster for my Son’. Elmira is carry’d away in a Swoon by her Ladies. Argone tries to explain, but Erenice dismisses him as a traitor to love and duty. In A Garden Haliate is unmanned by his defeat. Melo, entering with Officers, reports that Sosarme’s Medes have mutinied and are demanding the rescue of their captured King. Altomaro accuses Melo of engineering the mutiny, and Haliate denounces both his sons: one is a rebel, the other wants to see him scorned and unavenged. Melo denies this; Altomaro emphasises the duty of monarchs to quell the haughty. Haliate suddenly changes his mind and orders Altomaro to offer peace and pardon to Argone. Altomaro again chides Melo for abjuring his own greatness. Melo is convinced that providence punishes the guilty. Altomaro, all the more determined to place Melo on the throne, rejoices that his genius has discovered the means. The set changes to A Closet [in Sardis], Sosarmes reposing on a Bed, and Elmira applying Remedies to his Wound. He rejoices that so slight an injury should have brought him so great a reward. They agree that the path to happiness passes through pain. Erenice reports the arrival of Haliate’s peace offer and asks Sosarme to urge its acceptance on Argone. He says he came to Sardis and allowed himself to be captured for that very purpose; honour is the sole motive for military glory. In a Room of Audience with a Throne Sosarme persuades Argone to receive Haliate’s envoy. An Officer goes out to introduce Altomarus. Argone promises to beg Haliate’s pardon in return for the restoration of his right to the succession. Altomaro says that Haliate will conclude peace if Argone first fights him in single combat. Argone appears astonish’d; Elmira, Erenice and Sosarme are outraged. Argone bitterly accepts the challenge. He and Altomaro depart in opposite directions. Erenice, recommending Argone to Sosarme’s care, sets off for Haliate’s camp to soften his rage. Sosarme promises to appease Argone and then return to Elmira’s arms for ever.   Viene (HG) should be sviene.   Knights accompanying Argone in Handel’s autograph.   A royal pavilion in the autograph.   The autograph has Fonderia Reale (Royal Arsenal).   This detail is in the autograph but not the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 211

06/10/2006 14:52:02

212

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Elmira hopes that Erenice and Sosarme will prevail and bring back Argone like a bird to its nest or a tigress to her young. Act III. The Suburbs of Sardis, with Military Tents at a Distance. Altomaro tells Haliate that Argone not only spurns his peace offer but challenges him to single combat, set on by Erenice ‘with all the Art of Language’. Haliate once more hardens his heart. When Erenice enters he has her arrested and put in Melo’s charge: whether he himself or Argone is killed, the survivor will always be a source of remorse to her. Melo soon discovers Altomaro’s perfidy from Erenice, and sends her to his tent attended by the Guards. He means to expose Altomaro by taking his father’s place in the duel, dropping his sword and embracing his brother. The set changes to A Royal Garden. Argones attended by an Officer, with two Swords ... As he is going out, he’s stop’d by Elmira and Sosarmes, who try vainly to detain him. He departs in a Rage. Sosarme follows, promising to quench Argone’s fury with his own blood. Elmira, banishing tears, screws up her courage to confront Argone: pleasures are seasoned by the pain that precedes them. In A Field appointed for the Duel Haliate orders Altomaro to keep the lists clear and allow no one to obstruct his chastening wrath. Altomaro compares Haliate to Jove and bids him destroy his ‘impious offspring’. Haliate rejects Melo’s plea to take his place. Altomarus with two Swords, Haliates, Argones, with an Officer bearing two Swords. After an exchange of insults Altomaro presents a Sword to Argones whilst the Officer presents another to Haliates: They afterwards put themselves upon their Guard, and begin the Combat. Erenice advances to Argones and Melus ... goes to Haliates, and both of them are wounded [disgraziatamente ferita], the Mother by the Son, and Melus by the Father. Altomaro declares that all is lost and betakes himself to Flight, and Erenice goes to Haliates, whilst Melus advances to Argones ... They throw away their Swords and stand in Suspense. Melo explains Altomaro’s deception in bringing a challenge to single combat instead of a pardon, presently confirmed by Sosarme and Elmira. Sosarme reports Altomaro’s suicide, and all are reconciled. Study of Sosarme was for long confused by a wrong identification of the source libretto and the fact that more than halfway through the composition Handel changed the title and the names of all but one of the characters. Matteo Noris’s Alfonso Primo, set by C. F. Pollarolo for Venice in 1694, claimed as the source by all commentators from Burney and Chrysander to Loewenberg and William C. Smith, is a red herring. As Reinhard Strohm was the first to point out, the model was Antonio Salvi’s Dionisio re di Portogallo, set by G. A. Perti for Pratolino in September 1707, when Handel, who was in Florence at the time, must have seen it. He doubtless retained a copy of the libretto, for he set one of its arias in the 1728 revival of Admeto. He eluded scholarly pursuit by changing the title to Fernando re di Castiglia. The action in Salvi and Handel’s draft of the first two acts takes place at Coimbra in Portugal (see Plate 8b). The names of the characters are Dionisio (Haliate), Fernando   ‘Händel und seine italienischen Operntexte’, HJb 1975–6, 133.   One movement from the Dionisio libretto appeared in London much earlier: the words of the duet ‘Per le porte del tormento’ were used for the final coro of the pasticcio Almahide performed at the Haymarket Theatre in January 1710.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 212

06/10/2006 14:52:02

Sosarme, Re di Media

213

(Sosarme), Alfonso (Argone), Sancio (Melo), Elvida (Elmira), Isabella (Erenice) and Altomaro (unchanged). The Castilians became Medes, the Portuguese Lydians. The central figures are historical: Diniz (Dionysius) King of Portugal from 1279 to 1325 and founder of the University of Coimbra, his son and successor Alfonso IV (the Fierce), remembered chiefly as the murderer of his son’s mistress Ines da Castro, and Ferdinand IV King of Castile from 1295 to 1312. Salvi’s Dionisio is a good strong libretto, centred on the dynastic intrigue and family quarrels of Dionisio’s two sons; the love interest is secondary, although Elmira has a second lover in the Portuguese Prince Ramiro, Alfonso’s general. The background and the motivation are much clearer than in Handel’s libretto. The two sons, especially Alfonso (Argone), are more fully developed, and Altomaro is entirely convincing as a cynical opportunist, prepared to justify deceit as a means of gaining the throne for Sancio. Handel and his anonymous collaborator10 did a shoddy job. They preserved the outline of Salvi’s libretto but severed its sinews and reduced it to a blood-and-thunder melodrama. The omission of Ramiro is no great loss, though he could have been useful in helping to clarify the plot. But the wholesale slaughter of the recitatives muddied the motivation of the characters, especially the men, whose behaviour emerges as hopelessly quixotic. Handel performed this operation in two stages, removing a great deal before he put pen to paper and making many further cuts when he changed the location. In all he shortened Salvi’s libretto by more than 50 per cent, reducing 1,095 lines to about 520. His second use of the shears was probably motivated by the resounding failure of Ezio, which retained a good deal of Metastasio’s recitative, a commodity to which London audiences were becoming increasingly hostile. The two principal limbs of the plot, Argone’s rebellion against his father and Altomaro’s attempt to use this to place Melo on the throne, are poorly articulated. We are given no reason for Argone’s rebellion except the statement in the Argument that Haliate intended to make Melo his heir; this is not made clear in the opera, and Melo’s whole attitude undermines it as a dramatic motive. Argone is far too sketchily drawn, without a single aria. Altomaro has a motive of a kind, but it is not clear how such a rascal contrives to hold his job as Haliate’s trusted counsellor (he is Dionisio’s Prime Minister in Salvi) or how he expects to get away with his nefarious scheme, which a word from any of the other characters could expose at once. Neither of the instigators of the action thus carries conviction. Moreover the role of the eponymous hero as potential peacemaker is largely passive. He comes tardily on the scene with one aria towards the end of Act I, and does not appear again until II.viii. Thenceforward he is more prominent, but too late to justify his assumption of the title role. Handel or an assistant should have arranged for him to take the lead early in the opera. Alternatively he could have expanded Melo into the true hero, a status his conduct certainly justifies. This, however, would have meant promoting a bastard above two Kings, a consideration perhaps calculated to inspire Handel but a flouting of the conventions of opera seria and both politically and socially unacceptable. Elmira 10  I formerly suggested an identification with Rolli, since Altomaro’s line ‘Debellar i superbi, è virtu regia’ in II.v, an echo of the line in the Aeneid ‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos’, is paralleled in Rolli’s adaptations of Alessandro and Riccardo Primo. But the line is in Salvi’s Dionisio.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 213

06/10/2006 14:52:02

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

214

is a delightful heroine, and Melo and Haliate potentially interesting figures; but they remain stunted in the absence of an organic dramatic framework. Handel retained exactly half of Salvi’s thirty-four set pieces, a few of them modified, but their distribution is uneven. All the original arias of Alfonso/Argone, Altomaro and Fernando/Sosarme disappeared. There is little doubt that Argone’s eclipse was due to the presence of an inferior singer, whereas Altomaro’s new arias were the reward of an exceptionally gifted one. Sosarme gained ‘In mille dolci modi’ from Sancio in a very different context, one stanza from a duet with Elvida (M’opporrò’), two new arias, ‘Il mio valore’ and ‘Alle sfere della gloria’, and the expected final duet, which has no counterpart in Salvi. The striking duet ‘Per le porte del tormento’ however is in Dionisio. The result is a lopsided libretto, and a rare instance, at least in part, of Handel sacrificing consistency and dramatic relevance to expediency, catering for the singers at the expense of the drama (Table 6). Table 6 Perti 1707

Handel 1732

Dionisio (Haliate)

3 arias

3 arias

Fernando (Sosarme)

3 arias 2 duets

4 arias 2 duets

Alfonso (Argone)

3 arias 1 duet

1 duet 1 accompagnato

Sancio (Melo)

4 arias

3 arias

Ramiro

4 arias

—

Altomaro

2 arias

3 arias

Elvida (Elmira)

5 arias 2 duets

4 arias 1 cavatina 2 duets

Isabella (Erenice)

5 arias 1 cavatina 1 duet

4 arias 1 duet 1 accompagnato

cori

1

2

The reason for the sudden switch from early fourteenth-century Coimbra to Sardis in mythical times (the name Sosarme seems to have been invented for the occasion) was almost certainly political. King John V of Portugal, who reigned from 1706 to 1750, was the richest ruler in Europe, thanks to the mineral wealth of Brazil, and a man of excessive punctilio in matters of status, who in 1729 had arranged a dynastic marriage with the Spanish Royal Family. The Portuguese were Britain’s oldest ­ traditional allies. A libretto that presented them in a most unflattering light, their King engaged in an undignified civil war with his son and requiring to be rescued by his neighbour of Castile, might have raised a diplomatic storm at the court of George II.11 Handel’s score is tantalising. On the above premisses the coolness of Streatfeild (‘another of Handel’s less important operas’) and Dent (‘another unsatisfactory opera’) is justified, but their strictures on the libretto seem to have blinded them to the quality of the music, though each finds a few pieces to praise. Dent calls it ‘very 11  I am indebted to the late Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) for information in this ­paragraph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 214

06/10/2006 14:52:02

Sosarme, Re di Media

215

unequal’, too severe a judgement on a score in which almost every number exhibits some striking felicity of invention. Nevertheless it would be futile to deny that Sosarme does more honour to Handel as a musician than as a dramatist. The tension does not build up from scene to scene, because the behaviour of the characters inhibits presentation in depth. They sing exquisite music, but their conflicts seem contrived, like the manoeuvres of chessmen. This is presumably what Streatfeild meant in saying that the libretto contains ‘no dramatic situations worthy of the name’. Burney’s opposite judgement that Sosarme ‘may be ranked amongst [Handel’s] most pleasing theatrical compositions’ makes sense when we recall that the historian’s view went no further than the aria and the singer; time has scarcely modified his conclusion that ‘it seems impossible to name any dramatic composer who so constantly varied his songs in subject, style, and accompaniment’. The variety of resource in rhythm, melody, harmony and design is as striking as in any of the operas; all three duets and the final coro are of exceptional merit. Yet Sosarme remains too close to the received idea of opera seria as a string of unmatched pearls. The hero, already handicapped by the libretto, receives an uncertain start from Handel. His Act I aria, ‘Il mio valore’, is dramatically crucial. It should establish him as a champion of human rights against cruelty and injustice; but despite expressive details, such as the upper violin pedals in the A section, it makes a somewhat negative impression. The initial rhythmic figure, constantly reiterated and sometimes modified, is too short-breathed to lift the music from the ground. We see no more of Sosarme until he lies wounded halfway through Act II. From this point his music, all in major keys, is consistently first-rate. As in so many Senesino parts, it is that of a youthful and eager lover rather than a soldier; he is an attractive but not a dynamic figure. His three remaining arias are all sublimated dances. ‘Alle sfere della gloria’ resembles Trasimede’s ‘Se l’arco avessi’ in Admeto in the great length of its initial ritornello and A section (36 and 162 bars respectively) and the delightfully rich yet open texture for horns, oboes and four-part strings variously contrasted and combined. The six-bar main theme with its springy rhythm, besides impelling the music forward in irregular periods, reinforces the impression that Sosarme regards the pursuit of glory as an extension of the hunting season. The B section lacks horns, but the oboes and violins toss the same material to and fro in insouciant fragments, and the da capo is neatly foreshortened. ‘In mille dolci modi’ (which Salvi wrote for Sancio/Melo in Act III) has one of Handel’s loveliest minuet melodies, exquisitely refined by art. The rare choice of rondo form, in which Handel always excelled, may have been suggested by the words: Sosarme pledges his love ‘in a thousand sweet ways’, and the music suggests some of them. The long phrases of the D major main theme (6 + 8 bars in the ritornello, 8 + 10 + 4 + 8 for the voice) build up to a rapturous paragraph of devotion, balanced by two shorter episodes in F sharp minor and B minor. The final return is enriched at the start by the earlier octave doubling of voice and violins, and at the end by two subtle strokes: the entry of the ritornello on a high A before the vocal cadence and the arrival of the climactic D, the top note of the melody, four bars later. Both have been adumbrated at bar 22, but their novel spacing here sets the seal on a sublime inspiration. Burney oddly allows ‘great theatrical merit’ to ‘M’opporrò da generoso’ on account of ‘the agitation and fury

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 215

06/10/2006 14:52:02

216

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

of the character for whom it was composed’. To us it suggests rather the jaunty selfconfidence of the sportsman as Sosarme sets out to intervene in the duel between father and son. It is in effect a gavotte with extra bar-lines changing the time to 2/4; Handel first wrote a common-time signature against the top part. Again the ritornello is long, and the squareness of the melody is dissolved in long melismas for the voice. There is some splendid four- and five-part writing in this aria. Sosarme’s two duets with Elmira are marvels of beauty; it is difficult to know which to rank the higher. ‘Per le porte del tormento’ is one of those touching scenes for lovers in misfortune in which Handel’s operas abound; but unlike the great examples in Tamerlano, Rodelinda and Tolomeo it is in a major key (E), and one generally associated with confidence and serenity. The lovely lilting tune with its exquisite part-writing and characteristic melodic extensions (in particular the prolonged cadence before the Adagio at the end of the A section) seems to hold time suspended, as if the lovers sought to preserve the moment for ever.12 They do sustain it for a very long time, but we cannot wish it shortened, even if the twelve-bar second section seems little but an excuse to hear the first over again. The second idea of the ritornello (bars 3–6) is reserved for interludes, sometimes in delicate counterpoint with material from the first (bars 17, 21, 32); the violins add a new rhythmic figure in bars 22–5 and later. ‘Tu caro sei’ expresses the lovers’ relief after their trials are over with a light-heartedness that never descends to triviality. Perhaps no dramatic composer except Mozart rivals Handel’s power to combine sublimity with good humour. As so often, the motive force is primarily rhythmic and structural. The ideas are clichés, but their impact is wholly fresh. Handel used several of them elsewhere, sometimes in very different contexts: the contour and syncopated rhythm of the first bar in the early psalm ‘Laudate pueri’13 and the Second Harlot’s air in Solomon, the rocking sequence in thirds that enters so unexpectedly at ‘d’un alma amante’ in Rodelinda (‘Spietati’)14 and the chorus ‘When his loud voice’ in Jephtha. Even the time-worn cadential figure when Sosarme gives the expected answer to Elmira’s question (last four bars of HG 102) chimes in with a delicious aptness. The orchestra, though it occupies but three staves (for some time only two), reflects the touch of a master. Handel divides it into two groups, each with its own harpsichord: Elmira is supported by unison violins pianissimo and Cembalo piano con i suoi Bassi, piano, Sosarme by four violas in unison and Cembalo secondo colla Teorba, e i suoi Bassi. (The four violas represent a reinforcement. Handel’s orchestra normally had only two.) When at length the voices sing together the groups combine (Tutti, ma pp in the bass). The oboes double the violins in the fore and aft ritornellos, and at one point the bassoons leave the bass to join the violas. Elmira’s part is as rewarding as Sosarme’s; like him she has a single aria in the minor (the last instead of the first), but her five solos, one a cavatina, are well varied and all of the highest quality. ‘Rendi’l sereno al ciglio’ is Handel’s only aria in B 12  At bar 33 there is a borrowing from the duet ‘Una guerra’ in the cantata Apollo e Dafne, where however the mood and (implied) tempo are very different. 13  D major setting (1707). 14  This also uses the syncopated rhythm in bars 4–6, and later on the voice, but the line is different.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 216

06/10/2006 14:52:03

Sosarme, Re di Media

217

major.15 The tempo mark too, Largo assai, is very rare. It is brief and touchingly direct, as befits a daughter comforting her distraught mother: two bars of ritornello, ten bars in the first section, three in the second, no ritornello before the da capo. (Chrysander’s omission of stage directions obscures the fact that this is an exit aria; Elmira goes out, but returns with an afflicted Air (‘affannata’) after Erenice’s next line of recitative.) Yet this inspired simplicity embraces an extraordinary profusion of eloquent detail: the careful dynamics ( p – pp – un poco forte), the suppression of harpsichord and bassoons after the ritornello (at first Handel omitted them here too), the charming instrumental echo with a new rhythm in bar 6, the climactic entry of the first violins with a high B on an off beat at the end of the A section, echoing at a higher pitch an earlier phrase of the voice, the allusion to this by both violins in thirds in the B section, the Purcellian cadences in bars 2 and 12, the latter varied by a little upward turn on the first violins while the seconds hold their B instead of repeating it, the deceptive cadence veering towards D sharp major in the B section (bar 14), and the beautifully judged return dal segno via a drooping ‘Madre’ interpolated from near the end of the A section. This feature anticipates ‘Angels, ever bright and fair’ and ‘Waft her, angels’, of which ‘Rendi’l sereno al ciglio’ is a worthy forerunner. The similarity between the opening bars, which also foreshadow ‘Thou shalt bring them in’ in Israel in Eg ypt, and a phrase in the duet ‘Per le porte del tormento’ is no doubt an accident, but a happy one. ‘Dite pace’ also looks forward to the late oratorios, especially Theodora, in its use of contrasted tempo and textures within the A section. This was of course suggested by the words (‘Dite pace, e fulminate’) and is a convention Handel had employed as early as Teseo; but there is greater depth and subtlety here. The first Adagio begins on a first inversion and returns later over a dominant pedal. The singer should be chary of ornament, even in the da capo; to do otherwise would wreck the antithesis between this smooth legato and the lively violin figures and agile coloratura of the Allegro with its octave leaps and semiquaver runs. The modulations and chromatic restlessness of the B section, on a stepwise bass unpredictable in its changes of direction, have an almost Mozartian emotionalism. The return, though quite literal, achieves an effect of touching surprise through the juxtaposition of two Adagios. The second act is framed by two solos for Elmira. Handel wrote few lovelier cavatinas than ‘Padre, germano e sposo’, characteristically reduced from a full aria in Dionisio. Vocal line and accompaniment are perfectly balanced, internally and against each other. The ritornello presents the three main orchestral elements in concentrated form: a much ornamented violin line, throbbing dotted figures and steady quaver movement. The last two alternate throughout between treble and bass, while the voice pursues its independent way, moulding the initial broken phrases of grief into a sustained paragraph that mounts to a wonderful climax with the aid of Neapolitan harmony. Behind Elmira’s suffering we sense a sterling courage. ‘Vola l’augello’ is more relaxed. The transference of the aria from I.iii, where Handel originally introduced it, left a slight incongruity; while the simile is a valid symbol of hope, Elmira should be thinking of her wounded lover rather than her brother. 15  The opening may have been suggested by that of the aria ‘Plagnati del destino’ in Keiser’s Claudius.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 217

06/10/2006 14:52:03

218

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Nevertheless, criticism collapses before the seductive charm of the music, which crowns a superlatively rich act. Handel’s bird songs are not all as captivating as this. There is no risk of vapid chortles marring the design based on pedals, trills and the conjunct motion of voice and violins in unison, thirds, sixths and tenths. Handel varies this with such delicacy, placing the violins sometimes above and sometimes below the voice, as to convey an impression of sumptuous texture in the almost total absence of inner parts.16 The brief B section is more passionately engaged – just enough to circumvent the danger of facile uniformity. Subtle differences in all four ritornellos contribute to the same end. Elmira’s Act III aria, ‘Vorrei, né pur saprei’, though Burney considered it of slight importance, once more raises the simple to the sublime by means of rhythmic flexibility. The ritornello has two unequal limbs, of three and six bars; the latter, with its leaping fifths and sixths and sudden climb from the leading note to the subdominant a minor twelfth above, is an unforgettable inspiration. It never occurs in the aria itself (Ex. 28). After the same initial three-bar figure the voice introduces a new phrase, an unadorned rising sequence in the relative major (‘che la spene del mio core’), that by some mysterious magic clutches at the heart. Like many such details it was an afterthought. Although the phrase occurs once in the B section (‘questi solo fanno avere’), its place here was at first occupied by a less memorable sequence used in slightly different form after the repeat (Ex. 29). This internal redistribution of ideas was the making of the aria, which has no further resources. The first part is in binary form with repeats, the second uses the same material. Elmira is a heroine worthy of a greater opera.

16  John Roberts detects a borrowing from Pistocchi’s Narciso in bars 13–16.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 218

06/10/2006 14:52:03

Sosarme, Re di Media

219

Dent calls Erenice a managing matriarch, not a common type in Handel (despite Gismonda in Ottone, Matilde in Lotario and perhaps Storgè, who has cause enough for indignation). This is scarcely fair to a woman whose husband, son, daughter and prospective son-in-law are in constant danger of violent death. Her report of Hecate’s words in her dream exhibits that expressive choice of chords that is as characteristic of Handel’s accompagnatos as of Bach’s chorales; but neither of her arias in Act I transcends routine. The duet with Argone in II.iii is a spirited piece of theatrical action, unorthodox in design despite the regular da capo. Argone begins without ritornello, but it is Erenice who takes command. She never allows him more than two or three words, and those at irregular intervals, interrupting on each occasion with angular phrases of scorching contempt and finally driving him out. As in most of Handel’s ensembles where the characters are at odds, the orchestral parts are largely independent of the voices, the violins reinforcing Erenice’s objurgations with fusillades of semiquavers. The modulations to flat minor keys (F to C minor and F minor) strengthen the impact. ‘Vado al campo’ finds Erenice equally resolute. The Presto opening without ritornello, the first violins and bass in free imitation (an afterthought) while the middle parts keep up a buzz of repeated quavers, propels the music with a vigour that the striding first-violin figuration and rising vocal sequences never allow to slacken. The progression in bars 14–23, moving in a long crescendo from E flat to F, generates an intense urgency. The ritornello design assists the forward movement: nothing at the start (where Erenice’s decision brooks no delay), but ten bars extending and developing the main theme after the B section, and five in G minor, the key in which the B section ends, before the brisk resumption of the da capo in E flat. Perhaps the finest of Erenice’s arias is the last, ‘Cor di madre’, in which the prospect of the duel between husband and son wrings from her a desolate F sharp minor lament. In each section Handel deploys an obbligato for solo violin, whose long curling phrases, contrasted with the ejaculations of the voice (twice extended in irregular periods of five and six bars), would not be out of place in a Bach sacred cantata. Of the other two altos, Argone remains a cipher. Even so Handel makes capital out of Campioli’s inadequacies, while confining him to the few abortive but cunningly placed phrases in his duet with Erenice and an accompagnato with the appropriate rhetorical gestures at the start of the opera. Melo is a much more individual figure, who would have repaid fuller treatment. He has two arias in minor keys that bear witness to Handel’s interest in the bastard son who proves so much more sympathetic than his legitimate brother. In neither does the text demand the emotional treatment it receives; indeed one of them was first set to very different music. Both, like ‘Cor di madre’, have a flavour of Bach, an accidental peculiarity that suffuses a number of Handel’s works at different periods; Tamerlano and Theodora are notable examples. ‘Sì, sì, minaccia’17 is built round another violin obbligato (unison, not solo) in which a short rhythmic pattern of graceful filigree work is repeated many times. The vocal divisions are very expressive, and the aria has an undercurrent of profound sadness, though Melo is merely urging Sosarme to take a strong line in reconciling Argone and Haliate. This assumes a colour of sombre, even tragic anguish in ‘So ch’il ciel’. 17  The second word in the B section (HG 23) should be ‘Megera’, not ‘messera’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 219

06/10/2006 14:52:04

220

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The words express confidence in heaven’s power to frustrate the wrongdoer; Handel first set them to the music of Altomaro’s following aria, ‘Sento il cor’, which on a superficial view fits them better. Yet the counterpoint of words against music in the G minor ‘So ch’il ciel’ is strangely moving; it suggests that Melo for all his faith has little hope of the outcome. We are reminded of the coro at the end of Tamerlano, and of Bajazet’s ‘A suoi piedi’ in the same opera. In both arias the Bach parallels are striking. ‘So ch’il ciel’ has another violin obbligato of the type mentioned above, but still more eloquent. In the ritornello the broken figuration ranges over two octaves and a fifth, with leaps of a twelfth and a tenth. The angular vocal intervals over a relentless bass, interrupted cadences and tense sequences might have served for a meditation on the crucifixion (Ex. 30). The B section all but quotes the chorus at the end of Part I of the St. Matthew Passion. Much of the texture in the first section has the sonorous economy one associates with Bach’s solo violin sonatas; that of the second, with the violins divided and constantly crossing over a slow and irregular rising chromatic scale in the bass, suggests a magical vista of clouds dissolving beneath the warmth of the relative major key, only to reform as the music droops towards D minor before the da capo. The treatment of the violins in slurred semiquavers, often in thirds, makes a wonderful contrast with the earlier anfractuosities. Melo’s Act III aria, ‘Sincero affetto’, has a simple straightforwardness (violins doubling the voice at the octave) that illustrates the words very prettily. But it is superficial in comparison with his earlier music; Melo’s mettle shines brightest in adversity. Haliate is one of several tenor potentates dating from the ‘Second Academy’ period, when Handel enjoyed the services of Fabri and Pinacci. The plot forces him into wooden postures, but this is partly due to Handel’s contractions. In his first draft I.viii begins not with the rather perfunctory eight-bar recitative on HG 27 but with a prolonged soliloquy of fifty bars, in which the monarch vacillates between thirst for revenge and the urge to spare and come to terms with his rebellious son. In the middle, when he has apparently decided on pardon, comes the direction Sta un poco sospeso, poi infuriato. This is a turning point in the action and prepares the way for Haliate’s sudden change of front towards Argone in II.v. He is established at the outset as a man whose threats of violence conceal an inner doubt. It is surprising that Handel did not give this recitative a string accompaniment, and still more surprising that he cut it out, especially as he himself must have inserted or approved it; the words are not in Dionisio. There is a case for restoring it in a modern production. All three of Haliate’s arias are excellent. Two of them, as with Melo, are in minor keys. ‘La turba adulatrice’ is a C minor vengeance aria on the grand scale, an immensely powerful piece based on a typical series of contrasts. The ritornello has at least five ideas: a smooth half-sinister opening over a pedal, arpeggio and scale figures in rugged octaves, string tremolos over a marching bass, an angular gesture signing off with a trill, and a dotted cadential formula. They appear in the aria in a different order and all manner of transformations, the dotted figure supplying the seed of much of the B section. The first phrase is lengthened by imitation at the vocal entry and provided with a suave cadence in the relative major, making three and a half bars instead of one and a half. Later it appears in E flat throughout, lengthened by yet another bar, after a furious outburst of G minor semiquavers; the effect

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 220

06/10/2006 14:52:04

Sosarme, Re di Media

221

is of formidable reserves of power. The voice has some lively coloratura of a type associated with tenor and bass tyrants. The B section is extensively developed, with much new material and further contrasts, the orchestra confined to sharp expostulations while Haliate works off his anger in phrases of every length from two beats to extended melismas of four and five bars. There are traces in this aria, and elsewhere in Sosarme, of the new homophonic style Handel had encountered in Italy, but he uses it with a resilient strength seldom attained by Vinci or Pergolesi. In Act II this explosive monarch relaxes in an aria of equal rhythmic and thematic resource but very different temper. ‘Se discordia’ has a gracious melody of the same family as the duet ‘Cease thy anguish’ in Athalia and the minuet in the overture to Berenice. The four-bar opening phrase of the ritornello is answered by one of no fewer than fourteen bars containing a proliferation of rhythmic patterns. This flexibility

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 221

06/10/2006 14:52:05

222

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

extends throughout the aria, whose voice part falls into phrases of approximately the following bar-lengths: 4, 3, 2, 6, 5, 5, 10 (with a beautiful hemiola extension), 9, 5, 6, 5 and 4. Yet the result is a seamless paragraph, the orchestra constantly overlapping the voice. The B section, with a particularly happy spacing of the string parts, is little inferior. ‘S’io cadrò’ finds Haliate in a mood of bitter reproach, conveyed by short phrases and a jagged violin obbligato extending over nearly three octaves. Again one catches a glimpse of ‘A suoi piedi’ at the back of Handel’s mind. The major key of the B section, on similar material, brings a moment of calm, but it is soon dissipated. It is difficult to know what to make of Altomaro. Here is a double-dyed villain, an unscrupulous bully, liar and potential murderer, who expresses himself in music of mellow gravity or bluff exuberance, always in major keys with no chromatic inflections. It is possible that Handel meant to draw a jolly old scoundrel, an honest Iago whom no one could suspect; but this seems unlikely, especially as two of his three arias originated in other mouths. Handel seems to have resigned himself to exploiting the sonorous voice of his new singer, Antonio Montagnana, a true bass, not a blustering baritone like Boschi. It was to Montagnana’s singing in this part, his first aria in particular, that Burney applied the words ‘depth, power, mellowness, and peculiar accuracy of intonation in hitting distant intervals’. ‘Fra l’ombre’ is certainly a challenge in these respects, as the vocal line demonstrates (Ex. 31). Handel adapted this from an aria for Polifemo in the 1708 Naples serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, where the words and the musical material are almost the same, but the vocal line is still more ungainly and a fifth wider in compass, characterising the clumsy vastness of the giant. The cadences at the end of each section must be among the most eccentric ever written (Ex. 32a and b). A comparison between the two versions offers a fascinating insight into Handel’s methods in recomposition. The 1708 aria is strangely scored for two muted violins doubled by recorders,18 viola and Violono grosso senza Cembalo; the violins’ semiquaver figures are not present; and the initial imitations, begun by the voice, are successive instead of overlapping. In 1732 Handel made the texture smoother, tauter, more contrapuntal and more sensuous. The grotesquerie has disappeared. The opening, where the falling arpeggio of the instrumental bass is freely imitated in turn by voice, first violin, viola and second violin, has a concentration preserved throughout with the aid of intricately crossing string parts (once the viola finds itself at the top and the first violin nearest the bass) and deep pedals. The B section is equally fine and returns to the da capo by way of fresh development. Most of these features were new in 1732. It is a superb piece of music, but it is difficult to agree with Streatfeild that it ‘seems to be enveloped in a weird atmosphere of guilt and horror’. It suggests rather a timeless serenity, as of some aged philosopher contemplating the remote past; so might Handel himself have looked back to his youth in Italy. ‘Sento il cor’ would have made an admirable drinking song. It is a very odd response to Melo’s defiance, but the music was first conceived for Melo, which accounts for the appearance of the same rhymes, and the use of scale figures at the same point, in two consecutive arias, and in part perhaps for Altomaro’s muddled characterisation. (It suggests too that Handel changed his mind about Melo, making 18  Chrysander omits the recorders: the new HHA edition reduces them to one.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 222

06/10/2006 14:52:05

Sosarme, Re di Media

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 223

223

06/10/2006 14:52:06

224

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

him an introvert rather than an extrovert; no two arias would be more opposed in temper than what he first received and what he sang.) The text of ‘So ch’il ciel’ is in Dionisio; Handel must have asked for (or written himself) that of ‘Sento il cor’ to accommodate ideas already on paper. The bass scales in the ritornello and bars 14–15 were evoked by the line ‘far cader l’indegna frode’. They and the leaping octaves associated with them are apt enough for ‘di trovar si bella frode’, though the image of falling has gone. Handel used both ideas with characteristic resource, especially in the ritornello after the A section, where the scale tumbles down more than two octaves instead of an eleventh. Rollicking rhythms, which often take an unexpected turn, lively sequences and coloratura, and a B section that neatly combines the old with the new, distinguish an aria more suited to a bibulous clown, some Polyphemus guiltless of his fellow shepherds’ blood, than to a crafty conspirator. The same is true of ‘Tiene Giove’, a genial gavotte with a ritornello melody of six bars that the voice promptly extends to sixteen. This cheerful dance is the last piece before the duel and Altomaro’s suicide. If Handel meant it for dramatic irony, he missed his target. Sosarme has a fine and carefully composed overture. The preamble is not the usual dotted introduction but a stately sarabande in 3/2. This may be a link with the original Iberian venue; one recalls the sarabandes in Handel’s earlier Spanish opera Almira. The Allegro, more genuinely fugal than usual, has a springy subject related to the familiar melody used in the D major violin sonata and the symphony for the Angel’s appearance in Jephtha. A clever detail is the appropriation by the subject at bar 32 of a semiquaver flourish from the immediately preceding episode. The minuet plays off a short-breathed tune with a rhythmic resemblance to ‘God Save the Queen’, divided between woodwind and full orchestra, against a flowing counterpoint in slurred quavers for the first violins. The opening of Act I is theatrically effective, with two accompagnatos (the only examples in the opera) and a coro militare full of fanfares and flourishes before the first aria. The coro was sung by the soloists (except Argone) off-stage, and it is repeated later in the act (I.x),19 where it buttresses the hesitant Argone’s resolve to lead the sortie. The final coro, like others at this period, is a substantial movement, though in da capo form. The deceased Altomaro reinforces the bass from the wings. It is a delightful pastoral in rare 9/8 metre, with 19  This is dramatically awkward. Erenice is omitted, but Elmira, who is also on stage, has to sing because she is the only soprano.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 224

06/10/2006 14:52:07

Sosarme, Re di Media

225

a foretaste of the duet ‘O lovely peace’ in Judas Maccabaeus. The texture is rich, with copious double-thirds for violins and oboes and the mellow reinforcement of horns. The B section, as so often in this opera, is developed at length, moving from the relative (D) minor to E major as the dominant of A minor. A ritornello in the latter key replaces the opening and drops straight back to the reprise in F major, supplying with the same stroke fulfilment, continuity and surprise. The orchestra has no flutes or recorders, but the presence of trumpets and horns (each in two movements), the divided forces with theorbo in the duet ‘Tu caro sei’ and the full four-part accompaniment in the majority of the arias leaves an impression of exceptional amplitude. Burney tells us that Castrucci played the solo violin in ‘Cor di madre’. There appears to be no contemporary evidence for the statement in The New Grove that Handel used the violetta marina in Sosarme. The unusual balance of voices in Handel’s company during the years 1729–32, when he had several altos with a single soprano, tenor and bass, makes for further variety. Sosarme is the only opera he wrote for the particular combination SAAAATB. It is also the only one in which nine different major keys occur in set pieces; he never used D flat or F sharp major outside recitatives, and A flat only in L’Allegro. No overall tonal pattern is discernible, and no keys predominate. The minor mode is less prominent than usual in the last two acts (five times in twenty numbers); Act II, the finest of the three, ends with six consecutive movements in major keys.

History and Text Handel completed the score on 4 February 1732. There is no date at the beginning, so we cannot tell how much time (if any) elapsed between the abandonment of the first draft and its resumption with the names changed. It seems likely that he began Sosarme before the production of Ezio on 15  January and finished it after, slashing the recitatives in a desperate attempt to save it. There was a public rehearsal at midday on 14 February, which Viscount Percival attended on his way to the House of Lords.20 The first performance took place the following evening (15 February) at the King’s Theatre, with the following cast: sosarme Senesino (alto castrato) haliate Giovanni Battista Pinacci (tenor) elmira Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) erenice Anna Bagnolesi (contralto) melo Francesca Bertolli (contralto) argone Campioli (alto castrato) altomaro Antonio Montagnana (bass) There were eleven performances, the last on 21 March; all were assiduously patronised by the Royal Family. The reception was enthusiastic. Percival, who attended the third night on 22 February, noted that the opera ‘takes with the town, and that justly, 20  ‘Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont. Diary of Viscount Percival ...’ Historical Manuscripts Commission, 3 vols (London, 1922–3), I, 222; not in Deutsch, because the opera is not named.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 225

06/10/2006 14:52:07

226

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

for it is one of the best I ever heard’. This is confirmed by the Colman Diary (‘took much ... & was for many Nights much crowded to some peoples admiration’); by the author of the contemporary pamphlet See and Seem Blind (‘most pleasing, and in my mind exceeding pretty: There are two Duetto’s which Ravish me, and indeed the whole is vastly Genteel’); and by Burney, who observes that ‘In mille dolci modi’ was, ‘according to tradition, always heard with great pleasure’ and ‘Tu caro sei’ ‘became a general favourite’.21 So did the other duet, ‘Per le porte del tormento’, which during the 1733 season was sung at least six times,22 in the intervals of various plays at the King’s Theatre and Drury Lane, by ‘Miss Arne and young Master Arne’. These were the future Mrs Cibber and the younger brother of the composer.23 Mrs Cibber and Mrs Arne (Cecilia Young) sang the same duet at two concerts in the Dublin Music Room under Handel himself on 21 and 28 July 1742. It had been included in the Dublin performances of Imeneo earlier the same year, but was still attributed to Sosarme. Mrs Wright sang ‘Sincero affetto’ at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 19 April 1732. Handel revived Sosarme for three performances in 1734, the first on 27 April, at a time when rivalry with the Opera of the Nobility was at its height and both companies were in low water. Mrs. Pendarves attended the rehearsal on the morning of the 26th and the second performance on the 30th. She considered it ‘a most delightful opera’ and ‘a charming one, and yet I dare say it will be almost empty! ’Tis ­vexatious to have such music neglected’. No 1734 libretto is known, but the changes can be reconstructed from the two performing scores. The cast given by Deutsch24 is almost certainly correct: Sosarme – Carestini, Haliate – Durastanti, Elmira – Strada, Erenice – Maria Caterina Negri, Melo – Rosa Negri, Argone – Scalzi, Altomaro – Waltz. There are three changes of voice here: Carestini was a mezzo-soprano, Durastanti and Scalzi sopranos. Moreover, while Scalzi was a much finer singer than Campioli, Durastanti’s voice was failing, and both Negri sisters (especially Rosa) and Waltz were inferior to the artists they succeeded. As a consequence Handel’s alterations were extensive. He modified all Sosarme’s music outside the recitative, adding upper alternatives (printed in small notes in HG) in the two duets, transposing ‘Alle sfere’ up a tone to G (thereby increasing the brilliance of the horn parts) and the lowlying ‘In mille dolci modi’ up a fourth, also to G, and replacing ‘Il mio valore’ and ‘M’opporrò’ by two arias from Riccardo Primo, ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ and ‘Nube che il sole adombra’. Both had been written for Senesino and were now transposed up a major third, to D and G major respectively, with the words adapted to the new context. One result was to modify Sosarme’s character, not to its advantage, in the direction of extrovert bravura, with no music in the minor mode. ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ is peculiarly inapt as the first utterance of a would-be peacemaker. 21  Burney was told that Strada ‘captivated the audience extremely’ in ‘Rendi’l sereno al ciglio’ (Performances in Westminster Abbey in An Account of the Musical Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785; repr. 1964), 51). 22  20 and 25 October and 19 November 1733, 4 January, 4 March and 2 April 1734. 23  His name was probably Richard (born 1719): see Julian Herbage, ‘Young Master Arne’, in Monthly Musical Record 90 (1960), 14–16. 24  He was unable to recall where he obtained it; and it is missing from the typescript of his Documentary Biography, now in the Coke Collection. Presumably he found a libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 226

06/10/2006 14:52:07

Sosarme, Re di Media

227

Scalzi as Argone received three arias, ‘Corro per ubbidirvi’ in I.i between his accompagnato and the coro militare; Sosarme’s ‘Il mio valore’, transposed up a tone to A minor, in place of the duet with Erenice in II.iii; and ‘Quell’orror delle procelle’ in F major at the end of III.vi (HG 93, after Elmira’s ‘T’arresta’). The first and third of these are again from Riccardo Primo, where they had been sung by Faustina and Senesino respectively, the former at the same pitch (A major), the latter a fourth lower in C. The verbal changes disturbed the initial words, which in Riccardo are ‘Vado per obedirti’ and ‘All’orror delle procelle’. In ‘Corro per ubbidirvi’, whereas Pulcheria went to obey her father, Argone follows the impulses of his heart to do the exact opposite; the music too was altered, a substantial cut reducing the B section from eighteen to seven bars before the return of the first line of text. The other parts – except Elmira, which Strada sang unchanged apart from a seemingly pointless cut of five bars in ‘Padre, germano’ – were all significantly shortened. Erenice lost ‘Due parti del core’, the duet with Argone and ‘Cor di madre’; her surviving arias, ‘Forte in ciampo’ and ‘Vado al campo’, were raised by a tone, but the direction was crossed out in the performing scores.25 Handel also marked the duet ‘Se m’ascolti’ up a tone to G, but then replaced it. Melo lost ‘So ch’il ciel’ and the two expressive bravura passages in ‘Sì, sì, minaccia’ bracketed in HG. Altomaro lost ‘Fra l’ombre’ and (according to Clausen) ‘Tiene Giove’. For Durastanti, operating an octave above the original pitch, Handel omitted ‘S’io cadrò’, which she could not have sung in E minor, and made extensive cuts in ‘La turba adulatrice’: not only the three marked in HG but two more, bars 28 and 29 and no fewer than seventeen and a half bars in the B section, from the middle of bar 81 to the end of bar 98. This eased the veteran singer’s task, incidentally removing the only top A – a note no longer within Durastanti’s reach – and involved alterations and rebarring at the end of the B section.26 There were also more recitative cuts than the eleven Chrysander indicates: the last five bars in II.vi (after ‘Colla perfidia’, HG 52), the eight bars from ‘ma di pietà’ to ‘quest’alma’ in II.viii (HG 59), the first three words of II.x (HG 72), the first six bars of III.iii (HG 86) and the last eight in III.iv (after ‘perfido Altomaro’, HG 90). These abridgements, even more drastic than those made before the first performance, amounting in all to some 180 bars, reduced the opera to little more than a string of arias. The only one that can be called an improvement is the second in I.x (HG 35), where by cadencing in E instead of A major Handel gave greater impact to the repeat of the D major coro militare in conformity with the stage direction (omitted in HG) Mentre stà sospeso si senta il coro militare ad invitarlo. Handel introduced four Sosarme arias, ‘Dite pace’, ‘Si discordia’, ‘In milli dolci modi’ and ‘Vola l’augello’, in his pasticcio Oreste (Covent Garden, 18 December 1734). Sosarme had the dubious honour of making two contributions to the popular sacred repertory, ‘Rendi’l sereno al ciglio’ as ‘Lord, remember David’, a favourite number of the tenor Samuel Harrison, who sang it at the 1784 Handel Commemoration, and 25  It is possible but unlikely that the transpositions were made before the 1732 performances and cancelled in 1734. If so, one would expect Erenice’s other two arias to be transposed at the same time. Walsh and all copies have the original keys. 26  See below, p. 234.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 227

06/10/2006 14:52:07

228

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

‘Per le porte del tormento’, arranged as an anthem, ‘O give thanks unto the Lord’, by one R. Andrews. The fears of Mrs Pendarves were to be more than justified in the long term. Sosarme was not heard again until the BBC broadcast Act II in December 1948 and all three Acts in January 1955. Anthony Lewis, who conducted that performance, recorded a slightly shortened version in the same year. A second recording by Johannes Somary appeared in 1994. The first modern stage revival was Alan Kitching’s at Abingdon in 1970. Six others have followed, two of them in Poland. In 2005 Alan Curtis conducted in Lisbon his reconstruction of Handel’s original plan under the title Fernando re di Castiglia, restoring cancelled recitatives and the Iberian names of the characters in all three acts. It remains to be seen how well this works.

Autograph (RM 20 c 10) The original (Coimbra) draft consisted of fols 1–24,27 26–33 (31 misplaced), 36–44 and 46–65 (see Plate 8b). Handel foliated this in his usual manner on every fourth leaf, beginning a fresh series for Act II. Fols 25 and 34–5 were inserted after the names had been changed, supplying a much shorter substitute for Dionisio’s recitative in I.viii and an extra aria for Elmira, ‘Dite pace’,28 at the end of the act. Its introductory recitative was squeezed in at the bottom of the verso of fol. 33, where Handel had first written Fine dell Atto Primo after ‘Due parti del core’. Fols 45, with three rewritten passages for ‘Se discordia’, and 54 are bound back to front. There are several interesting points about this draft. The overture, which bears the original title (Ouverture dell’Opera Fernando Re di Castiglia), was composed first. The verso of fol. 31 has four altered passages of recitative for I.x (HG 34–5), supplied after the names were changed; but the recto (as now bound) is the first page of the rejected setting of Melo’s ‘So ch’il ciel’ later adapted for Altomaro’s ‘Sento il cor’. There are minor but interesting differences in treatment: the ritornello is one bar shorter, and the octave and unison doubling of the first vocal phrase and the extension of the second from four to five bars are not yet present. The sixteen bars are fully scored; were it not for the presence on the verso of recitatives from a different act, which account for its survival, the conclusion would be irresistible that Handel completed this version. He made a number of other changes in the Coimbra section, though it is not always possible to date them with certainty. He marked ‘Fra l’ombre’ Andante larghetto, but smudged the first word with his thumb before the ink was dry. The duet ‘Se m’ascolti’ had oboes in two parts, as well as violins, on the top stave. The modifications to ‘Se discordia’ (fol. 45), all concerned with the three-bar sequence of slurred semiquavers in thirds (bars 13–15, 66–8, 95–7), were a notable improvement, and lengthened the initial ritornello from sixteen to eighteen bars. The tempo of the G minor ‘So ch’il ciel’ was originally Andante; Handel added larghetto in different ink 27  It is possible that ‘Il mio valore’ (fols 22–3) was an insertion, replacing an earlier aria, since it is ascribed to Sosarme, not Fernando. The name might have been added later, but there is no apparent difference in the ink. 28  This ends on fol. 36, which according to Burrows and Ronish is conjunct with fol. 30. If so, it must originally have been left blank.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 228

06/10/2006 14:52:07

Sosarme, Re di Media

229

and made four brief cuts, which necessitated a reorganisation of the barring. There were two significant modifications to ‘Vado al campo’: the tempo was quickened from Allegro to Presto, and the figuration of the bass altered from a procession of even quavers throughout the A section, except at the Adagio cadence. The new angular bass at each entry of the main theme was a multiple improvement: it strengthened the contrapuntal interest, let air into the texture at the important words ‘Vado al campo’, deposed the regular symmetry (the dotted rhythm lasts for three, two and seven bars at its three incursions), and gave Erenice’s purpose an extra urgency and rhythmic momentum. The autograph has the lower alternatives in the voice part of the first two bars. Handel added the upper notes in pencil in the performing score; they appear in none of the copies. In the second stage of the composition, which left the autograph as it stands today, Handel meticulously altered the names and the nationality of all the characters except Altomaro, substituted Sardi for Coimbra, and made a few minor changes in the text. For example Isabella in her dream (I.ii) had seen not ‘Hecate ... spuntar dal Cielo’, but ‘Irene ... sorger dell’acqua’, the reading in Dionisio. The recitatives in I.i, iii, v, vi, viii and x and II.iv, v, vi, ix and x, all fully composed, were subjected to drastic abridgement. The most substantial retrenchments were in I.i (19 bars, mostly in the accompanied section), I.vi (21 bars), I.viii (42 bars) and II.v (18 bars; the original cadence before ‘Se discordia’ was in D minor). This necessitated a few changes in the music, notably in I.viii, where only the first four bars of Haliate’s ‘Così dunque’ remained, and I.x. Handel completed the opera by composing I.xi, II.xiii, Elmira’s recitative in II.xiv (retaining the last five words from the original context in I.iii and leaving an exit without an aria), and the whole of Act III, in which the only set pieces taken from Dionisio are the arias for Haliate and Erenice at the start and the A section of ‘M’opporrò’. None of this new material was foliated. There are few alterations or corrections in this section of the autograph. An abortive ritornello for ‘In mille dolci modi’ (ten bars instead of fourteen, on similar material less expressively treated and with a weak two-bar formula instead of the first four bars) was cancelled as soon as written; it was itself a derivative of the rejected aria ‘Questo core incatenato’ in Act I of Giulio Cesare, which in turn goes back to an early cantata aria.29 In ‘S’io cadrò’ the silent bar with fermata at the bottom of HG 85 was first filled by three bars for voice and bass; Handel was never averse from allowing his singers a cadenza at suitable moments. The first two bars of ‘Cor di madre’ originally included the voice (as in bars 9 and 10), another idea rejected before it could be fully recorded. The B section of ‘M’opporrò’ seems to have been an afterthought; Handel intended it to have the same four-part accompaniment as the A section, for he supplied staves with clefs but left them blank. Smith copied this arrangement exactly in the principal performing score. The inspired afterthought at bars 13–16 of ‘Vorrei né pur saprei’ has been quoted above. A few lines of recitative in III.xii and xiii (ultima) were written out but not set. All the passages bracketed by Chrysander are in the autograph.

29  See Handel’s Operas I, 511–12.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 229

06/10/2006 14:52:07

230

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Libretto 1732. ‘Drama ... Done into English by Mr. Humphreys ... Printed for T. Wood in Little-Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market’. 55 pp. The Argument lays no claim to historical precedent, and the librettist is not named. A year later Samuel Humphreys transplanted the phrase ‘a soft serene’ from his version of ‘M’opporrò’ into the text of Athalia. The libretto includes a number of important and vivid stage directions omitted by Chrysander (for example in I.i, iii, x, II.iii, III.iii and xii), although all but two are in the autograph as well. The most extensive concerns the wounding of Erenice by Argone and Melo by Haliate in their endeavour to stop the duel. All are included in the summary at the beginning of this chapter. The accompagnato ‘Rasserena Erenice’ is printed as a da capo aria, an undramatic idea that Handel wisely ignored.

Copies and Editions Both performing scores used in 1732 and 1734 survive. They supply an almost complete key to what Handel performed in both seasons, besides indicating a number of expedients he considered in 1734 but rejected. The principal score, Hamburg MA/1054 (Ham 1), is a complicated document containing material of many different dates. Smith began work on it while Handel was still composing. He reached at least II.viii before Handel changed the names and shortened the recitatives of his first draft. This necessitated a number of insertions with the revised recitatives; Clausen lists seven (fols 9–10, 25, 29, 42, 49–50, 71 and 76, the last on the other side of an abandoned draft for ‘Dite pace’). At least four surviving folios (24, 26, 30 and 77) retain fragments of the suppressed passages, and a slip with the first bar of II.iv and the first four of II.v pasted over the bottom staves of fol. 70 almost certainly conceals another. Smith sometimes wrote the names of the Dionisio characters (24 verso, 30 recto), sometimes left blanks (97 recto), evidently awaiting Handel’s instructions, and sometimes added the Sosarme names later in different ink (28 verso). Still at an early stage, he moved ‘Vola l’augello’ from I.iii to II.xiv and added ‘Dite pace’ at the end of Act I. In this aria he included three separate bars subsequently cancelled in the autograph. A mistake by Smith in copying bar 26 of ‘Cor di madre’ (HG 88, bottom line) is reproduced in almost all subsequent manuscripts and the printed scores of Walsh, Arnold and Chrysander. The autograph reading (Ex. 33a) is obviously correct. Smith accidentally jumped the ripieno violins’ chord on the third beat, putting that on the fourth beat in its place (Ex. 33a and b). Only RM 19 a 5 and the Flower parts, which derive from the autograph, give the correct reading. As on other occasions, Chrysander was led astray by his uncritical faith in performing scores. Such errors by Smith are not infrequent; they were seldom corrected because the performing scores served continuo players, not a stick-waving conductor. Handel used Ham 1 to jot down his proposed alterations for the new cast in 1734. There is evidence in the form of pencil annotations, some of them cancelled and barely legible, of much chopping and changing. Among the abandoned ideas, he allotted ‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’ to I.i and ‘Il mio valore’ to III.vi, both for Argone,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 230

06/10/2006 14:52:07

Sosarme, Re di Media

231

and tentatively marked ‘Se discordia’ for transposition from B flat to G. He changed his mind more than once about the key of ‘In mille dolci modi’, moving it from D first to G, then to F, then back to G. Probably all the transpositions noted in Ham 1 date from 1734; they do not appear in copies or prints. When Handel put ‘Alle sfere’ up from F to G, Smith used convenient blank staves at the bottom of each page to write out the bass part in the new key for the continuo player. Most of the cuts were made by crossing out or pasting over. This involved minor modifications to the remaining music, most of them autograph. Handel noted exits in the recitative (Parte for Altomaro before ‘Fra l’ombre’, Melo before ‘So ch’il ciel’, and Erenice before ‘Cor di madre’). The B versions on HG 13, 35 and 76 were superimposed on the original; as was the contraction of the recitative of III.iv (ignored in HG), ending with a B major cadence in the third bar. The folios inserted in 1734 are 11–13 (‘Corro per ubbidirvi’) and 119 ( shortened recitative of III.iv recopied), written by Smith; 35–9 (‘Agitato da fiere tempeste’) written mostly by Smith, the closing bars by S1; and 65–7 (‘Il mio valore’ in A minor), 128–33 (‘Quell’orror delle procelle’) and 134–7 (‘Nube che il sole’) written by S1. ‘In mille dolci modi’ in G, also copied by S1, was later transferred to the performing score of the pasticcio Oreste (MA/1034). When ‘Il mio valore’ was recopied in A minor the violin part in the fourth bar and later was adjusted to avoid the top E; Handel seldom took violins above d’’’. The cembalo score for the second harpsichordist, Hamburg MA/185 (Ham 2), was copied from Ham 1 – Act I by H8, Act II by S4(?), Act III by an unidentified scribe – after it had been adjusted for the first performance (this included the removal of the three extra bars in ‘Dite pace’ as well as vestiges of the first draft). The 1734 cuts were made by blank paper pasted over the original text; in ‘La turba adulatrice’ the short bar 99 was accidentally included in the cut. Ham 2 has the same insertions as Ham 1 plus ‘In mille dolci modi’ in G, all copied by S1 for voice and bass only. ‘Quell’orror’ and ‘Nube che il sole’ are misplaced after the coro. At the end of the recitative of III.x (HG 99–100) someone (?the continuo player) altered the cadence and wrote Haliate D in the margin. Perhaps at one of the performances Durastanti

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 231

06/10/2006 14:52:08

232

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

was given an aria here, but there is no sign of it in Ham 1. Chrysander used Ham 2 for preparing his edition and annotated it copiously. It was not the printer’s copy, for most of the cut passages are still pasted over. The Malmesbury (pp. 1–11 S1, remainder S3, dated 1732 by watermark) and Lennard scores (S5, 1738 or later) give the complete 1732 version with no important variants. Both have the error in bar 26 of ‘Cor di madre’, indicating that they derive from Ham 1 before it received the 1734 accretions. Both are deficient in stage directions, but Lennard includes two important ones, before the coro militare in I.i and the duet ‘Se m’ascolti’ in II.iv, now to be found only in the libretto, though the autograph has an earlier version of the second. Neither copy retains the specification for four violas in the duet ‘Tu caro sei’. Malmesbury has an obviously erroneous Allegro on ‘Per le porte del tormento’. An Aylesford copy in RM 19 a 5, fols 62–182, has the 1732 score without secco recitatives but including a keyboard arrangement of the last two movements of the overture. Alone among the copies it derives from the autograph, not the performing score, and is a collaborative effort by four copyists, S1, S2, S3 and H8, dated 1732 by watermark. The Act III sinfonia has repeat marks, which appear elsewhere only in the Flower parts, and bar 26 of ‘Cor di madre’ is correct. If Jennens possessed a score with recitatives, it does not survive in the Flower Collection. The Coke Collection has another copy of the 1732 score without recitatives (one of a group of operas in a minute English hand), dated August 1733 at the end, presumably when it was copied. It lacks Argone’s accompagnato in I.i, the coro militare and the sinfonia in II.ii, but was not copied from Walsh; it contains the Act III sinfonia (without repeats) and 4 violi (sic) in ‘Tu caro sei’. Some idiosyncratic tempo marks – Largo e staccato and Vivace on the first and third movements of the overture, Largo on ‘Fra l’ombre’, Allegro on the duet ‘Se m’ascolti’ (also in Arnold’s score) and ‘In mille dolci modi’ (an obvious mistake) – may have been improvised by the scribe. Shaftesbury MS 211 in the Coke Collection (S4, late 1730s) contains the coro militare and the two sinfonias, supplementary to the Walsh print but misattributed to Orlando, and two of the Riccardo Primo arias introduced in 1734, ‘Quell’orrore’ (= ‘All’orrore’) in F and ‘Nube che il sole adombra’ in G preceded by nine bars of recitative for Elmira and Sosarme. RM 18 b 4, fols 1–8, has an H8 copy of the overture in score, the Malmesbury Collection an S3 copy of it in keyboard arrangement. Coke MS 144, a volume once owned by the countertenor Walter Powell, has early S3 copies of ‘Il mio valore’, ‘So ch’il ciel’, ‘Alle sfere’ and ‘Vorrei né pur saprei’. Copies of ‘Per le porte del tormento’ and ‘In mille dolci modi’ for voice and bass in the hand of Martin Smith are in Coke MS 124 (c.1736). ‘Vola l’augello’ and ‘In mille dolci modi’ are among the tunes arranged for Charles Clay’s musical clock in RM 19 a 1, fols 160–71 (S2, 1730s). The Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland has S5 copies of the duets ‘Se m’ascolti’ and ‘Tu caro sei’ (c.1744). Small groups of arias of later date in the RCM, RAM and British Library Collections include a copy of ‘Sincero affetto’ for voice and bass in Add. MS 31504 with many additional trills in the voice part. The Flower parts (S2, c.1743–7) – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2 (and horns 1 and 2 at University of Maryland) – omit the overture, Argone’s

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 232

06/10/2006 14:52:08

Sosarme, Re di Media

233

accompagnato, coro militare, sinfonia in II.ii and five arias (‘Il mio valore’, ‘Due parti del core’, ‘Alle sfere’, ‘Vado al campo’ and ‘M’opporrò’). They were extracted not from either performing score, but probably from RM 19 a 5. Violin 2 has the third violin part in ‘Dite pace’ and ‘Padre, germano’, but an additional solo part (with minor differences from HG) in ‘Cor di madre’. The bassoon is not mentioned in the cello part. The oboe parts differ from HG in a number of particulars. In ‘Forte inciampo’ they are silent only in bars 15–16, 26–9 and the B section. In ‘Vorrei, né pur saprei’ they double the violins in the ritornello after the B section, and they are in action throughout ‘Tiene Giove’, playing an octave above the violins where the pitch requires. In both these respects they contradict the performing scores and the autograph. Durham Cathedral Library has a set of parts for the overture (MS E 33) in the hand of a scribe with Oxford connections.30 Walsh lost no time in publishing two collections of Favourite Songs in score, advertised on 11 March and 29 April 1732. The first contains the overture, the duets ‘Per le porte del tormento’ and ‘Tu caro sei’ and six arias, the second seven more arias. Both collections were incorporated, printed from the same plates, in Sosarmes an Opera (c.1733), which omits only Argone’s accompagnato, the coro militare and the sinfonias in Acts II and III, besides the secco recitatives. Campioli is spelt Compiole, a sign perhaps of his obscurity. A set of proofs for this issue with corrections and bass figures in manuscript was sold at Sotheby’s on 17 November 1983. Walsh advertised an arrangement for flute and bass on 31 May 1732. He published an arrangement of ‘Alle sfere’ for two horns in Forrest Music, Vol. II (1733) and the overture in parts in his fifth collection ( June 1734). Sosarme is the latest of the four operas included in Arnold’s edition (1788). His score is a strange hybrid, evidently compiled from several sources, one of which reaches back to Handel’s first draft; in the recitative of II.xii Sosarme is addressed as Fermando (sic). It gives the 1732 form of the arias and duets, except ‘La turba adulatrice’ and ‘Padre, germano’, which are shortened, but the truncated recitatives of 1734 except in II.vi, III.iii and iv, which are complete. The coro militare is omitted, and the final coro rearranged for four voices, Haliate doubling Altomaro throughout. ‘La turba adulatrice’ is Andante allegro, ‘Rendi’l sereno’ Largo, the duet ‘Se m’ascolti’ Allegro. There are many careless mistakes; two arias lack their da capo, and six pieces have da capo instead of dal segno. Mysteriously Haliate appears in the list of characters, but not the score, as Corrido. Chrysander’s edition (1880) includes an arbitrary selection of the 1734 cuts without mentioning the insertions and transpositions, except that of ‘In mille dolci modi’. At the cadence before the cut in HG 12 he prints the 1734 setting of ‘il ciglio’; the notes in 1732 were a’ b b’ b b’, as the autograph, Malmesbury and the original state of Ham 1 and 2 confirm. In ‘La turba adulatrice’ he prints an anomalous conflation of the 1732 and 1734 versions with a half bar that Handel was careful to eradicate. The autograph, followed by RM 19 a 5, Malmesbury, Lennard, Coke and the Flower parts, reads in bars 99–104 (voice and bass only) as in Ex. 34. This was the original reading of Ham 1 and 2 as well. When Handel removed seventeen and a half bars from the B section in 1734 he shortened the vocal cadence by half a bar and shifted 30  See Handel’s Operas I, 457.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 233

06/10/2006 14:52:08

234

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the intervening bar-lines, leaving (from bar 81) what is shown in Ex. 35. The change is made by careful erasures and insertions in both performing copies. Chrysander ignored the cut but retained the cadence to which it gave rise.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 234

06/10/2006 14:52:09

c h a p t e r 13 Orlando

A

brief Argument in the printed libretto sets the scene and points the moral. ‘The immoderate Passion that Orlando entertained for Angelica, Queen of Catai, and which, in the end, totally deprived him of his Reason, is an Event taken from Ariosto’s incomparable Poem, which being universally known, may serve as an Argument to the present Drama, without any larger Explication. The additional Fiction of the Shepherdess Dorinda’s love for Medoro, and the constant zeal of the Magician Zoroaster, for the Glory of Orlando, tends to demonstrate the imperious Manner in which love insinuates its Impressions into the Hearts of Persons of all Ranks; and likewise how a wise Man should be ever ready with his best Endeavours to re-conduct into the Right Way, those who have been misguided from it by the Illusion of their Passions.’ Act I. Night. A Country with a Mountain in Prospect; Atlas, on the Summit of the Mountain, sustaining the Heavens on his Shoulders: Several Genij at the Foot of the Mountain: Zoroaster leaning on a Stone, and contemplating the Motions of the Stars. He thinks he can discern astrological signs that Orlando ‘will not, for ever, be a Foe to Glory’. Orlando enters, torn between the demands of glory and love. Zoroastro proclaims himself the guardian of his glory, and asks how he can sustain ‘the haughty Scorn of an inglorious Boy’. The Magician makes a Signal with his Wand, and the Genij cause the Mountain to disappear, and present to View the Palace of the God of Love, who is seated on a Throne, in the Form of a Youth, and some of the Heroes of Antiquity are seen asleep at his Feet. Zoroastro urges Orlando to leave Cupid and follow Mars. Orlando, looking at the throne of Love, wavers but decides to win glory in love’s service: Hercules and Achilles were no less heroic for enjoying the sweets of love. The set changes to A little Wood, interspers’d with the Cots of Shepherds. Dorinda finds her pleasure in the sights and sounds of nature disturbed by a strange new feeling which she suspects is love. A clashing of Arms within is heard, after which Orlando enters, with his drawn Sword, conducting a Princess, whom he has delivered from her Enemies. He sets the princess free, and they go out almost at once. Dorinda remarks that Orlando too is subject to love; whether it is joy or pain she feels, she can contain it. Angelica enters and confesses that she is in love at last, with Medoro, an African prince, whom she recently succoured when wounded. Medoro listens apart and, approaching her, replies that he lost his heart at the same time. When he declares his unworthiness, she replies that the possessor of her heart can claim the rank of a king. Dorinda, pleased to find Medoro alone, fears that Angelica will take him away. He replies that he owes his life to Angelica but will always cherish Dorinda’s love. Though doubtful of his sincerity she decides to trust his kind words. Zoroastro, suspecting that Angelica’s love for Medoro will drive Orlando to fury, retires aside to watch. Angelica, afraid that Orlando will prevent her departure with   Dorinda has given them refuge in her cottage; this is not made clear till later.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 235

06/10/2006 14:52:09

236

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Medoro, pretends to be jealous of Isabella, the princess he has just rescued. He says Angelica is his only love. Angelica, seeing Medoro at a Distance, cries out in alarm. The Magician comes forth and waves his Wand, at which a large Fountain rises out of the Earth and conceals Medoro, the Scene changing to a delightful Garden. Angelica, seeing that Medoro is safe, asks Orlando, if he loves her, to show his sincerity by banishing the princess. Orlando, who never loved Isabella, agrees to comply and declares himself ready to fight the fiercest monsters and assault any castle or magic power to prove his constancy. Medoro learns Orlando’s identity from Angelica; she induces him not to challenge such a formidable champion, and they plan to slip away before he returns. They embrace, and then enters Dorinda, who detains Medoro. Angelica is forced to confess her love for Medoro, but gives Dorinda a Jewel in thanks for her hospitality. Dorinda tells Medoro he has injured her more than he knows. He and Angelica try to console her, assuring her that she will find another love, but she foresees only a life of solitude and woe. Act II. A Wood. Dorinda finds the nightingale’s sad song reflects her own pain. Orlando asks why she put it about that he loves Isabella. She denies it, and relates how she and Angelica both fell in love with Medoro. When she shows him the Jewel (bracelet) which she says Medoro gave her, he is appalled to recognise his own gift to Angelica. He asks wild questions about his rival. She explains who Medoro is, and sings his praises while Orlando stands astonished, covering his face with his hands. He vows to pursue Angelica to the banks of Acheron and prays that his sword may end his life. The set changes to A distant view of the sea. On one Side a Grove of Lawrels [sic], and on the other an Opening into a Grotto. Zoroastro rebukes Angelica and Medoro for allowing their ‘imprudent Passion’ to put them in danger from Orlando, but promises to use his art to aid them: the blind god leads all mortals astray. Before leaving, Medoro carves their Names in the Bark of the Trees, bidding them stand witness to the union of their hearts. Angelica admits she has been unfaithful to Orlando, who saved her honour and her life, but if he were sane he would agree that no human heart is proof against love. Orlando, searching for the lovers, reads the Engravings on the Bark of the Trees, explodes with rage and rushes into the Grot, hoping to catch them in the act. Angelica returns to say farewell to the happy scenes they are leaving. Orlando comes out and denounces her. She flies into the Wood, Orlando following her, and then enters Medoro, who too enters the Wood. Angelica reappears in Flight, prays to the god of love and calls on Medoro. Orlando says her only escape is to another world. Angelica flies towards the sea and Orlando pursues her, on which a large Cloud descending, covers Angelica, and bears her away into the Air, accompanied by four Genij that surround her. Orlando rages against the ‘Stygian Monsters’ and spectres that protect her. Now quite mad, he thinks he sees Charon’s boat, which he makes as if to enter, Pluto surrounded by smoke and flames, Cerberus barking, and Medoro in Proserpina’s arms. He goes to snatch him, but Proserpina weeps and softens Orlando’s anger, ‘since, ev’n in Erebus, Love calls out Tears’. He first bids her not to weep, then tells her to weep on, for he has a heart of adamant and nothing will calm his anger. He rushes furiously into the Grotto,   This clause is in Handel’s autograph but not the printed libretto.   The libretto has only A Garden (Deliziosa).   These three words are not in the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 236

06/10/2006 14:52:09

Orlando

237

which bursts open, and discovers the Magician seated in his Car, who clasps Orlando in his Arms, and flies thro’ the Air. Act III. A Grove of Palm Trees. Medoro, as requested by Angelica when they ‘were parted by the late Adventure’, returns to Dorinda’s cottage. She admits him, while wishing that he came for her sake, and warns him against the raging Orlando: his life is dearer to her than her own. He wishes he had a heart to give her. She feels more grateful to him for telling the truth and is content to love him without hope of reward. As she retires Orlando detains her and makes violent love. She is astonished but flattered: after all, ‘the Breast of Jove once glow’d for lovely Leda’. He addresses her as Venus, waxing ever more ardent; she asks if he really means to unite the blood of heroes with a shepherdess. He says he is not deceived, and identifies her first as a descendent of the gods, then as Argalia, brother of his love whom Ferrauto murdered. Raving, he draws his Sword, and puts himself into a Posture for Combat. When she tries to restrain him he says he understands: Ferrauto is without sword or helmet. Accordingly he casts away his Sword and Helmet and prepares to fight unarmed. He imagines himself in battle, lifting ‘a new Antaeus from the Ground’, and challenges Mars to mortal combat, but sees himself dead, slain by his own guilt. On hearing of his insanity Angelica pities him and hopes for his recovery, but sometimes hopes are liars. Dorinda reflects on the universal power of love, which sets the head in a whirl and is said to give pleasure at first, but ends by causing distraction beyond endurance. Zoroastro enters attended by Genij; he makes a Signal, and the Scene changes to a horrid Cavern. He tells the genii to guard Orlando, whom he will replace ‘in the Track of Glory’; as a bright star comes out after a storm, so the brave learn from their errors. Exit, and the Genij enter the Cave. Dorinda, weeping, tells Angelica that Orlando has destroyed her cottage and buried Medoro in the ruins. She goes out weeping. Orlando enters, addresses Angelica as the faithless Falerina, and threatens to kill her. She bids him do so: she mourns Medoro’s fate, not her own. He demands her blood, not her tears, seizes her by Force, and throws her furiously into the Cave, that immediately changes to a very beautiful Temple of Mars, where at the back Angelica is seen high up [in una parte elevata] guarded by genij. Orlando claims to have purged the world of monsters and begins to feel drowsy. Telling perfidious love to disturb him no longer, he sleeps on a Stone. Zoroastro declares that the hour of rescue is at hand, and, surveying the Skies, invokes the ruling spirit of the universe to send down a cure for Orlando’s ‘Lovedistemper’d Soul’. He makes a Signal with his Wand, and four Genij in the Air accompany an Eagle, who descends with a golden Vessel in his Beak. Zoroaster receives it, and then the Eagle and the Genij fly through the Air. The Magician approaches Orlando, and Dorinda enters at the same time. She wants to leave Orlando sleeping, but Zoroastro tells her not to be afraid, sprinkles the Liquor o’er the Face of Orlando, and then retires, after which Orlando rises restor’d to his Senses. He is horrified when Dorinda tells him he has murdered Angelica and Medoro. Supposing his madness has returned, she hastily retires: Orlando in despair runs to throw himself from a Precipice, when he meets Angelica, who stops him. Zoroastro tells Orlando he has preserved Angelica and Medoro from his jealous rage and asks him to pardon them. Dorinda adds her plea, though she still loves Medoro. Orlando calls all to witness his supreme glory. At this Instant the Statue of Mars rises in the Middle of the   The last clause is in Handel’s autograph but not the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 237

06/10/2006 14:52:10

238

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Temple, with a Fire kindled on the Altar, and four cupids (amorini) fly through the air. The conqueror of enchantments and monsters, he proclaims his victory over himself and love, and bids Angelica be united with Medoro. All rejoice and Dorinda invites them to her cottage to celebrate. Handel’s choice of this subject marked a sharp change of direction from the heroic/ epic/historical plots that had occupied him almost continuously since Amadigi in 1717 towards magic and romantic subjects. It may well have been the discovery of Ariosto that governed not only the follow-up with Ariodante and Alcina but a more relaxed attitude to classical stories in Arianna and Atalanta. He was to revert to the epic-historical type, less successfully, for four more operas before modifying his approach towards a lighter, ironical manner in his last three operas. The libretto of Orlando poses a number of questions. Both the literary ancestor, Ariosto’s epic Orlando furioso, and the source libretto, Carlo Sigismondo Capeci’s L’Orlando, overo la gelosa pazzia, produced in the private Roman theatre of the exiled Queen Maria Casimira of Poland in 1711 with music by Domenico Scarlatti, are known. But Handel’s libretto is no mere adjustment of the old text to suit local conditions in London, whether of taste or for a particular cast of singers. It takes a radically new direction. Although Ariosto’s poem is full of sorcery and sorcerers, the Angelica–Medoro–Orlando story is conducted on a purely human level, as it is in Capeci. Neither Zoroastro nor Dorinda appears in Ariosto, and Zoroastro is not in Capeci, or any other Ariosto libretto of the period. His commanding figure shifts the whole focus of the plot, introducing the element of magic and spectacle and controlling the destiny of the characters by acting as a benevolent deus ex machina. Where did he come from, and who brought him into Orlando? Reinhard Strohm in a fascinating essay points out that Zoroastro figures in several contemporary operas on the Babylonian Semiramis story, generally as a rival monarch using his powers for his own ends; but in Johann Ulrich König’s Ninus und Semiramis, set conjecturally by G. C. Schürmann for Brunswick in 1730, he brings the plot to an end by acting as peacemaker. König was a friend of Mattheson and Brockes in Hamburg, a circle with which Handel may have been in touch. A contributory model could have been Ariosto’s Atlante, Ruggiero’s tutor, who casts plenty of spells in Orlando furioso, notably in the Alcina story. It may be more than a coincidence that Handel’s Orlando opens with a tableau showing Atlas (Atlante) sustaining the heavens on his shoulders. Capeci was an early member of the Arcadian Academy in Rome, the group dedicated to substituting a reasoned classicism for the extravagances of the   As note 5.   The best known is Grazio Braccioli’s Orlando furioso (which numbers Alcina, Ruggiero and Bradamante among the characters), set for Venice by G. A. Ristori in 1713 and Vivaldi in 1714, and by others later. Vivaldi had several bites at this succulent cherry, producing a new version in 1727. Orlando was also the subject of operas by Lully (Roland, 1685), Steffani (1691), Piccinni (1778), and Haydn (1782). Others concentrated on the Angelica–Medoro story.   ‘Comic Traditions in Handel’s Orlando’, in Essays, 249–69.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 238

06/10/2006 14:52:10

Orlando

239

seventeenth­-­­century libretto. His Orlando eschews not only magic and spectacle but the mixture of comic and serious language so repugnant to the Arcadians. His Dorinda is very different from Handel’s; though a shepherdess, she uses the same elevated speech as the other characters, including Isabella and Zerbino, the chivalrous lovers suppressed in Handel’s opera. Orlando himself, it is true, was by tradition an ambivalent figure; Dent aptly likens him to Don Quixote. A hero who confuses the identity of the persons he meets, mistakes a shepherdess for Venus, rushes about invoking the ancient gods, and constantly expresses himself in the most extravagant language (though there is less of all this in Capeci’s libretto than in Handel’s) could be treated as a comic figure, and often was.10 A madman was fair game for laughs. It is possible to imagine a number of scenes in Handel’s libretto, especially the conclusion of Act II and Orlando’s confrontation with Dorinda in III.iii, as material for the eighteenth-century equivalent of an Offenbach farce. We do not know how Scarlatti coped with this, since his music is lost. It is only Handel’s music that converts these episodes into profound psychological drama. We can surely credit Handel with the general plan of the opera and the intro­ duction of Zoroastro. He presumably had a collaborator, and one of no little skill. Who was he? Strohm puts forward Nicola Haym, who adapted the librettos of Handel’s most successful Royal Academy operas. But Haym died on 31 July 1729, and Orlando was not composed till the autumn of 1732. Moreover if, as Strohm suggests, the inspiration for Orlando came from Handel’s visit to Italy in 1728–29, which ended with his return to England on 29 June, Haym would have had barely a month – the last month of his life – in which to confer with Handel and write the libretto. There is a stronger argument against Haym’s authorship. The part of Zoroastro was clearly conceived for a powerful bass, such as Montagnana, who created it, and who did not reach London till autumn 1731, whereas in both the 1729/30 and 1730/31 seasons Handel had only mediocre singers for the bass parts, Riemschneider and Commano. Riemschneider was a failure in Lotario and allowed only one aria in Partenope, and in any case was a high baritone; Commano in Poro had no arias at all. Handel’s collaborator remains a mystery. Another of Strohm’s conjectures is much more convincing. He identifies Celeste Gismondi, who created the role of Dorinda in London, with the buffo soprano Celeste Resse (La Celestina), the star of a string of comic intermezzos in Naples between 1725 and 1732, who then disappears from the records, and suggests that Handel heard her in spring 172911 and was sufficiently impressed to engage her for London – though not till the 1732/33 season – and perhaps to allow her to influence his conception of Dorinda. It was not at all usual for an intermezzo singer to take a prominent part in opera seria, but the notion gains plausibility from the brilliant arias   In Ariosto Zerbino is the son of the King of Scotland and the brother of Ginevra, the heroine of Handel’s Ariodante. 10  For the early history of mad scenes in Italian opera see Paolo Fabbri, ‘On the Origins of an Operatic Topos: The Mad-Scene’ in ‘Con che soavità’: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740, ed. I. Fenlon and T. Carter (Oxford, 1995), 157–95. 11  Nothing is known of his visit to Naples except that he intended to go there: see Rolli’s letter to Senesino of 16 May 1729 (Deutsch, 242).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 239

06/10/2006 14:52:10

240

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

that Handel allowed Gismondi to sing at her London début in the pasticcio Catone, which opened his season on 4 November 1732, and in which, according to the Daily Advertiser of 6 November, she ‘perform’d a principal part ... with universal applause’. Four of these arias were by Hasse, the composer of eight of her Naples intermezzos. In her last aria in Catone, written for Caffarelli, she had a compass of a to c’’’, and it contained an upward leap of two octaves to the top C, comparable to the huge leaps in ‘Amor è qual vento’. The Angelica–Medoro story does not differ in essentials in the three versions. In Ariosto Medoro is a humbly born pagan, ‘a poor simple soldier’ as he describes himself, Angelica an emperor’s daughter. She tends his wounds in the cottage of a herdsman, to whom she gives the bracelet in thanks for his hospitality. Orlando, who has been pursuing her through several cantos, is enraged when he finds the names of the (married) lovers carved on trees, and the herdsman’s innocent production of the bracelet sends him out of his mind. Capeci replaced the herdsman with Dorinda, a telling stroke as it adds substance to the bracelet incident, and raised Medoro’s rank to that of a prince. In his libretto Orlando is cured by Angelica’s magic ring,12 which Zerbino (to whom she has given it) places on his finger while he sleeps after singing ‘Già l’ebro’. This is the one supernatural incident in his libretto, and he treats it merely as a convenient means of ending the opera. The Isabella–Zerbino story is quite separate in Ariosto, though Orlando rescues both at different times and it was Zerbino’s Scotsmen who give Medoro his wound. Of the forty-four set pieces in Capeci’s libretto, Handel retained twenty and half of another (‘Già latra Cerbero’). Twelve belong to Isabella and Zerboni and were eliminated, apart from ‘Quando spieghi’ (II.i), a da capo aria in Capeci which Handel transferred from Isabella to Dorinda, along with a few lines of Isabella’s recitative elsewhere in the opera. He slightly reduced the quotas of Orlando, Angelica and Medoro, but retained most of their arias. Orlando’s ‘Per far mia diletta’ (III.ix), all five of his accompagnatos, and the quartet ‘Trionfa oggi’ in the last scene (a separate piece from the coro in the libretto) were developed from recitative passages in Capeci. Dorinda’s ‘Ho un certo rossore’ (I.iii) incorporates hints from an aria in Capeci’s Act II. Apart from Zoroastro’s part (three arias and three accompagnatos) the only new texts are Orlando’s cavatina ‘Stimolato dalla gloria’ (I.ii), the coro, and three pieces involving Dorinda, her accompagnato ‘Quanto diletto’ (I.iv), her duet with Orlando ‘Unisca amor’, and the aria ‘Amor è qual vento’, all of which reflect her redrawn character. The trio is in Capeci. As usual Handel abridged the recitatives, from 1,633 lines to 632, but much of the deficit is accounted for by Isabella and Zerbino. Orlando is not a typical opera seria, nor is it a comic opera. It is a comedy only in Dante’s sense, in that it incorporates a wide variety of human experience. The obvious parallel is Die Zauberflöte, and Handel does not suffer by the comparison. Not only do both operas share the same central character in the sonorous bass who embodies the voice of reason and self-control and propounds the moral law. Both 12  In Ariosto he is cured by a mixture of violence and drugs after a bloody fight in which five warriors jump on him and truss him up ‘the way a farrier will bring down a horse or ox’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 240

06/10/2006 14:52:10

Orlando

241

hold opposed worlds, the heroic and the vernacular, in judicious balance. Handel had shown long before in his first London days a particular susceptibility to magic subjects, which released an exceptionally fertile, even a romantic strain in his imagination and at the same time helped him to bring out the intense humanity of his characters. Orlando illustrates the same susceptibility, but the emphasis is different. The magic figure, rather than a sorceress whose evil power is undermined by mortal longings, is male, benevolent, and at an angle to the action since his emotions are not involved. The magic element is no mere top-dressing but a vital component of the design, making the utmost use of the stage machinery13 in a parallel appeal to the eye and the ear. Strohm suggests14 that Handel and Heidegger, the manager of the theatre, were inviting comparison with Rinaldo, and that there may have been some link with Aaron Hill, author of the scenario of Rinaldo, who on 5 December 1732, a few days after the completion of Orlando, wrote to Handel, declaring his conviction that ‘a species of dramatic opera might be invented that, by reconciling reason and dignity with music and fine machinery, would charm the ear, and hold fast the heart, together’. Hill had English opera in mind, but Handel achieved the effect he wanted in Orlando. Dent’s observation that ‘concert performance ... with neither scenery nor action would be a disgraceful sacrilege’ is only a slight exaggeration. Handel evokes the supernatural aura, and the derangement of the eponymous hero, by stretching the bounds of the opera seria convention and, especially in Orlando’s part, breaking off or distorting formal units. Zoroastro exercises his powers in accompagnatos of great range and splendour. In the earlier operas Handel seldom wrote music to cover transformations, relying on the powerful impact of instantaneous scene changes; in Orlando he three times supplies sinfonias, so that the ear as well as the eye is enchanted as the magic works its spell. Orlando’s part contains no fewer than five accompagnatos, three cavatinas, two highly eccentric duets and an elaborate rondo; his only da capo aria in Act III stretches the form to the utmost. Both the opening and closing scenes of the opera are exceptionally flexible in design. The first ten movements after the overture (other than secco recitatives) include only three regular arias. The latter half of Act III, after Zoroastro’s ‘Sorge infausta’, comprises eight movements, not one of them in da capo form. Altogether Orlando has nine accompagnatos, a total equalled in the operas only by Tamerlano, and several of them expand into ariosos. The irregularity of the three duets, if indeed they deserve that title, is indicated by the fact that in two of them the voices are never heard together, and in the third for barely four bars. The opera also contains a substantial trio and a quartet, which Handel combines with the coro to form a conclusive and satisfying finale somewhere between a rondo and a vaudeville. The governing factor of course is the movement of the drama, to which every deviation is a response and to which the arias too, the great majority in dal segno rather than strict da capo form, are closely attuned. They scarcely ever hold up the action when it ought to move forward, as in so many operas of the period. The score 13  The stage directions in the libretto, like those in Rinaldo which they often resemble, are exceptionally detailed. Handel sometimes modified them in the autograph, as noted above in the summary. 14  Essays, 66.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 241

06/10/2006 14:52:10

242

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

is refreshingly free from simile arias; the nearest approach, ‘Sorge infausta’, springs directly from the context. Orlando is one of the most original of Handel’s operas in design. It is also one of the richest in musical invention. The opening is very impressive. The overture in the bleak key of F sharp minor, with a particularly fine introduction (based on the canzona by Kerll he was later to use for the chorus ‘Egypt was glad when they departed’ in Israel in Eg ypt) but a rather weaker gigue (which Dent suggests may have accompanied a ballet of spirits), prepares the way for Zoroastro’s B minor accompagnato, which in conjunction with the imposing set seems to reflect a spiritual world beyond the reach of mortality and time. Burney, echoed by Streatfeild, speaks with reason of ‘a wild grandeur ... of a very uncommon kind’. The strange martellato string figure in the opening bars,15 with a hint of the pentatonic scale, contributes to the sense of awe, as do Zoroastro’s first phrases with their octave drop (Ex. 36). As befits his station Zoroastro’s music has great dignity. All three of his arias exploit the range and power of Montagnana’s cavernous voice. ‘Lascia Amor’, defining the conflict (Love or War) and appealing to Orlando’s heroic ideals, is the most sumptuously scored, with clattering oboes and bassoons contrasted from time to time with the string body and still active in the B section. ‘Tra caligini profonde’ deploys for the last time a favourite invention of Handel’s youth, based on cross-rhythms and hemiola,16 which together with headlong downward scales and arpeggios gives the music great drive. Contrasted pedal points towards the end of each part and in the B section a switch to sustained chords serve to strengthen the impact. ‘Sorge infausta’ combines great striding phrases with long bursts of coloratura such as Handel seldom wrote for basses. Zoroastro’s two accompagnatos in Act III form a fitting crown to his part. ‘O voi, del mio poter’, in which he orders the genii to ‘change the Thicket to a gloomy Cave’, has a characteristic warbling figure for violins in thirds that descends to the depths in two octave jumps as the scene changes. His appeal to the heavens for the magic liquor that will cure Orlando’s sickness is one of the opera’s great moments. The spacious descending arpeggios in B flat minor over a pedal, moving to D flat, A flat and finally F minor, have a hieratic splendour that looks forward to the recitative announcing the completion of the temple in Solomon and even offers a distant vision of Valhalla (Ex. 37). A wonderful quiet sinfonia for strings without harpsichord follows as the eagle descends, a seamless paragraph of thirty bars in serene four-part counterpoint with scarcely an accidental, breathing an unearthly calm as if floating in mid-air, the perfect equivalent of the stage action. If Zoroastro stands above human weakness, Orlando is its victim. But Handel takes care to suggest the finer side of his character before the trouble begins. His madness is cumulative. In Act I he is drawn as a hero; all his utterances are in major keys. In Handel’s operas the first utterance of a principal figure always supplies an important key to character: he liked to introduce Senesino in particular with a simple 15  Handel used it again in Dejanira’s air ‘No longer, fate, relentless frown’ in the first scene of Hercules. There may be some association with the idea of fate. 16  It is associated with the bass voice in Agrippina (‘Io di Roma’) and Acis and Galatea (‘Cease to beauty’), and appears also in Almira, a cantata, a motet, a chamber duet and a rejected aria in Radamisto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 242

06/10/2006 14:52:10

Orlando

243

continuo accompaniment, in Radamisto (‘Cara sposa’), Floridante (‘Alma mia’) and Tamerlano (‘Bella Asteria’) as well as Orlando. The words of the cavatina ‘Stimolato dalla gloria’ bespeak anxiety as he hesitates between two opposed courses of action, but the music, in the serene key of E major, shows no sign of agitation or ‘misero core’. The spare texture, the voice accompanied only by a beautifully suave cello line, all other instruments except the harpsichord being silenced, makes the point with admirable economy. Orlando’s response to the vision of besotted heroes asleep in the palace of love, ‘Imagini funeste’, betrays momentary anxiety, but the example of Hercules and Achilles suggests a way of combining business and pleasure. The splendid aria ‘Non fu già men forte Alcide’, richly scored in eight parts with mellow horns (their only appearance in the opera), is all confidence and bravado. The germ of the melody comes from an aria in Keiser’s Octavia (in the same key), and bars 42–3 echo another horn aria, ‘Alza al volo’ in Radamisto, but the impact is entirely fresh. His rescue of the princess is disposed of summarily in recitative, but the sight of Angelica rouses his passion, especially when she accuses him of loving Isabella. ‘Fammi combattere’ is another extrovert aria, with a catchy tune that, yoked to an idea in Porta’s Numitore, was to give birth to ‘Let the bright Seraphims’ in Samson. The words have a hubristic ring, but the music with its hammered string chords and fanfare figures

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 243

06/10/2006 14:52:11

244

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 244

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

06/10/2006 14:52:14

Orlando

245

is perfectly assured. This was the spirit in which Ariosto’s heroes were expected to go into action. In Act II Orlando’s mind begins to give way, exacerbated by the thought of the bracelet he gave to Angelica passing to his rival Medoro. He has to stand by with his hands over his face17 while Dorinda gives utterance to her love for Medoro, but then bursts out in a furious vengeance aria, ‘Cielo! se tu il consenti’, full of the rapid low-pitched triplet divisions for which Senesino was renowned. The voice’s first notes augment the rhythm of the opening of the ritornello while varying the intervals, as if Orlando were gathering strength for his denunciation. The general chase that follows Angelica’s ‘Verdi piante’ culminates in the famous mad scene, introduced appropriately by the menacing motive for Tutti Bassi that signalled Medea’s final disappearance in her dragon chariot in Act V of Teseo. This finale is remarkable for its length (205 bars18), its form – a series of accompagnatos and ariosos culminating in an elaborate rondo with sharply contrasted episodes – and above all for its psycho­ logical profundity. There can be few more vivid depictions of mental disorder in music of any period. With its abrupt mood swings, from fury to panic, self-pity to rampant jealousy, from the depths of despair to a crazy exhilaration, represented by wild modulations and repeated changes of tempo and rhythm, it seems to step outside its period. Three very different Andante sections are embedded in the initial recitative, the first a cry of despair accompanied by repeated quaver chords in uneasily shifting minor harmonies, the third, with the whole orchestra in octaves, a vision of Cerberus howling in a rhythm prophetic of Gluck’s furies. In between come the celebrated bars in 5/8 time (Plate 9), described by Burney as ‘a division of time which can only be borne in such a situation’ and by Strohm as a joke. No doubt they represent the rocking of Charon’s boat as seen through Orlando’s crazed imagination, but in context they suggest that something has gone askew in the natural world. The suave rondo theme A tempo di Gavotta, the voice doubled by all the upper strings, supplies at once a contrast, a binding agent and a brilliantly conclusive end to the act, while conveying a flavour of bitter-sweet irony thanks to its dancing rhythm and pure major tonality after the hectic emotionalism of the recitative. The first of the two episodes, on a descending chromatic ground, seems to look backward to Purcell and forward to a dawning Romantic age at the same time, achieving an extra­ordinary level of emotional intensity (Ex. 38). The second combines restless tonality with rushing scale figures that grow ever more frenetic. The coda adds a final surprise; material from the second episode, bursting from quavers into triplets, gathers itself up to launch a final statement of the rondo theme fully harmonised for the first time as Orlando disappears through the air in Zoroastro’s chariot. Orlando’s second mad scene in Act III is scarcely less memorable. The duet ‘Unisca amor’ follows the action closely, eschewing formal design. No longer raging but increasingly confused in his thoughts, Orlando woos the baffled Dorinda in a twelve-bar Largo in triple time accompanied only by continuo, all the more sinister 17  Handel added this detail in the autograph to cover the awkwardness of the situation, one of the libretto’s few weak spots. 18  The finale begins with the Tutti Bassi motive, as indicated in the copy RM 18 c 7, not as printed in the scores.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 245

06/10/2006 14:52:14

246

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 246

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

06/10/2006 14:52:15

Orlando

247

for its apparent restraint. Agitated violin arpeggios introduce19 and accompany her bewildered reply, in quicker tempo, shorter notes and common time. They are hopelessly at cross-purposes, as the two strains alternate at not quite regular intervals till Orlando drops into recitative. ‘Già lo stringo’, in which he prepares for battle after quixotically throwing away his arms, is another gavotte, with the voice and upper strings in unison and the bass now doubling at the octave. It strikes a note of hollow menace, startlingly contradicted by the B section, in which the tempo changes to Largo and the accompaniment to three-part strings without basses or continuo. Though less than six bars long, it explores remote harmonic regions, beginning irregularly in the dominant (F) minor and passing through A flat minor to C minor as Orlando imagines himself the victim of his own guilt. Then he shakes himself, sings a da capo, and goes sauntering off to seek fresh adventures as the complete orchestra including oboes plays a bouncy ritornello, the only one in the aria, with but a remote connection to what has gone before. Orlando’s duet with Angelica, ‘Finché prendi’, which Burney considered ‘the most masterly composition in the opera’ is more fully developed than that with Dorinda but equally irregular and subservient to the drama. This time the characters are distinguished by the scoring, Angelica accompanied by strings only, Orlando also by harpsichord and bassoons. Unusually the ritornello begins pianissimo. Angelica’s tearful pleas in F minor are answered gruffly by Orlando in urgent anapaestic rhythm in the relative major, and the voices alternate, with Orlando’s longer phrases squeezing Angelica’s to gasps of a single bar. At the climax they come briefly together, Orlando raging against Angelica’s plaintive suspensions. In the brief coda the orchestra takes over the buzzing scale figures with which he has threatened her. His next accompagnato drops suddenly from Furioso semiquavers in A flat to Lento with quiet repeated chords freely modulating to end in F minor as he rests from his labours, which he considers complete. His sleep aria ‘Già l’ebro’ in E flat, its sole appearance in the opera and an inspired choice after F minor, is perhaps the most beautiful music in the score, a miracle of peace and quietude after all the frenzy. The unique scoring, for two violette marine and a pizzicato bass line (Violoni in the performing score, perhaps without harpsichord), places it in a class by itself. The violetta marina, an instrument with sympathetic strings akin to the viola d’amore, was an invention of Pietro Castrucci, the leader of Handel’s orchestra, and played by him and his brother Prospero; Handel noted their names in the autograph. Exquisite part-writing, especially in the ritornellos, contributes to the haunting effect. There is no da capo; an extended pianissimo coda of nine bars with an ad libitum for the leader lays a gentle hand on Orlando’s slumbers. His last solo is another cavatina of a very different kidney, in F sharp minor, a key not touched since the overture. In jagged dotted rhythms with the orchestra mostly in grim octaves he resolves on suicide; but as he goes to throw himself over a precipice Angelica, whom he thinks he has killed, comes forward and bids him live in a wonderfully expressive phrase in the relative major, a perfect resolution of the tonality and the drama. As Dent remarks, its inspired simplicity might have been written by Gluck (Ex. 39). Orlando’s 19  The introductory bar was an afterthought, added in the margin of the autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 247

06/10/2006 14:52:15

248

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

fifth and last accompagnato is crowned, aptly, by an expanded cadence for the other four characters. Next to Orlando Dorinda is the opera’s most interesting character, and a very original one. A naive shepherdess in the sophisticated environment of chivalry, she adds a new layer to the plot, both socially and psychologically. In face of the extravagant emotionalism of Orlando and Angelica, not to mention the unpredictable interventions of Zoroastro, she represents the world of earthy common sense, besides possessing a charming individuality. There is never any doubt of her love for Medoro or that she is destined to lose him, and her acceptance of this wins sympathy and adds a piquant flavour to the finale. Her whole part is written in the language of comedy,20 quite unlike that of the other characters or of her namesake in Capeci’s libretto, and her music has a feathery lightness all its own. Handel introduces her in A major – a telling move following the F major of Orlando’s ‘Non fu già’ – with a long accompagnato, almost an arioso, full of bounding triplets that foreshadow the 12/8 metre of three of her arias, a shepherdess’s prerogative of course. Her joy in the pleasure of her woods is tinged with a strange new feeling she cannot quite understand, as the music modulates into remote keys, ending in the minor with a Neapolitan cadence. The fluttering three-note violin figure that permeates ‘Ho un certo rossore’ and skips about at different pitch levels, together with the light scoring (in contrast to the more ample texture of the earlier arias), nicely touches in her character. Even rejection by Medoro does not drive her to despair; she prefers to trust his kind words while knowing that they may mean nothing. ‘O care parolette’ is another light-fingered aria, in an attractive variant of gigue rhythm punctuated by sudden pauses as she seems to catch her breath. But the sight of Angelica and Medoro in each other’s arms (represented musically by their cadence in thirds) makes a deeper wound. In the trio 20  Strohm quotes some examples, Essays, 253.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 248

06/10/2006 14:52:16

Orlando

249

that ends the act she finds no consolation in their gently proffered sympathy. This is one of the longest ensembles in Handel’s operas (the A section runs to 144 bars) and the only one with more than two voices to end an intermediate act, a place where one would expect it in later opera. It is beautifully characterised. Angelica and Medoro, singly or together, contrapuntally or in thirds, attempt to comfort Dorinda in gently rocking 3/8 rhythm; her sad replies in both sections trail off into the mediant minor. The da capo (or rather dal segno) design is dramatically apt, since the characters have reached an impasse from which there is no escape. Dorinda’s cavatina ‘Quando spieghi’ is one of the subtlest of Handel’s bird songs. It is not a simile piece; the nightingale’s song, initiated by the first violins and later by the voice, is a reflection of Dorinda’s mood, illustrated too by several dips into the minor, especially at the words ‘e piange’, in a manner prophetic of Schubert. The texture is very light, the basses confined to the ritornellos, and then mostly to pedals. The placing of ‘Se mi rivolgo’ is a trifle awkward, as already mentioned, but it is a superb aria in the siciliano manner inherited from Alessandro Scarlatti which again and again drew profound music from Handel. Both sections abound in subtle touches of texture, harmony or rhythm, for example the voice’s tendency to enter a beat early, holding the note over the bar-line, and the irregular incursions of a sixnote figure in the bass, otherwise again sparsely occupied. Dorinda’s single aria in Act III, ‘Amor è qual vento’, is the most remarkable in the opera, one of those movements, like ‘Tu mia speranza’ in Amadigi, that resembles nothing else in Handel’s work or anyone else’s. After her brush with Orlando at his most deranged she reflects on the intoxicating effects of love, not as a personal experience but with a half-amused detachment. Though flattered at first by his attentions, she soon realises that he has gone over the top. The striking first phrase with a flattened seventh over a pedal (Ex. 40), the two-octave compass from low b, the extraordinary leaps and plunges of the voice up to a ninth, eleventh and twelfth, the unpredictable phrase-lengths and intense rhythmic energy, evoked by the image in the second line, ‘che gira il cervello’, can leave an audience breathless (Ex. 41). When Orlando, restored to sanity, exclaims in horror at what he has done, Dorinda fears the worst and runs away (corre via); but she is soon back to invite everyone to a party, a deliciously balanced figure to the last.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 249

06/10/2006 14:52:16

250

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Angelica, like Orlando, is confined to major keys in Act I, in which she is relatively untroubled. She and Medoro are introduced together in a most original duet, ‘Ritornava al suo bel viso’. This is a da capo aria for Angelica in Capeci; by giving the B section to Medoro, who has just entered for the first time and has been listening, Handel establishes their relationship at the outset by the most economic means. Angelica’s E major solo21 is graced by lovely melodic extensions from a single violin at the cadences; his reply, starting with a variant of her theme, modulates in typical B section style to end in C sharp minor. But the expected da capo is denied, and the scene continues in recitative. ‘Chi possessore’ carols away happily without adding anything new. ‘Se fedel’, accompanied only by continuo except in the brief ritornellos, has a touching melody and a beautiful extension of the vocal line, unfolding out of itself, towards the end of the A section. Until her last phrase of all that is virtually the end of Angelica’s dealings with the major mode. Of her two consecutive arias in Act II ‘Non potrà dirmi ingrata’ is the less interesting, despite a certain rhythmic vitality, perhaps because at this point her emotions are not deeply involved. ‘Verdi piante’ on the other hand is exquisite. The situation is familiar: she muses on the beauties of the scene where she fell in love with Medoro and which she thinks they are about to leave. The murmuring figures in slurred semiquavers involving all four parts of the string orchestra, though the basses are tactfully silent during the voice’s opening bars, portray the rustling leaves and trickling streams throughout both sections, a conventional image that seldom failed to inspire Handel. A particularly happy touch is the unexpected first entry of recorders in bar 32, more than halfway through the A section, after which they add a new strand in a different rhythm. Handel had used this idea before in Tolomeo (‘Fonti amiche’), where the recorders likewise enter late with an identical phrase in the same key, G minor. In Act III Angelica has little to do except continue to run away from Orlando. Besides the duet she has a single equally plaintive aria, ‘Così giusta’, both sections of which contain expressive harmonic detail, notably the progression over a pedal at the word ‘ingannata’ towards the end of the A section. Medoro plays rather a passive role, but he has three fine arias. ‘Se il cor’ is a tender minor-key love song with a thin accompaniment and a light bass. The ritornellos are attractive, especially the second after the A section, which nicely expands the first. ‘Verdi allori’ finds Handel again exploiting nostalgia for the beauties of nature soon to be lost. Situation, mood and key (E major) anticipate ‘Verdi prati’, and Medoro’s aria is little inferior, though it lacks something of the irony in Alcina. The germ 21  Based on the aria ‘Tu del Ciel ministro eletto’ (in the same key) in the 1707 oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 250

06/10/2006 14:52:17

Orlando

251

motive of the six-bar ritornello (with four changes of dynamics) is subtly modified by the voice, built up into a sequence with a dying fall, then shared in gentle dialogue between voice and violins. The return after the B section is beautifully contrived. The voice cadences in G sharp minor, jumps the ritornello and sings its first bar in the A section without a pause. The orchestra interposes an echo, the voice follows with its second bar, and we are in the repeat before we know it. Medoro’s Act III aria ‘Vorrei poterti amar’ in D minor and gigue rhythm, has an ambivalent flavour, as is no doubt appropriate. Medoro tries to comfort the love-lorn Dorinda while telling her that his heart is engaged elsewhere. Minor and major alternate; a soothing phrase in F major first heard in bar 17 seems to offer relief, only to land back twice on the dominant of D minor. Apart from the violette marine there is nothing exceptional about the composition of the orchestra. Horns appear once and recorders twice, with telling effect on each occasion. The entire action of the opera takes place in the open air, and this is reflected in the pastoral flavour of many scenes, chiefly but not exclusively in Dorinda’s part, and the delicacy of the scoring. Except in Zoroastro’s arias and two or three of Orlando’s the instrumental texture is light, the basses sometimes dropping out for bars on end. But there is much subtle detail, especially for strings, and great care for balance and texture, both within movements and between scenes. The first violins are reinforced by ‘2 first seconds’ in the ritornello of ‘Quando spieghi’. ‘Ritornava’, a quiet piece introduced by a single loud chord, has a solo violin. The violas are in action in nearly every movement and allowed more independence than usual, notably in ‘Sorge infausta’ where at bar 3 their part is marked forte against the piano of violins and bass. Unusually the most sumptuously scored arias are the first two in the opera, ‘Lascia Amor’ and ‘Non fu già’. There is no overall tonal design, but B flat is prominent in Act I and even more in Act III, in the later stages of which it becomes almost a home tonic. Except for two arias that in different ways stand out from their context Act III is confined to flat keys. The tonal spectrum is very wide; if accompagnatos are included Handel uses every accessible key, including B flat minor and A flat, except C major. He often makes a dramatic point by unexpected switches, for example A major after F for Dorinda’s first appearance, D major for the strepito d’armi and Orlando’s sudden return after Dorinda’s G minor, and – best of all – E flat after F minor for Orlando’s sleep aria.

History and Text Handel finished Act II on 10 November 1732 and the whole opera on 20 November; this date could refer either to the first draft or to the complete filling-out. The first night was planned for 23 January 1733 but postponed till the 27th, ‘the principal performers being indisposed’.22 The cast was: orlando Senesino (alto castrato) angelica Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) 22  Quoted from the Daily Post by V. Schoelcher (The Life of Handel (London, 1857), 122); not in Deutsch or The London Stage.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 251

06/10/2006 14:52:17

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

252

dorinda Celeste Gismondi (soprano) medoro Francesca Bertolli (contralto) zoroastro Antonio Montagnana (bass) This was Senesino’s last Handel part and arguably his greatest, though Burney, who seems to have had a hang-up over this opera, which he may have found Gothic and bizarre (he thought ‘Vaghe pupille’ should have been in D minor), roundly asserted that Senesino’s songs, compared with those in Poro, showed ‘a manifest inferiority in design, invention, grace, elegance, and every captivating requisite’. The tessitura is lower than in his earlier London parts. Dorinda was Handel’s only part for Gismondi, who died young after a lingering illness in 1735. There were six performances up to 20 February, and four more between 21 April and 5 May.23 Another was announced for 8 May but replaced by Floridante owing to the indisposition of a singer, probably Strada, who according to the Daily Advertiser of 5 March ‘continues very ill’. She was not in Bononcini’s Griselda a fortnight later. Orlando was popular with the Royal Family, who attended seven of the performances in force, including the first four. Unfortunately one of the sedan chairmen carrying the Queen home after the performance of 3 February tripped on a flight of steps, depositing Her Majesty (unhurt) on the pavement. The press announcements stated that ‘the Cloaths and Scenes are all entirely New’, and the Colman Opera Diary described the production as ‘extraordinary fine and magnificent’. Nevertheless Orlando seems to have made little impression on contemporaries – with one notable exception, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who on a visit from Scotland attended the last performance (it was the last performance for nearly two centuries) and wrote in his diary: ‘I never in all my life heard a better piece of musick nor better perform’d – the famous Castrato, Senesino made the principal Actor the rest were all Italians who sung with very good grace and action, however, the Audience was very thin so that I believe they get not enough to pay the Instruments in the orchestra.’ He usefully listed the instruments, ‘2 Harpsichords, 2 large basse violins, each about 7 foot in length at least with strings proportionable that cou’d not be less than a ¼ of an inch diameter, 4 violoncellos, 4 bassoons, 2 Hautbois, 1 Theorbo lute, & above 24 violins. These made a terrible noise & often drown’d the voices.’ Clerk praised the Castrucci brothers, ‘who play’d with great dexterity’, but was somewhat disconcerted by Montagnana, who ‘sung the bass with a voice like a Canon’ (ballistic presumably rather than clerical).24 Susanna Arne sang ‘O care parolette’ and ‘Vorrei poterti amar’ at the Little Haymarket on 22 November 1733 and, with her brother Master Arne and Miss Jones, the trio at the same theatre on 5 January 1734. Handel included ‘Lascia Amor’ and ‘O care parolette’ in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo at the King’s Theatre on 25 February 1738. He never revived Orlando. There were no contemporary productions in Germany, and Orlando was slow to make its mark in modern times. After isolated revivals in a German version at Halle 23  Deutsch lists a performance of Orlando on 18 April, not in The London Stage. 24  Cited in J. Simon (ed.), Handel, A Celebration of his Life and Times 1685–1759 (London, National Portrait Gallery, 1985), 145.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 252

06/10/2006 14:52:17

Orlando

253

in 1922 and Krefeld in 1934 it received a successful production at Drottningholm in 1950. The first British production was by the pioneer Alan Kitching at Abingdon in 1959. Since then Orlando has been one of the most frequently revived of Handel’s operas. There have been four recordings, conducted by Stephen Simon (1971, clumsily cut), Christopher Hogwood (1991), William Christie (1994) and Charles Mackerras (1999, from a performance in 1985).

Autograph (RM 20 b 8) Handel’s foliation by gathering covers only the first two acts. The insertions, all made at an early stage before the performing score was copied, are fol. 20 (‘Ritornava’), 30–1 (rewritten A section of ‘Fammi combattere’), 36 (bars 83–90 of the trio), 45 (last 16 bars of ‘Cielo! se tu il consenti’), 63 (revised opening sinfonia of Act III) and 68 (final ritornello of ‘Già lo stringo’). The little sinfonia on HG 7 replaced a longer one on similar material (15 bars, Andante, incipit in Baselt, HHB 1, 383); Handel may have reduced it because less music was required at the scene change. The recitative ‘M’hai vinto’ (HG 22) was originally continued for sixteen bars (six lines of text from Capeci), linking up with ‘Spera, mio ben’ (HG 25). Handel cancelled these bars when he cued in ‘Ritornava’. He made four cuts in ‘Se il cor’ (sixteen bars in all) and radical changes in ‘Fammi combattere’, scrapping the A section at the filling-up stage, rewriting it on the same material and revising the B section. The manuscript contains two incomplete sketches (treble and bass only) for the Act III sinfonia, the first on fol. 62, the second on the verso of fol. 61 after the closing bars of Act II. Handel first wrote the words of ‘O voi, del mio poter’ for secco recitative. ‘Sorge infausta’ was originally set to a different text (with much the same meaning), and the A section was a good deal longer; Handel cancelled sixteen bars after bar 34 and five more after bar 39 in pencil and adjusted the neighbouring notes. He changed the tempo of ‘Unisca amor’ from Larghetto to Largo, ‘Già per la man d’Orlando’ from Agitato assai to Furioso, and ‘Già l’ebro’ from Andante larghetto to Larghetto. ‘Sorge infausta’ is clearly marked Allegro, and ‘Tu che del gran Tonante’ Larghetto. The autograph fragments in the Fitzwilliam include a version of ‘Vaghe pupille’ in unbarred common time and notes of half the value (Mus. MS 260, p. 60).

Libretto London 1732 [1733] ‘Drama ... done into English by Mr. Humphreys ... Printed for T. Wood in Little Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s Theatre in the HayMarket. M DCC XXXII. [Price One Shilling.]’ 51 pp. The date is probably Old Style, though Handel may have planned to produce the opera before the end of 1732. Argument in Italian and English. No dedication; Handel not named. Humphreys’ version, placed opposite the Italian as usual, has more literary merit than most such translations. In eight pieces an erroneous da capo is indicated, sometimes in the Italian text, sometimes in the English, sometimes in both. Although some significance has been read into this, it is clearly no more than a printing error, perhaps

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 253

06/10/2006 14:52:17

254

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

on the part of a compositor assuming that a da capo was de rigueur in set pieces. It cannot reflect the intention of whoever adapted the libretto. No author in his right mind would have prescribed a da capo for ‘Stimolato dalla gloria’ or ‘Amor, caro amore’ (printed as an aria in II.x, though Handel set it as recitative), both three-line texts in a single sentence containing ten and nine words respectively.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1035), copied by Smith, agrees with the autograph as amended in all material particulars. The cembalo score mentioned in Chrysander’s Preface has disappeared. The early copies – Malmesbury (S3, text Smith, 1733), BL Add. MS 31565 (Smith junior, text S1, c.1736), Flower (S2, early 1740s), Lennard (S1, late 1730s) and RM 19 f 5 (largely an aria collection, S1) – have no significant variants. All were probably copied from the performing score. The opening of the overture in RM 19 f 5 is Vivace. Lennard has pencil notes adapting the coro for some later performance, perhaps in the nineteenth century. Flower and Add. MS 31565 have Segue subito l’aria after Zoroastro’s first recitative. None of the copies (apart from the performing score) mentions the reinforcement of the first violins in ‘Quando spieghi’. RM 18 c 7, fols 1–38 (S2, 1733/34) contains all the accompagnatos and sinfonias not quite in the right order, presumably to supplement the Walsh score, together with the complete Act II mad scene, ‘Per far, mia diletta’ and ‘Sorge infausta’ in the longer version of the autograph, from which it must have been copied for Jennens. The Flower parts (S2, c.1738–42), cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2, but no recorders or horns (the movements in which they play are missing), as usual give an unpredictable selection. The omissions are the overture, the little sinfonia on HG 7, one accompagnato (‘Itene pur tremendo’), and five arias (‘Non fu già’, ‘Chi possessore’, ‘Fammi combattere’, ‘Verdi piante’ and ‘Così giusta’). There are a number of variants, most of them probably due to carelessness (mistakes are plentiful), but one curiosity. The sinfonia on HG 100 runs to thirty-seven bars, its last bar elided and the shorter sinfonia on HG 101 tacked on. It also has oboe parts, which are certainly wrong. Otherwise the oboes are less problematic than usual, largely because Handel in so many movements gave them separate staves. They play in unison with upper strings at the first statement of ‘Vaghe pupille’ and (divided) in the coda. Bassoons are mentioned in the cello part only in ‘Lascia Amor’, where they are given a mixture of their individual part and the bass, ‘Se fedel’, where they are silenced at the voice entry and in the B section, and the duet ‘Finché prendi’, where their entries and exits are carefully indicated. Each of the violette marine is given a separate page in the viola part. The Coke Collection has a set of seven parts for the overture (oboe 1 + violin 1, violins 1, 2 and 3, viola, bassoon, cello + cembalo) in a contemporary hand not unlike that of S4. The bassoon part is identical with the cello + cembalo part, except that the latter is fully figured. Also in the Coke Collection is a copy of ‘Vorrei poterti’ for voice and bass in Boyce’s hand (c.1736). Shaftesbury MS 211 contains an S4 copy of the Act III sinfonia (HG 73) and all the accompagnatos, supplementing the

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 254

06/10/2006 14:52:17

Orlando

255

Walsh score. There are keyboard arrangements of the overture in the Malmesbury Collection (S3) and RM 18 c 6 (S2), and a copy of the trio in Add. MS 31572 (Xi). ‘Quanto diletto’ (HWV 589) is one of the pieces arranged for Clay’s musical clock in RM 19 a 1 (S2, 1730s), not identified in Squire or HHB 3. Walsh paid Handel 25 guineas for the score and advertised it (‘Orlando an Opera, Engraven in a fair Character, and carefully corrected’) on 6 February 1733. He seems to have taken more trouble than usual. There were two issues: the first contains a number of corrections in manuscript; in the second they are incorporated in the engraved text.25 The volume contains the overture, all arias and duets, the trio and the coro, but no recitatives of either type or sinfonias. Dal segno arias are correctly indicated, and the scoring is complete, though occasionally the instruments are not named. Walsh subsequently issued two slightly different groups of Favourite Songs, printed from the plates of the score. He advertised a flute arrangement in May 1733 and the overture in parts and in keyboard arrangement in June 1734. There are two editions of the full score, edited by Chrysander (1881) and Siegfried Flesch (1969, one of the first operas to appear in the HHA edition). Both are serviceable. Chrysander omits two tempo marks (on ‘Sorge infausta’ and ‘Tu, che del gran Tonante’) and an occasional stage direction. Flesch’s Critical Report has not yet appeared. He does not discuss the oboe parts in his Preface; but in ‘Fammi combattere’ and ‘Se mi rivolgo’ both oboes should double the first violins in the ritornellos. This was Handel’s normal practice when he wrote Tutti against the top treble stave at the start of a movement and Viol. on the top stave (only) when the oboes drop out.

25  See Smith, Descriptive Catalogue, 40–1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 255

06/10/2006 14:52:17

ch a pter 14 Arianna in Creta

S

ubstantial quotations from the printed Argument are necessary to clarify this involved libretto. ‘The Political Enmity of the Athenians against Minos, King of Crete, was the Cause [?Result] of their having Androgeos, his Son, kill’d on their Land, after that Archeus, Prince of Thebes, and Confederate with them, had stole his Daughter, but just born, and who, notwithstanding, was carefully preserv’d and brought up as his own, under the Name of Ariadne. This irritated Minos to wage a bloody War against them, in the Course of which ... they were reduc’d to the last Extremity. [After they had consulted the Oracle] Peace was obtain’d of the offended King, but with an Agreement that then, and every seven Years, they should send to Crete a direful Tribute of seven young Men, who were appointed to serve in the Plays instituted to the Honour of Androgeos, where all died; and as many Damsels to give to the Minotaur, to be devour’d, drawing [lots] at their Arrival which of the Unhappy should first be made the miserable Victim. The fatal Law farther bore [sic], that it should continue for ever, unless there came some Champion, who, to save the Victims, should offer himself to overthrow the Monster, to come out of the intricate Ways of the Labyrinth, and fight Tauris, Son of Vulcan, a Man of a most fierce Nature, and provided he overcame him, he should for ever free the City of Athens from so grievous a Tribute. The Time of the third Homage being come, Theseus, Son of Aegeus, went to offer himself, stimulated as well by a generous Virtue of relieving his oppressed Country, as by an impatient Desire to see Ariadne, who thought the Daughter of Archeus was kept Hostage with Minos ...’. Act I. The Sea Shore with Ships and Gallies, from whence come the Hostages. On one Side a Throne, on the other a great Stone, on which is engraven the Agreement of the Tribute to Athens. The seven Athenian young Men led by Theseus, and the seven young Women [including Carilda] disembark. Minos, King of Crete on the Throne. Tauris his Captain of the Guards, Ariadne, Theseus, Carilda. Teseo offers the tribute and asks for the release of Arianna. Minos agrees and orders Tauride to read the inscription on the monument, whereupon The Stone, on which is engraven the Agreement with Athens falls down and breaks to Pieces. Four Cupids fly thro’ the Air. Teseo and Arianna are disturbed to find Carilda among the victims. Carilda wishes Teseo’s pity were love. Tauride, aside, looking on Carilda, exclaims at her beauty. Minos tells Tauride to take charge of the tribute and goes out. Tauride tries to impress Carilda and Arianna by boasting of his strength. Teseo and Arianna endeavour to console Carilda; looking on Theseus she asks him to tell the Athenians that she faced death boldly, and goes out with the young Men and Women of Athens, accompanied with the Guard. Arianna and Teseo pledge their love, but she is alarmed by his resolve   Handel’s autograph, but not the libretto as printed, adds with garlands and olive branches in their hands.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 256

06/10/2006 14:52:18

Arianna in Creta

257

to fight the Minotaur. Alceste, a friend of Teseo, enters, looking for Carilda. He and Teseo argue about which of them is to fight for her. The set changes to A Spacious Court, with a Door that leads to the Temple of Jupiter. Teseo, Carilda angrily, and the other Virgins of Athens. She tries to ward off Tauride’s attentions. The other characters enter from the Door leading to the Temple. Carilda is surprised to see Alceste. Minos orders him, as a Greek and a stranger, to draw the lot that will determine the first offering to the Minotaur. Alceste takes a Name out of the Urn. First Teseo, then Minos reads the Name. It is Carilda’s. Minos orders it to be posted in the temple: if no champion comes to fight for her she must die. He goes out with Tauride and Teseo, shortly followed by Arianna (after embracing Carilda) and Alceste (after promising to rescue her). Carilda, alone, says she loves only Teseo, and goes out accompany’d with Guards. Minos, Arianna and Teseo return. Teseo asks if it is in order for him to fight for Athens and for Carilda. Minos agrees and departs. Arianna throws a tantrum. If Teseo is willing to die for Carilda (he has no chance of survival) he must be in love with her: if he is faithful to her (Arianna) he must renounce the fight. He stands confus’d, but assures her of his love. She is torn between love and anger. Act II. A Wood, at the Bottom [i.e. at the back] of which is seen the Temple of Hercules, on one side a dark Cave, opposite to it a Tower. Teseo, distraught by the rival claims of patriotism and love, begs the god of sleep to ease his troubled breast and lies down to sleep at the Mouth of the Cave. Sleep in the Form of a venerable old Man on a Cloud calls on dreams to open their gates and show the sleeping hero his future triumphs. [The tower disappears, and one sees the gate of transparent horn from which the ancients believed that] prophetic dreams enter; they pass wing’d in a human Form [and at the end a hero appears who fights with the Minotaur and overthrows him.] Sleep disappears, [and the gate of horn closes.]. Theseus dreaming of Fighting with the Minotaur, rises furiously. Alceste asks why Teseo wants to fight for Carilda if he loves Arianna. Teseo replies inconsequently that Arianna is Minos’s daughter, and cites a little ancient history. He rejects Alceste’s request to fight for Carilda. Arianna asks who is to champion Carilda against the Minotaur. Alceste’s tactless reply that Teseo insists on doing so, motivated by love, naturally increases her suspicion. But she cannot help loving Teseo, though he deserves the worst. She overhears Tauride discussing the odds on the fight with Minos, and learns that Carilda’s champion must drive his sword through the monster’s throat, find a thread to guide him out of the labyrinth, and deprive Tauride of his ‘fatal girdle’. Tauride is sure of the outcome. Going, he meets Carilda, conducted by the Guards. He is going to take her in his Arms when Arianna comes forward and intervenes. Tauride retires with threats. Arianna dismisses the Guards, who are going to lead away Carilda. The two women indulge in a dialogue at cross purposes, partly aside. Arianna, referring to Teseo, says that love is his guide. Carilda assumes she means Alceste and enlarges on his long, faithful and passionate love, adding fuel to Arianna’s jealousy. When Teseo enters she denounces him as a traitor. He jumps to the conclusion that she has learned her parentage from Alceste and hates him (Teseo) as the son of the man who   A man, translated as Alcestes, not the Alceste (Alcestis) of Admeto. His presence in Crete is not explained.   The reference is to Odyssey XIX and Aeneid VI.   The phrases in square brackets are in the autograph, but not the printed libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 257

06/10/2006 14:52:18

258

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

concealed it. Nevertheless, she gives him a Paper with details (which she has only just learned) of how to deal with the Minotaur and Tauride; but he will never possess her heart. Confident in his sincerity, he is sure she will relent. The set changes to A Court before the Gate of the Labyrinth. Tauride resumes his assault on Carilda, threatens to kill her if she resists – and goes out. Alceste suggests to Carilda that they escape, since Teseo will be her champion. A Noise of Arms within. Teseo discovers from a bitter Arianna that she still believes she was born in Thebes. Tauride reports to Minos that Carilda has fled and two of her guards have been murdered. He points to Teseo and Arianna as the culprits. Minos orders Arianna to take Carilda’s place, ‘first to the Altar, then to Chains, then to the voracious Minotaur’, and goes out with Tauride. In a duet Tauride professes his constancy, but Arianna sends him packing. She compares her plight to that of a forsaken nightingale. Act III. An inner Part of the labyrinth with the Minotaur. Carilda learns from Alceste, apparently for the first time, that Teseo and Arianna love each other. This strengthens her resolve to die, but she begins to feel pity for Alceste and wishes this might change to love. He fastens on this gleam of hope. In A Horrid Subterraneous Way in one Part of the Labyrinth for the Victims appointed to the Monster Teseo, lost and alone, invokes the aid of heaven, Arianna, his country, love and glory, taking comfort from ‘the Thread, my friendly Guide’s fix’d to the Wall’. After a defiant aria he fights with the Minotaur, which is kill’d. Returning by the subterraneous Way, with his drawn Sword, he meets Arianna. She still believes he loves Carilda, and begs him to kill her too. He promises to explain everything when he has dealt with Tauride. In A Court of the Palace Tauride confidently prepares to face Teseo. Going, he meets him. They fight, and Tauris falls, Theseus forcing the Girdle from him. Minos, Theseus with the Girdle in his Hand, Ariadne and Tauris in Suspence. Minos agrees that Teseo has freed Athens from the tribute, and is going when Teseo calls him back with the information that Arianna is his daughter. He delightedly orders the palace to be lit up in celebration and goes out with Tauride, leaving Arianna and Teseo to sing a love duet. The final scene is A Royal Hall. Minos, Theseus with Ariadne by the Hand, Alcestes likewise with Carilda, Tauris, Soldiers and Populace. Teseo leads the company in a paean to hope and thanksgiving. A substantial part of Giovanna Gronda’s scholarly study La carriera di un librettista, Pietro Pariati da Reggio di Lombardia (1990) is devoted to the history of this libretto, one of the most popular (after Metastasio) in the eighteenth century. Pariati wrote it in five acts for Francesco Conti in 1715 when he held the post of court poet in Vienna. In 1721 Leo adapted it for Naples as a three-act pasticcio, with contributions from Porpora, Orlandini, Bononcini and Vivaldi. Leo added buffo scenes designed for the local market and set them himself together with the recitatives and half-a-dozen arias and duets. The libretto was then set as a dramma per musica by Porpora (Venice, 1727), Feo (Turin, 1728), Leo (this time alone, Rome, 1729), Broschi (Milan, 1731),

  Gronda has shown that a setting by Porpora at Vienna in 1714 or 1715, accepted by many authorities including Loewenberg, is a myth.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 258

06/10/2006 14:52:18

Arianna in Creta

259

and by many other composers after Handel. From the start it underwent frequent changes; Leo’s pasticcio scrapped all but two of Conti’s aria texts, and both Porpora and Leo in 1729 inserted many more new ones. Handel, whose principal source was Leo’s 1729 version (of which he probably obtained a libretto in Italy at the time), was a partial exception. He retained seventeen of Leo’s twenty-seven aria texts (seven out of eight in Act I) with minor changes, including two (‘Narrargli’ and ‘Bella sorge la speranza’) with the lines in a different order and one (‘Se ti condanno’) taken from the opening lines of a Leo ensemble. He must also have had access to Leo’s 1721/22 libretto, from which he took two arias, ‘Salda quercia’ and ‘Se nel bosco’, not in the 1729 libretto (‘Dille, che nel mio seno’ and ‘Qui ti sfido’ are in both). The libretto as set by Handel is a wretched affair, for which it would be a gross injustice to blame Pariati. None of his aria texts survives, and Handel and/or his London collaborator made mincemeat of his recitatives, which had already begun to be whittled away. The figures are revealing: Pariati’s 1715 text (excluding the Licenza) runs to 1,351 lines of verse, Leo’s Naples pasticcio, omitting the comic scenes, to 1,139, his 1729 version to approximately 1,050, Handel’s to 596. If arias are excluded the difference is even more striking. The main incidents of the plot are little altered, and the distribution of arias between the characters remains much the same, apart from Minos, to whom Handel allots a single aria as against four in 1729. The last act underwent some rearrangement. The Minotaur does not appear in Pariati’s 1715 original, where it is despatched off-stage and everything is built up to a climax with the fight between Teseo and Tauride in the last scene. Leo’s 1721/22 version brings the fight with the Minotaur on-stage, but not that with Tauride, which is merely reported. This must have seemed an anticlimax, for in 1729 Leo has both fights on stage. So has Handel, but he placed that with Tauride two scenes earlier and despatched it in a couple of lines. The one innovation for which he was responsible was the introduction of a supernatural element: the collapse of the monument in the first scene (which is pointless, since apart from a single exclamation from Minos, no one takes the slightest notice, even with the air full of Cupids) and the sleep scene at the start of Act II, perhaps the most memorable episode in the score. As a result of compression the characterisation is confused and the action jerky and inconsequent. Handel gets the opera off on the wrong foot by omitting the entire first scene, which explains the background and without which much of what follows is inexplicable outside the turgid Argument. No doubt he wished to begin with an effective tableau, the disembarcation of the Athenian victims to the strains of the last movement of the overture. This works, but at too great a cost to the clarity of the plot. The device whereby Arianna overhears Tauride detailing the obstacles that   Many Handel singers appeared in these productions. Teseo was sung by Nicolini in Naples 1722 and Venice 1727–28, by Caffarelli in Turin 1728, by Giuliano Albertini in Rome 1729 (an allcastrato affair); Minos by Pacini (alto castrato) in Naples, Fabbri (tenor) in Venice and Antinori (tenor) in Turin. The tenor Francesco Borosini was the original Tauride in Vienna 1715. In Naples Faustina Bordoni sang Arianna, Antonia Merighi Carilda, and Fabbri Alceste. The Carilda in a 1728 Venice revival was Benedetta Sorosina.   Most of these figures come from Gronda, who prints three of the librettos in full, but not Leo’s of 1729, Handel’s main source.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 259

06/10/2006 14:52:18

260

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

confront Teseo in the labyrinth and a few minutes later communicates them to Teseo in writing would appear to require both a sound recorder and a computer. And what are Alceste and Carilda doing in the labyrinth at the start of Act III when they have apparently escaped and done murder in the process? The technical construction is particularly awkward. The exit aria convention, important as a binding agent, is honoured as much in the breach as in the observance. Characters repeatedly leave the stage without an aria (Minos five times, Arianna four times), and when they do have an aria it is often dramatically null. The score teems with simile pieces; black clouds, an oak, a lion, a lost traveller, a nightingale, a gentle breeze and a storm-tossed steersman are all called in evidence. Tauride’s reactions to Carilda are brusque to the point of absurdity; twice in Act II he threatens her with death and walks off, once in recitative and once after a not particularly menacing aria. Dent called Arianna ‘a lamentable falling-off after Orlando’, and one can only agree. There are of course a few superb episodes, as in all the operas of Handel’s maturity, and even the weaker arias may yield flashes of inspiration, expressive modulations (‘Tal’or d’oscuro velo’), a judiciously placed pedal point (‘Quel cor che adora’), a sudden enrichment of harmonic colour (‘Deh, lascia!’ B section). But the grand overview and the clear delineation of characters moving through conflict to a dramatic climax are missing. Generally Handel introduces each major figure with a strong aria that projects an important facet of his or her essential nature. With the possible exception of Tauride none of the characters in Arianna is so endowed; indeed the first act contains very little first-rate Handel. Much can be put down to the faults of the libretto, both in characterisation and design. The trivial misunderstandings between Arianna, Teseo and Alceste repel sympathy and even credibility, and the prominence of simile aria texts and others that are merely sententious (‘Qual cor che adora’, ‘Non ha diffesa’) act as a brake on the fluidity of the drama, though elsewhere Handel can sometimes mask such defects. But that is not the only trouble. Streatfeild hinted at a more basic defect when he called Arianna ‘a concession to the conservatives ... in some sort an apology for Orlando’. This view receives unexpected confirmation in a footnote in Hawkins’s History. ‘Most of the songs in the opera of Ariadne are calculated to please the many; and for this deviation of his general conduct, Mr. Handel gave to one of his friends as a reason, that he meant by it to recover the favour of the nobility, whom he was sensible he had displeased in some of his more elaborate compositions for the stage; but this attempt failed of its end’ – artistically yes, and in the long run, but not with early audiences. Handel’s deviation is explained in part by the departure of nearly all his leading singers to join the Opera of the Nobility in the summer of 1733. Its season did not begin till 29 December, but he must have known that he was facing   This scene comes later in 1715, in the amphitheatre prepared for Teseo’s duel with Tauride, and as an appendage to Act II in 1722. Leo in 1729 was responsible for putting them in with the Minotaur.   J. Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776; repr. 1853; facs. repr. 1963), 913.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 260

06/10/2006 14:52:18

Arianna in Creta

261

serious competition, and perhaps that Porpora, who had already set Arianna e Teseo, was preparing another opera with the same heroine. There may well have been a link between the lightening of his style and his acceptance of an exceptionally ill-found libretto: for once the urge to explore the inner motivation of the characters seems to have taken second place to a decision to flatter the ear with pretty tunes and simple textures. Many of the arias, especially in the parts of Carilda and Alceste but also Arianna’s ‘Turbato il mar’ and both her duets with Teseo, begin with a short catchy phrase which is then repeated or treated sequentially in the same rhythm, often several times. The ideas are attractive in themselves but not developed to their full potential either musically or as keys to character; Handel seems to go on autopilot. Of course repetition and sequence are regular features of the period style, Handel’s not least, but one is seldom so conscious of their mechanical application. By the same token, apart from the fugue in the overture, the score contains relatively little contrapuntal activity but a good deal of flashy coloratura. The contrast with the Ariosto operas that immediately preceded and followed Arianna could scarcely be more marked. Teseo has most of the best music, but also some of the weakest. This was the first part Handel wrote for his brilliant new castrato Carestini, and he evidently put himself out to gratify singer and audience with a spectacular display of pyrotechnics. (He was not familiar with Carestini’s voice, and had to transpose most of his arias down.) Teseo’s first aria, ‘Nel pugnar’, and his first in Act II, ‘Salda quercia’ are among the flashiest in any Handel opera, full of hollow scales and mechanical divisions: much glitter but little substance. Unlike the Carestini arias in Ariodante and Alcina, they suggest a singularly flatulent hero. ‘Al fine amore’ is not much better, clogged by rhythmic monotony and repetitions, though Handel scores a harmonic point on the word ‘gioco’.10 The rest of Teseo’s part rises very high. ‘Sdegnata sei’ is the one outstanding aria in Act I. The melody with its rising sixth looks forward to Manoa’s ‘How willing my paternal care’ (Samson) in the same key (E major), and its mood of tender solicitude is not dissimilar. Voice and violins are beautifully interwoven, with a haunting episode where drooping sevenths for the voice answer the fifths and octaves of the instruments. Teseo enjoys the opera’s two most dramatic episodes, his dream at the start of Act II and the fight with the Minotaur in Act III. As one would expect, Handel rises to the occasion. Both scenes are free in form, incorporating accompagnato (the only examples in the opera) and featuring arioso in the one case and a flexible treatment of ritornellos in the other. Handel seldom failed in supernatural scenes, of which there are several in these late operas. At the start of Act II11 the music grows ever more languid, the bass twice creeping down a diminished fifth, as Teseo, torn between love and patriotism, sinks to an exhausted sleep. Murmuring strings pianissimo accompany the arioso ‘Sol ristoro’, with a poetic touch of the tonic minor 10  ‘Ingrato’ as first set. 11  The first six lines come from Act I in Leo’s 1729 libretto, where they lead to Teseo’s closing aria.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 261

06/10/2006 14:52:18

262

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

(‘misero mio cor’) just before he loses consciousness. After the god of sleep’s bass recitative (sonorous string chords) this music returns briefly, bursting into a sudden Allegro as supers (presumably dancers) enact his dream of conquering the Minotaur, and he wakes with a start. The climax is the more effective for its brevity; it must not undercut the real fight in Act III. That is more extended. The accompagnato ‘Ove son?’ instantly raises the tension, G minor12 after the bland E flat of Alceste’s aria, painting with great vividness Teseo’s horror at finding himself in the monster’s lair and his summoning up of a resolution discharged in the magnificent aria ‘Qui ti sfido’. It seethes with rhythmic energy, whirling string semiquavers alternating with sharp dotted figures and accented unison crotchets, the vocal line sometimes coinciding with the rhythm of the orchestra and sometimes cutting across it, and culminates in a trenchant interrupted cadence, after which the voice goes off on its own. The B section offers a contrasted texture of repeated chords, as defiance yields to a rhetorical request to the Minotaur, if it should be victorious, to spare his heart, ‘for ’tis not mine’. The ritornello after the da capo expands from five bars to twelve, the dotted figure considerably developed, as Teseo disposes of the monster. After a brief recitative of triumph this ritornello is repeated; he seems to be savouring his triumph as he returns through the labyrinth to meet Arianna. The whole scene is gripping. Having shot his bolt here, Handel hurries through the fight with Tauride, giving it no music at all. Perhaps he was wise; it could only have been an anticlimax. Teseo’s ultimate reward is the superb aria ‘Bella sorge la speranza’, extended by the coro in one of the most exhilarating of Handel’s finales. The melody begins with a four-bar phrase that deceives the ear by dividing not 2 + 2 but 1½ + 2½ (Ex. 42). It builds up in a series of magnificent paragraphs, variously enriched by melodic extensions, pedals, echoes, an occasional flattened seventh, and a delicious rocking figure over a pedal, first heard at bar 19, that assumes increasing prominence till it forces its way into the ritornello after the A section. This ritornello is heard only once; it is replaced after the da capo by an exultant ensemble for the whole company, in which the initial phrase and the rocking figure, now in close conjunction, soar to a triumphant climax. Exceptionally the opera ends with the last vocal chord, not with the usual orchestral codetta.

Arianna must have been one of Strada’s least rewarding Handel parts. Clearly Handel did not warm to her; none of her music strikes the note of passionate commitment we might expect, perhaps because the ease with which her jealousy is aroused and maintained forfeits sympathy, ours and the composer’s. Her first aria, ‘Deh! 12  It was originally G sharp minor leading to ‘Qui ti sfido’ in E major. The change, to accommodate Carestini, is regrettable. It softens the tonal impact of the initial chord and places ‘Qui ti sfido’ in the same key as Alceste’s ‘Par che voglia’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 262

06/10/2006 14:52:18

Arianna in Creta

263

lascia’, suffers from the short-breathed sequential treatment mentioned above and tells us little about her. Only an upward leap of a tenth in the A section and the broadening of the pace with a Neapolitan sixth progression at the end of the B section hint at anything out of the ordinary. Handel gives Arianna the final aria in each of the first two acts, but neither quite justifies the privilege. The best moment in ‘Sdegno, amore’ is the return of the voice’s initial Adagio via the subdominant. The main body of the Allegro suffers from an excess of otiose triplets and heavily accented tonic and dominant cadences in a pattern that evokes a vision of ‘Three Blind Mice’. ‘Se nel bosco’ is better, a plaintive bird song with the usual accoutrements, including the warbling dotted figure immortalised in Galatea’s ‘Heart, the seat of soft delight’. It is loosely attached to the context, but makes an effective quiet end to the act. ‘So che non è più mio’, a minor-key Scarlattian siciliano, is perhaps the best of Arianna’s arias. Handel seldom if ever fails with this type, but he produced many more gripping specimens in response to the deeper emotions of other afflicted heroines. Arianna’s single aria in Act III, ‘Turbato il mar’, is an emotionally neutral simile piece which neither a pretty tune nor a delicate orchestral figure of slurred repeated semiquavers can quite redeem. Neither of Arianna’s duets with Teseo amounts to much. ‘Bell’idolo amato’ is a lovers’ quarrel, a duet of opposition in which the voices never coincide. Arianna, the more indignant, is confined to phrases of a bar or less, except at the end of the B section, but the music generates little tension; the ideas are too amiable for the situation. ‘Mira adesso’ is vacuous and very long, with an endless efflorescence of triplets. The minor characters are no better served. Alceste, the second castrato, has one striking aria, ‘In qual stanco pellegrino’, but it contributes nothing to plot or character. The elaborate cello obbligato, written for the newly arrived virtuoso Andrea Caporale, and the dark G minor tonality, varied by incursions into the major and alternating rich and spare textures, with occasional pedals and suspensions, gives it a strange, brooding, almost romantic flavour. For the rest, Alceste emerges as a colourless figure, for ever bickering with Teseo as to who will fight the Minotaur. ‘Tal’or d’oscuro velo’ and ‘Non ha diffesa’ present amiable ideas but make little of them, though the former modulates nicely, notably from G minor to A flat in the B section. Burney, who on the whole overrates the opera, describes ‘Non ha diffesa’ as ‘innocent of meaning and passion’. ‘Par che voglia’ is more interesting, thanks to the rhythmic vitality of the principal melody, which has the gait of a Courante, and the extension of the vocal phrases longer than the ear expects. But it comes too late to bring Alceste to life. Carilda is even more of a disappointment. One would expect Handel to make much of a girl who for almost the entire opera is both the victim of unrequited love and under sentence of death. Though the first two of her four arias are in minor keys there is no depth or passion in her music. Caterina Negri was no great singer, and for much of the time Handel doubles her voice at the octave with flute or violins, but he gave her more interesting parts in other operas. Only the occasional detail, such as the touch of chromaticism over a dominant pedal at the end of the B section of ‘Quel cor che adora’ remains in the memory. ‘Un tenero affetto’ is a comically jaunty gigue after the manner of Corelli’s violin sonatas.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 263

06/10/2006 14:52:19

264

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Tauride, composed for the ageing Durastanti, is a cardboard villain, and floppy cardboard at that, despite a promising start in ‘Mirami’, which has a faint foretaste of Handel’s next travesti villain, Polinesso. It gains thrust from the repeated entry of the first phrase with its octave drop, whether on voice or instruments, before the ear expects it, coinciding with the last chord of the previous cadence instead of waiting for it. It is as if he were stamping his foot with impatience. The diminished seventh on the word ‘ira’ is also effective. But the B section is weak (and so is the substitute aria ‘Del labbro tuo’ which replaced ‘Mirami’ in the revival). After that Tauride’s lusts are confined to recitative, where they can make little impression. ‘Qual leon’ is a showy piece dependent on brilliant scoring with a cornucopia of braying horns, oboes and bassoons, but otherwise unremarkable, ‘Che se fiera’ a trivial gavotte out of place in the mouth of this farouche figure. ‘In mar tempestoso’, the second successive marine simile aria, is likewise too genial and serves no purpose except to complete Tauride’s quota and delay the climax. Minos is drawn in the libretto as a crusty monarch who should combine menace with dignity, but Handel scarcely attempts to bring him to life. His habit of scuttling off-stage at the first opportunity almost turns him into a comic figure, and his single aria is conventional, thanks perhaps to the inexperience of Waltz in his first part in a Handel opera. The overture is one of Handel’s finest, with a closely worked sinewy fugue (the subject based on the opening of J. K. Kerll’s third Canzona for organ), the tension screwed up by the repeated entry of a figure of five accented crotchets marching up the chromatic scale. It is also unusual in design, on more than one level. The stern D minor of the first two movements melts beautifully into the major for the minuet (labelled only Andante in the autograph), which became an immediate popular hit. It was played after the rise of the curtain as part of the action. That in itself was not new; Handel had established a similar link in other operas, notably Giulio Cesare and Scipione. But it is particularly effective here, where the change to the major as the suave Gluck-like melody accompanies the disembarkation of the Minotaur’s intended victims strikes a powerful note of dramatic irony. The movement is on a far more spacious scale than the binary dances that conclude most of Handel’s overtures. The stately opening paragraph of sixteen bars, followed like a distant echo by a pianissimo four-bar codetta, is repeated in slightly condensed form with the unexpected reinforcement of two horns, and a contrasted section moving through the sharp keys leads to a full restatement from the entry of the horns, the whole movement amounting to seventy-six bars. The sinfonia at the start of Act III is less happy. The stage direction indicates our first view of the interior of the labyrinth, complete with its grisly occupant, but the jolly music rattles along in a style more appropriate to a picnic party. Handel makes the most of Teseo’s two big scenes; elsewhere his control of the drama is uncharacteristically limp. A small point of interest is the frequency with which a concluding recitative for one character is followed by an aria for another; it happens six times, and helps slightly to vary the monotony of design. Apart from the three movements with horns and the aria with cello obbligato the scoring is routine. The tonality leans heavily towards sharp keys and, except in the latter part of Act II, the major mode;

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 264

06/10/2006 14:52:19

Arianna in Creta

265

Act III remarkably has no movements at all in the minor. In an essay13 dealing mostly with vocal and instrumental imagery Reinhard Strohm points to certain recurring melodic patterns, for example the parallel between the overture’s minuet and Carilda’s aria ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’. It remains uncertain whether this and similar instances have a specific dramatic significance or arise accidentally from the workings of Handel’s subconscious mind. The suggestion that ‘the keystone of the whole construction of this opera is the little sinfonia of the first scene’ is surely farfetched. It certainly symbolises the fall of the tablet and the rise of the Cupids; but a fall followed by a rise is one of the commonest of overall operatic designs. Handel not only composed it as an afterthought but soon cut it. John Roberts cites three possible borrowings, in ‘Un tenero affetto’, ‘Bella sorge’ and ‘Se nel bosco’, from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Dafni, Vignati’s Ambleto and an aria by Fiorè respectively. They may have given Handel a starting point, but he transformed them, almost beyond recognition. On Christmas Day 1755 William Mason, in a letter to the poet Thomas Gray, described ‘a sweet Song’ (‘Ogni amante’) in the pasticcio Demofoonte, produced at the King’s Theatre on 9 December, as almost identical with the Minuet in the Arianna overture. ‘I am told ’tis a very old one of Scarlattis wch if true Handel is almost a musical Lauder’ (a notorious forger). Mason considered it an improvement on Handel’s Minuet, Burney an imitation ‘not very well done’. In fact, as Roberts has shown,14 it is from Gluck’s Issipile (1752); Handel for once was the lender, not the borrower.

History and Text Handel completed the score on 5 October 1733, nearly a month before the opening of his season; there could be no question of any defects being due to haste. Perhaps waiting for the Rolli–Porpora Arianna in Nasso, with which the Opera of the Nobility launched their enterprise at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 December (with an echtHandelian cast, including Senesino, Gismondi, Bertolli and Montagnana, joined in April by Cuzzoni), Handel began with three pasticcios and a revival of Ottone, holding back his Arianna till 26 January 1734, when he introduced it at the King’s Theatre with the following cast: arianna Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) teseo Giovanni Carestini (mezzo castrato) alceste Carlo Scalzi (soprano castrato) carilda Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) tauride Margherita Durastanti (soprano) minos Gustavus Waltz (bass) Waltz may have sung the small part of the God of Sleep. Apart from Strada and Durastanti (returning after nine years with her vocal powers reduced to mezzo13  ‘Arianna in Creta: musical dramaturgy in Dramma per Musica’, Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1997), 220–36. 14  ‘The ‘sweet song’ in Demofoonte: a Gluck borrowing from Handel’, in Opera and the Enlightenment, ed. Thomas Bauman and Marita Petzoldt McClymonds (Cambridge, 1995), 168–88.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 265

06/10/2006 14:52:19

266

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

soprano level) this was a new company, but they had been thoroughly run in via the pasticcios. The opera was an immediate success, receiving seventeen performances before the close of the season. The Royal Family were assiduous in their attendance, appearing in different strength on at least seven nights. The Earl of Egmont was present at the second performance, but made no comment in his diary. The author of the Colman Opera Diary however was enthusiastic: ‘a new Opera & very good & perform’d very often – Sigr Carestino sung surprisingly well’. The Earl of Shaftesbury in his retrospective comments on Mainwaring’s Life of Handel remarked of this season that Handel’s ‘Houses were generally very thin, ’till the Opera of Ariadne was exhibited, which gained him several full Houses’. Porpora’s opera, which with a month’s start had twenty-four performances, was also a success, and so was a pantomime entertainment Bacchus and Ariadne at Covent Garden on 26 February, with Marie Sallé as the heroine. London seems to have been Ariadne-mad this season. On 20 April all three Ariadnes were performed on the same night. In defence of Porpora, the target of severe objurgation from Chrysander, for whom Handel never came second, it must be said that Arianna in Nasso is a lively and skilful opera whose catchy rhythms and florid vocal writing easily account for its popularity. It has several strokes of strong drama, including a supernatural scene and a dream scene, numerous accompagnatos and a few expressive, attractively scored arias. The style is more verbose, repetitive and sequential than Handel’s at its best, with a surfeit of emphatic cadences, some of the ‘Three Blind Mice’ type, and it lacks the finer points of characterisation. Rolli’s libretto begins where Handel’s leaves off, with the Minotaur lying dead, and ends with Teseo’s departure, largely engineered by Bacchus disguised as the god Libero and masquerading as his own High Priest, and Arianna’s union with the god. Handel was quick to revive his Arianna after the move to Covent Garden; the first of five performances took place on 27 November 1734. There were three changes of cast, necessitating a number of alterations. John Beard (tenor) took over Alceste’s role: II.xii, including ‘Son qual stanco pellegrino’, obviously unsuited to a tenor, was omitted, and ‘Par che voglia’ replaced by ‘D’instabile fortuna’ from Lotario, transposed up a semitone to F with modified text beginning ‘D’instabile Cupido’. Maria Caterina Negri succeeded Durastanti as Tauride and received a new aria, ‘Del labbro tuo’, in place of ‘Mirami’ in I.ii, a poor exchange. ‘Qual leon’ was cut. Rosa Negri, an inferior singer, replaced her sister as Carilda and lost two arias, ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’ and ‘Un tenero affetto’. Her remaining two, ‘Qual cor che adora’ and ‘Narrargli’, were put up a tone and a minor third, to F sharp minor and G major respectively. II.x with Teseo’s ‘Al fine amore’ was omitted, and so were the B section and da capo of ‘Bella sorge’. The most important newcomer was Sallé, for whom Handel added dances at the end of each Act.15 Those in Act I were the Gavotte on HG 41, a shortened version of the overture’s Minuet reduced to three parts and fifty-six bars without the horns, and the Gigue in A from the interval music after Act II in the April 1720 version of 15  Conti’s 1715 opera had two ballets, for Cyclopses (attendants on Tauride) after Act II and the staff of the labyrinth after Act IV.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 266

06/10/2006 14:52:19

Arianna in Creta

267

Radamisto.16 Handel probably used movements from his new version of Il pastor fido/ Terpsicore for Act II, and for Act III three dances from a group of five Dances in Arianna that survive in two copies and a set of parts: a second Gavotte (not in HG) and short versions of the Musette later used in the overture to Alcina and of the coro ‘Bella sorge la speranza’. The first two groups were probably treated as interval dances outside the action, to which they bear little reference. Handel transferred the Acts I and III groups with the exception of the Gigue to the pasticcio Oreste three weeks later. All the dances may have been cut during the short run. Handel used the finale ‘Bella sorge’ again for Oreste in December 1734 and ‘Salda quercia’ in Alessandro Severo in February 1738. The overture became immensely popular. It was played (with Acis and Galatea) at the Aungier Street Theatre in Dublin on 21 February 1735; four times at Covent Garden concerts in May 1735, and again for the benefit of one Wood on 11 May 1736; at Drury Lane on 3 June 1735; at the Little Haymarket on 14 January 1736 and 27 December 1751; at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 21 January 1745; and at the Concert Hall in Aberdeen on 20 December 1758. The Minuet alone featured at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 19 June 1735 and doubtless on many other occasions. Susanna Arne sang ‘Bella sorge’ at Drury Lane on 30 March and 1 April 1734 (during the original run). Mrs Roberts sang ‘Deh! lascia’ at the same theatre on 29 April 1735. On 25 March 1740, when patriotic feeling was running high, Beard sang ‘Nel pugnar’ at Drury Lane ‘in the Character of a Captain of an English Man of War upon the taking Porto Bello’. Arianna in Creta was staged at Brunswick in Italian in August 1737 and again in February 1738, probably by G. C. Schürmann. The casts are not known, but there were eight substitutions, mostly from Handel’s earlier operas (see below, under Librettos). The part of Minos was greatly expanded. There have been about a dozen modern revivals, the first at Göttingen in 1946 in an arrangement by Fritz Lehmann, the first in Britain at Abingdon in 1974. A recording of the 1999 Göttingen revival, conducted by Nicholas McGegan, was made available to members of the Göttingen Händel-Gesellschaft.

Autograph Handel foliated the autograph (RM 20 a 6) to the end of Act II. The insertions are fols 23–4 (‘Sdegnata sei’), 45–6 (‘Al fine amore’), 57–8 (duet ‘Bell’idolo amato’, transferred from Act I), 78–81 (duet ‘Mira adesso’), and probably 82 (opening of Scena ultima). In addition he added the short sinfonia in the first scene on an empty space after the overture, and ‘Par che voglia’ on one and a half blank folios at the end of Act II with a cue to III.ii. The long stage direction for the first scene (HG 6) precedes the 3/4 movement of the overture. The autograph underwent important changes before reaching its present condition, which corresponds essentially to the first performance. (i) Handel changed the order of movements, replacing some of them with insertions. The duet ‘Bell’ idolo amato’ was composed for I.xi (moved to II.xiv and replaced by ‘Sdegnata sei’), ‘Salda 16  See Handel’s Operas I, 340.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 267

06/10/2006 14:52:19

268

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

quercia’ for II.x preceded by a different recitative (moved to II.iii and replaced by ‘Al fine amore’), and ‘Bella sorge’ for Alceste in III.ii (transferred to Teseo in the last scene). (ii) He indicated downward transpositions by a tone or a semitone for almost the whole of Teseo’s part. (The exceptions are ‘Sdegnata sei’, a late insertion, and the Act II dream scene.) ‘Nel pugnar’ was composed in A, ‘Salda quercia’ in D (marked down to C), ‘Al fine amore’ in A minor (transposed first to F sharp minor, then to G minor), the accompagnato ‘Ove son’ in G sharp minor, ‘Qui ti sfido’ in E, and ‘Bella sorge’ in E flat. The recitative in Scena ultima was likewise put down a semitone. (Handel also marked Alceste’s ‘Non ha diffesa’ down from G to F, but Burrows and Ronish are probably right in regarding this as a slip.) Reinhold Kubik17 postulates an original version18 of the opera before Handel changed the order and conjectures that he did so in response to pressure from Carestini, who thereby gained three arias.19 That is almost certainly correct in all respects except one: it cannot account for the transposition of ‘Bella sorge’, since the coro, linked to the aria and on the same music, is in E flat in the original autograph bearing the date of completion. Handel must have shifted the aria to the end of the opera, moved by its obvious appropriateness as a climax for the hero, before transposing it down to D. The autograph shows a number of other changes. Teseo’s ‘Al fine amore’ (II. xii) was originally set to different words after the first line. The short introductory recitative (‘Nelli sdegni d’Arianna’) is not in the manuscript. In II.xii Handel began an aria for Alceste, ‘Del ciel voi giusti numi’, Larghetto 12/8 E flat, but cancelled it at once after four bars and substituted ‘Son qual stanco pellegrino’, in which the voice entry was originally accompanied by two solo violins. The recitative before ‘Un tenero affetto’ (III.i) ends as printed in Chrysander’s Preface. The words of Alceste’s aria in III.ii underwent some curious vicissitudes. Handel first set the text in Leo’s 1729 libretto, where it begins ‘Lusinghiera al nostro seno’, merely exchanging the first two lines. After moving this to the last scene he began its replacement by setting the 1729 text with the first two lines in the original order, but supplied the eventual text when he reached the B section. He then went back and dubbed a fresh text (‘Par che voglia’, etc.) on the A section. There were many changes in the recitatives of the last two scenes. Scene vii is followed by two short recitatives (incipits in HHB 1, 394), in which Carilda expressed her love for Alceste (viii) and Alceste his delight that after so much pain all ends well (ix). These were copied into the performing score but then suppressed. Several arias are longer than as printed in HG: ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’ (three passages, twenty-two bars), ‘Deh! lascia’ (two bars), ‘Nel pugnar’ (two bars), ‘Tal’or d’oscuro velo’ (three passages, twelve bars). The cuts are mostly in ritornellos; that 17  ‘Die Fassungen von Arianna in Creta HWV 32: Überlegungen zum Werkbegriff der Opera seria’, Gattungs-Konventionen der Händel-Oper, ed. Hans-Joachim Marx (Laaber, 1992), 159–70. 18  He regards it as superior to the version Handel performed, which is certainly arguable, and makes a case for giving it priority as the main text in the HHA edition. 19  There can be no doubt that Carestini arrived in London after Handel had finished the score. If Handel had heard him in Rome in 1729, he may not have retained an exact memory of his voice.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 268

06/10/2006 14:52:19

Arianna in Creta

269

after the A section of ‘Tal’or’ ran to twenty bars. Chrysander omits three tempo marks in the autograph: Andante on the third movement of the overture, Allegro on the sinfonia in the first scene and on ‘Salda quercia’ (where it appears in all copies). ‘Mirami’ was originally Allegro unqualified. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 263 has three autograph sketches: (i) top of p. 49, treble only in G of Gavotte on HG41, HHB 1 no. 32;20 (ii) bottom of p. 49, treble and bass in B flat of Gavotte in Act III, HHB 1 no. 34 (both Gavottes transposed to A for Arianna); (iii) p. 71, fragment (soprano voice and bass) of an abandoned setting of ‘Sdegnata sei’ in E flat, barred in a mixture of 12/8 and 6/8, the second line of text reading ‘Mi chiami traditor’. It is much weaker than the eventual setting, to which it bears no resemblance.

Librettos [1734 January] Handel. ‘Ariadne in Crete, an Opera; As it is Performed at the King’s Theatre in the Hay-Market ... Printed for T. Wood, in Little-Britain, and are to be sold at the King’s Theatre [Price One Shilling].’ Dated 1733 in Roman numerals. 47 pp. Title page, Argument and Dramatis Personae in English only. Baselt in HHB 1 attributes the English translation to Samuel Humphreys, which is likely enough, though his name does not appear. As noted in the plot summary, the libretto prints a shorter and simpler version of the stage directions in I.i and II.ii than the autograph; evidently the theatre was economising in stage magic. Teseo’s two lines of recitative before Minos’s ‘Se ti condanno’ are missing in this and all other librettos. A second impression, identical except for changing the date to 1734, was presumably issued for later performances in the run. 1734 November Handel. As last, but ‘As it is perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. The second Edition’, dated 1734. 47 pp. The changes are described above. Each act ends with a direction for dances. ‘D’instabile Cupido’ is not translated in the English version. The copy in the Schoelcher Collection bears many annotations in English. The scribe (not Schoelcher) compared the text, not always accurately, with the first edition and used two pages for financial calculations. 1737 Brunswick. Title page in Italian and German: ‘Drama per Musica Nel famosissimo Theatro di Braunsviga nella fiera d’Estate l’anno 1737 ... Wolfenbüttel druckts Christian Bartsch.’ No singers named. Text in Italian with German version on facing pages, based on Handel’s original production with additional stage directions that clarify the action, especially in Act III. Two added scene changes, a gallery in the palace of Minos with statues of Androgeos and other Cretan heroes in I.x, a street in II.vi; II.xi is a royal garden (to validate the ballet at the end of the Act). Minos’s part is expanded (?for a castrato) with four new arias: ‘Sol prova contenti’ (Atalanta) in I.i, ‘Prova fa di tua fortezza’ in place of Tauride’s ‘Qual leon’ in II.vi, ‘Se la legge ti condanna’ (8 lines) in place of ‘Se ti condanno’ in II.xiv, and ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ (Ariodante) at his exit in III.viii. Carilda’s ‘Narrargli’ (II.viii) 20  Composed for Ariodante (fol. 93 verso of autograph) and used again for the finale of the Trio Sonata Op. 5 no. 1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 269

06/10/2006 14:52:19

270

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

is replaced by ‘Vorresti, O mie pupille’, Alceste’s ‘Par che voglia’ (III.ii) by ‘Cosi giusta è questa speme’ (Orlando), Tauride’s ‘In mar tempestoso’ (III.v) by ‘Son, dal furor portato’ (perhaps ‘Va, dal furor portato’ in Ezio; the text based partly on ‘Qual leon’). The complete finale of Orlando, ‘Trionfo oggi il mio cor’ with a little necessary adjustment of the text, ousts ‘Bella sorge la speranza’. ‘Qui ti sfido’ is reduced to its A section. The unidentified arias may be Handel parodies, or perhaps composed by Schürmann. Extra lines of text in two arias indicate either resetting or modificaton of the underlay. Ballet is mentioned only in the dream scene and at the end of Act II (a dance of gardeners of both sexes).21 1738 Brunswick. As 1737 except changed date (‘nella fiera d’Inverno l’anno 1738’).

Copies and Editions The principal performing score, Hamburg MA/1005, all in Smith’s hand, was copied from the autograph after Teseo’s arias had been transposed and ‘Bella sorge’ (in D) moved to the last scene, but before most of the other changes. This first group of insertions – the repositioned ‘Salda quercia’ and ‘Bell’idolo mio’, the added numbers ‘Sdegnata sei’, ‘Al fine amore’ and ‘Mira adesso’ with associated recitative links, and a new opening recitative for Scena ultima – tends to support the conjecture that they were made for Carestini. The extra scenes III.viii and ix were cued in both before and after ‘Mira adesso’ but presumably removed when Handel composed the new opening of Scena ultima (fol. 120). Blank slips conceal the suppressed bars (not in HG) in ‘Dille che nel mio seno’, ‘Deh! lascia’ and ‘Tal’or’. The cancellation of the sinfonia in I.i, pencilled cuts in ‘Salda quercia’ (bracketed in HG) and ‘Nel pugnar’ (two bars after bar 70, not in HG) and a further downward transposition of ‘Ove son’ and ‘Qui ti sfido’ to F sharp minor and D may date from the November revival, or in the case of ‘Salda quercia’ from its reuse in the pasticcio Alessandro Severo. A second group of insertions for the revival comprises ‘Del labbro tuo’ (possibly put up to A), ‘D’instabile Cupido’ and transposed versions of ‘Qual cor che adora’ in F sharp minor and ‘Narrargli’ in G. The Gavotte in A (HG 41) was added on the verso of fol. 48 (end of ‘Sdegno, amore’); folios carrying the other dances have been removed. A new conclusion to the recitative of III.i (as on HG 87), designed to introduce ‘D’instabile Cupido’, is pasted over the original in both performing scores. The cembalo score (MA/1005a), a full score except for the November insertions (corresponding to the second group in MA/1005), which are for voice and bass only, was copied by S1 from MA/1005 after the pre-performance changes had been incorporated, and ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’, ‘Deh! lascia’ and ‘Tal’or’ – but not ‘Nel pugnar’ or ‘Salda quercia’ – had been shortened. The verso of fol. 39 (end of ‘Sdegno, amore’) has the bass of all three Act I dances, but the whole page is crossed out; presumably the ballet was omitted in later November performances. At the beginning of Act I not only the little sinfonia but most of the recitative in the first two 21  This seems to have been a popular (?comic) turn. It features also in Venice (Ariodante, 1716), Hamburg (Partenope, 1733, 1736), and several other Brunswick librettos (Siroe, 1730, Partenope, 1731– 32).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 270

06/10/2006 14:52:20

Arianna in Creta

271

scenes is pasted over. This is not the case in MA/1005, and may indicate that the recitatives were accompanied by the second harpsichordist, perhaps in one of the later performances. Someone (the continuo player?) indicated a transposition of ‘Se nel bosco’ down to G minor. On a blank recto before ‘D’instabile Cupido’ Smith wrote a short recitative for Carilda, ‘Che puo? se cadi tu sua preda io resto’, followed by some unset words for Alceste and a couple of bars without text or bass, evidently an abandoned continuation. The Malmesbury, Flower and Shaftesbury copies give the original version and differ from HG only on minor points. All three have ‘Nel pugnar’ and ‘Salda quercia’ without cuts. Malmesbury and Shaftesbury have the closing bars of the recitative before ‘Un tenero affetto’ (HG 87) as printed in Chrysander’s Preface (Flower has no secco recitatives). Carilda’s recitative in I.ix (HG 30) is omitted in Malmesbury (and Lennard) but present in Shaftesbury (it is crossed out in the cembalo score). ‘Qual leon’ is Allegro in Malmesbury and Flower, Andante in Shaftesbury; these are the only sources to give it a tempo mark. Malmesbury (S3, spring or early summer 1734) was the last Handel work copied for Elizabeth Legh, who died in August that year. Flower (S3, verbal text in a different hand, c.1734–35) has the date of completion added by Jennens from the autograph, together with some bass figuring. In Shaftesbury (S4,c.1736) S4 apparently copied the close of the recitative before ‘Un tenero affetto’ as amended for the revival, but Smith then restored it to the original form. The Lennard copy (Smith, late 1730s), like Malmesbury, is very sparing of instrumentation and stage directions. It gives a mixed version: no sinfonia in I.i, ‘Del labbro tuo’ in place of ‘Mirami’, ‘Quel cor che adora’ in F sharp minor, but ‘Salda quercia’ and ‘Nel pugnar’ in full and the cadence in III.i in original form. Six dal segno arias and the duet ‘Bell’idolo mio’ are given a lazy da capo. RM 19 f 1022 (S3, c.1735) is an aria collection probably copied for a patron, containing twenty arias and the duet ‘Bell’idolo mio’ in original versions, numbered in sequence. No mention of oboes or flute. The missing pieces are ‘Mirami’ (and ‘Del labbro tuo’), ‘Qual leon’, ‘Se ti condanno’, ‘Par che voglia’, ‘Qui ti sfido’ and ‘Mira adesso’. Three volumes in the Coke Collection contain early selections. MS 160 has S1 copies of ‘Che sei fiera’, ‘Narrargli’, ‘Quel cor che adora’ and ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’ with the names of the original singers. ‘Dille’ includes the three passages blanked out in the performing score and must have been copied from the autograph. MS 16 has a chaotic collection of excerpts in three different hands: ten arias for voice and bass copied by Xi (short versions of ‘Tal’or’ and ‘Deh! lascia’, long version of ‘Salda quercia’; ‘Par che voglia’ A section only with subito at the end), Teseo’s two accompagnatos in full score with additional bass figures copied by S1, and the first eighteen bars of ‘Mirami’ by an unidentified copyist with a flowery C clef. Xi also copied the bass of the overture. The Coke Collection contains a number of other fragments, including ‘Turbato il mar’ and ‘Bella sorge’ in MS 146. MS 211 (ex-Shaftesbury) has S4 copies of the Act III sinfonia and the accompagnato ‘Ove son?’, a supplement to the printed score. There are S5 copies of the two duets (c.1744) in the Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland. 22  Accidentally omitted from Squire’s Catalogue of the Royal Music.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 271

06/10/2006 14:52:20

272

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

RM 18 c 4 (S3) and RM 19 d 11 (RM5/6) have identical groups of five Dances in Ariadne with the November aria ‘Del labbro tuo’. The dances include both Gavottes but not the Gigue from Radamisto. There is an S3 copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement in RM 18 b 4, another in the hand of Nu prefixed to the full score in the Flower Collection (but not mentioned in the Catalogue), and arrangements of ‘Deh! lascia’ and ‘In mar tempestoso’ for musical clock (S2) in RM 19 a 1. The Flower Collection has two sets of parts. The first (S2, mid-1740s) – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2; horns (at the University of Maryland) – is a strange composite that must have been taken largely if not entirely from the autograph. It omits the overture, sinfonia in I.i, and the arias ‘Dille, che nel mio seno’, ‘Quel cor che adora’, ‘Al fine amore’, ‘Che se fiera’ and ‘Un tenero affetto’, but includes all accompagnatos, both alternative arias in I.ii and the Act III sinfonia. Arias present are all in their longer versions, and ‘Nel pugnar’ (in A), ‘Ove son?’ (in G sharp minor), ‘Qui ti sfido’ (in E) and ‘Bella sorge’ (in E flat) in keys abandoned before the first performance. ‘Qual leon’ is the only movement apart from the coro where the oboes are divided and where they play while the voice is singing. Elsewhere, including ‘Deh! lascia’ and ‘Turbato il mar’, they take the top line in unison in ritornellos. They are silent in ‘Se nel bosco’, but play in ‘Par che voglia’ and ‘In mar tempestoso’. Bassoons are given a separate part in ‘Qual leon’; otherwise they are mentioned only when silenced in ‘So che non è’. In this aria and ‘Son qual stanco pellegrino’, where the cello part alternates between solo and tutti, the true bass is sometimes left to the harpsichord. The second set of parts, which belonged to Jennens’s nephew Lord Guernsey, consists of strings only (violins 1 and 2, viola, basso) and was copied by four or five hands, including Xi, working in harness. It covers the overture, Act III sinfonia, one accompagnato (‘O patria!’), the two duets and sixteen arias. ‘Deh! lascia’ and ‘Tal’or’ take the shorter form, ‘Nel pugnar’ and ‘Salda quercia’ the longer. The Library of Congress has an almost complete set of Aylesford parts for the five Dances in Arianna (S2), comprising cembalo, violins 1 and 2, cello, bassoon, oboes 1 and 2 but no viola. Walsh, quick to exploit a success, advertised two collections of Favourite Songs (together with similar excerpts from the pasticcio Arbace and Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso) on 23 February and 6 April 1734, the first containing six arias, the second the overture, four arias and two duets. ‘Ariadne an Opera as it is Perform’d in the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden’ (1737) incorporates both groups and contains all arias except ‘Del labbro tuo’, one accompagnato (‘O patria!’) and the coro. ‘Nel pugnar’ and ‘Salda quercia’ are in the long form. Many dal segno arias have a da capo; instrumentation is seldom specified. Many tempos are missing, but ‘Mirami’ (as originally in the autograph) and ‘Bell’idolo amato’ are Allegro. ‘Salda quercia’ is attributed to Strada. Walsh advertised the overture in parts and ‘curiously set for the Harpsichord’ on 22 June 1734, a flute arrangement on 18 January 1735. Four single-sheet arrangements of the overture’s Minuet as a song with English words appeared about 1740. There was a Paris publication of the overture in four parts in 1743.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 272

06/10/2006 14:52:20

Arianna in Creta

273

Chrysander’s score (1881) prints the first version, except that ‘Nel pugnar’ lacks the two extra bars, and the end of the recitative in III.i is confined to the Preface. Of the November changes he includes ‘Del labbro tuo’, the Gavotte at the end of Act I, and (in the Preface) the amendment, pencilled in the performing score, necessitated by the second cut in ‘Salda quercia’ (HG 50). The irregular barring in the overture’s Minuet and the omission of the third flat in the key signature of ‘Qui ti sfido’ (following early sources) serve no obvious purpose. The omitted tempo of ‘Salda quercia’ is Allegro in the autograph and all early manuscripts. The note v. Prefazione to bar 50 of ‘In mar tempestoso’ (p. 105) – not answered in the Preface – presumably refers to a pencil addition to the autograph made apparently when the aria was used in the June 1737 revival of Alcina. The small words above the stave in ‘Mira adesso’ (HG 109–10) are Chrysander’s suggestion for regularising the underlay; they are not in any source. Colman of course had nothing to do with the libretto. In 1940 Bärenreiter published a vocal score edited by Fritz Lehmann, with a scrupulous piano arrangement by Paul Greven and a German translation by Emilie Dahnk-Baroffio. The text is in German only. The score, based on Chrysander’s edition, is an advance on those published between the wars, despite the relegation of the parts of Teseo and Tauride to the bass clef. It was issued in connection with a planned production at Göttingen, but owing to the war this did not take place till 1946.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 273

06/10/2006 14:52:20

c h a p t e r 15 Covent Garden, 1734–1737

I

t was not Heidegger who turned Handel out of the King’s Theatre at the end of the 1733/34 season, but the Opera of the Nobility functioning as the rump of the Royal Academy of Music, whose 1719 Charter still had several years to run. Heidegger remained as manager, a post he held for the greater part of his active life. Handel, who could be high-handed when his professional interests were affronted (witness his treatment of Cuzzoni and Gordon in the 1720s) had antagonised a number of the Academy’s directors and supporters. Lord Delaware’s letter of 16 June 1733 to the Duke of Richmond (see Chapter 7, p. 133) is not the only evidence of this, though it is conclusive enough. Three weeks earlier, on 24 May, Thomas Delahaye wrote to the Earl of Essex: ‘Hendel is become so arbitrary a prince, that the Town murmurs’. Unfortunately no minutes of the Opera of the Nobility’s meetings, formal or informal, and no lists of its directors between Delaware’s letter and the expiry of the Royal Academy’s charter in July 1740 are known to survive. There can, however, be no doubt that, as soon as Handel’s five years were up, they made haste to get rid of him and repossess the theatre. Perhaps they expected him to retire. If so, they misjudged his character. He immediately looked for another theatre. Robert D. Hume finds the move to John Rich’s Covent Garden puzzling from the angle of both parties. But it is not difficult to explain. For Handel it was an obvious choice. It was London’s newest theatre, open for less than two years, perhaps larger than Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Little Haymarket and better equipped for staging opera, especially the sort of opera Handel was about to present. Rich was not hostile to opera. ‘My Inclination to Musick frequently leads me to visit the Italian Opera’, he wrote in his dedication of the libretto of the Theobald–Galliard pantomime The Rape of Proserpine (Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1727). What he criticised in   Displeased by Handel’s method of accompanying him at a rehearsal of Flavio, Gordon threatened to jump on the harpsichord. Handel replied that if he did that on the night he would advertise it, ‘for I am sure more people would come to see you jump than to hear you sing’. When Cuzzoni complained that ‘Falsa imagine’, her first aria in Ottone (and in London), was beneath her dignity, and refused to sing it, Handel forced her consent by threatening to throw her out of the window. See also Handel’s Operas I, 426, note 13.   C. Taylor, ‘Handel’s Disengagement from the Italian Opera’, Handel Tercentenary Collection, ed. S. Sadie and A. Hicks (London, 1987), 180. See also the letters quoted on pp. 278 and 282 below.   ‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, M & L 67 (1986), 352ff.   There is some doubt about its size (estimates of its audience capacity range from about 1,400 to 2,100), but its technical sophistication is unquestioned. See R. D. Hume, ‘Covent Garden Theatre in 1732’, MT 123 (1982), 823–6; B. Baselt, ‘Dramaturgische und szenische Aspekte der Coventgarden-Opera Händels’, Händel auf dem Theater, ed. H. J. Marx (Karlsruhe, 1988), 134, and Frontispiece.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 274

06/10/2006 14:52:20



Covent Garden, 1734–1737

275

the Academy’s seasons was the concentration of resources on the fabulous cost of the singers at the expense of spectacle, ‘those various Embellishments of Machinery, Painting, Dances, as well as Poetry itself’, which he regarded as ‘Auxiliaries absolutely necessary to the Success of Musick’ (i.e. opera). He may have had the English semi-opera in mind; but it is hardly perverse to view opera as a union of the arts. Handel must have opened negotiations with Rich well before his King’s Theatre season ended on 6 July 1734, for within a week the London Evening Post for 11–13 July announced: ‘We hear that the Town will be entertained next Season with an Opera at the Haymarket and with another under the direction of Mr. Handel (twice a week) at the New Theatre in Covent-Garden ... We hear also that Mademoiselle Sallé is to dance in the said Opera at Covent-Garden’. We do not know the terms of Handel’s engagement with Rich. Shaftesbury and Mainwaring use the word ‘partnership’, and there must have been some such arrangement for Rich to claim, as he did in a letter to his landlord, the Duke of Bedford, on 9 March 1737, that ‘severe Losses by the Opera’s etc carry’d on by Mr. Handel & myself ... for these three years last past’ had left him unable to pay the ground rent due to the Duke. The Treasurer’s Accounts for Rich’s theatres in the 1736/37 season show that Handel paid Rich £52 5s 8d for opera nights (but £33 13s 8d for the last night of Atalanta, perhaps because an extra performance had been commanded by the Queen) and £19 5s 8d for oratorio nights in Lent, when he did not have to pay Rich’s actors. That makes a total of £776 15s 8d for Handel’s short season of nineteen performances. We have no information on how the box-office receipts were apportioned. Whatever the arrangement, it lasted for three seasons, during which Handel changed one of his opera nights from Tuesday to Wednesday, presumably to avoid clashes with the Haymarket. Rich was renowned for his spectacular productions. One of the attractions he offered was dancing. Three of his seasons at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1725/26, 1726/27, 1730/31) and one at Covent Garden (1733/34) had featured Marie Sallé, a leading ballerina of the Paris Opéra, who appeared in his popular productions of Camilla (1726/27) and The Beggar’s Opera (1730/31). In a letter to the Duchess of Richmond on 26 September 1731 and in a contract with the Paris Opéra in the same month she mentioned a projected return to London, though without specifying a date. She was then in negotiation with Drury Lane. It is perhaps surprising that she agreed to work again for Rich, whom, in her letter to the Duchess, she described as ‘un homme impoli et injuste’, and for two seasons. She may have been on bad terms with the Opéra (not for the first time) or perhaps in 1734/35 she relished the prospect of dancing for Handel. For his part Handel doubtless welcomed the opportunity to   Sarah McCleave, ‘Dancing at the English Opera: Marie Sallé’s Letter to the Duchess of Richmond’, Dance Research 17 (1999), 22–46; quoted from Stanley Vince, With Entertainment of ­Dancing, a Life of Marie Sallé.   Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 235, Hume, ‘Handel and Opera Management’, 354. According to Hawkins, Handel composed his music to Smollett’s Alceste to settle a debt to Rich: could this have dated back to 1737? Rich’s letter was first quoted by Andrew Saint in MT 123 (1982), 827.   Deutsch, 411.   McCleave, ‘Dancing at the English Opera’.   Rich is said to have paid Sallé £200 a year (Lindgren, Zamboni, 176, Letter 372b).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 275

06/10/2006 14:52:20

276

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

widen the scope of opera seria, offering a counter-attraction to the Nobility’s latest coup in engaging Farinelli, the supreme pop star of the age. Rich also commanded a small chorus, of which Handel made sparing but effective use. Dance of course was nothing new in a European context, though it added a fresh flavour to London opera. French tragédie-lyrique had for long treated it as an essential constituent in the action. Handel must have been familiar with its legacy in his early years at Hamburg, where French influence was strong. The librettos of his lost operas Florindo and Daphne contain elaborate ceremonial scenes, with provision for solos, ensembles, choruses and dances, inviting composite settings.10 This tradition was alien to Italian opera, where dance was habitually restricted to an interval entertainment without any necessary connection with the plot. London opera, an Italian import – though not the native semi-opera – had tended either to follow the same line or to exclude dance altogether. Handel had introduced occasional dances in his earliest London operas and in Radamisto as first performed created a composite finale involving solo singers, dancers and chorus. In Admeto he had employed dance very effectively as a dramatic agent in two scenes, but he had not followed it up, perhaps for want of opportunity, though he continued to experiment with the composite finale. Before Handel could introduce his new acquisition, the Nobility pre-empted him on 29 October 1734 with their greatest success. Their company was as prestigious as Handel’s had been in the late 1720s, with Senesino, Cuzzoni, Montagnana and Bertolli from the previous season reinforced by Farinelli, braving the English climate to make his London début: the rival queens succeeded by the rival kings. Hasse’s Artaserse, padded out with arias by Farinelli’s brother Riccardo Broschi and Porpora, enjoyed twenty-eight performances in the season and eight more in the next. Though by some accounted an indifferent actor with a manner more appropriate to the church than the stage, Farinelli, apart from his voice, possessed personal magnetism and a more attractive character than Senesino. In a letter to Riva on 9 November Rolli described his singing as a revelation and his manners as ‘most agreeable and cultivated [accorti]’; he presented Rolli with the recently published Collected Works of Metastasio. His salary was reported to be £1,500 with a benefit that more than doubled it, and rich presents in addition.11 Against this Handel still had Carestini, Strada, Waltz and the Negri sisters, but Scalzi and Durastanti had gone. In their place he engaged two young English singers, the tenor John Beard and the soprano Cecilia Young, a novelty in London’s Italian operas. Referring to Beard, the Ipswich Gazette of 9 November announced that Handel ‘had got an extreme fine English Voice ... who never sang on any stage’, and twelve days later Lady Elizabeth Compton wrote that ‘Beard, (who left the Chappell last Easter) shines in the Opera of Covent Garden & Mr. Hendell is so full of his Praises that he says he will surprise the Town with his performances before the Winter is over’. Handel’s highest hopes probably rested on Sallé, who already had a certain following from her appearance in earlier seasons. For her he composed Terpsicore, a one-act opéra-ballet after the French manner – his sole venture into that territory 10  See Handel’s Operas I, Chapter 5. Some of the dances survive. 11  Holdsworth to Jennens, 24 August 1734 (HHB 4, 243).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 276

06/10/2006 14:52:20



Covent Garden, 1734–1737

277

– as a prologue to a third version of Il pastor fido, with which he opened his season on 9 November.12 He followed this with a revival of Arianna in Creta and a pasticcio, Oreste, assembled from titbits in his own early works as far back as Rodrigo, Agrippina and the Rome cantata ‘Cor fedele’. Sallé had a prominent part in each, but none seems to have had much success, and Oreste was performed only three times. His first new opera of the season, Ariodante (8 January 1735), had eleven performances, but must be accounted a failure. According to a letter in The Old Whig; or, The Consistent Protestant of 20 March, Handel ‘has this Winter sometimes performed to an almost empty Pitt’. Riding on a wave after Artaserse, the Nobility challenged him on his own ground, mounting a production of Ottone (10 December), in which Farinelli sang his only Handel role, the secondary part of Adelberto, much altered and enlarged for the occasion.13 They followed this with Porpora’s Polifemo (1 February), which ran till the end of March (though Burney stigmatised the arias sung by Farinelli as variously frivolous, languid, common, uninteresting and insipid) and a revival of Porpora’s oratorio Davide e Bersabea (28 February). If that was another attempt to undercut Handel, it failed, with only three performances. On 5 March he temporarily abandoned opera for a month of oratorios (seasoned with Italian arias for Carestini), giving fourteen performances of Esther, Deborah and Athalia (its first time in London), during which he initiated the practice of playing organ concertos between the acts. This was later to become a popular attraction, but at first, according to the Old Whig writer quoted above (a Handel supporter), ‘So strong is the Disgust taken against him, that even this has been far from bringing him crowded audiences; though there were no other publick Entertainments on those Evenings. His Loss is computed for these two Seasons at a great Sum’. The Nobility may be said to be leading on points, but their last two operas, Sandoni’s Issipile (8 April) and Porpora’s Ifigenia in Aulide (3 May) were both failures – though Lord Egmont thought the latter was unjustly condemned by the town14 – and they fell back on Artaserse, ending their season on 7 June. Handel regained some ground with a second new opera, Alcina (16 April), and went on performing it for another month, closing on 2 July, after which Sallé, who had been both encored15 and criticised for an exiguous costume, left London.16 12  See Handel’s Operas I, 221ff. 13  See Handel’s Operas I, 441. 14  A. H. Scouten, The London Stage, Part 3: 1729–1747, 488. 15  McCleave, ‘Dancng at the English Opera’, note 47. 16  There is some doubt as to when (or whether) she returned. Most authorities state that she did not, but an early biographer claimed that she left Paris for England in 1741, and an anonymous French musician, in a tiresomely imprecise account unadorned by dates, implied that he met her in London, and that he witnessed ‘her unhesitating sacrifice of over a thousand louis which ought to have accrued from her engagement with Handel, even though she was solicited by the greatest lords in London to break it off, in order that she might form a new one with a certain entrepreneur which a caprice led them to speculate would be more desirable’. (D. Charlton and S. Hibberd, ‘My Father was a Poor Parisian Musician: A Memoir (1756) Concerning Rameau, Handel’s Library and Sallé’, JRMA 128 (2003), 161–99). Could this be a link with the abortive Smollett–Handel Alceste (1750), which contains specific dances? If Sallé had performed in London after 1735, it would certainly have been mentioned in the press.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 277

06/10/2006 14:52:21

278

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

By this time both opera companies were probably in low water. The Ipswich Gazette of November 1734 had estimated the ‘vast expense’ of the coming season at £12,000 for the Haymarket and £9,000 for Handel, which is consistent with the calculations of Milhous and Hume. The ferocity with which the struggle was contested is underlined by a letter of 27 December, in which an unidentified writer declared: ‘I don’t pity Handell in the least, for I hope this mortification will make him a human creature; for I am sure before he was no better than a brute, when he could treat civilized people with so much brutality as I know he has done.’ Mrs Pendarves wrote in more measured terms to Swift on 16 May 1735: ‘Our Operas have given much cause of dissension; men and women have been deeply engaged; and no debate in the House of Commons has been urged with more warmth; the dispute of the merits of the composers and singers is carried to so great a height, that it is much feared, by all true lovers of music, that operas will be quite overturned. I own I think we make a very silly figure about it.’ Whether for financial reasons or because he failed to obtain adequate Italian singers, Handel renounced opera at the start of the 1735/36 season. Writing on 28 July to thank Jennens for an oratorio libretto (?Saul), he added: ‘There is no certainty of any Scheme for next Season, but it is probable that some thing or other may be done’. On 16 October the General Evening Post announced that ‘Mr. Handell will perform Oratorios, and have Concerts of Musick, this Winter, at Covent-Garden Theatre’.17 Until the spring his activities were confined to the ode Alexander’s Feast (composed in January 1736, performed with great success in February) followed by short revivals of Acis and Galatea in the English and Italian version and Esther. The Nobility’s undistinguished season began on 28 October 1735 with a short revival of Polifemo, followed by Veracini’s Adriano in Siria (25 November), which Jennens found so much better than he expected that he resolved to see it again,18 but Lord Hervey comprehensively damned: ‘I am this moment returned with the King from yawning four hours at the longest and dullest Opera that ever the enobled ignorance of our present musical Governors ever inflicted on the ignorance of an English audience’. He called Veracini a madman and the librettist (Metastasio, modified by Angelo Cori) an anonymous fool, and added that Senesino had lost his voice and retained nothing of his former self but his flesh. Hervey was not renowned for musical perception19 but he was not the only hostile critic. Sir Henry Liddell wrote to Henry Ellison on 27 November that Veracini’s opera ‘will not do, & I doubt we are in a bad way for ye winter, for Hendal is proud & saucy, & without him nothing can be done for us that is good’.20 17  This announcement also appeared in the Daily Advertiser. See D. Burrows, ‘Handel and the London Opera Companies in the 1730s’, GHB 10 (2004), 149–65, which quotes some press notices not in Deutsch. 18  ‘I like it better than any opera we have yet had from an Italian’, Jennens to Holdsworth, 27 November 1735 (HHB 4, 258). He ordered a score of it, now in the Flower Collection at Manchester. 19  He was to condemn Alcina in the same terms twelve months later. 20  Taylor, ‘Handel’s Disengagement’, 180.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 278

06/10/2006 14:52:21



Covent Garden, 1734–1737

279

Hervey’s letter continued: ‘Handel sat in great eminence and great pride in the middle of the pit, and seemed in silent triumph to insult this poor dying opera in its agonies, without finding out that he was as great a fool for refusing to compose, as Veracini had shown himself by composing.’ Though freed from competition, the Nobility failed to profit. Porpora’s Mitridate was reported very full on the second night (27 January)21 but achieved only two further performances. Orfeo, a pasticcio, did a little better, but Ciampi’s Onorio did not survive its first night. Lord Lovel (25 January) heard that ‘operas don’t do so well’. In March, H. Corry, one of his agents, told Essex: ‘Tis generally thought the operas will hardly last till the next winter, the spirit which supported them seems to flagg very much’. The directors began to worry. They had probably never been unanimous; back in November 1727 Mrs. Pendarves said they were always squabbling.22 In June 1735 Lord Limerick had heard a (false) rumour that Lord Delaware had resigned, and suspected that he might join Handel, secretly if not openly. Some time during the winter the directors made an approach to Handel. Corry informed Essex on 9 March that Handel had got 500 or 600 guineas, evidently from the first three performances of Alexander’s Feast (according to the London Daily Post the first night could not have brought him less than £450), ‘which is more than the Academy ... have yet offered him’. At one point the directors apparently contemplated throwing up the sponge; on 6 April Richard Fawcett, an Oxford copyist, wrote to James Harris: ‘There will be no opera in the Haymarket next year, the managers don’t think of raising a subscription[;] whether they will come to Handel or no I have not heard’.23 Sir John Buckworth had other ideas. Declaring that ‘everybody is tired of Cuzzona’, he told Essex that he had written ‘to engage Faustina and her husband [Hasse] to make two Opera’s at fifteen hundred the two’. William Chetwynd heard (22 April) that they ‘are to be here next winter, if Handel does not think fit to accept of the proposals the directors have made’. Handel did not think fit, but Hasse and Faustina did not come;24 Hasse is said to have refused to compete against Handel. The directors remained at sixes and sevens. Burlington had already withdrawn. Lovel told him the following 24 November that he had been ‘seriously reprimanded’ by his fellow directors for subscribing to Handel’s opera. Towards the spring the prospect of the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha stimulated Handel into action. He had more than one motive: as a royal composer to celebrate a public event, and to win back the Prince’s favour. The Prince had not subscribed to his last two seasons, and the King’s Bounty had gone to the Haymarket.25 The first we hear of Handel’s plan is in Richard Fawcett’s 21  Scouten, London Stage, 547. According to the Daily Advertiser of the 30th ‘Above 50 People were oblig’d to go away for want of Room’. Unattributed quotations in this paragraph and the next are from Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 222–33. 22  See Chapter 1, p. 6. 23  Burrows and Dunhill, 14. 24  Though rumours of Faustina’s return reached the Daily Advertiser of 6 June (Burrows, ­‘Handel and the London Opera Companies’, 160, note 43). 25  All Handel’s performances in the 1734/35 season had been announced as by Royal ­Command of the King and Queen, which may have been enough to keep the Prince away.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 279

06/10/2006 14:52:21

280

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

letter of 6 April quoted above. He reported ‘the news of the Town’ that Handel ‘will have an opera very shortly and that he has a voice called Dominico [Annibali] who is now at Paris in his rode [sic] to England and is reckon’d a fine Singer’. The Daily Advertiser announced on 9 April: ‘We hear that Mr. Handel has engag’d several of the finest Singers from Italy, and that they are expected here next Week, in order to perform eight Operas, for the Entertainment of her Royal Highness the future Princess of Wales’. Eight operas presumably meant eight performances. Annibali was not expected till the autumn, but on the 13th the London Daily Post announced the imminent arrival of the young castrato Gioacchino Conti, and the spirits of Handel’s supporters rose. On the 20th Holdsworth tried to cheer up a depressed Jennens, telling him the ‘the Prodigious’ (their name for Handel) was going to undertake operas again.26 Two days later Shaftesbury communicated Handel’s opinion that Conti ‘exceeds the expectation he had of him before he came’.27 Jennens soon fanned the flame: ‘Those who have heard him say [Conti] is the finest Soprano they ever heard: & what is something surprising, he goes five notes higher than Farinelli, with a true natural voice, & is sweet to the very top ... & very great things are said of [Annibali’s] singing too’.28 The wedding took place on 27 April, but Atalanta could not be readied in time (the score was only completed on the 22nd, and according to the London Daily Post of the 29th ‘great Numbers of Artificers, as Carpenters, Painters, Engineers, &c are employed to forward the same, in order to bring it on the Stage with the utmost Expedition’). Handel therefore initiated his short season with a revival. His first choice was Alcina, in which (Shaftesbury told Harris in his letter of 22 April) Conti as Ruggiero was to have a new part except for ‘La bocca vaga’ and ‘Verdi prati’. But the late arrival of a singer caused a switch to Ariodante, which was performed twice, on 5 and 7 May. Conti can have had no time to learn his part, and Handel for the first time allowed a singer to substitute arias from his continental repertoire. Shaftesbury attended both performances and waxed lyrical, not over the opera, which was given in a grievously emasculated form, but over Conti, whom he compared favourably with Farinelli and described as ‘all things consider’d the best singer I ever heard & they say in the world’. (He was to say much the same about Annibali later in the year.) Conti had sung nothing of Handel’s except the Act III duet ‘Bramo aver mille vite’: ‘I really think between him and Strada I never was so delighted with any duet I ever heard in my life & it quite charmed the audience.’29 Atalanta followed a week later in a spectacular production ending with fireworks (the Lord Chamberlain, if it was his province, had not yet laid down the law on this subject). According to Benjamin Victor, writing to Matthew Dubourg a few days later, Handel’s appearance in the orchestra was greeted by ‘so universal a clap from the audience that many were surprized, and some offended at it’. But he also reported that ‘the two operas are, neither of them, in a successful way; and it is the confirmed opinion that this winter will compleat your friend Handel’s destruction, 26  HHB 4, 263. 27  Shaftesbury to James Harris, Burrows and Dunhill, 15. 28  Jennens to Holdsworth 27 April 1736, HHB 4, 264. 29  Shaftesbury to James Harris, Burrows and Dunhill, 17.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 280

06/10/2006 14:52:21



Covent Garden, 1734–1737

281

so far as the loss of his money can destroy him’. The Prince ostentatiously abstained from attending any of the performances of Atalanta; he commanded a play at Drury Lane on the first night and attended that theatre or the Haymarket Opera on most of the others.30 The Nobility’s contribution was a serenata by Porpora, La festa d’Imeneo (4 May). It made little mark: ‘the musick exceedingly fine, but the success not equal’ (Sir John Buckworth, 13 May). Others called it ‘sad stuff’ and ‘good for nothing’.31 According to Buckworth, the Nobility already had nearly a hundred subscribers for the following season, and with the Prince of Wales in charge of the subscription he felt confident. They still had Farinelli and Montagnana (who according to Mrs Pendarves ‘roars as usual’), but Senesino, Cuzzoni and Porpora had left. They had tried to re-engage Senesino, but (in Buckworth’s words) he ‘insists, that no one shall have more than him, which is raising one hundred guineas on his salary’; whereas Farinelli agreed to waive his benefit night, saving the company £400 and depriving himself of three times as much.32 The replacement singers, Antonia Merighi, Margherita Chimenti, Elisabeth Duparc (Francesina) and in spring 1737 Maria Antonia Marchesini – all shortly to sing under Handel – were regarded as of little account.33 Handel retained Conti, reinforced by Annibali (though he did not sing till December) and Bertolli, who rejoined him from the Haymarket late in the year. He had a much larger orchestra this season, in which John Clegg succeeded Castrucci as leader. Lord Shaftesbury had special praise for Giuseppe Sammartini (first oboe) and Andrea Caporale (first cello since 1734).34 Handel opened on 6 November 1736 with three revivals, Alcina, Atalanta and Poro. The Prince of Wales now did a complete about-turn.35 With the Princess he attended the first night of the season, for which the Royal Box had been specially decorated in white satin with festoons of flowers and ‘a flaming Heart between two Hymeneal Torches’, and commanded and attended the revival of his Wedding Opera. He and the Princess continued to patronise Handel’s house (as well as the Haymarket) for the rest of the season. At a performance of Alexander’s Feast on 16 March they ‘seem’d to be highly entertain’d insomuch that his Royal Highness commanded Mr. Handel’s Concerto on the Organ to be repeated’.36 After ignoring Handel for two seasons, he paid each company £250. The King too subsidised both.

30  See Taylor, ‘Handel’s Disengagement’, 167 and 179 (note 19). If the newly married couple had gone to Atalanta there would surely have been some mention of it in the press. 31  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 228; Burrows and Dunhill, 16, 18. 32  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 217. 33  Barbara Pisani, a soprano at the Viennese Court, was approached, but she demanded 1,500 guineas a season plus a benefit (Lindgren, Zamboni, 166). Handel had tried to engage her in the summer of 1731. 34  Letter to James Harris, 18 January 1737 (Burrows and Dunhill, 22). 35  Was he influenced by the Princess’s taste, or (more probably) by the King’s withdrawal (see below)? 36  London Daily Post, 17 March; Scouten, London Stage, 649.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 281

06/10/2006 14:52:21

282

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Mrs Pendarves had been quite hopeful on 27 November. She was contemptuous of the Haymarket repertory (‘dull Italian operas, such as you almost fall asleep at’) and of Merighi (‘with no sound in her voice, but thundering action – a beauty with no other merit’). Strada was singing better than ever, Conti had improved since the spring, and Annibali ‘has the best part of Senesino’s voice and Carestini’s, with a prodigious fine taste and good action!’.37 It was to be of little avail. The Russian envoy Prince Cantemir told a correspondent in Paris on 18/29 November that few people were going to Handel’s operas, though the Nobility did not open till five days later.38 Handel mounted twelve different works during the season, including three new operas (Arminio, Giustino and Berenice), a pasticcio (Didone, mostly from Vinci39) and a largely recomposed version of his Rome oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Only one, Giustino, ran for more than five performances. Holdsworth, writing to Jennens on 27 January, wished Pope would attack the taste that equated Handel with Hurlothrumbo (‘He might find Heroes enough amongst the Directors, and I doubt not but that you cou’d furnish him with sufficient materials’). And on 15 March: Handel ‘notwithstanding all the pains he has taken to please’ must be ‘convinc’d ... what a perverse, stupid, & incorrigible race we are. He wou’d do very well I think to lay quiet for a year or two; and then I am persuaded that his enemies will sink of course, and many of them will court him as much as now they oppose him’.40 Another Handel supporter, a Mr Pennington, was equally indignant: ‘Partys run high in musick’, he wrote on 19 February, ‘Mr. Handel has not due honour done him and I am excessively angry about it’. The Nobility had opened on 23 November 1736 with Hasse’s Siroe, on Metastasio’s libretto set by Handel in 1728, followed by Broschi’s Merope, ‘the worst that ever was composed’, according to Newburgh Hamilton as reported by Lady Lucy Wentworth.41 In the New Year they endeavoured to boost their popularity by introducing comic intermezzos, mostly by Orlandini, sung by two buffo singers between the acts. (Lady Lucy disapproved of them receiving £500 each for acting ‘that silly stuff’ two nights a week, thereby supplying a useful piece of information.) They tried another dodge on 26 April, when Marchesini made her début in Sabrina, a pasticcio based on Milton’s Comus put together by Rolli: ‘The Signora Marchesini’s Songs are distributed after such a judicious Manner by the ingenious Author, so as to rise gradually upon the Audience in each Act’.42 Did she begin them in the wings? On 10 March the Lord Chamberlain, anticipating new powers under the Stage Licensing Act (which came 37  She must have heard him privately or was going on his reputation; he had not yet sung in public. 38  Lindgren, Zamboni, 165, letter 367a. 39  See Strohm, Essays, 197ff. 40  HHB 4, 275, 277. 41  Scouten, London Stage, 629. Hamilton was steward to the Earl of Strafford and on occasion escorted his teenage children to the opera. Some of their reactions are printed in R. Loewenthal, ‘Handel and Newburgh Hamilton’, MT 112 (1971), 1063–6. The date of the last letter quoted on p. 1065 should be [1736/37]. The fourteen-year-old Lord Wentworth detected Hamilton’s partiality to Handel, but he wrote ‘impartial’ when he meant ‘partial’. 42  Scouten, London Stage, 663.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 282

06/10/2006 14:52:21



Covent Garden, 1734–1737

283

into force on 21 June), forbade four theatres, including Covent Garden, to act plays on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent.43 This did not apply to operas at the Haymarket, which went on performing Pescetti’s Demetrio up to Holy Week. It did not affect Handel, who had switched to oratorios. The Nobility continued with Veracini’s La clemenza di Tito, Sabrina, and a single performance of Duni’s Demofoonte, their season petering out on 11 June. The King, for whatever reason, had absented himself from the theatres since May 1736, when Benjamin Victor wrote that ‘his majesty will not permit his royal ears to be tickled this season’. However he came out of purdah in May 1737, saw Sabrina twice, and was expected to be present at the first night of Berenice on the 18th. Farinelli’s popularity had been dwindling; according to Colley Cibber he sometimes played to a house worth a mere £35.44 He left, never to return, breaking a contract with the Nobility for the following season on receiving a more lucrative offer from the King of Spain.45 It is hardly surprising that under the strain of four years of intense rivalry and almost continuous labour Handel’s health broke down.46 About the middle of April he suffered a seizure, variously described in the press as rheumatism (London Daily Post, 30 April) and ‘a Paraletick Disorder’ (London Evening Post, 14 May). Lord Shaftesbury wrote in 1760: ‘Great fatigue and disappointment, affected him so much, that he was this Spring (1737) struck with the Palsy, which took entirely away, the use of 4 fingers of his right hand; and totally disabled him from Playing: And when the heats of the Summer 1737 came on, the Disorder seemed at times to affect his Understanding’. Mainwaring enlarged on this: ‘And how greatly his senses were disordered at intervals, for a long time, appeared from an hundred instances, which are better forgotten than recorded’. Whether the affliction was rheumatism, a stroke or what would now be called a nervous breakdown, he recovered remarkably quickly, aided by a strong constitution. Shaftesbury sent James Harris periodic bulletins: ‘He is in no danger upon the whole though I fear or am rather too certain he will lose a great part of his execution so as to prevent his ever playing any more concertos on the organ’ (26 April); ‘Mr. Handel is surprizingly mended he has been on horseback twice’ (30 April); ‘Mr. Handel is better though not well enough to play the harpsichord 43  Hume, ‘Handel and Opera Management’, 355. 44  Quoted by Burney, History, II, 813. But according to Prince Cantemir in April (Lindgren, Zamboni, 166) his company was the better attended. 45  He admitted this to Burney in 1770 (loc. cit.). He forfeited an advance of £650: see ­Cantemir’s letter to him of October 1737, trying to balance reproof with approval (Lindgren, Zamboni, 168, letter 368d). 46  It may be significant that since the move to Covent Garden he seems to have resorted increasingly to his long-established practice of generating movements, especially arias, from ­passages in the work of others, as well as in his own earlier compositions. It is possible that, more than at other periods, he needed a push to start his engine, or that he was more inclined to allow alien ideas access to his subconscious mind. But two points are worth noting: it is the frequency of the borrowings in these operas, not their extent, that increases; many are quite short, and might never have been noticed but for the presence of undoubted borrowings from the same source. Secondly, the number of borrowings bears no relation to the quality of the opera. Two of Handel’s finest operas, Alcina and Serse, contain more borrowings than any of the others except Agrippina and Rinaldo.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 283

06/10/2006 14:52:21

284

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

himself which young Smith is to do for him’ (12 May).47 The London Daily Post had expressed a hope that he might be able to accompany Giustino on 4 May, but it is unlikely that he played at any performances after the first night of Didone on 13 April, including all four of Berenice. Before his season ended on 25 June 1737 Handel was again in negotiation with the Nobility directors, this time fruitfully. Lord Shaftesbury implies that the impetus may have come from Handel: ‘His Circumstances being in a manner ruined, he entered into an Agreement to Compose, for the Gentlemen at the Hay Market’. Whoever made the first advance, it suited both parties. Each had had a disastrous season. Shaftesbury wrote to James Harris on 11 June that despite the ‘invincible obstinacy’ of Lady Cowper and Delaware ‘the other undertakers are so desirous of hearing good music that I dare say things will turn out well. The terms proposed are two opera’s for which Handel is to receive a thousand pounds’.48 The implication is that the Nobility retained control of the King’s Theatre with Heidegger as manager and Handel as a hired composer. It was ‘the managers of the Opera in the Hay-Market’ who, according to the Daily Advertiser of 13 June, engaged Caffarelli, ‘a famous Singer from Italy, to sing in our Operas here next Winter’.49 Both the officials in charge of the Royal Bounty and the press continued to refer to the Haymarket opera as the Royal Academy of Music.

47  Burrows and Dunhill, 26–9. 48  Ibid., 31. 49  Burrows, ‘Handel and the London Opera Companies’, 160.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 284

06/10/2006 14:52:22

c h a p t e r 16 Ariodante

T

he Scene is in Edenburgh, and the Neighbouring Parts.’ In A Royal Cabinet Ginevra, only child of the King of Scotland, sits at the Glass dressing herself preparatory to meeting her betrothed Ariodante (a Vassal Prince) attended by Dalinda (a Lady of the Court), Pages and Damsels. Presently she rises from the Glass, and the Pages and Damsels go out. She tells Dalinda that her father approves of her love. Dalinda is going, but returns with Polinesso, Duke of Albany, who pleads his ardent love for Ginevra, though he intends to use her as a step to gain the throne. She scornfully rejects him – the furies could not be more odious in her sight – and sweeps out. Dalinda tells Polinesso that his suit is hopeless, looks languishing on him, and reveals her own secret love. Polinesso decides to use this to frustrate Ariodante’s suit: cunning is fraud if it fails, prudence if it succeeds. In A Royal Garden Ariodante sees his love reflected in the beauties of nature, but feels too humble to aspire to a Princess’s hand. Ginevra reassures him, and they pledge their faith. Whilst they repeat the Duetto, the King enters, and placing himself between them, takes Ariodante and his Daughter by the Hand. He blesses them, tells the kneeling Ariodante that he could not imagine a worthier son-in-law and successor, sends Ginevra to make ready for the wedding, and orders Odoardo (a ‘Favourite’ courtier) to ‘prepare the Pomp’. He formally offers Ariodante ‘the greatest Gift I can bestow, my Daughter and a Kingdom’. When they have gone Polinesso and Dalinda enter, talking together. He delights her by promising to renounce Ginevra’s ‘Power, her Nuptials, and the Crown’. He tells Dalinda, after Ginevra has gone to sleep, to dress in her clothes and do her hair in her style, striving ‘to be exact in each Particular’, and then to admit him to Ginevra’s apartments by a secret door in the garden. He silences her scruples by promising her his love. Lurcanio, Ariodante’s brother, pleads his love to Dalinda. She rejects him impatiently and, when he has gone, proclaims her love for Polinesso. The set changes to A beautiful Vale, Ariodante admiring the Pleasantness of the Place. Ginevra joins him, and they look forward to their marriage on the morrow. Ariodante calls the shepherds and nymphs who inhabit ‘these Retreats’ to celebrate their joy with song and dance. The Act ends with a love duet, chorus, and A Dance of Shepherds and Shepherdesses. Act II. Night with the Light of the Moon. An old ruinous Place, where is seen a private Door of the Royal Gardens adjoining to the Appartments of Geneura. Polinesso reflects on the fortunate fact of Dalinda’s love for him and waits for Ariodante to fall into his trap. When Ariodante appears, unable to sleep, Polinesso turns the conversation to Ginevra, affects great surprise that Ariodante expects to marry her, and says she has offered him (Polinesso) her favours this very night. To Ariodante’s angry

‘

  ‘Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?/ For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.’ (Sir John Harington).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 285

06/10/2006 14:52:22

286

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

challenge he promises ocular proof. Lurcanio enters aside, sees them together, and hides among the Ruins. Ariodante threatens Polinesso with death if he lies. He too hides himself among the Ruins, and Polinesso knocks at the Door, which is open’d by Dalinda in Geneura’s Apparel, observed with shame and horror by Lurcanio and Ariodante. Polinesso goes in, and the door closes. Ariodante goes resolutely to the door, draws his Sword, and puts the Pummel to the Ground to kill himself, when Lurcanio withholds him, and takes it away. He urges Ariodante to live for revenge; his life is too precious to waste on an unworthy woman. Ariodante thinks of Polinesso enjoying Ginevra and promises as a shade to haunt her perjured love. (No set change is indicated; perhaps Polinesso and Dalinda appear at a window.) Polinesso, watching Ariodante’s departure (va guardando per la scena), exults in his success. Dalinda looks forward to the joy of living with him. Polinesso derides virtue; it brings only unhappiness to those who live by it. The set changes to A Gallery. The King with Guards, accompanied by his Counsellors. The King is about to proclaim Ariodante his heir, when Odoardo brings a report that he is dead; he wandered distraught to the cliffs and leapt into the sea. The King laments: until now the sun shone on no happier kingdom than his. Ginevra enters in a state of agitation she cannot understand. The King breaks the news to her and Dalinda. Ginevra faints into a Chair and is carried off by Dalinda, Pages, etc. And the King going meets Odoardo, and Lurcanio. He offers Lurcanio sympathy, but Lurcanio demands justice ‘against the Guilty of my Brother’s Death’, the King’s unchaste daughter. He gives [the King] a Letter, describing what he saw in the garden and offering to maintain its truth with his sword against anyone who espouses Ginevra’s cause. The King throws himself Pensive in the Chair. Lurcanio urges him to prove he is a king as well as a father by enforcing the law punishing unchastity with death. Dalinda and the distraught Ginevra return. The King denounces his daughter as ‘a shameless Prostitute’, rises in a Rage, and goes out. Ginevra, bewildered, asks whom she is supposed to have taken for a lover, summons the furies from hell and begins to doubt her sanity. She weeps. Dalinda tries to comfort her, apparently not grasping the effect of her own part in the affair. Ginevra summons death to end her agony. Act III opens in A Wood. Ariodante, and afterwards Dalinda flying from two Assassins. Ariodante in different Habit puts them both to flight. Ariodante and Dalinda recognise each other with surprise, she thinking him dead. When he mentions the false Ginevra she tells him the truth about Polinesso’s and her own part in the deception. Ariodante interrupts her explanation and bewails his lost faith. Dalinda rails against the ingrate Polinesso; her fault was that she loved too well. In A Royal Garden Odoardo asks the King to grant Ginevra’s last request, to kiss his hand. He refuses, since no champion has come forward ‘to vindicate her blasted Honour’. Polinesso offers to do so in the name of duty, justice and love. The King relents and sends for Ginevra, who is brought in accompany’d by Guards. She pleads her innocence and begs to kiss his hand before her execution. She kneels, and he gives her his Hand. When he tells her Polinesso is to be her champion, she protests she would rather die. He says the challenge must stand, and embraces her, perhaps for the last time. While prepared to die, she begs heaven to defend her honour. The set changes to A Field appointed for Publick   In the source libretto he is attended by the Scottish Parliament.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 286

06/10/2006 14:52:22

Ariodante

287

Tournaments. The King on the Throne with Guards; Odoardo, Lurcanio arm’d, and then Polinesso also arm’d. People. Polinesso as Ginevra’s defender answers Lurcanio’s challenge. They fight, and Polinesso is wounded. At the King’s command Odoardo supports the Duke, and leads him off the Field. Lurcanio asks if any other challenger will defend the guilty; and the King rises from the Throne to descend, and enter the List. Ariodante enters with his Helmet down and comes forward to champion Ginevra. When Lurcanio tells him to draw, he refuses to make himself guilty (of fratricide) and raises his Helmet. In a scene of recognition and astonishment Ariodante calls for and obtains the King’s pardon for Dalinda’s unwitting offence. Odoardo reports that Polinesso confessed with his last breath. The King orders festivities. Ariodante hails the sun’s blaze after black night. Lurcanio renews his advances to Dalinda and wins her in a duet in which she confesses and renounces her former love for Polinesso. In An Appartment allotted for [her] Confinement Ginevra longs for relief in death. Her despairing thoughts are interrupted by a Gay Symphony and the entry of the King and the rest of the cast. Ariodante and Ginevra embrace, and the others leave them to sing an ecstatic duet. The final set is A Royal Hall, at the Bottom a grand Stair-Case, adorn’d and supported by Columns: on each Side of the Stairs below are two great Doors. The King with Ginevra and Ariodante by the Hand, Dalinda and Lurcanio hand in hand, and Odoardo; Knights and Ladies, Attendants on the King, descend the Steps. In the mean Time, by the two Doors enter Guards and People; Whilst the King descends, the Chorus begins, and the Knights and Ladies form a Dance. A chorus in praise of virtue and innocence follows the ballet. This story comes from the fifth canto of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, where it is narrated by Dalinda to Rinaldo after he has rescued her from two assassins sent by Polinesso, as in the opening scene of Handel’s third act. It is also Rinaldo who kills Polinesso in a duel (which takes place at St Andrews) after a fight between Lurcanio and the disguised Ariodante ends in a draw. (Rinaldo, perhaps speaking with Ariosto’s voice, vehemently denounces the barbarous Scottish law punishing sex outside wedlock with death.) Dalinda has been Polinesso’s mistress for some time and is so passionately in love with him that she even pleaded his cause with Ginevra when he promised to go on loving her after satisfying his political and dynastic ambitions by marrying the princess. Dalinda does not pair off with Lurcanio but leaves Scotland to become a nun in Denmark. The Argument in Handel’s libretto states that the story ‘is somewhat alter’d, to give the greater Force to the Passions of the Actors, and a more extensive Field of Variety to the Musick’; nevertheless it is the same in outline except that Ariodante plays Rinaldo’s part as well as his own.

  In the source libretto he is attended by the Scottish Parliament.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 287

06/10/2006 14:52:22

288

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel’s source was Antonio Salvi’s Ginevra principessa di Scozia, set by G. A. Perti for the Medici villa at Pratolino in 1708, when Handel may have been in the audience. He probably obtained a copy of the libretto at that time; one of its arias, ‘O scemami il diletto’ sung by Ginevra in Act I, found its way into Radamisto in 1720, and the opening lines of another, ‘Mi palpita il core’, introduced a cantata (HWV 132), dating from the early London period. His most conspicuous innovation was the addition of ballet suites at the end of each act; there are no dances in Salvi’s libretto or in any of the other operas based on it, and nothing that corresponds to Handel’s I.xii and xiii and III ult. As usual, he considerably shortened the recitatives throughout the opera. He tightened up the plot by removing inessential scenes for Polinesso and Dalinda at the end of Act II (xiii–xv in Salvi’s libretto) and for Ginevra and Odoardo at the start of Act III (Salvi’s i and ii). What happens in these scenes is reported or transferred elsewhere, or can be inferred. Odoardo, who has three arias in Salvi, is reduced to a bearer of messages. At one point Handel changed the order of events. In Salvi Polinesso’s challenge to Ariodante, provoking the latter’s defiant aria ‘Tu preparati a morire’, comes in Act I (ix) before Polinesso coaches Dalinda for her part in the deception. By transferring it to the nocturnal scene (II.ii) Handel arguably strengthened Act II at the expense of Act I. Handel retained twenty-six of Salvi’s forty-one texts, two of them slightly modified and one rejected before performance. He reduced Dalinda’s quota from eight arias to four and Polinesso’s from six to four, and increased Ariodante’s from four or five to seven, giving him two additional duets with Ginevra towards the end of the first and third acts. The 1708 libretto prints ‘Dopo notte’ apparently as a duet, giving the first three lines to the King and the last three to Ariodante. This may be a mistake; otherwise Ariodante would have only one aria in Act III, ‘Cieca notte’ near the beginning. ‘Dopo notte’ is an aria in Pollarolo’s setting. Characteristically Handel inserted two cavatinas, Ginevra’s ‘Vezzi, lusinghe’ in I.i and Ariodante’s ‘Numi! lasciarmi vivere’ in III.i, and created two more by reducing ‘Qui d’amor’ (I.v) and ‘Sì, morrò’ (III.vi) from da capo arias. He replaced Salvi’s final chorus and four arias, all in Act I, with   Salvi’s libretto became immensely popular, the basis of at least fourteen productions in eleven cities between 1716 and 1734 in settings by C. F. Pollarolo, D. Sarro, S. A. Fiorè, F. Falconi and G. Sellitto among others. It was set later by Vivaldi (1736), Wagenseil (1745) and Bertoni (1753). There had been earlier operas on the subject by G. M. Costa (Genoa, 1655) and G. B. Bassani (Ferrara, 1690). See Olga Termini, ‘From Ariodante to Ariodante’, Introduction to facsimile of ­Pollarolo’s 1718 setting; Drammaturgia musicale veneta 13 (Milan, 1986). Termini traces in great detail the ­history of the deception plot and its treatment by poets, novelists, librettists and composers from ­ Chariton of Aphrodisias in the first century up to modern times, including a perceptive ­account of Handel’s opera.   This opera was the occasion of some interesting correspondence between Perti and Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, who was not averse to putting pressure on composers; he sent back three arias with a demand for improvements. (See R. L. and N. W. Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978), 213–14.) It would be interesting to know how the Prince dealt with Handel’s Rodrigo the previous year.   But see below, p. 303.   Pollarolo had set this as a cavatina.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 288

06/10/2006 14:52:22

Ariodante

289

new texts, and added (beside the two cavatinas and two love duets) two choruses in the finales of the first and third acts. But three of the most striking moments in the opera, the interruptions to the duet in I.v and Ginevra’s ‘Manca, oh Dei’ in III.xi, and the duet in which Lurcanio woos and wins Dalinda in III.x are Salvi’s invention, a tribute to an admirable libretto. Of all Handel’s operas, Ariodante is perhaps the most accessible to an untutored modern audience. It is unique in several respects, apart from being his only opera set in the British Isles. It falls into none of the usual categories, lacking the supernatural element in the magic operas, including the other two based on Ariosto, and equally free from satirical comedy on the one hand and lofty heroics on the other. It tells a straightforward story of love, loyalty, ambition and sexual jealousy without complications of any kind. Although the scene is a royal court and the characters are aristocrats, the emotions that move them are common to all ranks of society. There are no political or dynastic tangles, no sudden switches of allegiance that defy probability or demand a suspension of belief. Unusually for the period, there is no subplot; all the characters are directly involved in the main action, which is projected with exceptional clarity. They include all four voice types, the tenor and bass not confined, as so often, to subsidiary roles. The happy end, instead of being imposed by convention as in so many operas of the period, is the natural outcome of the plot.10 If the climate of the opera resembles anything, it is perhaps that of a Shakespeare play, and not only in the fact that it shares its central incident with Much Ado About Nothing. Polinesso’s plotting and his cynical exploitation of the weakness and honesty of the other characters has a distinct flavour of Iago. And the superb music throughout the tragic second act justifies comparison with Othello.11   Three in succession, ‘Volate, amori’, ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ and ‘Con l’ali di costanza’, are concerned with images of flight. The significance of this, if any, is not apparent.   We do not know the identity of his literary assistant, if he had one; but his was certainly the controlling hand. 10  Not the least damning feature of the English National Opera production in 1993 was the corruption of the finales of the last two acts, with its introduction of Freudian irrelevance (Ginevra sexually interfered with by her father) and its depiction of the happy end as bogus. That even a director clamouring for the limelight should choose to undermine this beautifully balanced plot defies comprehension. 11  The story made a strong appeal to the first Romantic generation, inspiring nine operas between 1798 and 1812 (see Termini, ‘From Ariodante to Ariodante’), three of which, though now forgotten, were popular and influential in their day. Berton’s Montano et Stéphanie (1799), Méhul’s Ariodant (1799) and Mayr’s Ginevra di Scozia (1801) are based directly on Ariosto. Weber’s most ambitious opera, Euryanthe, with a similar central intrigue, owed not a little to Méhul’s opera and in its turn exerted a powerful influence on Lohengrin. One of Handel’s German biographers, Hugo Leichtentritt, can hardly keep Lohengrin out of his plot summary of Ariodante. It is not by chance that Ariodante was chosen as the basis of the only attempt in the nineteenth century to bring a full-length Handel opera back to the stage. This was ‘Ginevra of Sicily, Grand Serious Opera ... The Libretto written and the Musick arranged and adapted for Dramatic Representation by M. Rophino Lacy’, of which an undated manuscript vocal score was recently discovered by Brian

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 289

06/10/2006 14:52:22

290

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

It is not too fanciful to detect a Romantic quality in Handel’s music, reflecting the temper of Ariosto’s poem, in which he surely recognised a kindred spirit. The poet’s vivid imagery, the celebration of the pleasures and pains of love in countless variations, the freedom from moral preoccupation (not untouched by irony) with which the characters are viewed, and the strong feeling for nature and the open air – it is difficult to recall any incident in his vast epic that takes place indoors – all found a ready response from the composer. Handel was always susceptible to the charms of nature; we have only to think of L’Allegro ed il Penseroso. Many of his operas contain garden scenes or the like, though they do not always have a distinctive colour. In his three Ariosto operas the presence of the natural world is a living force. Not only does most of the action in Ariodante take place in the open air; the environment is constantly reflected in the music, for example in the wonderful little sinfonia depicting the rising moon that sets the scene for the nocturnal drama in Act II. This surely qualifies as a Romantic tone poem in miniature. As usual with Handel at the height of his powers, one of the most memorable features is the vitality of the characterisation. Ariodante perhaps is not the most subtle of his heroes. The plot does not require him to develop, except in his response to the very different situations with which he is confronted. He is a blameless hero at the start, and he regains that status at the end. But he is beautifully drawn. Handel endows him with one of the loveliest of all entrance solos, the cavatina ‘Qui d’amor’. Supported by a rich orchestral texture (up to five parts, with three violins, a light bass, and unison oboes strengthening the top line at beginning and end) it captures at a stroke Ariodante’s rapt wonder at his own happiness linked with the beauty of the palace gardens, one of the opera’s key images. His duet with Ginevra with its lilting 3/8 rhythm and pastoral pedals extends the mood, now mutual, happily crowned by the King’s intervention. Just when the ear expects a regular da capo there is a double surprise: the second voice enters sixteen bars early, and two bars later the King appears behind, interrupts the lovers in the middle of a word and joins their hands in blessing, the scene continuing in recitative. It is a perfectly judged moment that at the same time advances the plot: this is the King’s first appearance in the opera. ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ is a brilliant showpiece for Carestini with a bow to the new Vinci style. It adds little to Ariodante’s character but is apt enough and exhilarating when well sung. The finale, with its almost too insistent gavotte melody running through a second love duet, chorus, dance and repeat of chorus – varied by three other dances, including two delightfully tuneful Musettes – merely confirms the dramatic situation, giving outward confirmation of the lovers’ betrothal. But it carries an ironic charge, since we know that their security is endangered by the machinations of Polinesso. note 11 continued Trowell in the library of the Oxford University Music Faculty. Lacy (1795–1867), an ­enthusiastic Handelian, turned Ariodante into a typical Romantic opera after Donizetti, with many cuts and ­eccentric insertions, including a preghiera and a sextet, but using twenty-five numbers from ­Handel’s score, which he must have taken from the autograph. There is no record of a performance. See Trowell, ‘Michael Rophino Lacy and Ginevra of Sicily’ in The Handel Institute Newsletter, vol. 6 no. 1 (Spring 1995).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 290

06/10/2006 14:52:22

Ariodante

291

If Act I contains little action, Act II more than makes up for it. The deception scene, prepared by the moonlight sinfonia, is treated with intense vividness in the swiftmoving recitative, the emotional climaxes pointed by the placing of the arias. Both of Ariodante’s are superb. ‘Tu, preparati a morire’, his reply to Polinesso’s ­challenge, opens with a gesture of defiance; the first word, detached and followed by a rest at its every appearance, demands – or reflects – an emphatic accusative gesture from the singer, one of several such arias in the opera. The B section, unusually in the tonic (E) minor, in a new tempo and metre as Ariodante agonisingly considers the possibility that Polinesso’s words may be true, is at once eloquent and sharply contrasted, reinforcing the impact of the repeat, now deprived of its initial ritornello. ‘Scherza infida’, his reaction to the apparent betrayal, has become justly renowned in modern performances. The striking orchestral colour – muted upper strings, pizzicato basses (Chrysander’s ‘violini’ is of course a misprint for ‘violoni’) and pianissimo bassoons moaning discordantly in the middle of the harmony – conveys an overwhelming impression of grief. The relentless tread of repeated quavers in the middle parts, as in another aria of intense anguish, Alcina’s ‘Ah! mio cor’, throws the agonised cries of the voice into relief. The lovely cadential phrase in the relative major at the midpoint of the A section, as the quaver movement ceases for three bars, accentuates the heartbreak (Ex. 43). The short B section, suggesting sadness and resignation rather than the threats of the text, provides just enough contrast to make the return, again without its initial ritornello, even more moving. Handel provided no tempo mark for this aria; presumably he thought it needed none. Modern conductors are sometimes tempted to take it so slowly – it is a very long aria – that forward momentum is lost. There is a florid ornamented version in an unknown hand, conjecturally attributed by John Roberts to the young William Savage (c.1735–40), in the Royal Academy of Music (Mus. MS 139, fo l .70) (Plate 14).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 291

06/10/2006 14:52:23

292

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Ariodante’s music in Act III shows no falling off. The D minor cavatina ‘Numi! lasciarmi vivere’, its ritornello headed Sinfonia, strikes a mood of unalloyed tragedy as he wanders in exile, reflected in the sombre scoring for strings in low register, relentless dotted rhythms, and an exquisite move to the relative major at the last repetition of the text. The same rhythm in more angular form haunts ‘Cieca notte’: learning of Polinesso’s deceit, he turns his reproaches on himself. Despite the smooth E flat and four-part strings of the B section, the bare texture and jagged leaps of unison violins answered gruffly by the basses paint a picture of abject misery. There is one subtle touch: at the return to the A section Ariodante utters the first word ‘Cieca’ in notes of double length as if unable to shake off the image of darkness. ‘Dopo notte’ is another aria designed to display Carestini’s prowess, but it is much more than that. Electric cross-rhythms, huge bounds over two octaves by two-thirds of the violins in unison, and long vocal lines flowering in exuberant coloratura, generate immense energy as Ariodante’s pent-up tension is released. Towards the end of the A section, for the first and only time in the opera, Handel exploits Carestini’s full two-octave compass, taking in the top and the bottom A and the syncopated rhythm in a single far-flung phrase (Ex. 44). Ariodante’s third duet with Ginevra after her release from prison is conventional in form (though Burney detected in it ‘a plan and subject totally different from any of Handel’s other opera duets’) and its forest of semiquaver triplets have a facile look on paper, but it works well in the theatre. These lovers after all have much to celebrate. Ginevra, like Iphis in Jephtha,12 is a charming heroine whose innocence never becomes mawkish. In Handel’s best operas the first utterance of an important figure is always a key to character. He establishes Ginevra at once in the cavatina ‘Vezzi, lusinghe’, expressing girlish delight as she surveys her jewellery in the mirror (she has only recitative at this point in Salvi’s libretto). Bounding triplets dominate both the violin and voice parts. The music is not without subtlety; the ritornello ­ modulates from G major to A minor, and towards the end Handel combines the violin triplets with a new idea on the voice. This passage (bars 57–72) was a late substitution. Polinesso’s unwelcome attentions provoke a cabaletta sharply contrasted in mood and key (F major), beginning without a note of preamble; indeed the voice enters without waiting for the orchestra. The first phrase, ‘Orrida a gl’occhi miei’, with its instant drop suggests an indignant stamping of the foot. ‘Volate, amori’, like Ariodante’s ‘Con l’ali di constanza’ and their duet at the end of the act, merely reiterates contentment; Burney thought it ‘more wrinkled than any other movement in the opera’. The melody reappeared in 1746 in the victory song ‘From scourging rebellion’ (words by John Lockman). The phrase that ends the two main ritornellos recurs in Belshazzar’s drinking song ‘Let the deep bowl’, where perhaps it is more appropriate. It is some time before Ginevra’s appearance in Act II, when all has changed. ‘Mi palpita il core’ is that rarity, a da capo aria without an exit, the first of two 12  Handel remembered Ariodante when composing his last oratorio; he adapted the pastoral sinfonia in I.xiii for the crucial pivot of the drama, Iphis’s entry to greet her victorious father, and Iphis’s aria ‘Happy they’ incorporates a quotation from Ginevra’s ‘Io ti bacio’, inspired no doubt by the parallel dramatic situation.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 292

06/10/2006 14:52:23

Ariodante

293

in her part. The libretto says parte, but she remains. She is haunted by forebodings she cannot explain. The aria is very simple but goes straight to the heart. The hesitant rhythms, contrasted with the heavily stressed third bar, communicate both anxiety and puzzlement. The B section closes with a Purcellian cadence. After her initial faint she reacts to her father’s charge of unchastity in a wild accompagnato, the only one in the opera as performed. Sudden switches in harmony and figuration depict her mental confusion trembling on the brink of insanity: the low E flat chord after G minor as she invokes the furies is a vivid moment. The episode is rendered more poignant by the presence of Dalinda, who either dissembles or has not grasped her responsibility; the music suggests the latter. This scene – accompagnato followed by despairing E minor aria – was to find a notable parallel in the next opera, Alcina. But Ginevra is a gentler, more passive heroine. The initial violin figure of ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, which suggested to Leichtentritt an image of her wringing her hands, owes something to the corresponding phrase in Pollarolo’s setting (see below, p. 300). This is a mad scene fuelled by defiled innocence rather

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 293

06/10/2006 14:52:24

294

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

than guilt. The creeping violin phrases, sudden pauses and gnawing suspensions contribute to an aria of haunting pathos. Handel originally ended Act II here. He later evolved a most original finale, employing dance not as a diversion but as a powerful dramatic agent. Ginevra falls into an uneasy sleep, and a ballet-pantomime enacts her dreams. It falls into four sections: Entrée des Songes agréables, an exquisitely tender Largo for five-part strings without continuo in E major, Entrée des Songes funestes in grim A minor octaves, incorporating the ‘springing tiger’ motive used in Teseo and Tamerlano,13 Entrée des Songes agréables effrayés for two violins and viola only in A major, and Le combat des Songes funestes et agréables, the longest movement, appropriately violent and contrapuntal. This closes on a tentative chord, whereupon Ginevra wakes with a start and ends the act with a wild six-bar accompagnato in F sharp minor. The idea may have been suggested by a recitative in Salvi’s II.vii, omitted by Handel, in which Ginevra speaks of terrifying dreams, but the musical model was French, as its titles suggest: the Sommeil scenes in tragédie-lyrique, specifically that in Act III of Lully’s Atys (1676), where the participants are the same Songes agréables et funestes. Handel did not perform the scene in Ariodante, perhaps considering it too strong meat for a London audience, but transferred it to Alcina, where Chrysander printed it before recognising its source. Handel substituted the two dances in the HG score, Entrée de’ Mori and a Rondeau close to Rameau in style. Sarah McCleave has suggested14 that the Entrée de’ Mori may be an oblique reference by association to Othello, which had many performances in the same season. But the two dances are not integrated with the action, and are likely to strike anyone familiar with the dream-pantomime as an anticlimax. Certainly the latter is to be preferred, as it has been in some modern productions. Ginevra’s music in Act III continues on the highest level. When her father in obedience to the law condemns her to death, she accepts the sentence and begs only to kiss his hand. The little aria ‘Io ti bacio’, a mere eighteen bars including the da capo, packs infinite feeling into very few notes. After the unison opening, echoing the last phrase of her recitative (‘più son contenta’), the first chord, a pianissimo Neapolitan sixth, makes an impact altogether out of proportion to the means employed (Ex. 45). By contrast ‘Sì, morrò’ has a rich concerto grosso accompaniment with solo violin and cello, three ripieno violin parts, viola and tutti bassi. The design is unusual, falling into three unsymmetrical sections: a five-bar Largo in 3/4 accepting death, an Allegro in common time imploring heaven to save her honour (twenty-three bars, pausing on the dominant), and a nine-bar cadence and ritornello (there is none at the start), each section separated by a full bar’s rest. Ginevra’s trials are not quite over. Scene xi finds her in prison, preparing to face death in a touching little G minor arioso without ritornello or cadence. After five bars a cheerful sinfonia, opening in canon, signals the arrival of King and Court with a pardon. They 13  ‘Qual tigre e qual Megera’ and ‘Più d’una tigre altera’. Handel had previously used the ­motive with different associations in the cantata ‘Mentre il tutto’ and Agrippina (‘Fa quanto vuoi’). 14  ‘Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas: The Collaboration with Marie Sallé’, Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College, University of London, 1993, 240–1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 294

06/10/2006 14:52:24

Ariodante

295

tactfully leave the reunited lovers to sing their duet on an empty stage, their first meeting since the end of Act I. At first glance Polinesso’s music may seem tame for a double-dyed villain, perhaps the nastiest character Handel ever created. But he is no big bass blusterer like Garibaldo or Harapha. Handel wrote the part for a woman and emphasised the slyness and slipperiness of the character, consumed by ambition and lust for power. All four of his arias, two of them soliloquies, reveal a profoundly cynical outlook and a contempt for those who live by conventional values. Handel indicates this in various ways, chiefly by means of rhythm. ‘Coperta la frode’ in C major, a comparatively rare key in Handel’s operas, states part of his credo. The bold rising arpeggio at the start is answered by a snapping figure that suggests a gesture of contempt, amplified and extended in the ritornello after the A section (twelve bars after four at the start). ‘Spero per voi’, when he has successfully exploited Dalinda’s affections, begins with another rising arpeggio, this time in the bass, answered by a dotted rhythm breathing cocky self-confidence that prances through both sections jostled by suspensions (Burney thought Handel ‘more licentious in the use of discords than usual’ in this aria). The sudden Adagio at Polinesso’s first word and its later reappearance hints at reservations, uttered perhaps with a smile: he only hopes to reward her, he does not promise. ‘Se l’inganno’ is a second ‘credo’ soliloquy: if his deceit continues to prosper, he can dismiss virtue as an expedient that fails to work. This is his most powerful aria, combining cackles of triumph in the bursts of semiquaver triplets with menacing downward scale figures, sliding syncopations and suspensions. The opening, borrowed from an aria in Keiser’s Claudius, anticipates the duet ‘Go, baffled onward’ in Samson. The first phrase, slurred at the start, is pounded out with the first four notes heavily stressed in the ritornello after the A section, which picks up and develops a

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 295

06/10/2006 14:52:25

296

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

semiquaver figure evolved in the course of the movement. Polinesso’s Act III aria ‘Dover, giustizia’ reverts to the rising arpeggio motion, now in broken rhythm and undercut by a jerky figure in the bass that recurs at intervals throughout the A section. This is Polinesso on his best behaviour, but he cannot quite conceal the cloven hoof. Another characteristic jerky figure appeared first in bars 34 and 35; Handel later introduced it at several other points (bars 7, 20 and 44). The B section is weak and was subsequently cut, probably for the revival in the following year. Dalinda is the one character who is perhaps not completely realised. In Ariosto she is a licentious girl who has long been Polinesso’s mistress. Salvi in a preface to his libretto claimed that, while exaggerating Polinesso’s evil nature, he had tried to make Dalinda less offensive to the taste of his audience. Handel seems to have been in doubt whether to treat her as a flirtatious type or more seriously; the fact that all three of her original arias are in minor keys inclines to the latter view. In Act I she makes a direct appeal for Polinesso’s love in ‘Apri le luci’, a somewhat insipid aria in this context. She has scruples about her honour before agreeing to Polinesso’s plan, and firmly rebuffs Lurcanio before resolving to be true to her ‘primo ardor’. This last aria is an insertion by Handel, effective enough but not very revealing of character. ‘Se tanto piace al cor’ in II.iv is more expressive and carries a powerful charge of dramatic irony. She responds to Polinesso’s promise of love in an E minor siciliano, whose plaintive tone and minor key give the lie to the cheerful text, as if she dare not trust her good fortune – and of course she is right. It is a through-composed aria (partly based on material in the King’s discarded ‘Invida sorte amara’) in which the words are repeated several times and the music moves between various keys as if uncertain where to settle. Dalinda’s Act III aria ‘Neghittosi’ is a conventional vengeance piece; she rails against Polinesso’s treachery in a torrent of downward scales and brief breathless phrases. Her duet with Lurcanio, ‘Dite spera’, is one of the most original movements in the opera. Handel wrote it first as a da capo aria for Lurcanio. When he recast Dalinda’s alto part for soprano, he converted it into a duet by a process of grouting. The aria consisted of bars 1–35, an eight-bar ritornello equivalent to that at the end of the duet, a ten-bar B section to the words ‘Un si dolce e caro accento/ Darà giubilo al mio sen’, and a regular da capo. The revision turned it into an action piece, in which Lurcanio gently woos and wins Dalinda, who is at first understandably reluctant to change her allegiance; she does not enter till bar 37. It is virtually monothematic, with little tonal variety apart from a short passage in F sharp minor, but the forward movement is continuous in the form of a dialogue; only at the very end, for six bars, are the two voices heard together. It is unique too in other respects, the only duet in Handel’s London operas in which a tenor takes part, and Lurcanio is the only young tenor lover in any of them. Lurcanio is a sympathetic character without inhibitions, whether vainly pleading his love for Dalinda in Act I, urging his brother to live for revenge, or recalling the King to the duties of his office. All his three arias are admirable. ‘Del mio sol’ is full of rhythmic subtlety, constantly deceiving the ear with unpredictable placement of hemiola, varying the voice’s phrase-lengths, and interspersing fragments of ritornello at irregular intervals. The B section in the relative major, beginning over a pedal

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 296

06/10/2006 14:52:25

Ariodante

297

soon transferred to the voice, makes an attractive contrast. ‘Tu vivi’ is another aria opening with an emphatic gesture. The initial four-note figure with its distinctive rhythm permeates the whole piece, stressing the urgency of Lurcanio’s appeal. Stated twice by unison violins at the outset, it soon migrates to the bass, enunciates the first words of the text, and continues to punctuate all three parts, including the voice, at irregular intervals and different pitches. It forces its way into the B section, and takes control of the shortened dal segno ritornello, appearing three times in succession instead of twice, and some twenty times in all. This aria and ‘Il tuo sangue’, in the same key (G major) and full of brilliant string figuration and copious coloratura, invest Lurcanio’s character with great energy: whatever he does, he puts his whole weight behind it. The old King too is firmly drawn. Most of Handel’s basses are blusterers, especially in the Boschi era. When they display the wisdom of age, and particularly if they are fathers, Handel endows them with music of mellow beauty: one thinks of Abinoam in Deborah, Manoa in Samson, Caleb in Joshua, Lycomede in Deidamia. The type is rare in the operas; the King of Scotland is perhaps the outstanding example. ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ is a showpiece, but a very attractive one, a model of outer contentment; significantly Handel replaces the more strident trumpet of the text with a pair of horns. The autograph of this aria is a good deal longer than the printed version, with a ritornello of forty bars. Handel evidently smoothed its difficulties for Waltz, modifying the coloratura, removing drops of a tenth in bars 64 and 65 and later shortening it.15 The octave descent, first played by the strings in the ritornello (bar 11) and taken up by the voice in bars 41 and 45, becomes almost an obsession in the B section, repeated again and again by the violins at different pitches. The alternative arias for the King in HG II.vi present a puzzle. Both are in Salvi’s libretto, ‘Invida sorte’ sung by the King, ‘Più contento’ by Odoardo, and it seems probable that that is how Handel set them. ‘Più contento’ is ascribed to Odoardo in the performing score and all early copies. It is an undistinguished piece, more suited to a secondary figure than to the grief-stricken King. ‘Invida sorte’, a characteristic siciliano lament in F minor, is far finer. It strikingly anticipates Arsamene’s ‘Quella che tutta fé’ in Serse, in key, metre, mood and early unprepared switch to E flat. Handel may have felt that his use of its material in the soprano ‘Se tanto piace’ invalidated it, and for that reason transferred ‘Più contento’ to the King. But it is by no means certain that he did: no musical source gives it to the King, only the libretto, which could be wrong. The fact that it is for bass whereas Odoardo’s recitatives are for tenor is immaterial: the compass of Stoppelaer’s voice is uncertain (his single phrase in Alcina is in the bass clef),16 and there could have been a change of singer. ‘Invida sorte’ should be restored for the King, even if ‘Se tanto piace’ is retained. The finest of the King’s arias is ‘Al sen ti stringo’, his farewell to the daughter he has been forced to condemn. It is a haunting compound of tender love and anguish, the emotional intensity accentuated by the major key, appropriately E major. So perfectly 15  The upper F in the A section cadence (HG 28) may also have been for Waltz’s benefit. The autograph has only the low F. 16  There were two singing Stoppelaers at this period. It is seldom possible to be certain which is meant.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 297

06/10/2006 14:52:25

298

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

does it fit the situation that one finds with astonishment that Handel achieved it only after a long struggle. No fewer than four preliminary stages can be detected in the autograph. The rocking figure for flutes and violins over a pedal that gives the music so much character was a late afterthought added in the margin (Ex. 46).

Ariodante makes a powerful impact in the theatre, thanks not only to the interest of the plot and the vitality of the characters, but to the skill with which Handel binds the constituent elements, including orchestration and stage action, into a musicodramatic unity. There are no loose ends. As in Orlando, he relaxes many of the more restrictive bonds of opera seria. The da capo plan with its obligatory exit remains in place – it is needed as a framework and point of reference – but is treated with considerable freedom. Of the twenty-three full arias, sixteen employ the short-cut dal segno form, permitting greater flexibility. It is only in the comparatively static Act I that the stricter form predominates; it governs the first four arias and then almost disappears. Six cavatinas ease the progress of the action by not enjoining exits, and two short arias disobey the rule. Of the four duets, an exceptional number, only the last, after the plot has been resolved, is conventional in form. Four sinfonias, placed at crucial points, either prepare the ground for the scene to follow or are themselves part of the action. The lovely movement in I.xiii, richly scored with horns and independent bassoons, sets the pastoral mood for the celebration of the betrothal. The moonlight prelude to Act II,17 a mere ten bars comprising a rising scale of more than two octaves over a ground bass, is a miracle of economical evocation. The two short sinfonias in Act III, the summons to the duel (seven bars, the 17  Based on an aria in Steffani’s La libertà contenta (C. Timms, ‘What did Handel Learn from Steffani’s Operas?’, GHB 9 (2002), 58–9). Timms cites interesting links between Steffani and Keiser and hence with Handel.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 298

06/10/2006 14:52:25

Ariodante

299

trumpet’s first appearance in the opera) and the allegra sinfonia (twelve bars warmed by the horns) that releases Ginevra from prison, not only make a strong dramatic impact for all their brevity; they have a practical function, to cover a scene change. The Lennard copy places the heading for Scene vi in the middle of the trumpet sinfonia. Handel’s dramatic use of tonality is much in evidence, especially to mark scene changes (where the music went straight on). The switch to E flat after the C major of Polinesso’s ‘Coperta la frode’ gives a happy lift to the garden scene (I.v). A C major chord after B flat introduces the valle deliziosa of I.xii. The most striking instance is the opening of the prison scene (III.x), where the genial A major of the Dalinda– Lurcanio duet is followed by a cold chord of G minor, and a little later when the breezy allegro sinfonia breaks into Ginevra’s lament as it wanders away from its tonic. All three devices contribute to the pacing of the opera. If Act I contains a certain amount of marking time, it fulfils its function, to prepare the ground for the cumulative build-up of tension in Acts II and III. The scoring too is dramatically conceived. Horns and trumpets, like recorders, flutes and oboes probably played by the same players, have different functions, the horns in the first and last acts with pastoral and cheerful associations, the trumpets reserved for ceremonial occasions in Act III. Flutes and bassoons colour two of the finest arias. In the final scene, for the first time since Giulio Cesare, Handel deploys a double orchestra. The wind band on stage, exchanging antiphonal bursts of jubilation with the main orchestra, contributes to a scene of great splendour, visual and musical, described in the elaborate stage direction at the start. The lengthy ritornello (39 bars), coinciding with a complex scene change, was doubtless designed to accommodate a good deal of stage action. It must have been a feast for the eyes as well as the ears. The cembalo performing score contributes one interesting detail: ‘Scherza infida’ and ‘Io ti bacio’ are marked senza lute, an indication that the ­instrument was employed elsewhere in the opera. The opera has a definite tonal plan, based on G minor–major, which Handel seems to have associated with the dance. The G minor overture, followed by a first act almost entirely in major keys moving from G to F, a key prominent in this act but scarcely touched later, finds a tonal echo in the climactic ‘Scherza infida’. In Act II (D–E minor) and the first two scenes of Act III the minor mode predominates, especially in Ariodante’s and Ginevra’s parts (Ginevra has five consecutive movements in the minor between Act I and the final duet), gradually yielding to sharp major keys, with two duets in A, the most spectacular aria and the biggest chorus in D, and a final return to G. In an interesting paper read at an Ariosto conference at the University of London Institute of Romance Studies in November 1991 Lucia Mencaroni argued convincingly that Handel knew C. F. Pollarolo’s Ariodante (Venice 1716, revived 1718, when Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni took the roles of Ginevra and Dalinda) and adapted ideas from Pollarolo in ‘Spero per voi’, ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, ‘Cieca notte’ and ‘Dopo notte’. John H. Roberts18 noted similar points of contact between Handel’s opera and Giovanni Bononcini’s Xerse (1694, two arias) and La regina creduta 18  Handel Sources, vol. VIII.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 299

06/10/2006 14:52:25

300

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

re (1706, one aria). Remarkably, two of these arias, ‘Spero per voi’ and ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, are common to both groups (the third is ‘Il tuo sangue’). They throw a fascinating light on the way Handel’s mind worked. In ‘Spero per voi’ the common factors are the initial drop on the first word (a fifth in Pollarolo, a fourth in Handel), followed by a rest, a brief march up the scale in the next bar, and the repetition of a single note in the next line of text. The last two also occur in Bononcini’s aria ‘Porta le braccia il seno’ (La regina creduta re), where the resemblance to Handel’s is a good deal closer; the repeated-note figure followed by a falling semitone is a central feature of both (Ex. 47). In ‘Il mio crudel martoro’ Handel combines Pollarolo’s initial violin figure with its rocking fifths (but inverted)19 with two motives from ‘Sento che l’alma mia’ in Xerse, the violin’s climbing figure in bars 5 and 6 and the contour of the principal vocal melody, especially when it appears with violin suspensions in bars 18–19. These are by no means the only examples of Handel fusing two different sources,20 a ­procedure that must have been largely subconscious. All three parallels in Ariodante, like countless others, suggest that the source material lodged in his memory and in

19  Reinhard Strohm discusses the relationship between Pollarolo’s and Handel’s settings of this aria in ‘Händel und Italien – ein Intellektuelles Abenteuer’, GHB 5 (1993), 37–40. 20  See John H. Roberts, ‘Handel and Charles Jennens’s Italian Opera Manuscripts’ in ­Music and Theatre, 179ff and 202; and Roberts, Handel Sources, passim.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 300

06/10/2006 14:52:26

Ariodante

301

due course provided a springboard for fresh invention. With Handel borrowing (if that is the right word) could be a very subtle and creative process.

History and Text Ariodante was the first new opera Handel composed for Rich’s theatre in Covent Garden. His long reign at the King’s Theatre had come to an end in July 1734 when his five-year term was up and the theatre reverted to the Opera of the Nobility. He began Act I of Ariodante on 12 August, and on the 27th excused himself from accepting an invitation from Sir Wyndham Knatchbull through pressure of work, ‘being engaged with Mr. Rich to carry on the Operas at Covent Garden’; he completed Act I the following day. Deutsch’s statement that he was taking the cure at Tunbridge Wells from late July to late August appears to be the result of confusion with the following year. Two voice changes fell during the composition. Throughout the first two acts the part of Lurcanio, including all three of his arias, was written for soprano, probably the castrato Carlo Scalzi, who had been a member of Handel’s King’s Theatre company and had not joined the Opera of the Nobility but did not return to London. By III.vi, his first appearance in this act, Lurcanio was a tenor, though Handel first wrote a soprano clef before correcting it. Dalinda was an alto throughout the first draft of the autograph, almost certainly Rosa Negri, Maria Caterina’s sister, a new member of the company who sang in the revivals of November and December but turned out a disappointment.21 Handel must have been impressed by the high soprano Cecilia Young, for whom he expanded Dalinda’s role, adding ‘Il primo ardor’ and her part in ‘Dite spera’ and resetting ‘Se tanto piace’. It is uncertain at what point he composed the dances; it could have been very late, possibly after he had completed the opera with the exception of the last scene. As noted in the autograph, he ended Act I on 28 August with the chorus ‘Si godete al vostro amor’, Act II on 9 September with Ginevra’s aria ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, in both cases without any mention of dances. He dated the end of the opera 24 October, after an uncharacteristically long gap. He may have been awaiting Sallé’s arrival from Paris, possibly delayed, for he did not launch his new season till 9 November. At some point, probably when planning the 1736 revival (when the dances were omitted), he proposed to end Act I with Dalinda’s ‘Il primo ardor’, a late insertion for soprano. But Dalinda then reverted to alto and the aria was cut. Ariodante is first mentioned in the press on 4 November 1734 when the London Daily Post and General Advertiser announced: ‘We are informed, that when Mr. Handel waited on their Majesties with his New Opera of Ariodante, his Majesty express’d great satisfaction with the Composition, and was graciously pleased to subscribe 1000 l, towards carrying on the Operas this Season at Covent Garden.’ On 1 January the same paper reported Ariodante ‘now in Rehearsal ... The Scenes prepar’d for that 21  The flute doubles the voice at the octave only in the alto version of ‘Apri le luci’, perhaps to support a weak or insecure singer.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 301

06/10/2006 14:52:26

302

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Purpose are thought to exceed any Thing of the Kind that has yet appear’d’.22 The first performance took place on 8 January, with the following cast: ariodante Giovanni Carestini (mezzo-soprano castrato) ginevra Anna Maria Strada del Pò (soprano) dalinda Cecilia Young (soprano) polinesso Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) lurcanio John Beard (tenor) king of scotland Gustavus Waltz (bass) odoardo Stoppelaer (tenor) There were eleven performances (Deutsch omits that on 11 January). The only immediate reactions known came from the Royal Family, who attended the first night in force. On 14 January Queen Caroline wrote to her daughter Anne Princess of Orange: ‘Handel has not met with his usual approval. They say his opera is so pathetic and lugubrious that everyone who has returned from it has this opinion and has been saddened by it.’ On the same day her daughter Caroline wrote to her sister that the opera was ‘fairly full. It is not much approved, being among [his] most pathetic, in the style favoured by his new friend, who, as you know, has the misfortune that his advice is scarcely worth following, in affairs of money as well’.23 The new friend may have been Jennens, whose acquaintance with Handel and requests for copies of his works seem to have begun a year or two earlier though he had subscribed to his publications since 1725. Other indications confirm that Ariodante was not a success. No London paper mentioned the dances. Walsh, who published more or less complete scores of many Handel operas at this period, issued only a single group of eight Favourite Songs. No excerpts seem to have figured at concerts apart from a performance of the overture in Manchester on 8 January 1745. Doubtless the Opera of the Nobility with its starstudded casts, including Farinelli, Senesino, Cuzzoni and Montagnana, took away much of Handel’s custom. He revived Ariodante once only, on 5 May 1736 for two performances, as a stopgap when Atalanta, composed to honour the Prince of Wales’s marriage, was not ready in time. The score was sadly emasculated. Since Sallé was not available the dances were omitted, as were all choruses except the last. Thus all three composite finales disappeared. There were four changes of cast. Carestini was replaced by the high soprano castrato Gioacchino Conti, who either on account of his late arrival or because the opera was a late substitution, was unable to learn Ariodante’s arias.24 Handel exceptionally allowed him to replace all seven with arias from his current 22  Quoted by McCleave, ‘Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas’, 206; not in Deutsch. 23  Both letters quoted and translated from the French by Richard G. King, ‘Handel’s Travels in the Netherlands in 1750’, M & L 72 (1991), 384. But according to Donald Burrows (‘Handel and the London Opera Companies in the 1730s ...’, GHB 10, 160, note 41) the letters should be dated two years later, in which case the opera was Arminio and Handel’s new friend was the Prince of Wales. 24  See Chapter 15. He did however sing ‘Dopo notte’ (shortened) in Handel’s December 1736 revival of Poro.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 302

06/10/2006 14:52:26

Ariodante

303

Italian repertory which must have taken much of the stuffing out of the opera. Most of the new texts are marginally appropriate, but the immediate effect is lost and the emphasis misplaced. An aria beginning ‘Tremola qual la fronda/ Mobile qual è l’onda’ is a poor substitute for ‘Tu preparati a morire’. Nevertheless the London Daily Post and General Advertiser reported on the following day that Conti on his first appearance ‘met with an uncommon Reception; and in Justice both as to Voice and Judgment, he may truly be esteem’d one of the best Performers in this Kingdom’. According to the libretto Cecilia Young again sang Dalinda, but there must have been a late change. It is clear from both performing scores that the part, much abbreviated, reverted to alto pitch; it was probably taken by one of the Negri sisters. She lost three of her four arias, ‘Il primo ardor’, ‘Se tanto piace’ and ‘Neghittosi’, and the duet ‘Dite spera’ was cut back to the A section of Lurcanio’s original aria. Act I ended, as in Salvi’s libretto, with Lurcanio’s ‘Del mio sol’. In the most surprising cast change Polinesso was entrusted to the shadowy German bass Erard,25 who had sung in the first performance of Alexander’s Feast in February. This is a rare if not unique instance of Handel transposing an alto part down an octave, but it was almost certainly an emergency measure and Erard sang less than half of it. ‘Coperta la frode’ and the four preceding lines of recitative were replaced by ‘Affanno tiranno’, a bass aria composed for the revival of the macaronic Acis and Galatea on 24 March 1736, when Erard sang it;26 but the B section, and probably the A section as well, is cancelled in the performing score of Ariodante and it may have been omitted. ‘Spero per voi’ and the B section and da capo of ‘Dover, giustizia’ were cut. Only the A section of that aria and ‘Se l’inganno’ went down an octave. Reinhold, replacing Stoppelaer as Odoardo, sang ‘Più contento’. In Act III the scene changed to a Royal Hall before the King’s recitative ‘Figlia, innocente figlia’ (Scene xii), coinciding with the allegra sinfonia. ‘Vezzi, lusinghe’ and ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ were also cut, and the duet ‘Prendi da questa mano’ was reduced to its A section. An inventory of ‘Theatrical Properties and Scenery at Covent Garden in 1743’ gives a faint glimpse of the admired new sets: ‘back Arch of Ariodante’s pallace ... 4 [wings] Ariodante’s pallace ... 2 of Ariodante’s pallace, but are rubbed out and not painted ... front of gallery in Ariodante, a small palace border in do., a frontispiece in do ... a large border of Ariodante’s pallace ... a border to frontispiece in Ariodante.’ Ariodante’s stock has risen gradually over the years, at first with scholars and eventually after a long interval with the public. Burney wrote one of his more perceptive accounts, concluding that ‘though it has fewer capital and captivating arias than some of his preceding dramas, [it] abounds with beauties and strokes of a great master’. Streatfeild said much the same (‘a work which in grace and charm yields to few of his operas’) and, like Burney, picked out ‘Quì d’amor’, ‘in which Ariodante breathes his passion in strains of the most voluptuous tenderness’, ‘the wonderful orchestral picture of the rising moon’, and the little pastoral sinfonia in I.xiii, ‘a 25  Possibly to be identified with Erhard (Erhardt), who had sung in operas by Telemann in Hamburg and Brunswick in 1730–35. 26  The printed libretto for this revival, like that of the 1736 Ariodante, has only recently been identified: see A. Hicks, ‘Acis and Galatea 1736’, Handel Institute Newsletter, vol. 15 no. 1 (Spring 2004).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 303

06/10/2006 14:52:26

304

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

gem of the first water’. Chrysander and Leichtentritt had particular praise for the declamation and harmonic subtlety of ‘Io ti bacio’. Dent praised the whole score, ‘except for one or two very conventional castrato arias’, and made the point that ‘few operas of Handel exhibit so complete a unity of music and drama’. Nevertheless Ariodante was slow to attract modern revivals. An isolated production at Stuttgart in 1926 preceded the bicentenary year 1959, since when Ariodante has had more than fifty productions in fourteen countries. The first in Britain was at Birmingham in 1964 with Janet Baker in the title role, which she had previously sung in a memorable radio performance. There have been commercial recordings conducted by Stephen Simon (1971), Raymond Leppard (1979), Nicholas McGegan (1996), Marc Minkowski (1997) and Ivor Bolton (2001).

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 a 7) is at first glance confusing. Only Act I carries Handel’s foliation. As well as changes made in the course of composition, Handel modified it at different times to accommodate the altered pitch of Dalinda and Lurcanio and the inclusion of dances. He returned to it for the 1736 revival, adding higher notes for Conti in almost all Ariodante’s recitatives. Chrysander printed some of them, but ignored others, for example in I.vi (HG 22), I.viii (HG 30), II.ii (some on HG 63) and III.i (some on HG 98). In four places (HG 30, 63, 70 and 98) Handel changed recitative cadences in pencil or indicated transpositions or both, to introduce Conti’s arias. Most of the added upper notes for Dalinda in HG come from the main performing score (Hamburg MA/1006); some on HG 126 are in the autograph as well. Movements in HG missing from the autograph, all subsequent additions, are the soprano versions of Dalinda’s first and last arias, the whole of I.xi with ‘Il primo ardor’, the last three dances and repeat of the chorus at the end of Act I, the two dances at the end of Act II, and the B version of the Rondeau (HG 141). The insertions are fo ls 7 (substituted passage in ‘Vezzi, lusinghe’), 22 (B section of ‘Voli colla sua tromba’), 24 (two insertions in ‘Con l’ali di speranza’), 33 (sinfonia in I.xiii), 37 (Ballo, HG 57–8, both halves repeated), 46–7 (soprano setting of ‘Se tanto piace’, HG 74), 51 (Più contento’), possibly 62 (Ginevra’s accompagnato ‘Che vide? Oh Dio’ as printed in HG Alcina, p.107, followed by a second Fine dell’Atto 2do), 72 (substituted ritornellos in ‘Al sen ti stringo’) and 84–5 (duet section of ‘Dite spera’). Probably on first deciding to introduce ballet Handel added dance cues to the chorus ‘Si godete’ (HG 54): Si balla when the soloists enter at bar 9 and again at bar 19, non si balla at the choral entries, bars 17 and 21, and Si balla e seguitar per tutto il resti at bar 25. All are crossed out; he must have seen that the quick changes, the dance stopping for two and four bars while the chorus sings, would be ineffective. At this stage presumably he added the Ballo on fo l. 37. Originally the duet ‘Se rinasce’ ended with an Adagio cadence and the chorus, in which the soloists did not take part, was longer, the section from bar 17 to the end being repeated. The alto setting of ‘Se tanto piace’ (Larghetto 12/8 E minor), heavily corrected, follows the recitative of II.iv. Neither setting names the character, but the libretto as well as the sense makes it clear that Dalinda is the singer. At the end of Act II Handel used

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 304

06/10/2006 14:52:26

Ariodante

305

the blank verso of fol. 61 to make extensive sketches for the first three movements of the dream-pantomime (Plate 10): a different version (Andante larghetto e piano, G major, twenty-eight bars, incomplete) of the Entrée des Songes agréables (HHB 1, no. 31a, p. 407), the opening of the E major setting as printed (Larghetto e pianiss., top line only, twenty-five bars), bass line of the Entrée des Songes funestes, both sections, with upper parts added towards the end, and a sketch, mostly top line only, of the Entrée des Songes agréables effrayés. In Act III the substantial chorus with double orchestra ‘Ogn’uno acclami’ was even longer as planned. On fol. 93 verso Handel wrote an extension of the bass part (eighteen bars), but cancelled this and superimposed a Gavotte in three parts in G major, not in HG, but used in Arianna (HG 41) and Oreste (HHA 137). The Rondeau in HG 139 follows (version A), then (fol. 95) the first twelve bars of the G minor dance on HG 137 with clefs prepared for the continuation but not filled in. In the overture, where this movement also occurs, Handel changed the scoring, originally as HG 4, to that of HG 137. This strange dance with its stamping rhythm, like a gavotte beginning on the wrong foot, recalls the sailors’ dance in Dido and Aeneas and may have been intended as a touch of local colour, though it does not sound particularly Scottish. The Andante allegro dance in G major (HG 142) follows on the verso of the G minor movement. Four of the Ariodante dances reappeared in the Op. 5 trio sonatas. The autograph throws much light on Handel’s fastidious care for detail, for example in adjusting the internal balance of arias (‘Orrida a gl’occhi miei’ and ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ in particular) and in changes of metre and tempo. The duet ‘Prendi da questa mano’ (Larghetto in all sources) was begun in 6/8 and changed to 3/8 in the course of composition. ‘Volate, amori’ and ‘Tu vivi’ moved in the opposite direction from 3/8 to 6/8. Handel began the B section of ‘Tu preparati a morire’ with an Andante larghetto in 3/8, scrapped after eight bars. He changed the tempo of the alto ‘Apri le luci’ from Andante allegro to Andante, that of the soprano ‘Se tanto piace’ from Andante to Larghetto, that of ‘Cieca notte’ from Larghetto to Largo, that of the final dance and chorus from Allegro to Andante allegro; evidently he did not want them taken too fast. On the other hand the long chorus ‘Ogn’uno acclami’, originally Andante or perhaps Andante allegro, was speeded up to Allegro. The duet ‘Bramo haver’ has no tempo in the autograph or MA/1006, but is Allegro in the cembalo score (MA/1006a), Andante in the Lennard copy. Handel enlivened the intermediate ritornello of ‘Dopo notte’ (bottom of HG 116), replacing a tired threebar sequence with a syncopated rhythm on the violins. In the bass of bars 7 and 8 of ‘Qui d’amor’ he wrote a dotted figure on the first beat but cancelled it; as Burney nicely observed, ‘during the song, the base is silent till there is an opportunity for its saying something interesting’. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258 has autographs of the Musette on HG 59 with repeat signs, possibly cancelled, in bar 20 and at the end (pp.1–2),and on pp.3–8 the complete ballet-pantomime in Act II as printed in HG Alcina, pp.106–7, with a few differences. The Entrée des Songes agréables is Larghetto e pianissimo. As first composed Le combat des Songes funestes et agréables ended with four cadential bars after the first system on HG 107. These are crossed out, and the continuation written on a fresh page ending

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 305

06/10/2006 14:52:27

306

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

with the two bars before the Adagio (fourth system, fifth bar), followed by a commontime signature and the word Recit but no music. The 2-bar Adagio is the Alcina ending. Chrysander’s ‘späterer Schluss’ (B), added to the Alcina performing score in faint pencil, possibly by Handel, remains a mystery. Among the many miscellaneous sketches in Mus. MS 263 is a group (pp. 49–54) probably dating from autumn 1734 and intended as source material for the numerous dances in the operas of that season. Those connected with Ariodante, consisting mostly of a treble line with occasional fuller indications, are on p. 49, lines 1–2 (the Gavotte on fol. 93 of the autograph), p. 49, lines 3–5 (the Musette on HG 59), and p.51, lines 3–9 (the Rondeau on HG 96, preceded by another (?rejected) Rondeau in the same metre and key). Page 71, line 6, has a sketch for an unpublished dance in 6/4 time in the cembalo score (MA 1006a). (See Table 7, p. 309).

Librettos 1735. ‘An Opera; As it is perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden ... Printed for T. Wood, in Little-Britain, and are to be Sold at the Theatre in Covent-Garden. MDCCXXXIV (sic) [Price one Shilling.]’ 47 pp. Short Argument and Dramatis Personae in English only. The last line of the duet ‘Se rinasce’ is ‘Non isperi mai provar’. Chrysander gives the autograph reading, but both performing scores, parts and copies follow the libretto. ‘Se tanto piace’ in II.iv is for Dalinda, followed by Parte, ‘Più contento’ in II.vi by implication for the King; ‘Invida sorte’ is not present. Dances are indicated at the end of the first and third acts, but not the second. 1736. As last except date. 47 pp. The full texts of Ariodante’s substitute arias are present, but the music of only two has so far been found. ‘No, no chiedo’, the replacement for ‘Numi! lasciarmi vivere’ in III.i, comes from Conti’s role as Cherinto in G. M. Schiassi’s Demofoonte (Venice, 1735), a copy of which is in Brussels Conservatoire, MS 2355. ‘Il mio core innamorato’, which replaced ‘Cieca notte’, is in Yale University Music Library MS 78, a manuscript formerly owned by Charles Jennens, who added the note ‘Sung by Signor Conti in Ariodante’; unfortunately there is no indication of its composer or source. One other aria, ‘Tremola qual la fronda’, replacing ‘Tu preparati a morire’, is almost certainly the aria with similar text from Conti’s part of Annio in Leo’s La clemenza di Tito (Venice, 1735), but the music appears to be lost.27 Changes of cast and other alterations are listed above. Doubtless due to hurried preparation none of the inserted arias is translated in the English text.

Copies and Editions There are two performing copies in Hamburg, MA/1006 (principal score) and MA/1006a (cembalo score for the second harpsichordist, possibly used as the principal score for the 1736 revival). They differ in important particulars, and their relationship to each other and even to the autograph is not always clear. Both contain 27  Information in this paragraph supplied by Anthony Hicks.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 306

06/10/2006 14:52:27

Ariodante

307

pre-performance insertions and modifications for the 1736 material, though not the same ones. There are many signs of deletion, especially in the dances, and, as indicated by Clausen, some interchange between the copies in Act I. Clausen posits an Ur-Handexemplar comprising most of Act I (without Scene xi and the two Musettes), all in score, many movements of which were later transferred to the cembalo score; but there is no certainty that the last three scenes were copied at the same time as the rest. As it stands MA/1006 was all copied by Smith except one insertion (fols 15–17, dating from 1736, copied by S1), though not all at the same time. In the original copy Dalinda is an alto throughout, including the unpublished ‘Se tanto piace’, of which the last five bars remain, cancelled, on fol. 87 recto, and Lurcanio a soprano in the first two acts. Dalinda’s four soprano arias and her part in ‘Dite spera’ are inserted, and higher notes added to her recitatives (Chrysander did not print quite all of them, for example in I.i). ‘Del mio sol’ was recopied for tenor, but not his other two arias. The most interesting insertion, probably for the 1736 revival, is ‘Più contento’, not for the King but for Odoardo in the bass clef, which, together with the suppression of ‘Se tanto piace’, suggests that Handel may have restored ‘Invida sorte’ to the King. As first copied Act II ended with ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, followed by the dream-­pantomime and Ginevra’s final accompagnato, later removed and transferred to the performing score of Alcina; the Entrée de’ Mori and E minor Rondeau replaced them. Cuts are marked in ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ (producing HG version B) and ‘Dopo notte’ (indicated by the bracketed passsages in HG), the former almost certainly for insertion in the 1738 pasticcio Alessandro Severo, the latter for the 1736 revival of Poro. The dances in Act III are all insertions or replacements. For the 1736 revival the alto version of I.ii was restored, and a copyist’s note indicates that ‘Neghittosi’ (III.ii) was to revert to its alto key of G minor (but was subsequently cut), while ‘Il primo ardor’ and ‘Se tanto piace’ were crossed out and ‘Dite spera’ reduced to a torso. The cembalo score (MA/1006a) is more complex. It is often difficult to discern the order of insertions. The instrumentation of Act I alternates between full score and bass, that of Acts II and III is for bass only. According to Clausen’s conjectural UrHandexemplar the fully scored items were originally part of MA/1006. The copying of these sections and the rest of the manuscript was the joint work of Smith and S1 in close collaboration, with single contributions (insertions) from S4 (fols 10–11) and another (fol. 80, possibly S4 again). ‘Scherza infida’ and ‘Io ti bacio’ are marked senza lute, implying the participation of that instrument elsewhere. This copy alone reflects the most fundamental change in 1736, the replacement of all Ariodante’s arias. The instrumental basses of what Conti sang are present as insertions (see Plate 12), together with modified recitative cadences, as in the autograph. One such page (fol. 16) which also carries the bass of the Acis and Galatea aria ‘Affanno tiranno’ is bound back to front and was apparently pasted over. The Act I Ballo (HG 57) is followed by an unpublished dance, Air Lentement 6/4 in G minor, and the Ballo as well as the chorus was to be repeated at the end of the act. All this is cancelled. After ‘Il primo ardor’ Smith wrote Fine dell’ opera [sic] by mistake. Later this aria

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 307

06/10/2006 14:52:27

308

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

and preceding recitative were crossed out, and the end of the act indicated after ‘Del mio cor’. As in MA/1006 the alto version of ‘Apri le luci’ is restored. Apart from insertions, Dalinda’s part is copied mostly in the alto clef, but in III.ii and ‘Dite spera’ in soprano; sometimes both clefs coexist on different sides of the same page. Such inconsistencies in recitative are immaterial since the continuo part was unchanged. One anomaly perhaps conceals a change of plan: the recitative in II.vi ends in C major (Version A), followed by ‘Più contento’ in B flat (Version B). There is no trace of ‘Invida sorte’ in either performing score. The evidence of the manuscripts with regard to the dances is confusing, though they were performed only in 1735. Apart from the Shaftesbury copy every early source that contains any dances at all includes at least one that does not appear in HG – amounting to four in all – and no two sources give the same selection. The performing score contains one incomplete dance in Act III that occurs nowhere else. Some recur with reasonable consistency, but it is clear that Handel either regarded the dances as non-specific to any particular opera or repeatedly changed his mind. Their distribution is shown in Table 7. Incipits of the unpublished items are given by S. McCleave.28 The four complete early copies (Flower, Shaftesbury, Lennard and Granville) derive in the main from MA/1006 or a derivative of it, not always at the same stage. None contains anything attributable to the 1736 revival. All give ‘Più contento’ to Odoardo. Flower (S3, ?1735), probably the earliest, has Dalinda’s original recitatives for alto, her arias and additional or modified recitatives for soprano. Lurcanio, as in Shaftesbury and the aria collection RM 19 a 16, is a soprano in the first two acts, except in ‘Del mio sol’. ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ has the original forty-bar ritornello (?copied from the autograph) but the rest of the aria shortened as in HG. It is not clear where S3 found the G minor Bourrée for woodwind in Act III, which exists elsewhere in the Ariodante material only in the early Flower parts,29 unless it was subsequently removed from the performing score. In six arias where the sources imply oboes S3 marks the treble staves for violins only. Act I ends in D minor, omitting the repeat of the chorus. Jennens figured the bass throughout and supplied the final date. Shaftesbury (S1 to p.72, remainder S2, c.1737) and Lennard (Smith, late 1730s) give Dalinda’s whole part for soprano. The copyists evidently worked from a text with alto recitatives, occasionally writing an alto clef first and then correcting it, and making a few mistakes in the transposition. Lennard has Lurcanio for tenor throughout. Many arias in this copy have a da capo instead of dal segno, saving labour but damaging the text, a bad habit of Smith’s in some other copies. A second score in the Fitzwilliam, Mus. MS 89, dated 1767, was copied from Lennard. Granville (S5, early 1740s) has both Dalinda and Lurcanio regularised in the correct clefs. RM 19 a 16 (S3, c.1735), a presentation copy for a patron requiring only solo music and duets, has Dalinda as a soprano except in the accompagnato ‘A me impudica?’ and Lurcanio 28  ‘Handel’s Unpublished Dance Music’, GHB 6 (1996), 127–42. 29  It also features as the last movement of the Trio Sonata Op. 5 no. 6.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 308

06/10/2006 14:52:27

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 309

f. All under heading The Dances in the 3rd Act.

g. Headed The Arc.

c. Insertions.

d. Incomplete.

e. Cancelled.





















Flower

b. After Fine dell’Atto.

e

e





e



c

c

e



MA/1006a

a. Not in HG.

Lennard, Granville and RM 19 a 6 contain no dances.



a

G minor Dance [Bourrée]



c, d

a

G major Dance [Gavotte]

Andante allegro (HG 142)

c



c

Rondeau B (HG 141)

Rondeau A (HG 139)

G minor Dance (HG 137)

a

c

Rondeau E minor

ACT III Gavotte G minor

c

Entrée de’ Mori

ACT II Pantomime, ‘Songes’

 12 bars



Allegro D minor (HG 6a)

Ballo (repeated)

c c



Musette 3/4

Sketchesb

b

Musette 6/8

a

MA/1006

















Shaftesbury

18 b 6 { RM  Flower v. 65

PARTS

















f







g











Flower v. 64





















Flower v. 52–8

















Fitzwilliam 798

{

Air Lentement 6/4 G minor

ACT I Ballo (HG 57)

Autograph

Table 7. Dances

Ariodante 309

06/10/2006 14:52:27

310

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

as a tenor in ‘Del mio sol’ but soprano in his other two arias. The duet ‘Prendi’ has a full da capo. The overture (S1) appears to have been copied separately.30 The Aylesford (Flower) Collection possessed two sets of instrumental parts. Of the earlier set (c.1735) the second violin is still there (v. 65) together with an eccentric part for cello and cembalo (v. 64); the first violin, viola and bassoon are in the British Libary (RM 18 b 6); the upper wind and brass parts are missing, if they ever existed. This set covers the overture, all arias and duets except ‘Invida sorte’ and the alto ‘Se tanto piace’, one chorus (‘Si godete’) and many dances, in a chaotic order. The compilation was the work of no fewer than six copyists (S1, S2, S4 and three others), who employed three different numbering systems, yet many pieces are not numbered. Most arias have da capo instead of dal segno. The cello and cembalo part conforms for about half the contents, but then diverges (though its pages are numbered consecutively throughout). Unlike the other parts, it includes the G minor dance on HG 137, without its last four bars, headed The Arc. (?Archers). These parts were copied at an early stage, perhaps in 1735; but Dalinda’s arias are for soprano. The second set, copied later by S2 (c. mid-1740s), is more orderly and complete. It comprises violins 1 and 2, viola + violin 3, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2 including transverse flutes and recorders, trumpets 1 and 2, and cembalo; horns 1 and 2 at University of Maryland. They were derived largely from the autograph, supplemented from another source (not the Flower score). Like other parts prepared for Jennens they include rejected pieces: the alto ‘Se tanto piace’, ‘Invida sorte’, and the Gavotte in G in the last scene (see Table 7). They cover the entire opera, choruses included, with the exception of the overture, sinfonia in III.v and secco recitatives. ‘Apri le luci’ and ‘Neghittosi’ are in the alto keys (Version A). Lurcanio’s arias serve either soprano or tenor since the voice parts are in the treble clef. The directions for bassoon in the cello part are exceptionally detailed. The oboes as usual are confined to ritornellos; bars 9–13 of ‘Dover, giustizia’ are an exception, noted in the autograph. Except where the sources specifically direct otherwise, both oboes double the first violins, for example in ‘Volate amori’, ‘Il primo ardor’, ‘Mi palpita’ and ‘Dover, giustizia’, where the autograph and/or performing score have Tutti on the top line (incorrectly placed by Chrysander). They are included in ‘Del mio sol’ and the B section of ‘Voli colla sua tromba’, following Tutti in the autograph; in the latter at least they were excluded in the performing score. ‘Voli colla sua tromba’ takes the longer original version with forty-bar ritornello, except in the ritornello after the B section, which omits the first eight bars in HG. The viola part in the duet ‘Se rinasce’ (ritornello) and the flutes in ‘Al sen ti stringo’ are accidentally omitted. The Lennard ‘Miscellanys’ volume (Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 798, S5, c.1740) contains many of the dances in no particular order, headed Balli in Ariodante (see Table 7), intended perhaps to supplement the Lennard score. ‘Invida sorte’, omitted elsewhere, was copied separately for Jennens (who figured the bass) by S2 in RM 19 a 2 (mid30  The programme of a production at Herrenhausen in 1963–64 reproduced in facsimile an excerpt from a manuscript score in private possession, attributed ‘very probably’ to Smith. The hand, which bears no resemblance to Smith’s, is that of the English miniaturist who copied scores now in the Coke Collection and in Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 310

06/10/2006 14:52:27

Ariodante

311

1740s). The Flower Collection has a copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement (S2, mid-1740s), prefixed to the earlier score (v. 63); the fugue and the following movement are both Allegro, as in the earlier parts and some copies. Two collections of soprano arias in a neat copyist’s hand in Vienna Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek contain items from Ariodante. ‘Tu vivi’ and ‘Il mio crudel martoro’ in S.m.4033 may have been copied from Walsh, but four of the five in S.m.4034 are not among his Favourite Songs. Walsh published the overture and eight Favourite Songs – ‘Scherza infida’, ‘Volate, amori’, ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ (version A), ‘Voli colla sua tromba’, ‘Il mio crudel martoro’, ‘Io ti bacio’, ‘Tu vivi’, and ‘Al sen ti stringo’ – in haphazard order in September 1735, most of them with da capo instead of del segno. A flute arrangement followed in December 1735, the overture in parts and in keyboard arrangement in April 1737. Chrysander’s score (1881) contains a major error in II.vi, ascribing ‘Se tanto piace’ to Ariodante, who is not on stage, and in the previous recitative giving Dalinda an exit which is not in any source. For no discoverable reason he omits the alto setting of the aria (which Baselt in Händel-Handbuch 1 gives to Polinesso). The words, identical in both settings, make sense only in the mouth of Dalinda, who has the aria in the libretto and then goes out. The violin solo in bar 4 of ‘Coperta la frode’ (HG 16) is Chrysander, not Handel; the autograph and performing scores have V. pianiss. or V. pian. ‘Io ti bacio’ is Largo assai and the duet ‘Prendi da questa mano’ Larghetto in all sources, including autograph and performing scores. In 1960 Bärenreiter published a vocal score edited by Karl-Josef Fürth. It is a straight transcription of Chrysander, except that ‘Se tanto piace’ is correctly assigned to Dalinda (but after she has left the stage), the tempos of ‘Prendi da questa mano’ and ‘Io ti bacio’ are corrected and – without explanation – Ariodante is a tenor and Polinesso a bass. This chapter was written before the appearance of the HHA score.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 311

06/10/2006 14:52:27

ch a p t e r 17 Alcina

T

he scene is Alcina’s enchanted island, where the sorceress is living ‘in wanton Idleness’ with the paladin Ruggiero, whom she has bewitched. She has transformed her former lovers, when she tired of them, into rocks, trees and wild beasts. One of her victims is another paladin, Astolfo, shipwrecked on the island with his young son Oberto. Alcina changed Astolfo into a lion, but took pity on the boy and ‘suffered him to live, in his own Form, comforting him for the Loss of his Father’. Ruggiero’s spouse Bradamante sets out to rescue him, accompanied by her ‘Governor’ Melisso, who is equipped with a magic ring. Act I opens in a desert Place terminated by high cragg y Mountains, at the Foot of which opens a little cave. Bradamante in warlike Men’s Habit and Melisso also in warlike Habit have just landed. Alcina’s sister Morgana comes out of the cave to welcome them and looking tenderly at Bradamante, instantly falls in love with him/her. A Noise of Thunder and Lightning, the Mountain suddenly opens and breaks to Pieces, and vanishing, leaves to View the beautiful Palace of Alcina, where she, adorning herself, sits by Rogero, who holds a Mirrour. Oberto at her side, Pages and Damsels, who bring in different Habits, other young Knights and Ladies, with Chaplets of Flowers on their Heads, form the Chorus and a Dance. They acclaim this ‘Seat of endless Pleasure’. Bradamante and Melisso stay some time admiring the Magnificence of the Place and Pomp. Bradamante recognises Ruggiero, but Melisso silences her and advancing towards Alcina, introduces her as Ricciardo, asking for shelter till the storm is over. Alcina welcomes them and bids Ruggiero show them the beauties of her palace and gardens, including the place where she and Ruggiero first declared their love. Oberto asks the newcomers for news of his father. Bradamante (aside to Melisso) is sure that he will be ranging the woods as a wild beast. Oberto weeps and entreats their help. Ruggiero recognises Ricciardo as Bradamante’s brother, but says he now loves Alcina. When Bradamante and Melisso reproach him for abandoning his sword, shield and heroic reputation as well as his bride, Ruggiero, looking round for Alcina, tells them not to bother him. Oronte, Alcina’s general, accuses ‘Ricciardo’ of robbing him of Morgana’s love, draws his sword and challenges him to a duel. Before Bradamante can answer, Morgana enters and takes her part against Oronte. Bradamante, addressing them in turn, taxes Oronte with jealousy and says Morgana is suffering from her own complaint, unrequited love. Morgana tells Oronte she will do just what she pleases; her former vows are gone with the wind. The set changes to a Gallery, leading to the Appartments of Alcina, Rogero returning from seeking her. Oronte, pleased to find another   The Italian word ‘sposa’ can mean betrothed or wife. The Argument, in English only, describes Bradamante as ‘promis’d in marriage’ to Ruggiero and also calls him her husband. In this context the distinction is doubtless academic, as it certainly is in Ariosto.   This and a number of other stage directions are missing from the English translation in the printed libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 312

06/10/2006 14:52:27

Alcina

313

in his own plight, tells him that Alcina now loves Ricciardo and will soon change him (Ruggiero) into a stream, rock or wild beast. He taunts him with trusting the word of a woman. When Alcina enters Ruggiero accuses her of loving Ricciardo; she is both offended and pleased by his jealousy. Bradamante begins to flatter Alcina, provoking another outburst from Ruggiero, who tells her to go back and fight her country’s foes. Alcina assures Ruggiero that her feelings have not changed. Ruggiero castigates ‘Ricciardo’ both as a rival and as Bradamante’s brother. She says she is Bradamante; but Melisso, entering at that moment, denies it and tells Ruggiero not to listen. Ruggiero takes Ricciardo’s claim as a sign of madness: Alcina’s beauty is not for him. Melisso rebukes Bradamante for endangering security by her rash words. Morgana begs ‘Ricciardo’ to flee, since Ruggiero has persuaded Alcina to change him into a beast. Bradamante asks her to inform Ruggiero that ‘he’ cannot love Alcina since ‘he’ loves another, and when Morgana asks if it is she, not only agrees but swears it on oath, giving Morgana her hand. Left alone, Morgana rejoices that she has given her heart to one who returns her love. Act II. In A rich and splendid Hall of the Inchanted Palace of Alcina Ruggiero complains of Alcina’s cruelty in absenting herself even for a moment. Melisso enters in the Form of Atlante who had brought him up. Ruggiero goes to embrace him but Melisso repulses him, rebukes him for abandoning his noble destiny for wanton idleness, and puts the Ring (formerly Angelica’s) on Rogero’s Finger, and the Hall immediately changes to a horrid desart Place. Then Melisso resumes his former Shape. Ruggiero asks what portent has restored his vision. Melisso explains the situation and tells him to resume his military uniform but still pretend to love Alcina. Let him express a desire to go hunting in order to facilitate their escape. Bradamante enters, and Ruggiero, still taking her for Ricciardo, asks forgiveness. He cannot believe her claim to be Bradamante and denounces her as a phantom conjured up by Alcina. She calls on love to arm and avenge her; but if Ruggiero remains hard-hearted, let him take her life. Ruggiero is left in two minds: perhaps she really is Bradamante, in which case his doubts deserve the sternest reproach. The set changes to A Place leading to the Royal Gardens, with the Statue of Circe (who changes Men to Beasts) in the Middle. Alcina is summoning her attendant spirits and Circe to turn Ricciardo into a beast when first Morgana and then Ruggiero beg her to desist. Ruggiero says he is satisfied that Alcina does not love Ricciardo. Morgana assures Ruggiero and Alcina in turn that they have nothing to fear: she herself is Ricciardo’s beloved. Ruggiero tells Alcina he is tired of idleness and asks permission to take up arms and go hunting. She consents, but begs him to return soon. In a double-faced aria he assures her that he is faithful – but (aside) – not to her. Oberto, still inconsolable, cannot enjoy the pleasures of Alcina’s court. Moved to pity, she promises he shall soon see Astolfo. Oronte tells Alcina that the guests have worked on Ruggiero to plan escape. She sees why he wanted arms and swears revenge; but her heart is torn between desire to kill him and the love she still cannot banish. Oronte informs Morgana that her new lover is about to abandon her, but she takes this for a lie inspired by jealousy and goes out smiling and making him a deep bow. Oronte decides to dismiss her from his heart. Bradamante tells Oberto he will soon   Queen of Cathay, the heroine of Orlando.   This direction is not in the printed libretto, but in Handel’s autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 313

06/10/2006 14:52:27

314

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

see his father safe and the sorceress baffled, but warns him to keep mum. Ruggiero on his knees begs Bradamante’s pardon for his double error. They embrace, and she urges immediate flight from ‘this hateful place’. Morgana, who has been listening apart, comes forward in a fury, denounces them respectively as a liar and an ingrate, and departs angrily to warn Alcina. Ruggiero addresses the fair landscape of meadows, woods, flowers and streams, whose beauty is doomed to perish. In A Subterraneous Appartment of the Inchantress, with various Figures and Instruments for their Use, Alcina rages against Ruggiero’s treachery, though she still loves him. She invokes the spirits of Acheron and ministers of night and vengeance to prevent his flight. When there is no response she looks around anxiously (sospesa), at first incredulous, then angry, then desperate (infuriata), then imploring. She cannot understand why the spirits, though they are all around and can hear her, no longer obey her rod. Finally she goes out in a Rage, throwing away her Magick Wand, when divers spectres appearing, form a Dance. Act III. In A Court of the Palace Morgana returns to Oronte, but he rejects her, quoting back her words in Act I: his former vows are gone with the wind. She begs his pardon and his pity. He gives in: love heals the wounds it inflicts. Ruggiero and Alcina meet by accident. In answer to her reproaches he pleads his knightly virtue and honour. When she accuses him of loving another he says Bradamante is his wife (sposa) and rejects Alcina’s protestations of fidelity. She tells him to go: when he returns he will be loaded with chains, but since she loved him she cannot withhold her pity. Melisso tells Ruggiero the island is defended by armed squadrons and magic monsters; human strength alone will not evict them. Ruggiero, unwilling to leave Bradamante, compares himself to a tigress unable to leave her young exposed to the hunters. Melisso orders Bradamante to board a ship secretly prepared in a bay. She refuses till she has liberated Alcina’s victims; in the end heaven will reward faithful lovers. Alcina learns from Oronte that Ruggiero has defeated her troops and monsters and threatens to free the whole island. Left only with her tears, she wishes she could hide beneath the waves. The set changes to A Prospect of the splendid Palace of Alcina surrounded with Trees, Statues, Obelisks and Trophies, and Dens of wild Beasts; an Urn rais’d in the Middle which incloses the whole Power of the Inchantment. A chorus, evidently of victims, hopes for rescue. Alcina, with a Dart in her Hand, listens apart, as Oberto looks forward to reunion with his father. She confronts him; he is at a loss for a reply, but takes courage and reminds her of her promises. Alcina turns towards the Den of wild Beasts, and muttering some Words, a Lion comes meekly towards Oberto, and Alcina gives him a Dart, telling him to defend himself against the beast. The Lyon lies down near Oberto, licking his Feet. Alcina resolutely orders him to kill the animal, but Oberto recognises it as his father. Angrily Alcina demands the weapon back; Oberto retiring, turns the Dart on Alcina, mean while the Lyon returns to the Den. Oberto denounces Alcina and goes out, carrying away the Dart. Alcina tries to detain Ruggiero and Bradamante with alternate blandishments and threats. She claims to be moved not by love or jealousy but by pity and desire for their happiness, but they see through her designs. Alcina goes out in one direction, Bradamante in another. Ruggiero meets Oronte, to whom he gives [back] his Sword and his liberty. Ruggiero goes to break the Urn with the inchanted Ring, and Alcina hastily   From opposite sides in the Italian text, differently in the English.   Again translated differently.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 314

06/10/2006 14:52:28

Alcina

315

holds him. She offers to dissolve the charm herself, but Bradamante returns and goes to break the Urn, when Morgana enters and hinders her. Melisso demands the reason for the delay. Alcina and Morgana cry that they are lost and retire. Ruggiero throws down the Urn and breaks it, when the Scene wholly disappears, changing to the Sea, which is seen thro’ a vast, subterraneous Cavern, where many Stones are chang’d into Men; and among them is Astolfo, who embraces Oberto: They form the Chorus and the Dance, amazed by their deliverance. Another dance follows, and a final chorus of rejoicing. As the Argument in the libretto informs us, ‘the story is taken from the sixth and seventh Cantos of Ariosto [’s Orlando furioso], but partly alter’d for the better conformity of Drama’. Ariosto supplies the central limb of the plot, Alcina’s seduction of Ruggiero and his eventual escape, and one particular scene (II.i) in which Melisso, disguised as Atlante, opens Ruggiero’s eyes to Alcina’s true nature by means of the magic ring. These three are the only important characters in Ariosto’s account. Melissa [sic] is a benevolent magician, guardian of Bradamante’s interests, who not only masterminds Ruggiero’s escape but restores Alcina’s lovers to their human shape. Bradamante remains in the background; Morgana is mentioned in passing as a sorceress no less vicious than her sister, Oronte and Oberto not at all. Alcina transforms Astolfo into a myrtle bush, not a lion. Handel’s immediate source was a libretto by an unknown author, L’isola di Alcina, set by Riccardo Broschi, brother of the great castrato Farinelli, for Rome in the carnival season of 1728. Handel almost certainly acquired a copy of this libretto during his visit to Italy in 1729; he introduced one of its arias, ‘Mi restano le lagrime’, into the unfinished opera Titus l’Empereur (1731), part of whose music he adapted for Ezio in the following year. Broschi’s librettist added Oronte to the cast, retained Melissa (though less prominently), developed Bradamante and Morgana as important figures, and constructed the plot very much as we know it in Handel’s opera. The one surprising feature is that Morgana had more arias than Alcina, due perhaps to the rank of the singer. Since a papal interdict banned women from the public stage in Rome, all four female parts as well as Ruggiero (Farinelli) were taken by castratos. Handel’s changes were fewer and less radical than usual (a tribute to the libretto), but they are significant as an illustration of his technique in strengthening the dramatic content. He scarcely altered the sequence of events, retaining all nine scene settings, three in each act, and only changing Melissa’s sex to provide a role for a bass. In accordance with his usual practice of throwing the principal characters into relief he reduced Morgana’s quota from seven arias to four and that of Melissa(o) from three to one, and slightly abridged those of Bradamante and Oronte (see Table 8). In Broschi’s opera, in addition to the Act III trio, Bradamante and Ruggiero had a duet in the equivalent of II.xii. Handel introduced the boy Oberto as a late afterthought and gave an important role to the chorus. Whereas Broschi had only the   Except in subject it has no connection with Antonio Marchi’s Alcina delusa da Ruggiero, set by Albinoni for Venice in 1725 and revived in 1732 as Gli evenimenti di Ruggiero.   We do not know who his literary collaborator was, if indeed he had one. He always took the lead in such matters, and it is not impossible that he did the whole job himself.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 315

06/10/2006 14:52:28

316

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

conventional final ensemble for the soloists, Handel supplied four genuine choruses, for Alcina’s courtiers in Act I and her victims in Act III. Dances already played a part in Broschi’s opera, at the same points as in Handel’s. Table 8 Broschi

Handel

Alcina

6 arias, trio

6 arias, trio

Morgana

7 arias

4 arias

Bradamante

4 arias, duet, trio

3 arias, trio

Melissa(o)

3 arias

1 aria

Ruggiero

7 arias, duet, trio

8 arias (inc. cavatinas), trio

Oronte

4 arias

3 arias

Oberto

—

3 arias

Choruses

1

4

Balli

3

3

Of Broschi’s thirty-four aria texts (including the duet and trio) Handel retained the exceptionally large number of twenty-four, nineteen of them for the same characters and five (with a few verbal changes) for different characters in different situations. Of the ten texts not retained, six disappeared as a result of the reduced quotas already mentioned, and three were replaced, two of them by stronger, more positive arias for Alcina herself. Ruggiero lost one inessential aria, ‘Errante pellegrino’, in I.vii (viii). Handel introduced nine new texts, three each for Oberto and the chorus (the fourth chorus is a setting of Broschi’s final ensemble, ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’). The other three made striking contributions to the drama. Morgana’s ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, which brings Act I to an exhilarating conclusion, is a much improved version, words and music, of an aria in Handel’s 1708 cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ – another indication, if one were needed, of Handel’s involvement in the construction of his librettos. ‘Qual portento’ in the first scene of Act II, Ruggiero’s exclamation of amazement at the transformation wrought by the magic ring, derives its opening words from Broschi’s recitative and is correctly described in Handel’s autograph as a ‘cavata’10 i.e. a lyrical passage excavated from dialogue. The third new text, Bradamante’s ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ in the following scene, an indignant outburst as Ruggiero takes her for one of Alcina’s phantoms, replaced the milder and more plaintive ‘Sì, son quella’ (saying that she is the faithful woman he deserted for Alcina). This is one of the five texts that Handel kept but transferred to other characters. It is much more effective in Alcina’s mouth (I.x) when Oronte has aroused Ruggiero’s jealousy by telling him that Alcina is besotted with Ricciardo. ‘All’alma fedel’ (Bradamante, III.iv), the sense of which is that true faith will always be rewarded, was moved from Broschi’s I.xiii, where it is sung by Melissa to Bradamante. Alcina’s ‘Mi   Handel did compose an aria here, but removed it before performance: see below. 10  It is in Smith’s hand, but he must have got the term from Handel.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 316

06/10/2006 14:52:28

Alcina

317

restano le lagrime’ (III.v), when she has been deserted by Oronte as well as Ruggiero, is the last aria in Broschi’s opera (III.xii), after the climactic trio, and was sung by Morgana. No doubt Handel felt, correctly, that it would be wrong at this stage to divert the audience’s attention (and sympathy) from the heroine to her sister. Oronte’s ‘Un momento di contento’, a happy reflection after his reconciliation with Morgana in III.i, originated (with a different B section) as a conjugal duet for Ruggiero and Bradamante when the scales are removed from Ruggiero’s eyes and he recognises his wife (Broschi’s II.xi). At this point in Handel’s opera, immediately before Alcina’s great incantation scene (the same text in both operas), Ruggiero sings the famous aria ‘Verdi prati’, looking back nostalgically at the enchanted landscape, the scene of so much happy dalliance, that he is about to destroy. In Broschi’s opera it occurs not here but at the end of Act I and is sung not by Ruggiero but by Bradamante, in whose mouth it can carry none of the ironic overtones of Handel’s wonderful setting, since she has never been subject to Alcina’s magic powers.11 It is difficult to find serious fault with this libretto as Handel set it. Due to the usual compression, especially of recitatives, the action in Act I moves with improbable swiftness, though its course is always clear, and there are a number of exits without arias where the context seems to ask for one (Morgana and Oronte in I.vii, Morgana in II.ix, Melisso in III.iv, Oronte in III.v). In each case an aria in the source has been cut. Only in I.vii, which ends with a few lines of recitative immediately before a set change, is there a slight feeling of awkwardness. In III.viii Ruggiero gives Oronte back his sword, though we are not told how he acquired it. But these are minor matters. The libretto supplied a firm foundation for one of Handel’s greatest operas. Alcina completes the trio of his Ariosto operas, and is his last opera with a magic content. The magic is no mere scaffold to support the plot; the flavour of enchantment (in more than one sense) suffuses the entire score. As in Orlando, Handel drew inspiration from Ariosto’s vision of the natural as well as the supernatural world. In both operas, and in Ariodante, one is constantly aware of the background of nature and the open air. The combination made an evident appeal to Handel’s imagination, evoking a quality that one is tempted to call Romantic. No longer bound by the fetters of rationalism or morality, in so far as they extended to the operatic convention, he was free to depict the seductive delights of Alcina’s island with extraordinary vividness. He was able to exploit the fresh resources – ballet, chorus, the spectacular scenic effects associated with Rich’s pantomimes – acquired with the move to Covent Garden, with the result that in a good performance Alcina appeals equally to the eye, the ear and the imagination, forming a deeply satisfying fusion of opera’s component arts, music, drama, dance and spectacle. Burney thought that if any Handel opera were to be revived on the stage in its entirety, Alcina would be a suitable candidate.12 11  For another example of Handel achieving a stroke of rare genius by the simple process of transposing an aria from one character to another, compare ‘Chi t’intende, O cieca instabile’ in Berenice. 12  He reckoned that out of thirty-two arias (he must have included the trio and chorus) twenty-one are all’antica, Handel’s usual style, eight alla moderna, and three in a mixture of the two. It is not easy to understand how he apportioned them.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 317

06/10/2006 14:52:28

318

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The layout is carefully planned, in the libretto and in the music. The arias are so placed that, besides advancing the plot and developing the characters, they throw each other into relief, contributing greatly to the dramatic irony that permeates the score. This is particularly striking in Act II, where Alcina’s kindness to the boy Oberto (whether sincere or duplicitous) is immediately followed13 by her disillusionment in the great tragic aria ‘Ah! mio cor’, and that in turn by the trivial quarrel between Morgana and Oronte, the haunting nostalgia of ‘Verdi prati’, and the desperation of Alcina’s attempt to rouse her attendant spirits. The drama is in constant forward motion. There are no static arias that halt the action with a jerk; Handel turns the one simile aria, ‘Stà nell’Ircana’, into an action piece. While at the beginning and end of the opera the texture is attractively varied by choruses and dances, it is at first glance surprising to find that the arias conform more than usual to a strict da capo plan. There is not a single dal segno in the nine Act I arias and only six in the opera (though they include at least two outstanding examples) as against nineteen with exact da capo (twenty with the trio). But there is no risk of formal monotony. Three arias have B sections contrasted in tempo and metre as well as tonality, and four are addressed either to two characters alternately or partly aside to the audience. A distinct tonal plan is perceptible. Act I is firmly grounded in B flat (the overture and three arias, including the last) and the key returns in the climactic trio; Act II moves from G minor (two of Ruggiero’s solos) to the relative minor of G major, Act III from two movements in D minor to G major. All the dances (except the pantomime at the end of Act II, which moves from the E minor of Alcina’s aria to E major) and all but one of the choruses are in G minor or major; the fourth is in its dominant. While the setting is mythical and the course of events liable to supernatural disturb­ ance, the distinguishing feature of the characters is their intense humanity. Handel’s greatest operas tend to have one overriding theme which gives them their particular tinta, to borrow Verdi’s term; uninhibited sexual love in Giulio Cesare, conjugal fidelity in Rodelinda, the ties between father and daughter in Tamerlano, the betrayal of innocence in Ariodante. In Alcina it is the many-sidedness of love: consuming passion in Alcina herself, a more superficial relationship in Oronte and Morgana (at least until her last aria), conjugal ties in Bradamante, filial in Oberto, quasi-paternal or at least tutorial in Melisso. There is even a touch of the maternal in Alcina’s Act II scene with Oberto, where she invokes her ‘materno amore’. The magic setting seems, as in his other magic operas, to have sharpened Handel’s perception of human weakness and folly. Alcina may be a witch, but her emotions and desires are those of a mortal woman raised to the highest degree. Her music leaves no doubt that she is desperately in love with Ruggiero, whereas he is the victim of an obsession, since he is bound by a spell. Significantly he has no straightforward love music, which must be rare for a castrato hero. Alcina is the most fully developed of Handel’s sorceresses and one of opera’s great tragic heroines. Her character, drawn with marvellous subtlety, develops radically during the course of the action. At the start she is the sensual hedonist, rejoicing not in her magic powers but in reciprocated love. ‘Dì, cor mio’, its opening based on 13  A particularly telling result of the late addition of Oberto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 318

06/10/2006 14:52:28

Alcina

319

the first aria of the cantata ‘Dolce pur d’amor l’affanno’, is radiant with happiness. The graceful main theme and the violins’ creeping figure in thirds are Handelian formulae, treated in a relaxed lyrical style with a nice variation of phrase-length. ‘Sì, son quella’ exposes her vulnerability. The spare continuo accompaniment suggests intimacy, but there is more than a hint of anxiety in the key (A minor), her entry without ritornello, and the repetition of her plaintive first phrase at different pitches in both sections (Ex. 48).

It is an appeal for Ruggiero’s affection, the emotion intensified by the single fully scored ritornello after the A section, where the first phrase of the accompaniment suddenly gives birth to an expressive new idea with drooping intervals of a fifth, sixth and seventh. She seems to be holding out her hands in mute entreaty (Ex. 49).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 319

06/10/2006 14:52:29

320

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Her two great arias in Act II are a very different matter. ‘Ah! mio cor’ is a superb depiction of a woman torn between grief, love, injured pride and vengeful fury, all within the confines of a da capo/dal segno aria. The long sixteen-bar ritornello, a bleak procession of detached chords on upper strings while the bass plods wearily beneath, paints a mood of desolation, made explicit in Alcina’s unaccompanied first words. The A section is a prolonged lament, for the most part over restlessly shifting harmony punctuated by anguished discords as she calls on the stars and the gods. The vocal line is broken up into short phrases, as if gasping for breath, with special emphasis on the words ‘sola’ and ‘perchè?’ A rocking figure on the violins adds variety to the second full statement of the text, but the inexorable chords of the ritornello are never far away. When at last the voice falls wearily to the tonic C minor with a final ‘perchè?’ the upper strings break into a passionate yearning theme in the major key that, a little like the coda of Pamina’s ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ in Die Zauberflöte, hints fleetingly at emotions too deep for words – perhaps a momentary recollection of lost hopes – before lapsing back into the minor. This is a wonderful moment in its context (Ex. 50). That is not all. Suddenly Alcina remembers that she is a queen and a magician, and her thoughts turn to vengeance in a brilliant E flat B section, Allegro 4/4 after Andante larghetto 3/4, with rattling semiquavers on the violins. But it is no use: after a confident E flat cadence she is once more overwhelmed by memories of lost love, and the repeat begins with the cri de cœur of her first three words, unaccompanied, omitting the long initial ritornello altogether. Her lament now seems more desolate than ever.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 320

06/10/2006 14:52:30

Alcina

321

No less remarkable is Alcina’s scena that ends the act, beginning with a long accompagnato of thirty-nine bars, the only one in the opera. The opening chord, a fiercely repeated B minor following immediately on the gentle E major of ‘Verdi prati’, is itself a master stroke. At once a woman scorned and a sorceress at bay, she rages against Ruggiero in a series of wild modulations, then turns to the black arts and summons the spirits of hell. When they fail to appear she grows more and more frantic, calling desperately into the void in strange angular intervals of up to a tenth. In these eight bars Handel doubled the voice with the first violins and the two principal seconds, silencing the rest of the orchestra. The intention no doubt was to keep Strada on pitch, but this may not have been necessary: an early set of parts silences the violins as well. The E minor aria, addressed to the spirits and launched without a full cadence, is rich in suspensions, through which a slurred semiquaver figure creeps from instrument to instrument. The mood is one of incredulity, bitterness and despair rather than defiance – again she repeats the word ‘perchè’ (why?) – crowned by her breaking her magic wand. Act III traces the disintegration of Alcina’s personality. ‘Ma quando tornerai’ again expresses divided emotions. Meeting Ruggiero by chance, she contemptuously dismisses him and threatens him with torture when he returns, with an energetic melody (Allegro, F major, common time, unison violins and continuo) resurrected from an aria in the 1708 cantata ‘Mentre il tutto’ (HWV 130). But she still cannot forget her love: in the sharply contrasted B section (Largo, F minor, 3/4, four-part strings beginning with a wonderful chord of D flat) she makes one more appeal, inevitably in vain. He does not reply, and threats and anger surge back with the da capo. Her last aria, ‘Mi restano le lagrime’, acknowledges defeat: nothing is left but tears and hopeless longing to end her sorrows. Handel’s operas are full of pathetic siciliano arias in minor keys, but few are as haunting and beautiful as this. The everdrooping phrases in the gloomy key of F sharp minor and the intermittent pedals betoken an exhausted spirit. Handel progressively shortens the ritornellos: six bars at the start, three after the A section, a single bar after a brief but very beautiful B section in F sharp major which drops from the chord of G sharp minor straight back to the tonic. In the climactic trio, stripped of all dignity, Alcina humbles herself before Bradamante and Ruggiero, no longer threatening but imploring. The jaunty tune signifies clearly who holds the upper hand. Fully developed movements for more than two voices are all too rare in Handel’s operas; this trio, the voices contrasted one against two and beautifully blended, stands beside those in Tamerlano and Orlando as a masterly summing up of a dramatic confrontation. Alcina dominates the opera, but she is far from monopolising it. Ruggiero is one of Handel’s richest castrato parts. He too develops, but in a contrary direction. In Act I he is so besotted with Alcina that when Melisso and Bradamante try to recall him to duty and honour he shrugs them off in the flippant aria ‘Di te mi rido’. The main theme, wobbling round a single note, frequent sequences and recurring outbursts of laughing triplets are a sign that their remonstrances are water off a duck’s back. ‘La bocca vaga’ has one of the strangest openings of any Handel aria. After four bars moving from tonic (E major) to dominant and back a heavily stressed alien A sharp introducing a climbing figure on first violins threatens to wrench the tonality apart

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 321

06/10/2006 14:52:30

322

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

before dropping hastily back for the voice entry (Ex. 51). The nervy off-beat chordal figure, sudden plunge of the vocal rhythm from quavers to repeated semiquavers at bar 30 and later, and abrupt changes of harmonic direction, for example in the varied ritornello after the A section, give the aria intense rhythmic vitality and individuality. It is difficult to know how to interpret it (Leichtentritt considered it a comic piece in Neapolitan buffo style); does it reflect Ruggiero’s suspicion that Ricciardo is not quite right in the head, or (more subtly) an underlying fear behind his warning to Ricciardo that Alcina is not for him?

Ruggiero has no fewer than five solos in Act II. The first scene obeys and extends the convention that a cavatina does not entail the singer’s exit, by deploying two cavatinas, both for Ruggiero, to build up tension before its discharge in an aria. The first – a da capo aria in the libretto, but Handel ignored this – an expressive G minor Largo complaining of Alcina’s cruelty in absenting herself, is brusquely interrupted by Melisso on a chord of A major. The second, Ruggiero’s response to the transformation wrought by the ring, is introduced by a portentous striding ritornello that first occurs in the 1708 cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143) but finds its perfect context here (Ex. 52). ‘Mi lusinga il dolce affetto’14 reflects Ruggiero’s dawning suspicion that Ricciardo may after all be his beloved Bradamante. Its lilting melody and haunting sequences perfectly reflect his state of mind, enhanced by the move to the minor halfway through the A section. At his next meeting with Alcina, his confidence fully restored, he can afford to tease her. ‘Mio bel tesoro’ is a deliciously witty piece. In the same 6/8 metre as ‘Mi lusinga’ and a similar tempo he assures Alcina that he is faithful, adding aside to the audience ‘But not to you’. A pair of recorders, heard hitherto only in the Act I ballet, point up the irony, interjecting sly comments in thirds or sixths at irregular intervals throughout both sections. Of ‘Verdi prati’, 14  This text became a popular favourite; it found its way into the Catone in Utica operas of Vinci, Leo and Hasse (1728–31) and the 1734 revival (as a pasticcio) of Vivaldi’s Dorilla in Tempe, with varying modifications to the B section. It appears to have originated in Broschi’s libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 322

06/10/2006 14:52:30

Alcina

323

celebrated in its own right and for Handel’s splendid put-down of Carestini, who at first refused to sing it, it is difficult to speak in measured terms. Very simple, without a trace of counterpoint, the apotheosis of Handel’s long love affair with sarabande rhythm stretching back to Almira and Rinaldo, it is breathtaking in its context. The rondo form is singularly apt, as Ruggiero’s thoughts keep circling round, returning to the beauties of the earthly paradise he knows he must destroy. He is the only character in the opera whose utterances are not couched exclusively in da capo or dal segno form. He has only one aria in Act III, the brilliant bravura piece ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ with its panoply of high horns in G, oboes and four-part strings. It is a simile aria, but Handel ignores its oblique relevance to the situation and goes all out to display Ruggiero’s full stature as warrior and hero, for the first and only time in the opera. Bradamante’s male disguise introduces sexual complications almost de rigueur in opera seria and not quite the absurdity they may seem today, since vocally she could perfectly well represent a man. There is not much of the feminine in her music, and she scarcely emerges as a sympathetic figure; though all sterling resolution, as befits a warrior, she is not above deceiving Morgana with a whacking lie. There is a touch of self-righteousness in her first aria, ‘È gelosia’, in which she lectures the quarrelling lovers Morgana and Oronte. The emphatic phrase in octaves that punctuates both sections at irregular interval supplies a key to her resolute character. It is a lively piece, full of rhythmic energy, with a strong undercurrent of dramatic irony since Morgana’s love is for Bradamante herself. ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ in Act II expresses conflicting emotions when Ruggiero takes her for one of Alcina’s phantoms. The A section is a demand for vengeance, full of sparkling coloratura and highly effective in performance, if conventional on paper. The B section in the relative minor, with a change of tempo and metre (Larghetto 3/4 after Allegro 4/4), offers the one glimpse we are given of her gentler side. The aria successfully exploits da capo form, since at this stage revenge is her governing motive. Her Act III aria is a trifle sententious, but still in character.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 323

06/10/2006 14:52:31

324

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The second pair of lovers are no mere space-fillers. They too suffer the pangs of love, but on a more mundane level, and their comparatively trivial relationship throws the convulsive passions of Alcina and Ruggiero into relief. There is little or no falling off in their music so far as characterisation is concerned. Oronte is a shallow and somewhat cynical figure (and a turncoat in Act III). All three of his arias, in untroubled major keys, combine surface elegance with a faint but pervasive flavour of irony. He makes fun of Ruggiero for trusting the faith of a woman in the jolly rhythm of a jig with a nice use of pedal points on different notes of the scale. (The text of ‘Semplicetto, a donna credi’ in both Broschi’s and Handel’s operas originated in a cantata by Giovanni Bononcini, Gl’amanti felici, dating from the 1720s.15) When Morgana continues to show interest in Ricciardo, Oronte decides she is not worth bothering about; the cut of ‘È un folle’ suggests a prolonged shrug of the shoulders. He is quite willing to go back to her when she apologises in Act III, but there is no depth of feeling behind ‘Un momento di contento’, graceful as it is. We cannot suppose there was ever much chance of a satisfactory relationship. Morgana is a more subtle creation. A sister sorceress in Ariosto, she has no magic powers in Handel’s opera. Apart from Oberto, she is the only character who does not resort to some form of trickery or deceit; she is sincere throughout. Handel had a soft spot for coquettes, to judge from the music with which he endowed them; we have only to think of Poppea in Agrippina and Atalanta in Serse. He gives Morgana some particularly beautiful music. She has the first aria in the opera, which reveals her nature in short phrases and Scotch snaps suggesting gasps of pleasure as she makes eyes at the disguised Bradamante. When at the end of the act Bradamante responds positively to her love, her heart overflows with joy in one of Handel’s most captivating melodies. The situation is ironical, but there is no false sentiment in ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, whose material has interesting forebears in the cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ of 1708 and the aria ‘Un lusinghiero’ in Alessandro. Chrysander blundered in giving this aria to Alcina in his main text, a change forced on Handel in 1736 when he had an inferior mezzo-soprano for Morgana but wished (not surprisingly) to retain the aria. Morgana’s subsequent arias, both in minor keys, have extended obbligatos for solo violin and cello respectively, a sign of Handel’s close engagement. ‘Ama, sospira’ is rich in dramatic irony. She assures Alcina and Ruggiero in turn that Ricciardo presents no threat to either of them, since she herself – as she thinks – is the object of his affection. The shape of her short phrases seems to echo her first aria, and the spirited violin obbligato may reflect the irony of her situation or her flighty nature or both. At the same time the minor key perhaps hints at a deeper emotional undercurrent. There is no irony in ‘Credete al mio amore’, a heart-felt plea for forgiveness, the voice paired in eloquent dialogue with the solo cello. This beautiful piece, with its tender echoes between minor and relative major, suggests that Morgana’s character may have more depth than we supposed. Or is this just Handel’s instinctive response to a female in distress? Oberto’s three arias are admirably boyish, with mostly light accompaniments, expressing uncomplicated emotions: grief for his lost father, hope when Alcina treats 15  Lindgren, Bononcini, 751, 901.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 324

06/10/2006 14:52:31

Alcina

325

him kindly in Act II (the words speak of hesitation between hope and fear, but there is no sign of fear in the music), anger when she orders him to kill the lion. His instant response in ‘Barbara! io ben lo so’, ejaculating the first word before the ritornello, is conventional16 but no less effective for that. Melisso’s principal function, apart from trying to control the headstrong Bradamante, is to give Ruggiero the ring. He has only one aria, but it is strangely ambiguous. He urges Ruggiero to comfort the woman whom his cruelty has betrayed, and the music is intensely expressive, a siciliano in a minor key with long melodic phrases and poignant chromatic details. He should be thinking of Bradamante, whom Ruggiero has still not recognised, but his last words have told Ruggiero to pretend to Alcina that he still loves her, and on the surface the reference must be to her. Perhaps Handel blundered; but it would be in keeping with the complex irony pervading the opera if the ambiguity was deliberate. The choral and dance movements and the spectacular scenic transformations add not a little to the impact of Alcina in the theatre.17 The chorus, more than in Handel’s other operas of the 1734/35 or any later season, plays an integral part in the action, first as Alcina’s courtiers, later as her victims. In I.ii the G major setting of ‘Questo è il cielo’, full of lilting rhythms and pastoral pedals, paints an exquisite picture of life in the Elysian bliss of Alcina’s island; together with Morgana’s preceding aria and the ballet sequence that follows, it establishes the climate of the story. This was the second and definitive setting. The first in F major, based on the galumphing tune familiar in the organ concerto Op. 4 no. 4, is pleasant enough but sends the wrong signals; it would be more suited to a party of beer-drinkers in a tavern. The three choruses in Act II are sung by Alcina’s victims, not simply as a body but in ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ partly as individuals. Handel named them in the autograph (Plate 11); four have brief solos expressing wonder at recovering their human shape. The melody, with prominent hemiola, is a beautiful refinement of Apollo’s last aria in the cantata Apollo e Dafne, which likewise encapsulates a transformation, though in the opposite direction. The other two Act III choruses, ‘Sin per le vie’ and ‘Doppo tante amare pene’, are founded on dance rhythms, the latter on the immediately preceding Tamburino, which boasts the exuberant assistance of a sopranino recorder over a drone bass. As we should expect from the participation of Marie Sallé, the dances reflect French influence;18 hence the French language of most of their titles. For the ballet in I.ii Handel’s first intention was to use the Chaconne in A major composed for Radamisto, which had already done time in Parnasso in festa and Terpsicore, but he replaced it with the four-movement suite now in the score. In the copies the Sarabande precedes the Gavotte, perhaps because it makes a good run-in from the chorus. But Handel seems to have been in two minds on the matter; in the performing score the Gavotte, placed second, is directed to be played both before and after the Sarabande. The attraction of these dances requires no emphasis. At the end of Act II Handel imported the composite dance finale written for Act II of Ariodante but excluded from 16  Handel had treated the same word in the same way in two earlier arias, in the cantata ‘Cor fedele’ and Floridante. He recalled other details from both in Oberto’s aria. 17  Neglect of the visual element in a 1992 production at Covent Garden knocked much of the stuffing out of the opera. 18  See the discussion of Terpsicore in Handel’s Operas I, 221ff.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 325

06/10/2006 14:52:31

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

326

that opera. This has been doubted, but its presence in several copies authenticates its performance in Alcina. The entire section, including the end of Ginevra’s previous aria and her concluding accompagnato, was transferred from the performing score of Ariodante to that of Alcina. The ‘späterer Schluss’ added by Handel in faint pencil is difficult to account for; it does not appear anywhere else. The sequence is a powerful example of ballet d’action, but more effective in its original context, where it represents the dreams of the sleeping Ginevra, than in Alcina. Apart from the overture, whose delightful Musette19 and Menuet anticipate the flavour of the opera, the only other instrumental movement is the D minor sinfonia at the start of Act III, in which peremptory full chords in pairs poised against a skittering figure divided between the violins seem to foretell trouble to come. John Roberts in Handel Sources records nine borrowings, chiefly from Keiser and Giovanni Bononcini. None of them amounts to more than a few bars. One or two, as Roberts admits, are tenuous and may be coincidental: the rest could be the result of Handel’s memory retaining, perhaps subconsciously, a fragment of someone else’s work and using it as a starting point for fresh composition. One such example is the two-bar phrase that begins the unpublished aria ‘Bramo di trionfar’ and an aria in Keiser’s La forza della virtù. Handel also drew consciously on six of his early cantatas (and one aria in Amadigi), taking up old ideas and refashioning them, in every case to their advantage. The arias ‘Dì, cor mio’, ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ (retaining the initial words), ‘Qual portento’, ‘È in folle’, ‘Ma quando tornerai’ and ‘Barbara! io ben lo so’ and the chorus ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ make use of earlier material. Nowhere does this compromise the integrity or originality of the score of Alcina.

History and Text It is uncertain when Handel began the composition. The only date in the autograph is that of completion, 8 April 1735. The fact that Ruggiero’s suppressed aria ‘Bramo di trionfar’, possibly an insertion in Act I, became the basis for a new setting of ‘Through the land so lovely blooming’20 sung at the London première of the oratorio Athalia on 1 April suggests that the opera was begun well before April. Evidently impressed by the boy William Savage’s performance as Joas in Athalia, when according to the London Daily Post of 3 April he ‘met with universal Applause’, Handel added the character of Oberto and four new scenes at a very late stage between the completion of the main autograph on 8 April and the first performance on 16 April, when the cast was: alcina Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) ruggiero Giovanni Carestini (mezzo-soprano castrato) 19  The Musette was composed for the added ballet in the revival of Arianna in Creta in ­November 1734, and used again in the pasticcio Oreste a month later, before settling in Alcina. 20  It is clear from the word-setting that the Italian aria came first. The piece was parodied again as ‘Cease, O Judah, cease your mourning’ in the 1744 revival of Deborah. Arnold printed it as a supplement to his score of Athalia; it is not in HG, but is included in the addenda to the HHA score of Israel in Egypt, pp. 414–20.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 326

06/10/2006 14:52:31

Alcina morgana bradamante oronte melisso oberto

327

Cecilia Young (soprano) Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) John Beard (tenor) Gustavus Waltz (bass) William Savage (treble)

Six of the choral singers are named in the autograph and/or the performing score: Mrs Wright (soprano), Howard, Corfe and Tomson (tenors), Leveridge and Stoppelaer on the bass line (Plate 11). As in Ariodante, Marie Sallé led the dancers. The cast included all four principal voice types and only one castrato. Local soloists ­outnumbered Italians. Mrs Pendarves (later Delany) had already sampled Alcina. On the 12th with her sister she attended the first rehearsal at Handel’s house in Brook Street, and wrote a memorable tribute: ‘I think it the best [opera] he ever made, but I have thought so of so many, that I will not say positively ’tis the finest, but tis so fine I have not words to describe it. Strada has a whole scene of charming recitative – there are a thousand beauties. Whilst Mr. Handel was playing his part, I could not help thinking him a necromancer in the midst of his own enchantments.’ The London press did not mention the dances, but Sallé’s performance came in for criticism, apparently on account of her costume. According to Prévost she cast herself as Cupid and played the part in male attire, which did not suit her figure. A year before she had shocked the English by appearing ‘without skirt, without a dress, in her natural hair, and with no ornament on her head. She wore nothing in addition to her bodice and under petticoat but a simple robe of muslin arranged in drapery after the model of a Greek statue.’ In a Greek classical context this would appear eminently suitable but the English were shocked. She was apparently hissed at one performance of Alcina, and left the company at the end of the season. Alcina was Handel’s last operatic success, enjoying eighteen performances in the season – a total exceeded only by Admeto – despite a first night as late as mid-April. Lord Shaftesbury wrote in his Reminiscences of Handel that it ‘gave some turn in his favour, and a little recovered his losses’ in his struggle with the Opera of the Nobility. An anonymous ‘Philharmonick’ published a laudatory poem ‘On Mr. Handel’s performance on the Organ, and his Opera of Alcina’ in The Grub-Street Journal of 8 May. A sententious writer in The Universal Spectator of 5 July attempted to draw moral lessons from the opera, which he saw as ‘a beautiful and instructive Allegory’. On 28 July, in his earliest surviving letter to Charles Jennens, Handel wrote that ‘The Opera is a writing out and shall be sent according to your Direktion’. This is presumably the Flower copy discussed below. Handel revived Alcina for three performances on 6 November, with three changes in the cast: Carestini was replaced by the high soprano Gioacchino Conti, Cecilia Young by the mezzo-soprano Rosa Negri (Maria Caterina’s sister), Waltz by Henry Theodore Reinhold. Many transpositions were required. Of Ruggiero’s arias, ‘Di te mi rido’ (sung in F in 1735), ‘Col celarvi’, ‘Mi lusinga’, ‘Mio bel tesoro’ and ‘Stà nell’Ircana’ were put up a tone, ‘La bocca vaga’ up a semitone, and ‘Verdi prati’ up a minor third. Only ‘Qual portento’ and Ruggiero’s part in the trio retained

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 327

06/10/2006 14:52:31

328

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

their ­original pitch. Rosa Negri was a singer of no great attainments, and her part of Morgana was reduced accordingly from four arias to one and a half. ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ was tranferred to Alcina with necessary adjustments to the previous recitative. ‘Ama, sospira’ was cut, and ‘O s’apre al riso’ transposed down a major third. ‘Credete al mio dolore’ (A section only) must also have been transposed. Handel made many other changes, greatly shortening the opera, especially in the second and third acts. Since Sallé was no longer available, all the dances (except those in the overture) were cut, together with the chorus ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’.21 Seven arias – ‘Pensa a chi geme’, ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’, ‘Tra speme e timore’, ‘È un folle’, ‘Credete al mio dolore’, ‘Mi restano le lagrime’ and ‘Barbara! io ben lo so’ – were reduced to their A sections, and the cavatina ‘Col celarvi’ was shortened by the omission of the last six bars, removing the second couplet of the text. The recitatives in three scenes were shortened, before and after ‘È gelosia’ in Act I and at the start of Act III. The intention seems to have been to soften the bickering between Oronte and Morgana, but the excision of I.vi removed the anomaly mentioned earlier. The recently married Prince and Princess of Wales attended on the first night of the revival, when (as described in Chapter 15) the Royal Box was specially decorated and according to the London Daily Post the opera ‘was perform’d to a numerous and splendid Audience’. Lord Hervey’s impression of the third night was very different, despite the drastic cuts. ‘I am just returned with the Queen from a long dull Opera, and a cold, empty House’, he wrote sourly to Henry Fox.22 The Prince and Princess of Wales commanded a second revival at the end of the season, on 10 June 1737, when Lord Shaftesbury heard it ‘incomparably performed’.23 It was given twice, with at least one cast change: Rosa Negri was replaced as Morgana by a more powerful and accomplished contralto, probably Francesca Bertolli, who had defected to the Opera of the Nobility in 1733 but returned to Handel during the 1736/37 season. II.v for Alcina, Ruggiero and Morgana was reorganised, and ‘In mar tempestoso’ from Arianna in Creta in its original key of D inserted for Morgana, though not in the same place as ‘Ama, sospira’. A small pencilled change in the Arianna autograph, removing the fermata and rest from the voice’s A section cadence (bars 49–50), may date from this revival, for it appears thus in the cembalo score of Alcina. In III.i ‘Credete al mio dolore’ was replaced by ‘Vedrò fra poco’, the superb final aria for Alceste (Faustina) in Act II of Admeto, transposed down a tone to D. Both are big virtuoso pieces, wholly out of scale in their new contexts and inappropriate in the mouth of Morgana. Alcina was produced at Brunswick in February 1738, in an arrangement probably by G. C. Schürmann, and revived in the following August, when a new libretto was issued. Loewenberg’s statement that this revival was wholly in Italian is incorrect. For the many changes see below under Librettos. Handel included ‘Semplicetto, a donna credi?’ in the 1739 pasticcio Jupiter in Argos, and ‘Mi lusinga’ in his revival of Semele on 1 December 1744. The overture was played 21  There is some evidence that this and the following dance Entrée were cut during the ­original run. 22  Earl of Ilchester (ed.), Lord Hervey and his Friends (London, 1950), 255; not in Deutsch or HHB 4. 23  Burrows and Dunhill, 32.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 328

06/10/2006 14:52:31

Alcina

329

at Drury Lane on 6 December 1735. Four days later ‘some new Songs out of the Opera of Alcina’ were sung at the Crow Street Music Hall in Dublin, almost certainly by the Negri sisters, who had recently arrived for the season. Cecilia Young sang ‘Di, cor mio’ and ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ at Drury Lane on 15 and 16 December the same year. In a performance of Comus with music by Arne and Handel at Lord Gainsborough’s seat, Exton in Rutland, in June 1745 ‘Qual portento’ was sung at the Spirit’s invocation of Sabrina; it must have been highly effective.24 The overture featured at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 13 November 1744, at the King’s Theatre on 28 April 1745, when Miss Robinson, daughter of John and Ann Turner Robinson, sang ‘Mi lusinga’ for her own benefit, and at a King’s Arms concert on 17 October 1757. The castrato Ricciarelli sang ‘Verdi prati’ at a Musicians Fund benefit concert at the King’s Theatre on 24 March 1757. The same aria, with parodied words (‘Étant jeunette’), appeared in a Paris pasticcio, Les Ensorcelés ou Jeanott et Jeanette on 1 September the same year. On 19 October 1757 Frasi sang ‘Ombre pallide’ at a Castle Society concert at Haberdashers Hall. An inventory of property and scenery in store at Covent Garden in 1743 included ‘the falling rock in Alcina, four peices [sic]’. Alcina was rather slow to join the modern revival movement. There were four German productions before the war, the first at Leipzig in 1928. The first British production, by the Handel Opera Society (with Joan Sutherland in the title role), led to popular revivals in Stockholm and Venice, one of which mutilated the score, the other the plot. Since 1966 revivals have rapidly multiplied, reaching a total of nearly a hundred. There have been five commercial recordings, conducted by Ferdinand Leitner (1959), Nicola Rescigno (1960), Richard Bonynge (1962), Richard Hickox (1985) and William Christie (1999). Bonynge includes a cut version of ‘Bramo di trionfar’, in context; Hickox, who alone presents an unabridged 1735 text, adds the complete aria in an appendix together with the F major version of the chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’.

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 a 4) is at first glance a confusing document, with only a few incomplete and chaotic gathering numbers. As with Poro, Handel for the greater part of two acts (until II.x) composed the arias first, beginning each on a fresh page. Smith then prepared staves, clefs and verbal text of the recitatives, using any space left over at the end of each aria and sometimes continuing on an inserted page, whose verso carried scrapped material not necessarily linked with Alcina. Handel added the notes. He wrote the rest of the opera in sequence in the usual manner. The autograph contains no dances (except in the overture), but Handel supplied cues in four places: after the F major setting of the chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’ in I.ii (Segue il Ballo Chaccone [sic] ex A#), at the end of Acts I (not carried out) and II, and before the final chorus (Entrée Tambur). The following folios are insertions: 7–8 (G major setting of ‘Questo è il cielo’), 13, 16 (the greater part of Oberto’s scene in I.iii, added after the composition of the recitatives, concluded on fol. 86; Oberto’s later scenes follow on fols 86–90 after the 24  See A. Hicks, ‘Handel’s Music for Comus’, MT 117 (1976), 28ff.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 329

06/10/2006 14:52:31

330

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

final chorus with date of completion), 21, 28, 30, 36, 44, probably 35, and possibly 22–5. Three of these leaves are scrap paper used for the continuation of recitatives: the verso of 13 has a heading for Act II and staves prepared for a sinfonia but no music; that of 28 has the first six notes, cancelled, for the bass of an Air Lentement in B flat, 6/4 time, complete in the Hamburg harpsichord score of Ariodante but unpublished, written by Smith; that of 30 has the cancelled text of a recitative in Act III Scene i of the pasticcio Oreste (produced in December 1734), also in Smith’s hand, beginning in the middle of a word and breaking off halfway down the page. Fol. 21 has the continuation of the recitatives of I.vii (HG 36), followed by a short unpublished recitative for Ruggiero, ‘Vo cercando la bella ragion della mia pace, vieni, deh vieni a me, caro mio bene’. This was to introduce the aria ‘Bramo di trionfar’, which follows on 22–5. It is a brilliant and taxing piece full of triplet semiquavers for violins and voice, written in B flat but marked for transposition to A.25 It is dramatically out of proportion (and arguably out of character) in this context, and Handel was wise to cut it. This bifolium has a different rastrum from the bulk of the autograph, shared only by three insertions (28, 36 and 44). If the aborted sinfonia on 13 was intended for Alcina, 35 (‘Col celarvi’) was also an insertion. ‘Di te mi rido’ is in F major. Handel began this aria in notes of double length, and ‘Mi lusinga’ in 3/8. He cancelled opening drafts for ‘Sì, son quella’ (twelve bars in 3/8) and ‘Pensa a chi geme’ (six bars). He shortened the first three ritornellos of ‘Mi lusinga’ at the filling up stage, and made a substantial cut of thirteen bars in the A section of the trio, besides contracting both ritornellos. The violins in ‘Mio bel tesoro’ are muted, as in an early set of parts. The oboe parts in the Act III sinfonia were an afterthought. The stage directions in the lion scene differ slightly from both the libretto and HG 135. In the chorus ‘Dall’orror di cieca notte’ Handel hesitated between Stoppelaer and Waltz for the solo ‘Io fronda’, finally settling for the former. In the final chorus the soprano line is marked Hautb. colla parte in the autograph, performing score and all copies. ‘La bocca vaga’ and ‘Verdi prati’ are clearly marked Larghetto or Larghetta. A number of tempo changes may throw light on Handel’s intentions: ‘O s’apre al riso’ from Allegro to Andante; ‘Questo è il cielo’ (G major) Andante to Larghetto; ‘Dì, cor mio’ ?Larghetto to Andante larghetto; ‘Chi m’insegna’ Larghetto (or Larghetto andante) to Andante; ‘Bramo di trionfar’ Allegro to Andante allegro; ‘Di te mi rido’ no tempo in autograph or performing score, Andante in most copies; ‘È gelosia’ no tempo in autograph, Allegro in performing score and some copies. A few cuts in pencil, in ‘Col celarvi’ and the B section of ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ and apparently ‘Ah! mio cor’ refer to preparations for the 1736 revival, though the last cut was not made.

Librettos 1735 Handel. ‘An Opera. As it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden ... Printed for T. Wood, in Little-Britain, and are to be Sold at the Theatre in 25  The recitative was written after the transposition.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 330

06/10/2006 14:52:31

Alcina

331

Covent-Garden ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 53 pp. (in fact 55, for pp. 11 and 12 occur twice). Argument and Dramatis Personae in English only. Handel is not named. Oronte’s first two lines in Act III are printed as a cavatina. There were two issues; in the first the scene-numbering in Act I is confused, Scene iv appearing twice in the Italian text, Scene vi twice in the English, where in addition xi is misprinted as ix. In the second issue the scenes are numbered correctly from i to xiv in both languages but the duplication of pp. 11 and 12 remains. 1736 Handel. As 1735, but ‘The Third Edition ... Printed and Sold by T. Wood ... and at the Theatre in Covent-Garden.’ 48 pp. No second edition is known; the reference may be to the second issue of the first. The substantial cuts are listed above. Clausen omits ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ from his list of arias reduced to their A sections; either this is a slip or he saw an otherwise unreported issue. The same libretto may have been used in June 1737, perhaps with an inserted slip giving Morgana’s new arias. 1738 Brunswick I (February). ‘Alcina In einer Opera vorgestellet auf dem grossen Braunschweigischen Theatro in der Winter-Messe Anno 1738 Wolfenbüttel druckts Christian Bartsch.’ Handel is not named. Plot and sets unchanged; dances in same contexts as in London. Recitatives, including ‘Ah! Ruggiero crudel’, in German. Eighteen arias and the trio in the original Italian with German translation alongside. The arias ‘Tra speme e timore’ and ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ and choruses ‘Sin per le vie’ and ‘Dall’orror’ cut. The chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’, Oberto’s arias ‘Chi m’insegna’ and ‘Barbara! io ben lo so’ and Ruggiero’s cavatina ‘Qual portento’ in German only, fitted to the music. Three solos (‘Col celarvi’, ‘Ama, sospira’ and ‘È un folle’) and the B section of ‘Pensa a chi geme’ have greatly expanded texts, using many of the original words but sometimes modifying the sense, and must have been reset. ‘Col celarvi’ is a full aria. Bradamante’s arias ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ and ‘All’alma fedel’ replaced by new Italian texts (?set by Schürmann). Alcina has an extra accompagnato (German) when she conjures the spirits in II.iv, and two additional arias are inserted for Melisso, described as Bradamante’s steward (Hofmeister), ‘Trà caligini profonde’ from Orlando in I.xii and another unidentified in III.iv. Ruggiero despatches a firespitting dragon and knocks over a pyramid before assaulting the urn. Handel’s final chorus is replaced by a moralising German text. 1738 Brunswick II (August). As last, but ‘in der Sommer-Messe’ in title and an additional aria for Bradamante, ‘Cerva in bosco, se l’impiega’, at end of II.xi.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/998) is basically a Smith copy, made after Handel settled for the G major setting of ‘Questo è il cielo’ but before he added the Oberto scenes. The many insertions fall into three groups: (i) before performance – the Oberto scenes (fols 23–4, 87–9, 99, 150–3) and the Ariodante finale of Act II (fols 113–17), all copied by Smith; (ii) changes for the 1736 revival – fols 9–12, 28–30, 43–6, 51, 55, 67–9, 75–7, 101–2, 120, 139–42, the first two and part of the third copied by S1, the remainder by Smith; (iii) changes for June 1737 – fols 70–4 and 121–5, copied by S1. Clausen omits fol. 51, the recitative before ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ (Smith

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 331

06/10/2006 14:52:32

332

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

modified by Handel). It is not clear why he lists fol. 35 as an insertion and concludes that ‘Bramo di trionfar’ was first copied and then removed. The dances in I.ii and the final scene are not cancelled, but the word Balli after Alcina’s Act II conjuration scene is crossed out. The manuscript has an extra stage direction at the start of II.xii (HG 93): Ruggiero kneels to Bradamante (vuol ingenocchiarsi), though this is implied in the dialogue. The 1736 changes involved much copying, top line and bass only in the transposed arias. Suppressed B sections were generally pasted over. Handel added alternative notes for Morgana and Ruggiero in the recitatives throughout the manuscript, lowering the tessitura of the former and raising that of the latter. Chrysander indicates these in only two places (HG 37 and 75). According to Clausen Handel marked ‘Qual portento’ for transposition up a tone but cancelled the direction. The B section of ‘Ama, sospira’ is shown as cut, though the whole aria was omitted in 1736. The B section might have been cut during the 1735 run, as Clausen suggests, but Handel could have shortened the aria in 1736 before deciding to omit it. The note Morgana l’aria after Ruggiero’s words ‘chiede il mio amor’ in II.v (HG 70) probably refers to the insertion of ‘In mar tempestoso’ in June 1737. This and the other aria added on that occasion, ‘Vedrò fra poco’, were copied without text, and it is likely, as noted by Clausen, that they were sung with parodied words. Of the six further copies – RM 19 a 12 (S3 and S1, lacking secco recitatives, choruses, dances and the Act III sinfonia), Flower (S3), Shaftesbury (S2), Lennard (S1), Add. MS 31566 (S9) and Hamburg MA/165 (Xi, a copyist active in the late 1730s) – all but the last give the basic 1735 text, with a few variants. Shaftesbury (c. 1737) is the most complete, including all choruses and dances, the Ariodante sequence (final cadence as HG A, the Ginevra passage of course omitted) as an interlude after Act II. This is also present in Flower, which, however, omits the chorus ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ and the ballet Entrée in the last scene. If this is the copy written out for Jennens in the summer of 1735 (a date with which watermark and rastration are consistent), it confirms that these two items were cut during the original run; only the Entrée is cancelled (in pencil) in the performing score. Jennens added bass figures in Act I and ‘Mi lusinga’ and the date of completion at the end. RM 19 a 12, perhaps the earliest copy (though the date 1734 on the title page must refer to conception, not birth) omits the cavatina ‘Col celarvi’, which may be a late addition. Lennard (?1735), MA/165 (late 1730s) and Add. MS 31566 (from the same stable as Lennard but much later, perhaps after 1760) omit the ballets and ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’. All copies except MA/165 have ‘Di te mi rido’ in F. Lennard has pencilled vocal ornaments of later date in ‘Ah! mio cor’, ‘Verdi prati’ and Alcina’s part in the trio. MA/165 incorporates a few changes made in the 1736 revival. Besides omitting the dances and ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ it has the modified recitatives in I.vi and xiv, giving ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ to Alcina; but the recitatives in I.vii and III.i are complete, and there are no cuts in the arias. ‘Di te mi rido’ is in G, the sole transposition in any of the copies except the performing score. The revised tessitura is added only in Morgana’s first two lines of recitative (HG 6) and the two phrases for Ruggiero where HG gives both alternatives (HG 37 and 75). Chrysander used this manuscript while preparing his edition.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 332

06/10/2006 14:52:32

Alcina

333

There are two early sets of parts. One, divided between Flower (v. 64 and v. 65, cembalo and violin 2) and RM 18 b 6 (violin 1, viola and cello – the wind parts are missing) was copied by S3 and S1 in collaboration probably in 1735.26 It covers all set pieces except choruses and dances, and has two points of interest. The violins and viola are muted in ‘Mio bel tesoro’, as in the autograph but nowhere else, and the eight bars from ‘Vi cerco’ in Alcina’s accompanied recitative are not doubled by the violins. The second set of parts (cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2; horns 1 and 2 at University of Maryland), copied by S2 in the mid- or late 1740s, omits the overture, Act III sinfonia, the dances in I.ii and the finale, and the arias ‘Mio bel tesoro’ and ‘Stà nell’Ircana’, perhaps because they require fuller scoring than Jennens was likely to command. But both settings of the chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’ and the Ariodante dance sequence are present. The bassoon is mentioned only when silenced in the Entrée des songes agréables. Both oboes double the voice in bars 24–48 and 54–64 of ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ and the sopranos in the final chorus. They are divided in the F major ‘Questo è il cielo’ and in ‘Ama, sospira’, where they play with the violins in the single-bar interjections in both sections and in the two bars before the fermata at the top of HG 73. Otherwise they are confined as usual to ritornellos, and both oboes double the first violins in movements with two upper parts in the treble clef: the arias ‘O s’apre al riso’, ‘Di, cor mio’, ‘Sì, son quella’ (ritornello) and ‘All’alma fedel’, the trio, and the choruses ‘Questo è il cielo’ (G major), ‘Sin per le vie’ and ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’. This was in accordance with Handel’s usual practice, especially where, as in several of these movements, he wrote Tutti against the top line. These parts were not extracted from the Flower score, but at least to some extent from the autograph. A volume of ‘Miscellanys’ in the Lennard Collection (Mus. MS 798) contains the chorus ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ and the complete ballet music, including the Ariodante sequence, copied by S5 in 1738 or later, perhaps as a supplement to the Lennard score. There is a similar but not quite identical group in the Shaftesbury Collection (Coke MS 211, copied by S4, attributed to Arianna in Creta in the Harvester catalogue), designed to supplement the Walsh score. It gives the Act II finale in its original Ariodante form, ending with Ginevra’s accompagnato. Royal Academy of Music MS 140 has five arias (‘Ombre pallide’, ‘All’alma fedel’ in A major, ‘Credete al mio dolore’, ‘Ah! mio cor’ and ‘Pensa a chi geme’) copied by Smith and S3 in collaboration. An S1 copy of ‘Sì, son quella’ with the opening bars of ‘La bocca vaga’ (Largo) on the verso in RM 19 d 12 (late 1730s) was evidently part of a larger group. The Flower Collection has an S3 copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement (c.1735) and a beautifully written Smith copy of ‘Ah! Ruggiero crudel’, ‘Ombre pallide’ and ‘Ah! mio cor’ (c.1746). Two collections of soprano arias in Vienna (Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek), S.M. 4033 (four arias from Alcina) and S.M. 4034 (four arias and string parts) were apparently not copied from Walsh. Walsh published the music by degrees, the overture and seven Favourite Songs in a first collection, nine Favourite Songs and the trio in a second, and four more in the 26  Both groups came from the Aylesford Collection. Jennens seems to have had two sets of parts.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 333

06/10/2006 14:52:32

334

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

third. The first two, with the names of the original cast, appeared in 1735; ‘Di te mi rido’ is in F; the upper strings in ‘Mio bel tesoro’ are not muted. The third collection, after the revival of November 1736, names Reinhold, describes ‘Credete al mio dolore’ as sung by Strada and ‘Stà nell’Ircana’ in G as sung by Conti, though he could not have sung it in that key. In 1737 Walsh printed the whole score (except recitatives, the choruses ‘Sin per le vie’ and ‘Dall’orror’, the Act III sinfonia and the dances) in the correct order in Alcina an Opera, using old plates for the items in the collections. Two pieces, ‘O s’apre al riso’ and ‘Col celarvi’ (bars 1–7 only), though ascribed to the original singers, are in the transposed revival keys, F major and A minor respectively. ‘Vorrei vendicarmi’ has no B section. A flute arrangement appeared in December 1735, the overture for keyboard in April 1737 and the overture in seven parts c. 1739. Excerpts appeared in various intrumental arrangements, the overture’s Musette and Minuet as songs with inept dubbed words, and also in a French keyboard collection (1739). An edition of the overture in four parts was published in Paris in 1743. Alcina was the first opera published by Chrysander (1868), and the only one besides Act III of Muzio Scevola with a German translation. He based his text on the Hamburg copy MA/165, filling it with copious annotations, striking out at least one stage direction in the autograph (in II.xii), and appending the German translation intermittently throughout the opera. It is not clear why he regarded this manuscript as authoritative – more so than the performing score in some respects – but it accounts for some anomalies in his edition: the appearance of ‘Di te mi rido’ in G, the inclusion of the modified (1736) recitatives in I.vi and xiv (giving ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ to Alcina) but not those in I.vii and III.i, and the exclusion of all but two of the numerous tessitura alterations in the parts of Morgana and Ruggiero. Most of the passages shown as cut in the performing score are bracketed, but not those in ‘Col celarvi’ and ‘Pensa a chi geme’. Some omissions – the tempo of ‘La bocca vaga’ and ‘Verdi prati’, the repeats in both halves of the Sarabande in I.ii, and the cue for the oboes to double the sopranos in the final chorus – are doubtless accidental.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 334

06/10/2006 14:52:32



c h a p t e r 18 Atalanta

T

he plot, simpler than that of most operas of this period, is outlined concisely, if with a nice derangement of tenses, in the Argument prefixed to the printed libretto. ‘Meleager, King of Etolia, being in love with Atalanta, Daughter of Jasion, King of Arcadia, demanded her of her Father in Marriage; but she, not to lose the Pleasure she took in hunting wild Beasts, refused his Crown and Love; and under the name of Amarillis, went to the Woods among Nymphs and Shepherds, the better to follow the Chace. Meleager, as a Shepherd, under the Name of Thirsis, follows her to the Woods, where she at last fell in love with him. Nicander, an old Shepherd, to whom Meleager had trusted the Secret, discovers their Births and Characters; whereupon their Nuptuals ensue. The Loves of Amintas and Irene are introduced, to give greater Scope to the Drama.’ The scene of all three acts (until the epilogue) is a large Champaign Country, with a Prospect of Cottages: A Wood on each Side, and a vast Mountain at a Distance. Tirsi (Meleagro) is searching for Atalanta. Aminta, a shepherd likewise neglected by the maid who once returned his vows, tries unsuccessfully to console him. Irene, the maid in question, enters and resorts to her ‘wonted Arts’: she summons Tirsi to the chase and tells Aminta (‘inactive Swain’) to stay and amuse himself with amorous nymphs. Tirsi prefers to hunt alone. Irene spurns Aminta because he was not satisfied with her but asked her father for a dowry of herds and agricultural land as well. He goes off to die: her cruelty alone is the cause. Her father Nicandro asks Irene why she is so coy; she replies that she wants to test Aminta’s fidelity. Nicandro rebukes her for heartlessness. Alone, she admits that her love is quite as strong as Aminta’s, and promises that his eventual happiness will be all the more delightful after his present pain. Amarilli (Atalanta) enters, followed by Tirsi and shepherds, and disposes her beaters to put up a wild boar. She refuses Tirsi’s offer to stay beside her, though inwardly delighted to receive it. Irene tries to dissuade Aminta from suicide. A Wild Boar is seen at a Distance; Amintas rushes furiously towards him, but is held by the Shepherds. The Chace begins to Musick ... Atalanta going towards the Boar ... Meleager throws a Spear at the Boar, but misses him ... Atalanta wounds him, when the Shepherds come in and kill him. Atalanta takes no joy in her victory: there is another fiercer beast she fears she may not be able to master. Meleagro compares her to a wild animal, but hopes his constancy will tame her. Act II. A chorus of nymphs and shepherds celebrates Atalanta’s victory. In a musing Posture she expresses her love for Tirsi; but she must conceal it and return to court, for he is a shepherd and she a queen. Meleagro overhears this. He tells her he is a shepherd of illustrious race whose beloved preferred hunting and fled to the woods. When he says she hid her love because she thought him of lowly birth, Atalanta interrupts in agitation and runs away. Irene pretends to be in love with Tirsi. He

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 335

06/10/2006 14:52:32

336

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

asks her to take a scarf to Amarilli; she agrees, making it clear she does it for love of him. When Aminta approaches, Irene, looking, and kissing the Scarf Meleager gave her, works him into a state of jealousy and sends him packing: since he slighted her she has found a more faithful lover. Atalanta asks Aminta to take an arrow as a present to Tirsi without revealing who sent it. Aminta plans a bitter message for Irene, but his heart forbids and he changes it to one of love. Meleagro meets Atalanta struggling to suppress her love for him. She sends him away to cover her confusion. Act III. Irene gives Atalanta Tirsi’s scarf. Atalanta’s hopes rise, but she refrains from sending a message since ‘Amintas bears the Secret of my Heart’ (meaning the arrow). Irene misunderstands and grows jealous in her turn. Aminta claims to have found a gentler and more receptive nymph. Pressed by Irene, he says it is Amarilli, who vowed eternal truth and gave him the arrow he carries; he hurries off to find her. Meleagro, who has overheard, and Irene are distraught. Confessing that she pretended to love him in order to test Aminta’s fidelity, she gives way to jealous despair. Meleagro calls on the fates to end his life and throws himself  on the Ground to sleep. Atalanta recognizes Tirsi’s gift as a scarf her father once gave to Meleagro, but cannot believe it possible. She sees Meleagro, who cries out in his sleep, and bids sweet dreams comfort him. Waking suddenly, he asks why she is not with Aminta. She says she loves him, not Aminta, but did not dare reveal it. While they embrace, enter Nicander, Irene and Amintas Hand in Hand. Nicandro hails Meleagro by name (‘O forza del Destin!’ exclaims Atalanta with rare operatic foresight), and both pairs of lovers are reconciled. Mercury descends on a Cloud, attended by the Loves and Graces and brings Jove’s blessing to the British nation and the royal pair: their marriage will provide a model of glorious deeds and world peace. The chorus declare that the future of the dynasty is assured, since no vile issue can spring from a line of heroes. The Scene opens and discovers Illuminations and Bonfires, accompanied by loud Instrumental Musick. Further choruses of congratulation and rejoicing end the opera. With the partial exception of Riccardo Primo, Atalanta is the only opera Handel composed to celebrate a public event, the marriage on 27 April 1736 of Frederick Prince of Wales to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg; hence the festal overture and epilogue in which the characters step out of their parts to hail the royal couple in extravagant and prophetic terms. The Atalanta story had a long association with court weddings, especially in Germany. Handel’s source however was Belisario Valeriani’s La caccia in Etolia, set by Fortunato Chelleri for Ferrara in 1715. Handel’s changes, mostly reductions, scarcely affect the plot, but throw considerable light on his dramaturgy; he may have dispensed with a collaborator and arranged the libretto himself. Chelleri’s opera has only four characters, the two pairs of lovers, and no chorus; Nicandro, Mercury and all the choruses except ‘Viva la face’ (based on   furiosamente in the Italian text.   dalle Grazie, e da Molti Amorini in the Italian text.   The first issue proved to be George III, perhaps not history’s most conspicuous model for glorious deeds and world peace.   See Strohm, Essays, 71–3.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 336

06/10/2006 14:52:32

Atalanta

337

Valeriani’s final quartet) are new in Handel’s version. Apart from the duet ‘Cara, nel tuo bel volto’, a last-minute insertion, they are the only additions. Nicandro’s part in the recognition, a more extended process in Valeriani, is narrated by Irene. Of the twenty-six set pieces in La caccia in Etolia Handel retained eighteen with occasional modifications, replaced two and omitted six. He made considerable cuts in the recitative (predictably) and abridged the Aminta-Irene limb of the plot, reducing their total of eleven arias to six. He introduced a measure of flexibility by reducing two of Atalanta’s arias, ‘Al varco, O pastori’ and ‘Custodite, O dolci sogni’, to their first two lines and expanding Meleagro’s showpiece ‘Tu solcasti’ from four lines to eight. The most interesting changes are the two substitutions, both in Act I. Meleagro’s initial cavatina ‘Care selve’, the first line adapted from a recitative for Atalanta in Valeriani’s Act III, replaced a full-sized aria in which Meleagro explains who he is. ‘Riportai gloriosa palma’ (I.viii), in which after her victory over the wild boar Atalanta fears that she may be unable to subdue a fiercer beast in her own heart, is a striking improvement on Valeriani’s aria, a mere summons to rejoice. The added chorus ‘Oggi rimbombano’ imparts a happy impetus to Act II. The libretto, though slight and artificial, is adequate for its purpose. Handel was always at ease with the pastoral idiom and he was unlikely to fail with the hunt or the sleep scene. The characters belong to the world of Il pastor fido (Guarini’s play was probably in Valeriani’s mind). They go through the usual misunderstandings, send each other anonymous presents, and overhear remarks that cause them to leap to perverse conclusions; the royal birth of hero and heroine has nothing to do with the case. The score has great rhythmic vitality and countless felicities, and it hits just the right mood, light, diverting, unpretentious but never trivial. It is also commendably brief, and requires no cutting in modern performance. In style it is more consistent than Il pastor fido and fresher than Deidamia, which has a few points, including a hunt, in common. A closer parallel is Acis and Galatea, whose tragic overtones of course go much deeper. There is a link with more than one of Handel’s treatments of that story. Both words and music of Nicandro’s aria ‘Impara, ingrata’ derive from one of Polifemo’s outbursts in the 1708 Naples serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, and the original plan for the finale involved the lifting of a chorus from the bilingual Acis and Galatea of 1732 – a sign of Handel’s close involvement in the construction of his librettos. Atalanta fully justifies the enthusiasm of Streatfeild (‘its indescribable atmosphere of light-hearted gaiety and out-of-door freshness’) and Dent (‘wonderfully typical of this late period of Handel’s style, in which he throws off trivialities with astonishing originality and genius’). While it is for the most part an Arcadian idyll of the utmost charm, its rarest virtue is one that Handel shares with Mozart: the power to evoke   In Chelleri’s opera Irene was sung by Diamante Scarabelli, a front-rank soprano who had been Handel’s Poppea in Agrippina; her part contained as many arias as Atalanta’s. Chelleri’s score is lost except for two arias, one of which (‘Non sara poco’) survives because Telemann included it in his pasticcio based on Handel’s Ottone (Hamburg, 1736).   The victim is the celebrated Calydonian boar, which had been ravaging Aetolia. It is not clear whether any allusion was intended to the Prince’s love of sport, which was to cost him his life: he died, before his father, from injuries received in a cricket match.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 337

06/10/2006 14:52:32

338

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the profound beneath the lightly skimmed surface, to hint at the agonies of the human heart behind some trifling incident. The characters are flimsy abstractions in the libretto; like those of Così fan tutte, when lit by the flame of genius, they spring to life and move us with an intensity of feeling that quite transcends their superficial posture. Atalanta is a beautifully drawn heroine who develops in emotional range and capacity for suffering as the action proceeds. She does not appear till Scene vii, where her cavatina ‘Al varco, O pastori’ as she comes bounding in depicts the dedicated sports girl. The dotted rhythms of the orchestra contrast happily with the fanfare figures and coloratura of the voice. It is very spirited, but gives no hint of passion. We can perhaps detect in the following recitative and the gigue-like aria ‘Riportai’ with its bounding triplets a suggestion that all this physical exercise may be an attempt to work off more disturbing sentiments. In Act II such proves to be the case. ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’ is a superb aria and a penetrating piece of dramatic psychology. The exuberant chorus celebrating Atalanta’s conquest of the boar forces home the harsh contrast between outward success and inner frustration. She drops into the minor for the recitative and again for the aria, which begins with a plaintive 4/4 bar before the triple-time ritornello. The C minor tonality in this happy opera where every movement but four is in a major key, the restless cross-rhythms of the violins in thirds constantly entering half a beat behind the violas and basses with a phrase that droops disconsolately downwards, and the bitter dissonances over a pedal at the words ‘O bella, dolce, cara’ as she laments her lost liberty give a moving picture of a girl desperately in love against her will. The B section extends the imagery of the bird caught in a net with a new dotted figure and leaps of a ninth in the vocal line, and a beautiful high entry of the violin cross-rhythm, before resuming the da capo with the sighing 4/4 bar. Meleagro’s story of the nymph who scorned him is altogether too near the mark for Atalanta’s peace of mind. The duet ‘Amarilli?’ expresses the agitation of both lovers all the more poignantly for being in a major key. The recurrent suspensions in the string parts, resolving only to clash again a moment later right up to the final bar, throb like a jangled nerve. This is one of the subtlest of Handel’s duets between lovers, which are by no means confined to the reciprocation of commodious thirds. The voices are persistently at cross-purposes and, except once or twice at cadences, scarcely ever in thirds. In the middle there is an exact anticipation, for a bar and a half, of the duet ‘Go, baffled coward’ in Samson. Atalanta ends the act with a simile aria, comparing herself to a stream making for the sea but constantly diverted by rocky ground. The parallel carries the implicit hope that she is bound to reach her goal in the end. Handel seizes on the opportunities for trills and pedals that the words suggest, but the music is not merely facile. The unexpectedness of the phrase-lengths – generally three bars, but sometimes five, seven or more – would alone ensure this. One of the happiest touches in a delightful aria is the flattened seventh in the voice’s second bar (compare ‘Miserò quel vago volto’ in Radamisto, ‘Ritorna, O caro’ in Rodelinda and ‘Now love, that everlasting boy’ in Semele), all the fresher for not being anticipated in the opening ritornello – though it does slip into the ritornello after the A section.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 338

06/10/2006 14:52:32

Atalanta

339

Atalanta’s one full aria in Act III, ‘Bench’io non sappia’, returns to the dotted rhythms and triplets of her music in Act I; her mood is less inhibited (she has received Tirsi’s scarf), and the copious ornament for voice and violin, imitating and commenting on each other’s phrases, reflects the rise of hope. Laughing syncopations over a pedal make a delicious complement to the strutting main theme. The little arioso ‘Custodite’ is by far the simplest of her solos but one of the most telling; indeed it crowns the part. The curious convention of a character sleeping on stage seldom failed to inspire Handel. Atalanta’s benediction is only ten bars long, with a bare continuo accompaniment, but its simplicity speaks worlds. There is a marvellous aptness in the change to the tonic minor for the last two bars – a Romantic stroke that might have occurred to Schubert – as she repeats the words ‘in pace’ in a monotone on the fifth of the key, just before Meleagro wakes up. This was Atalanta’s last utterance apart from recitative in the score as first written. The spirited love duet ‘Cara, nel tuo bel volto’, which borrows an instrumental figure from the duet ‘Se teco vive il cor’ in Radamisto, was a late substitution. With the exception of Alceste in Arianna, Meleagro was the first new part Handel had written for a soprano castrato for nearly fifteen years (since Floridante in 1721). Conti was a finer artist than Scalzi, Baldassari, Berselli or Pellegrini, the male sopranos who had hitherto sung in the operas. Although Conti was the one castrato for whom Handel wrote a top C (and that in only two arias, in Atalanta and Arminio), he was celebrated as much for his expressive powers as for virtuosity. Burney considered, no doubt correctly, that Handel adapted Meleagro’s first two solos to Conti’s ‘new, graceful, and pathetic style of singing’. There can be no question that he wrote the part con amore, and employed the airy tessitura both for characterisation and as a contrast to the other male voices, a tenor and two basses. Apart from Ariodante, where one tenor was a late substitute and the other is confined to a few bars of recitative, Atalanta is unique among Handel’s operas in requiring three natural male voices. Notable too is the care with which Handel warmed up Conti’s voice, taking him to A in the first aria, B flat in the second and C in the third, and requiring the utmost brilliance and flexibility in the fifth and last. Meleagro’s music has a narrower emotional range than Atalanta’s, but is scarcely inferior in invention. Few new singers can have had a more grateful initiation than ‘Care selve’, whose unaccompanied first phrase invites him to woo the audience with messa di voce. The exquisite melody, a gentle Siciliano with artfully varied rhythm and length of phrase (and anticipations of more than one movement in Messiah), not only flatters the singer but establishes the pastoral mood of the opera after the overture with its solo trumpet has looked forward to the epilogue. ‘Lascia ch’io parta’ is no less admirable, with its careful dynamics (a crescendo, piano–pf–forte, on a single note in the ritornello), many subtle rhythmic touches, a main theme in three-part phrases that soon extends into flowing paragraphs, interrupted cadences in both sections, and a neat adjustment of the ritornellos after each. Burney described ‘Non saria poco’, at the end of Act I, as ‘of a modern cast’. It is one of the many arias at this period that reflect the new style of Vinci and his Neapolitan contemporaries in its emphasis on homophonic attack, with running quaver basses and a predominantly chordal accompaniment, rather than on counterpoint. The fine tune, delightful cross-rhythms, long

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 339

06/10/2006 14:52:32

340

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

phrases and spectacular coloratura over a considerable range (it is here that Conti enjoys his top C, on the key word ‘speranza’) produce an exhilarating effect. Depth of emotion, difficult to achieve in this style, is not required. Meleagro is a more detached and sanguine character than Atalanta; all his music is in major keys. His two arias in the second act do not suggest any deepening experience, though both are attractive. ‘Sì, mel raccorderò’ all but presents the melody of the Messiah Pastoral Symphony in the rhythm and tempo of ‘Let the bright Seraphims’ and again overflows into far-ranging coloratura. Its compound of tunefulness and irony anticipates the characteristic style of Serse. In the ritornello after each part the violins take up the divisions from the voice. ‘M’allontano’ reflects Meleagro’s easy-going temperament; he accepts Atalanta’s dismissal, confident that her mood will change, with an exquisite untroubled melody, the violins interpolating graceful comments between each phrase. ‘Tu solcasti’ in Act III is very like ‘Non saria poco’, but longer and even more brilliant; it would make a superb effect in the mouth of a great singer. This aria is on a grander scale than anything else in the opera, with a stately ritornello and leisurely modulations from D into A minor and F sharp minor. The texture is rich, the oboes generally independent of the violins; both are divided, but never at the same time. The smoother B section (strings only) on similar material makes an excellent complement. Handel’s usual skill in differentiating his two pairs of lovers is reinforced by the pitch of the voices; whereas Atalanta and Meleagro are both high sopranos, Irene is a contralto and Aminta a tenor. The second pair have one aria apiece in each act. Irene belongs to Handel’s flock of teasing minxes, alongside Teodata in Flavio (another alto), Atalanta in Serse and Dalila in Samson. He touches her in with a light hand; otherwise she would be intolerable. Dalila at once comes to mind in her first aria, ‘Come alla tortorella’, which evokes the parallel of the amorous turtle-dove to justify sexual waywardness. Burney calls it ‘an elegant pastoral’; it is rather a mating call, phrased with the utmost seductiveness and emphasised by the 12/8 rhythm and wheedling downward scale figures. The cooing motive, almost identical with that in Dalila’s ‘With plaintive notes and amorous moan’, is introduced by the violins, echoed by the voice (‘mio bene!’) and carried through both sections. In ‘Soffri in pace’ Irene plays the same game, dangling Aminta on the hook. The aria is rather spoiled by otiose triplet figuration, but the B section has some harmonic pith and a ritornello that suggests at least the capacity to feel by lingering in G minor and returning to E flat only at the dal segno. ‘Ben io sento’ shows Irene hoist with her own petard. She vents her frustration in an F minor aria with a bleak and spiky ritornello. Handel is careful not to make it too expressive lest she unbalance the opera; she has after all asked for trouble. The vocal scales in unison with the violins are a trifle mechanical; the 6/8 rhythm has an undercurrent of the dance. Aminta’s feelings go deeper; of this pair it is the man rather than the woman who engages Handel’s sympathy. The mood of ‘S’è tuo piacer’ is pathetic rather than tragic. The second lover must not steal the limelight from the first, least of all at the start of the opera; hence perhaps the avoidance of the minor mode that the words seem to postulate. But the brief phrases, mostly doubled by violins at the octave, have their own eloquence, and the division of the violins towards the end of

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 340

06/10/2006 14:52:32

Atalanta

341

the A section pleasantly defies expectation. So does the subsequent ritornello, which shuffles the ideas into a new pattern. In ‘Di’ ad Irene’ Handel allows Aminta more scope. The aria portrays his ambivalent attitude to Irene: indignation at her cruelty in the striding octaves of the first twelve bars (a characteristic anger motive that recurs several times, for example in Saul’s ‘With rage I shall burst’), the affection he cannot dispel in the smoother second theme and still more in the quiet Adagio bars between pauses that interrupt each section. The exceptionally long ritornello (twenty-seven bars) presents the ideas as if launching a concerto. The two moods are carried into the B section, but anger fades out after three bars and the music rises to a passionate affirmation of love. The da capo indicates that the struggle is not over. ‘Diedi il core’, in which Aminta pretends to love another nymph, is strangely lifeless, as if Handel could not find the notes for so false an emotion. Neither of the basses has much opportunity. Nicandro’s ‘Impara, ingrata’ is another typical anger piece, full of blustering octaves, scale figures and leaps of up to a twelfth for the voice. Striking as the music is, one wants to hear Irene’s father in a more genial mood. Handel did give him such an aria, ‘Or trionfar ti fanno’, in II.vi (at the bottom of HG 68), which was not performed and remains unpublished. It is a vigorous piece in C major in binary form, beginning with the same phrase as the overture to Saul. Though not of exceptional quality, it is, as Burney claimed, superior to Mercury’s ‘Sol prova contenti’. Handel could seldom work up much interest in a deus ex machina. The ceremonial music for the epilogue is a different matter. The string of short choruses and instrumental movements based on dance rhythms looks plain almost to the point of banality on paper. But like all Handel’s music for public or festive occasions it possesses a spacious strength that finds its mark. When presented with the fireworks and the forces for which it was designed – full chorus and orchestra alternate with a battery of three trumpets and drums – its effect must be splendid. The entry of three trumpets at this stage, after a lightly scored pastoral opera which after the overture apart from horns in the hunt chorus employs only oboes, bassoons and strings, is an electrifying stroke in itself. Handel dignified the overture with a solo trumpet, played by Valentine Snow according to Burney, who pronounced the music ‘uncommonly gay and spirited, as the hilarity of the occasion required’. It is broad, stately and undisturbed by emotional undercurrents; both the triple-time fugato and the attractive Andante in gavotte rhythm erupt into jocose triplets, the former as early as the third bar of the subject. The chorus ‘Oggi rimbombano’ is simple in design and texture, but amply scored with bright horns in B flat alt, the highest horn key used by Handel, and unexpectedly long; Handel was determined to make the most of his recent reinforcement, the Covent Garden chorus. The main theme turns the ‘Furies’ rhythm of Teseo, Orlando and Gluck’s Orfeo to more convivial purpose. The tonality, as one might expect, emphasises the major mode. There are only four pieces in the minor, all in flat keys. The trumpets enforce a strong tonic D major in the overture and epilogue, and its dominant, the bright key of A major, reigns in no fewer than five arias. There is plenty of F and B flat to hold a balance,   It is included in the Hungaroton recording, which relegates ‘Tu solcasti’ to an appendix.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 341

06/10/2006 14:52:32

342

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

characteristic of this tidy score. Act I (including the overture) moves from D to F, Act III from F back to D. Internally the structure is well jointed. Handel emphasises Atalanta’s first entry by moving from E to C without intervening recitative. Cadences in the subdominant, major and minor respectively, precede the duet ‘Amarilli?’ and ‘Ben io sento’. Particularly happy is the start of Meleagro’s B flat aria ‘M’allontano’ after chords of C minor and D major without a cadence, as if he were shrugging his shoulders at Atalanta’s display of temperament. The first two sections of the overture use material from Telemann’s Musique de Table, a favourite source of borrowings in instrumental movements. John H. Roberts lists a number of other borrowings in Atalanta, three each from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Dafni, Giovanni Bononcini’s Xerse and Carl Heinrich Graun’s Passion oratorio ‘Kommt her und schaut’, one each from Keiser’s Nebucadnezar and Sarro’s Ginevra. Roberts has since added two more, from Pistocchi’s Narciso.10 While there is no doubt that Handel did make use of the cited passages, some in their original keys, they are all short and for the most part tags with no intrinsic character. Handel seems to have used them to set his engine in motion, whence his imagination took over. The most interesting is the Graun borrowing in ‘Impara, ingrata’, which illustrates his peculiar powers of synthesis. The ritornello consists of four bars from an aria in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (its principal idea, here in a minor key), followed by four bars from Graun’s Passion (Ex. 53). Handel may have been struck by the aptness of Graun’s huge downward leap of two octaves less an augmented second to an aria associated with Polifemo, though in the Naples serenata he had confined such extravagance to a different aria. He uses the phrase again in the B section, which likewise begins with a literal quotation from the earlier aria.

  Production I.3, Concerto in A major ( J. H. Roberts, ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Telemann’, GHB 1 (1984), 161. ‘Sol prova contenti’ is also based on a Telemann borrowing.   Handel Sources, vols III, V, VII, VIII and IX. 10  ‘Handel and the Shepherds of Ansbach’, Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter, ed. D. Rosen and C. Brook (Hillsdale NY, 2003), 230–255.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 342

06/10/2006 14:52:33

Atalanta

343

History and Text Handel composed the score with his usual despatch, finishing Act I on 9 April 1736, Act II on 14 April, and the whole opera on 22 April. Even so it was not ready in time for the wedding, which ‘was solemnized sooner than was expected’11 on 27 April, or for the first night of the short spring season at Covent Garden on 5 May. Atalanta was produced a week later, on 12 May, with the following cast: atalanta Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) meleagro Gioacchino Conti (soprano castrato) irene Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) aminta John Beard (tenor) nicandro Gustavus Waltz (bass) mercurio Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) The delay was due to the construction of special scenery, as described in the London Daily Post of 13 May: a new Set of Scenes painted in Honour of the Happy Union, which took up the full length of the Stage: The Fore-part of the Scene represented an Avenue to the Temple of Hymen, adorn’d with Figures of several Heathen Deities. Next was a Triumphal Arch on the Top of which were the Arms of their Royal Highnesses, over which was placed a Princely Coronet. Under the Arch was the figure of Fame, on a cloud, sounding the Praise of this Happy Pair. The names Fredericus and Augusta appear’d above in transparent Characters. Thro’ the Arch was seen a Pediment, supported by four Columns, on which stood two Cupids embracing, and supporting the Feathers, in a Princely Coronet, the Royal Ensign of the Prince of Wales. At the farther end was a View of Hymen’s Temple, and the Wings were adorn’d with the Loves and Graces bearing Hymenaeal Torches, and putting Fire to Incense in Urns, to be offer’d up upon this joyful Union. The Opera concluded with a Grand Chorus, during which several beautiful Illuminations were display’d, which gave an uncommon Delight and Satisfaction. There were present their Majesties, the Duke, and the Four Princesses, accompanied with a very splendid Audience, and the whole was received with unusual Acclamations. Conspicuous by their absence were the Prince and his bride. As Sir John Buckworth put it in a letter the following day: ‘The Prince could not be persuaded to go to it,

11  London Daily Post, 29 April 1736. Handel’s new Wedding Anthem, ‘Sing unto God’, was sung – ‘wretchedly’, according to the Earl of Egmont.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 343

06/10/2006 14:52:33

344

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

but order’d a play at Drury Lane, which carry’d away most of the Company, though the rest of the Royal Family were at Covent Garden.’12 Not surprisingly the epilogue excited most comment. The poet Gray, remarking that ‘the first is a common scene of a wood, and does not change at all till the end of the last act’, tells us a little more about the fireworks. ‘There is a row of blue fires burning in order along the ascent to the temple; a fountain of fire spouts up out of the ground to the ceiling, and two more cross each other obliquely from the sides of the stage; on the top is a wheel that whirls always about, and throws out a shower of gold-colour, silver, and blue fiery rain.’13 The fireworks, a great success with the public, were devised by ‘the ingenious Mr Worman’. The scene-painter was probably Joseph Goupy, who became Painter and Surveyor of the Cabinet to the Prince of Wales in this year. Some of the scenery was still at Covent Garden in 1743, when it was listed in an inventory.14 Gray admired Conti ‘excessively in everything but his mouth’, which, he said later, ‘when open, made an exact square’. Benjamin Victor, in a letter to Matthew Dubourg which Deutsch plausibly ascribes to this occasion, thought the new singer ‘near equal in merit to the late Carestini, with this advantage, that he has acquired the happy knack of throwing out a sound, now and then, very like what we hear from a distressed young calf ... As to the opera, the critics say, it is too like his former compositions, and wants variety.’ Atalanta was performed eight times before the close of the season on 9 June and revived for two performances on 20 November the same year ‘by Command of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales’.15 Thomas Harris told Shaftesbury that Atalanta ‘was performed to-night in order to give their royall Highnesses a view of ye Fire-Works which went off with great Applause, tho’ I don’t think with that Splendour I have seen them formerly’.16 The wording tends to confirm that they had not seen it in the spring though it might carry the further implication that they valued the fireworks more than the music. Mrs Pendarves told her sister that Conti ‘is much improved since last year’ [season]. Meleagro’s aria ‘Tu solcasti’ (HG 69, version A), which is in the libretto but not the Walsh score, was replaced by the duet (HG 75, version B) at a very early stage, probably before the June première.17 Conti may have resented the loss of his most spectacular showpiece, for Handel restored it, probably in November, in a different place, immediately before he throws himself down to sleep in III.iv, and with the words changed to an exactly opposite sense, ‘favor d’amica stella’ to ‘furor d’infausta stella’, ‘contento’ to ‘tormento’, ‘gioja’ to ‘pena’. The music is singularly inappropriate both to the altered text and to its new position – not that it was a good fit where 12  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 229. 13  Letter to Horace Walpole, 11 June 1736. 14  Deutsch, 579. 15  Deutsch is wrong in stating that the 20th was the Prince’s birthday (he was born 20 January 1707); according to Burney it was the Princess’s. 16  M & L 40 (1959), 261; Burrows and Dunhill, 21. 17  Clausen reached the same conclusion by a different route.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 344

06/10/2006 14:52:33

Atalanta

345

Handel first placed it. ‘Sol prova contenti’ was reduced to its A section, perhaps on the same occasion. Those were the last performances of the opera for more than two centuries, but several excerpts were popular during the eighteenth century. Handel himself introduced ‘Lascia ch’io parta’, ‘S’è tuo piacer’ and ‘Impara, ingrata’ in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo (February 1738) and the chorus ‘Oggi rimbombano’ with altered words in Jupiter in Argos (May 1739). ‘Sol prova contenti’ found its way into a Hamburg pasticcio Die Hochzeit der Statira (1737),18 and a Brunswick production of Handel’s Arianna in Creta (1738). On 3 March 1738, repeated on the 21st, a concert at Drury Lane ‘for the Benefit of Master Ferg’, a dancer and timpanist, included ‘a Chorus out of Atalanta, for French-Horns and Trumpets, the two French-Horns to be perform’d by two little Negro-Boys, Scholars to Mr Charles, who never performed before’.19 This was presumably ‘Oggi rimbombano’. ‘The grand Chorus in Atalanta’ played ‘by Mr Charles the Hungarian, Master of the French Horn, with his Second [Leander], accompanied by all the best Hands in this City’ [Dublin] on 12 May 1742 (Fishamble Street Music Hall) and again on 12 February 1743 (Aungier Street Theatre) no doubt refers to the same piece. It also concluded ‘a Grand Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Musick, by Mr Charles and Mr Leander’ at the Assembly Room, Bury St Edmunds, on 12 December 1744. ‘The celebrated Fire Musick’ was performed at Cuper’s Gardens on 18 and 25 July and 1 August 1741 with Worman’s pyrotechnics, and at least once more in the summer of 1745. The advertisement for 18 July 1741 announced that ‘the Fire-works consisting of Fire-wheels, Fountains, large Sky Rockets, with an Addition of the Fire-Pumps, etc. ... will be play’d off from the Top of the Orchestra by Mr Worman himself’. For 1 August he ‘intends to make several beautiful Alterations with the Sky-Rockets’. It is likely that later performances of ‘Mr Handel’s celebrated Fire Musick’, such as that at Wiltshire’s Room, Bath, on 6 November 1749, refer to the Atalanta finale rather than the more famous work of 1749. There were at least two performances of the overture at the Manchester Subscription Concerts, on 8 January and 30 April 1745, and one at the Three Swans, Shaftesbury, on 28 August 1752. Atalanta has had three modern staged revivals in England, the first at Hintlesham Hall in 1970, and a semi-staged production in New York; Germany first encountered it at Göttingen in 2005. The Hintlesham and Ealing (1987) productions were in the open air, permitting an extra touch of authenticity through the inclusion of live fireworks, though they could not always be induced to go off on the beat. A recording under Nicholas McGegan was issued by Hungaroton in 1985.

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 a 9) has two major insertions: the duet ‘Cara, nel tuo bel volto’ (fols 57–60), hastily written and bound in the middle of Mercury’s accompa­ gnato, and fols 62–5, a gathering originally prepared for the revival of the macaronic 18  R. D. Lynch, ‘Opera in Hamburg 1718–1738’ (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1979), 506. 19  A. H. Scouten, The London Stage 1729–1747, 705; inaccurately ­transcribed by Deutsch.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 345

06/10/2006 14:52:33

346

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Acis and Galatea on 24 March. It contains ‘Sol prova contenti’ in D major with a text beginning ‘Ha solo contenti un alma amante’, a short secco recitative beginning ‘Contento sol promette amor’ (HHB 1, 427 no. 25b) marked to precede the aria, and instructions for the chorus ‘Lieto esulti il cor’ to follow it in Acis. ‘Sol prova contenti’ (which has several sets of words in the autograph, not to mention variants in the performing score and HG) soon migrated to the Esther revival on 7 April20 with its amorous sentiments replaced by a more edifying text (a sketch of the ritornello introduced by a short recitative for an Israelite is in Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 259, p. 68). Handel then transported the whole gathering to the autograph of Atalanta, marking the aria and the recitative down a tone.21 The aria thus featured in a serenata, an oratorio and an opera within a month. The words of ‘Impara, ingrata’ as first set were considerably closer to those of the aria in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. Minor afterthoughts were the unison eight-bar opening of ‘Oggi rimbombano’ (borrowed from Keiser’s Nebucadnezar) and the common-time bar before the da capo of ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’, which Handel added in pencil. The only internal cut of any size is a section of fifteen bars in ‘Di’ ad Irene’, including another Adagio with silent fermata bars before and after.

Libretto 1736. ‘An Opera; As it is perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden On Occasion of an Illustrious Marriage ... Printed for T. Wood, in Little-Britain: and are to be Sold at the Theatre in Covent-Garden ... [Price One Shilling.]’ Argument and cast in English only. Two issues, with identical wording on title page.22 The first includes ‘Tu solcasti’ but not the duet ‘Cara, nel tuo bel volto’ in III.vi. The second has the duet in III.vi and transfers the aria (with altered text) to III.iv, as noted above.

Copies and Editions The performing score, Hamburg MA/1008, was copied by Smith after Handel had cut ‘Or trionfar’, transposed ‘Sol prova contenti’ and reorganised the final scene. ‘Tu solcasti’ is present, preceded (as first copied) by version A of the recitative ‘O forza del destin!’ (HG 69). This is changed to version B (HG 75) and the duet ‘Cara, nel tuo bel volto’ (copied by S1, completed by Chrysander) inserted – but in the wrong place (II.i), as in the autograph and the Flower copy but in a different place each time. There is no sign of the rewritten text of ‘Tu solcasti’. ‘Di’ ad Irene’ is changed from a dal segno to a da capo aria, and there are a few cancellations: three idle bars

20  See J. H. Roberts, ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Telemann: An Inventory’, GHB 1 (1984), 161. 21  He also modified the violin parts in the opening ritornello of the aria and added oboes to the top line. 22  E. T. Harris, The Librettos of Handel’s Operas, reproduces only the first.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 346

06/10/2006 14:52:33

Atalanta

347

in ‘Ben io sento’ (after bar 21), repeats in both sections of the Act III sinfonia (HG 58) and the B section and da capo of ‘Sol prova contenti’. Later copies are not numerous. Lennard (Smith, c.1736–40) includes both ‘Tu solcasti’ and the duet in II.vi, preceded by the A version of the recitative. The Act III sinfonia has its repeats but no tempo indication. Three dal segno arias are given a da capo. Many stage directions are omitted. Flower (S2, c.1746–48) was copied from the autograph, including Handel’s dates at the end of each Act, ‘Or trionfar’ and the D major ‘Sol prova contenti’ as well as both alternatives in III.vi. The verbal text of ‘Sol prova contenti’ is a mixture of the versions in the autograph. The Flower Collection has a mixed volume of early date (c.1739) containing seven items from Atalanta, in keyboard arrangement. Royal Academy of Music MS 139 (? c.1740) contains fourteen arias from Atalanta, three of them (‘Come alla tortorella’, ‘Ben’io sento’ and ‘Impara, ingrata’) transposed up a third for a soprano Irene and a tenor Nicandro (Irene’s third aria is not present). An aria collection (Coke MS 18, S1) contains all solos and the two duets for voices and bass (with occasional figuring) but no secco recitatives, overture or choruses, ending the opera with Mercury’s aria. S4 copied the accompagnato ‘Del supremo Tonante’ and ‘Tu solcasti’ as supplements to the Walsh score for Jennens (RM 18 c 5, fols 2–14 with a keyboard arrangement of the overture) and for Shaftesbury (Coke MS 211, c.1738–40). There are S5 copies of the two duets (c.1744) in the Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland. Vienna Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek S.m. 4033 has copies of ‘S’è tuo piacer’, ‘Riportai’, ‘Sì, mel raccorderò’ and ‘Diedi il core’, and S.m. 4034 parts for ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’, all in the same calligraphic hand. The Flower parts (violins 1 and 2, viola + violin 3, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2; cembalo missing) were copied by S2 from the autograph and/or the Flower score c.1744–48. Besides the overture and secco recitatives, they omit the two arioso/­ cavatinas, all sinfonias except at the start of Act III, and all choruses except ‘Viva la face’ (hence no brass parts). The oboe parts are orthodox, confined to principal and intermediate ritornellos; both double the first violins, except in ‘Tu solcasti’, where they have separate staves in the score. The second oboe never doubles the second violin. The bassoon is mentioned twice; it is silenced in bars 9–12 of ‘Impara, ingrata’, but has a solo in the main ritornello of the suppressed ‘Or trionfar’. The three bars cancelled in the performing score of ‘Ben io sento’ are present. The Flower Collection has a (printed) trumpet part for the overture. A second set of parts in the Coke Collection (MS 18, c.1736–38), for strings only (violins 1 and 2, viola, cello) was in its original form copied by S1 probably at the same time as the Coke aria collection and gives the same text with the addition of the overture. They were intended perhaps for a client who wished to perform Atalanta with limited forces. The arias could have served as a continuo part with perhaps a second part for the recitatives. Later the violin parts were extended (with mistakes) to the end of the chorus ‘Viva la face’ – including the trumpet parts (so indicated) on HG 89 – and the cello part to the end of ‘Gridiam’ (HG 88), but the viola part left untouched. Perhaps a planned performance was cancelled. The cello is silenced in ‘Care selve’ and ‘Custodite’, indicating that they were to be accompanied by

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 347

06/10/2006 14:52:33

348

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

harpsichord only. The opening pages of the Violin 1 part as far as ‘Impara, ingrata’ are missing. On 14 May 1736 Walsh issued proposals for printing the score on subscription, the price 10/6 to subscribers and 16/- later. It was advertised as ready on 5 June, and seems to have been the most successful of the ten Handel operas published on subscription by Cluer and Walsh; it attracted 154 subscribers for 192 copies.23 According to Walsh’s proposals ‘the whole will be Corrected by the Author’, but it is unlikely that Handel did this: seven movements have no tempo marks, ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’ lacks its opening 4/4 bar (it is included before the da capo), and five arias have a da capo instead of a dal segno.24 One of these, as Chrysander noted, is ‘Soffri in pace’, which receives a ritornello in E flat instead of G minor after the B section. The score is complete (‘Tu solcasti’ replaced by the duet) except for the recitatives, the fragments of sinfonia on HG 20 and 80, and the last chorus, whose material occurs earlier. Walsh paid Handel 25 guineas, his usual fee for an opera. He published a flute arrangement and the overture in parts and for keyboard in 1737. There was an early single-sheet printing of ‘S’è tuo piacer’ with English words. The only later score is Chrysander’s (1882).

23  Smith, Descriptive Catalogue, 20. Deutsch, 408, gives lower figures from earlier in the sale. 24  The same five arias have a da capo in the Lennard copy.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 348

06/10/2006 14:52:33

c h a p t e r 19 Arminio

T

he Argument in the printed libretto gives a meagre historical background. ‘Arminius, Prince of the Cauchi and Cheruschi, People of Germany, living on the Borders of the Rhine, is well noted in Tacitus’ History, for the memorable Defeat he gave to Three Roman Legions, with the Death of their General QUINTUS VARUS; which affords sufficient Room to extend the Argument. On this Historical Truth, the present Drama is founded, and is attended by other probable Passages, to give the proper Scope to the Musick, and Ornaments to the Representation.’ This tells us nothing about the action of the opera, in which Varus’ defeat and death are reported in three lines of recitative in the last scene. His name was Quintilius, not Quintus. Act I opens in a Country bordering on the Rhine, with Tents, and other Implements of War. Arminius with his drawn Sword, Tusnelda and German Soldiers. Tusnelda, Arminius’ wife, begs him to fly from the victorious Romans. He is at first reluctant, but yields to her fears that she may be captured. They depart with a duet justifying their action on grounds of love and liberty. Varo enters with Tullio, tribune of the people, and many Roman Soldiers. Tullio reports Arminio’s flight; his camp is in Varo’s power, but Varo is smitten with love for Tusnelda. Tullio briskly observes that a Roman should control his passions and pursue glory. Varo replies that valour and love are not incompatible; he will demonstrate that the latter strengthens the former. Going off, he meets Segestes with Arminius’s Sword, and German Soldiers. Segeste, Prince of the Catti and Tusnelda’s father, presents the sword to Varo as symbol of the conquered German Empire. Arminio is led in in Chains, followed by Tusnelda. He denounces Segeste’s betrayal of his country and his family. Tusnelda sings an aria about conflicting loyalties and departs. Varo orders Arminio to make his subjection to Rome, but he opts for torture or death; Varo says he is too proud and leaves. Arminio after a defiant aria is led off under guard. Segeste declares that Arminio must be killed if he remains obstinate, since there will be no peace with Rome while he lives. In a Court in the Castle of Segestes Sigismondo, son of Segeste and in love with Arminio’s sister Ramise, reflects that dreams sometimes foretell a happy future. Tusnelda and Ramise enter from opposite Sides. Tusnelda tells them of Arminio’s capture and Segeste’s treachery. Sigismondo, appalled, tries to detain Ramise, but she departs with an aria of anguish. He seeks comfort from Tusnelda, who points out that her own griefs are far greater, torn as she is between a father she cannot hate and an imprisoned husband. Segeste tells Sigismondo to abandon hopes of Ramise now that Rome is victorious and raise his thoughts to higher spheres. Sigismondo refuses, throws down his Sword, and tells Segeste to kill him rather than deprive him of his love. Segeste goes out angrily. Sigismondo prefers death to life without love.   In fact, Book 1 of the Annales.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 349

06/10/2006 14:52:33

350

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Act II begins in a Cabinet. Segeste learns from Tullio that Varo is in love with Tusnelda, welcomes the prospect of their marriage, and looks forward to Arminio’s immediate subjection to Augustus or death. Varo shows Segeste a letter from Augustus, which Segestes reads low (silently: the words, printed in virgole in the libretto, are not set). The letter orders Arminio’s execution to complete the Roman conquest. Segeste will obey Caesar’s orders. In a Hall with Seats Arminio, chained and guarded, looks forward to gaining his country’s liberty. Segeste, with other Guards, urges him to ‘become a Subject to the Roman Empire’. Arminio scornfully refuses and accepts the alternative of death: he will meet it boldly, whereas Segeste will be tortured by remorse and demands for vengeance from his country, his honour and Arminio’s blood. He is led off, and Tusnelda enters weeping. Segeste suggests she persuade Arminio to change his mind. She refuses: ‘Or Freedom shall be his, or Death be mine’. Ramise abuses Segeste as an unnatural father, ‘most abject Prince, lost to all Sense of Honour’, and draws a Dagger, which she offers at Segestes, but is with-held by Sigismond. Segeste, more than ever resolved on Arminio’s death, exit sternly (angrily). Ramise turns on Sigismondo for interfering: if he wants her, he must join her in vengeance. He asks how he can kill his father, gives her his Sword, which she throws down, and he takes it to stab himself. She stops him, calls him ‘faithful son of an unfaithful Father’, sings an indecisive aria, and leaves him torn between love for her and for his father. In a dark and dismal Prison Arminio asks to see Varo, sweeps aside Tusnelda’s half-hearted plea to recant, and fires her to emulate his courage. When Varo enters, Arminio, knowing of his love for Tusnelda, confides her to him and goes to meet his death. Tusnelda indignantly tells Varo that if he wants to please her he should intervene to save Arminio’s life. Varo determines not to be outdone in nobility and goes out with three lines of recitative. Tusnelda, still apparently addressing Varo, says he will save two lives and earn her everlasting gratitude if he frees Arminio. Act III opens in a Court in the Castle of Segestes, with a Scaffold hung in Black. People at the Windows, and round about the Scaffold Roman Soldiers with their Ensigns. Arminius chain’d, then Varus from one Part, and Segestes from another, and afterwards Tullius. Arminio refuses to be intimidated by the ‘proud Theatre of Death’, and hopes by dying to conquer Roman pride. He bids the executioner strike and take his head to Segeste. Varo orders the removal of his chains, overruling Segeste’s protests; let him die as a warrior, not a criminal. Tullio brings news of a Roman defeat at the hands of Segismero (who is not otherwise mentioned). Varo orders action against him and the return of Arminio to prison. Arminio sings an aria of renewed confidence and is led off. Varo tells Segeste to defend the castle and compares himself to Hercules, an example of ‘the double fires of Love and Glory’. The set changes to an Apartment with a Table, and on it a Bowl of Poison, and the Sword of Arminius. Tusnelda, resolved on suicide, takes the Sword to stab herself ... Puts down the Sword, and takes the Bowl ... As she is going to drink, Ramise prevents her, tells her that Arminio is still alive and it is their duty to attempt rescue or revenge before dying. Tusnelda takes the Bowl, and Ramise the Sword, and they sing a resolute duet: their fortune, like the weather, may improve. The set changes once more, to a Court joining to the Prison, Sigismond, then Tusnelda with the bowl in her Hand, and Ramise with the Sword. They ask him to rescue Arminio; he repeats that his father is subject to Augustus and must obey him; they raise their weapons to kill themselves, but Sigismond throws down

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 350

06/10/2006 14:52:34

Arminio

351

the Bowl, and takes away the Sword from Ramise. He is again distracted by contrary and confused emotions, and goes out with a perplexed aria. Tusnelda, left with a weeping Ramise, is also torn, between hope and fear. Arminio enters at Liberty (it is not clear how) and asks the cause of their tears. Before they can reply Sigismondo returns with Arminio’s sword (the Sword he took from Ramise). He gives it to Arminio, who after embracing his wife and sister, goes off to seek victory or death with his Sword in Hand. Tusnelda urges him on and follows. Ramise advises Sigismondo to avoid his father’s anger, but he prefers to stay, acknowledge his deed, and so increase his reputation. Segeste enters with Guards and rebukes his ‘effeminate son’ for disobeying his orders in favour of ‘am’rous Blandishments, and idle Talk’. Sigismondo replies that he has released Arminio and asks for death as his reward; he throws down his drawn Sword. Ramise claims that she was the guilty party. On Segeste’s orders the Guards chain both. Breathing fire and slaughter he goes out angrily. Sigismondo tells Ramise to trust his constancy and is led off. She defies the guards who prevent her following. The final set is a spacious Garden. Segeste with Sword in Hand learns from Tullio that Varo is dead, Arminio victorious and Segeste’s castle captured. Tullio suggests flight; Sigismondo offers to defend his father but is dismissed as a traitor; Arminio enters with Tusnelda, Ramise and German soldiers, takes Segeste’s sword but spares his life. Sigismondo and Arminio urge Segeste to cease his ‘ungovern’d Frenzy’, and Arminio swears to forget his misdeeds if he does so. Segeste is ‘o’ercome by such Excess of Virtue’, and they embrace. Arminio gives his sister in marriage to Sigismondo, to whom he owes his liberty and life. (The entire scene to this point occupies some eighteen lines of text and twenty-six bars of secco recitative.) Arminio and Tusnelda sing a duet of conjugal love, and everyone rejoices. This libretto, as Handel set it, might almost be a send-up of the heroic opera seria convention. The action proceeds in a series of ill-motivated jerks, with particularly ludicrous results in Act III. The situations are not so different from those in earlier heroic operas, but the transitions are awkward or non-existent; even more than usual, the characters speak daggers but use none. Their threats and grandiose gestures repeat themselves and lead nowhere. The lieto fine must be one of the least convincing in any Handel opera. Little of the blame for this attaches to the source libretto, Antonio Salvi’s Arminio, set by Alessandro Scarlatti for Pratolino in 1703. Most of the characters are historical; Varus’ defeat and death at the hands of Arminius (Hermann) in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest took place in ad 9. Salvi’s intermediary, as usual, was a French spoken tragedy, Arminius (1684) by Jean Galbert de Campistron (1656–1723), a follower of Racine. The play is verbose and political; Salvi strengthened it by emphasising the heroic and patriotic element, no doubt with an eye on the current War of the Spanish Succession, in which Italy was a centre of operations. His Arminio became one of the most popular librettos of the age, the basis for productions at Genoa in   A large collection of arias from Scarlatti’s opera has recently been acquired by the ­University of California, Berkeley.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 351

06/10/2006 14:52:34

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

352

1704 (Caldara), Düsseldorf  in 1707 (Steffani), London in 1714 (pasticcio arranged by Haym from Vivaldi, Orlandini, Lotti, Ristori and others), Naples 1714, Florence 1716 and Rome in 1722 (all Scarlatti, perhaps newly set for Rome), Venice in 1722 (C. F. Pollarolo, his last opera), Florence in 1726 (pasticcio), Perugia in 1728 (with an all-male cast), Milan in 1730 and Vienna in 1732 (both Hasse). Handel cared for none of these things; as usual he went back to Salvi’s original, but he and his London collaborator treated it in barbarous fashion. They kept all the characters and the general outline of the plot, but compressed the recitatives so ruthlessly that only the bare bones remain. Of some 1,323 lines of recitative (excluding fifty more printed in virgole as omitted in 1703) they cut more than a thousand, leaving a rump of approximately 308. With them went almost everything that explains the motivation of the characters and sustains the credibility of the plot. Moreover Handel exercised less than usual care over details of construction. Twice, in II.x and III.vi, Tusnelda addresses a substantial aria to a character who has left the stage, in the first instance because Handel evidently wanted to end the act with an aria for a central character – his normal procedure, but clumsily managed. The treatment of the exit aria convention, an important element in this type of opera, is casual in the extreme Again and again the recitative builds up to a situation demanding an exit aria, which is then omitted, producing at best a hiatus, at worst a resounding anticlimax. Table 9 Scarlatti 1703

Handel 1737

Arminio

6 arias

3 duets

6 arias

2 duets

Tusnelda

6 arias

2 duets

7 arias

3 duets

Sigismondo

5 arias

2 duets

5 arias

Ramise

6 arias

3 duets

3 arias

Varo

5 arias

2 arias

Tullio

3 arias

2 arias

Segeste

2 arias

1 aria

1 coro

1 coro

Total

33 arias

5 duets*

26 arias (including cavatinas)

1 duet

3 duets

*  Francesco Giuntini (I drammi per musica di Antonio Salvi) (Reggio Emilia, 1994), 84, lists six duets, evidently counting the successive arias for Ramise and Tusnelda at the end of III.ix as a duet; but they are in different metres and have separate da capos.

  It is not certain that this production was based on Salvi.   There were further settings after Handel’s, including one by Galuppi (1743) and a second by Hasse (1745).   Of his seven operas based on Salvi’s librettos, only Lotario uses a later version. He probably collected the printed librettos in Florence, though not all the operas were staged while he was there.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 352

06/10/2006 14:52:34

Arminio

353

As can be seen from Table 9, Handel reduced the roles of Ramise, Varo, Tullio and Segeste, the first two very considerably. Segeste, the villain of the piece and a central cog in the action, is under-represented in both librettos, perhaps because adequate singers were not available. (In Pollarolo’s 1722 opera the role was allotted to Francesco Guicciardi, a leading tenor, who presumably had more to sing.) Handel gave him his single aria at the end of the scene in which he first appears (I.v), no doubt to establish his character (the first of his two arias in 1703 comes near the end of Act II). After that he appears in many scenes, boiling with rage but departing angrily (sdegnato) without an aria no fewer than three times (I.viii, II.vii and III. viii). If there was a door, he doubtless slammed it. Varo twice does much the same (I.iv, II.x); in II.ii both go off together with a recitative. In four of these contexts the ­corresponding scene in Salvi ends with an aria, in a fifth (the equivalent of Handel’s III.viii) with a highly dramatic recitative, presumably accompanied. In the equivalent of II.vii no exit is indicated, though one is implied. Handel’s reduction of Varo’s role is particularly unfortunate, since he is Arminio’s principal antagonist and potentially the most interesting character. Handel retained twenty-one of Salvi’s texts, nineteen arias, the duet in the first scene, and the coro, a few of them with (mostly minor) verbal changes. He transferred three to different characters, ‘È vil segno d’un debole amore’ (I.vii) from Ramise to Tusnelda, ‘Impara a non temer’ (III.viii) from Ramise to Sigismondo, and ‘Mira il ciel, vedrai d’Alcide’ from Tullio in I.ii to Varo in III.iii (Varo’s final exit) with a new B section. The coro also had a new B section (in Salvi it consisted of duets for the two pairs of lovers). Salvi had three extra movements: a duet for Ramise and Sigismondo in the equivalent of I.vi (replaced by Handel with Sigismondo’s ‘Non son sempre vane larve’, set with da capo but reduced to a cavatina), an aria for Ramise in III.i (Handel cut this scene), and an aria for Tusnelda in the equivalent of III.iii (reduced by Handel to a cavatina). Handel added another cavatina, ‘Tra speme e timore’ for Tusnelda in III.v, following his frequent practice of beginning scenes with single-section movements not entailing an exit. Arminio’s ‘Duri lacci’ in II.ii might be considered an entrance aria, but it occupies the entire scene; nevertheless it is followed in the next scene by another aria for Arminio, producing the very rare phenomenon in Handel’s mature operas of two consecutive da capo arias for the same character. In all Handel added nine new texts, including the two Act III duets, but nothing in Act II; this is Salvi’s strongest act, though the suppression of Varo’s two arias weakens it in Handel’s. The music has had an indifferent press. Dent damns the whole opera, lock, stock and barrel, suggesting that Handel’s ill-health may account for its ‘deplorable feebleness ... The music is for the most part quite unworthy of Handel, and it can only be passed over in silence.’ This is too dismissive; was Dent irritated by the insistent thumping of the tub of German patriotism? Burney, Streatfeild and Leichtentritt find it patchy, but redeemed by occasional flashes of genius, most of them in Arminio’s part. Streatfeild considered the accompagnato ‘Fier teatro di morte’ and the aria ‘Vado a morir’ as fine as anything in Radamisto. In Burney’s judgement Arminio

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 353

06/10/2006 14:52:34

354

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

contains ‘few captivating airs ... yet fine things frequently catch the eye, and manifest the great master’. On the whole, however, Handel’s return to the military heroic type of libretto, last addressed in Sosarme, after his fruitful incursions into the worlds of Ariosto and classical myth in the five intervening operas, elicited a weak response. Old stock devices like the business with the sword and cup of poison in Act III (compare Floridante, Tolomeo and Lotario) no longer inspired exciting music. Much of the score is ­reminiscent of things he had said better elsewhere. In most of Act I and the latter part of Act III he seems merely to be going through the motions. This is reflected in the comparative weakness of the characterisation, the element in which so many of his operas from Agrippina to Alcina had been supreme; and that must be put down in part to his rough treatment of the libretto. As in Berenice and for the same reason, instead of haunting our memory, the characters come only fitfully to life because they are allowed so little opportunity to explain their actions. Many of their arias, especially the more virtuoso pieces, have a tenuous connection with the plot. Only at the end of Act II and the start of Act III does Handel approach the height of his powers. Arminio himself makes an unheroic start with a rather undistinguished duet in which he agrees to fly from his enemies. His only aria in Act I, the E major ‘Al par della mia sorte’, however, is a striking piece, combining a flexible pseudo-ground bass with the marching staccato crotchets characteristic of the new continental school and nicely varied rhythms and phrase-lengths for the voice. The ritornello after the A section develops earlier material, and a shortened version leads back, after an expressive B section, to the voice’s opening messa di voce, sustained for four bars; the initial ritornello never recurs. Arminio’s Act II music rises higher, as usual when Handel finds his hero in durance vile. ‘Duri lacci’, in the ‘prison’ key of F minor, is a masterly example of a not unfamiliar type. Accompanied only by a single violin line and bass, with descending arpeggios on different chords invading both sections and all three parts at irregular intervals (compare ‘Notte cara’ in Floridante), it projects a powerful emotional charge in remarkably few notes. Again the ritornello design is beautifully varied. ‘Sì, cadrò’ in the tonic major serves as a cabaletta discharging the accumulated tension provoked by Segeste’s mingled urging and threats, the first two words ejaculated before the ritornello. Burney was contemptuous of the divisions, not without reason, but the aria, accompanied by a perpetual semiquaver buzzing from the upper strings, joined later by the basses, works adequately in context. ‘Vado a morir’ leaves it far behind. Handel’s choice of a major key (E flat) for an intensely poignant moment (Arminio, condemned to death, entrusts his wife to the enemy who loves her) enables him to express both the nobility and the heartbreak in his ­situation. There are many marvellous touches: the spare opening over a drooping bass, the voice entering after the first bar and the upper instruments not till the ninth, the lyrical flow of the melody stabbed by touches of F minor in the middle of the A section and E flat minor in the enriched and extended ritornello after it, a foretaste of ‘He was despised’ at bar 15, and the foreshortened return after the forlorn modulations of the B section. Arminio begins Act III with the opera’s single accompagnato, ‘Fier teatro di morte’, as he faces death on the scaffold (Handel took the first line from a recitative

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 354

06/10/2006 14:52:34

Arminio

355

for Ramise in Salvi’s libretto), a situation always calculated to inspire Handel. The chromatic ritornello paints the grim scene in colours reminiscent of ‘Alma del gran Pompeo’ and again prophetic of ‘He was despised’ (Ex. 54). ‘Ritorno alle ritorte’ worthily sustains the bleak mood, now in F sharp minor, its angular first phrase always unharmonised in octaves except once in the ritornello after the A section. The creeping figure in slurred semiquavers faintly (and not inaptly) looks forward to the prisoners’ chorus in Fidelio. When the danger is past, Handel appears to lose interest in his hero, and indeed in the opera as a whole. The final arias of all four main characters are below standard. Arminio’s ‘Fatto scorta’ sticks out like a sore thumb. Having hitherto written for Annibali in a narrow alto range, Handel suddenly extends it at both ends, taking him as high as g’’ and several times breaking the sound barrier into the soprano clef. It is a freak display piece with downward plunges of up to a tenth, which no doubt gratified the singer but does little for the character or the drama. The duet with Tusnelda before the coro is equally shallow.

Sigismondo cuts a far from heroic figure. In a state of permanent irresolution, he wavers repeatedly between contrary emotions. Handel endeavours to suggest conflict in his two Act I arias, but his switches of mood in the recitatives are too abrupt to carry conviction. ‘Non son sempre vane larve’ contrasts a ritornello in stark octaves with plaintive suspensions, and semiquaver scale figures with longer notes and an occasional pedal. The opening of the B section with a dominant seventh over an E flat (relative major) pedal brings a faint echo of ‘Ritorna, O caro’ in Rodelinda. ‘Posso morir, ma vivere’, which ends the first act and is perhaps the best thing in it, is a well-conceived two-paced design, alternating between Allegro and Adagio and again reflecting the ‘Neapolitan’ style. The Adagio – four bars at first, reduced to two at later appearances – is skilfully integrated with the da capo. The B section, after setting out in G minor and threatening B flat minor, reaches a sudden cadence in the

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 355

06/10/2006 14:52:34

356

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

tonic (B flat major), whereupon the Adagio returns with the harmony compressed, its four bars split by a contraction of the original Allegro ritornello. ‘Quella fiamma’ is Conti’s showpiece, in C major like Annibali’s ‘Fatto scorta’ and equally out of proportion. In lively concerto grosso style, with a brilliant oboe obbligato besides two ripieno oboes, and full of echoes between different groups, stern interjections in octaves holding the exuberance of the soloists in balance, it would make an effective concert piece. The voice rises to a top c’’’; Conti was the only castrato for whom Handel wrote this note. The long opening ritornello (twentyfour bars) contains a sizeable passage in G minor that never returns. ‘Il sangue al cor favella’ is unusual in form and texture, though the material is not striking. It appears in the libretto as a da capo aria, but Handel set it through-composed, using the text of both sections. The opening theme, in which for eleven bars second violin and viola act as bass to the voice, is not heard again. Rapid repeated chords for the upper strings, as in an accompagnato, punctuate the rest of the aria, with a new final ritornello in buzzing semiquavers. On Sigismondo’s last aria one can only echo Dent’s verdict. Both these arias feature an octave leap in their first phrase, which becomes almost a mannerism in this act (compare ‘Ritorno alle ritorte’, ‘Mira il ciel’ and the second phrase of ‘Voglio seguir’). Tusnelda, though not one of the most individual of Handel’s suffering heroines, has her moments, chiefly in the second half of the opera. Five of her seven solos, aptly for one so ill-used, are in five different minor keys. ‘È vil segno’ is the better of the two in Act I, notable for the clever interweaving of the violin and voice parts, which mitigates the sequential tread of the latter, and the strong emphasis on the Neapolitan sixth chord in both sections. ‘Al furor che ti consiglia’ has attractive ideas but fails to develop them and consequently seems too long. ‘Rendimi il dolce sposo’ at the end of Act II on the other hand, in which Tusnelda makes her appeal to Varo, is a lovely siciliano, with constantly intertwining voice and string parts and a very light bass, for much of the time entrusted to the viola. The pretty semiquaver figure at the start penetrates the texture of all the parts, including the bass. As in Arminio’s immediately preceding ‘Vado a morir’, Handel explores the emotional possibilities of the major mode. Both Tusnelda’s cavatinas in Act III are simple but eloquent; ‘Ho veleno’ in B flat minor as she contemplates suicide and the D minor ‘Tra speme e timore’, which modulates to F minor where the ear expects the major. Between comes one of the most original movements in the opera, the duet ‘Quando più minaccia il cielo’, remarkable alike in atmosphere, texture and design. As befits their new-found resolve, Tusnelda and Ramise sing together almost throughout in broad phrases doubled at the octave by recorders, while the violins chase each other in interlocking downward scales. Towards the end the upper strings break off into repeated staccato chords, followed by a long final ritornello that develops the initial rising scale in a new rhythm and propels the music forward into new territory. The scoring in HG is incorrect; autograph and performing score agree that the oboes play only in this ritornello. Ramise’s three arias, all in major keys, are deliberately lighter in tone. The most substantial, ‘Sento il cor’, combines lively cross-rhythms and neat counterpoint in the string parts over a bass of drumming repeated quavers in the Vinci–Pergolesi style.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 356

06/10/2006 14:52:35

Arminio

357

The pedals for the voice on the word ‘terror’ are a happy touch. The skittish tone of ‘Niente spero’, each phrase beginning off the beat, seems to have little connection with the dramatic situation. Towards the end of the A section the violins introduce triplet decoration not heard at the start and play with it in the closing ritornello; but Handel did this better elsewhere. ‘Voglio seguir lo sposo’ begins impetuously without ritornello and is saved from banality by occasional cross-rhythms. Varo deserves more than his two arias, which barely establish his character. ‘Al lume di due rai’ bounces along without saying much; the leaping violin part gives it a certain thrust. ‘Mira il ciel’, in which he compares himself to Hercules before going to meet his death, is the most richly scored aria in the opera, with a spirited twenty-four-bar ritornello in which pairs of horns and oboes discourse together and in opposition and the bassoons earn their sole specific mention. As always when Handel deploys the horns, the music has mellow warmth and charm, and there are happy touches of subdominant colour. Tullio’s two arias are bluff soldier’s music of a familiar type, though Handel wrote them for different voices and none of the scores bothered to regularise the clefs. They were sung by a contralto. ‘Con quel sangue’ has a hint, in a major key, of Harapha’s ‘Presuming slave’ in Samson. A repeatednote figure from the violins on different notes of the scale offers an apt suggestion of the parade ground. Segeste too deserves more music. His one aria is a clever piece of characterisation; the striding bass and abrupt changes of register paint a vivid portrait of a treacherous tribal chieftain, at once choleric and furtive. The B minor overture has a noble introduction, much admired by Burney, and a splendid fugato on a spiky chromatic subject, but is let down by a perfunctory minuet. The only other orchestral movement is a delightful springy little sinfonia with rich texture (three violins) introducing Act II. The scoring is mostly routine, but managed with some tactical skill. In the first half of the opera it is very light. Apart from doubling the top line in the overture, Act II sinfonia and the ritornellos of ‘Sì, cadrò’ the oboes are silent till near the end of Act II; the obbligato part in ‘Quella fiamma’ was written for Giuseppe Sammartini (Burney’s Martini). From that point nearly every movement has a fuller accompaniment, with the oboes enjoying more independence and recorders and horns added for special effect. The gloomy coro, a brief binary minuet, is not of great interest, but the minor key may be significant. The occasions when Handel ends an opera or oratorio in the minor almost invariably reflect a situation where the lieto fine lands the sympathy on the wrong side and the most attractive character is worsted or killed. Was Handel thinking of the unfortunate Varo, who does nothing wrong but is killed for his pains, or the historical fact that Arminio was subsequently murdered by his own people? There is no evidence of an overall tonal scheme. The first half of Act I is all in sharp keys, the second half of Acts I and III all in flat keys. It is perhaps worth noting that except in Act III da capo arias are greatly outnumbered by dal segno arias, which offer more opportunity for developing the material and varying the design. Almost without exception the da capo arias are weaker in other respects as well. John Roberts (Handel Sources) lists six borrowings in Arminio, from Gasparini’s Ambleto,   Amadigi, Tamerlano, Berenice, Imeneo, Alexander Balus and Theodora are the most striking ­examples.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 357

06/10/2006 14:52:35

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

358

Porta’s Numitore and G. Bononcini’s Xerse; but they are confined to short phrases and three of them are uncertain. He has since unearthed another, from Pistocchi’s Narciso (see Appendix D).

History and Text As noted in the autograph, Handed began the composition on 15 September 1736 (temporarily abandoning work on Giustino), finished the draft of Act I on 19 September, Act II on 26 September, Act III on 3 October, and the complete filling-out on 14 October. He conducted the first performance (attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales) at Covent Garden on 12 January 1737, with the following cast: arminio Domenico Annibali (alto castrato) sigismondo Gioacchino Conti (soprano castrato) tusnelda Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) ramise Francesca Bertolli (contralto) varo John Beard (tenor) segeste Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) tullio Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) Towards the end of November Handel had played the overtures to Arminio and Giustino on the harpsichord to Mrs Pendarves, who found them ‘charming’. On 8 January she attended a rehearsal of Arminio at Covent Garden, and wrote to her sister: ‘I think it as fine [an opera] as any he has made, as I hope you will’. In her opinion, Annibali had ‘the best part of Senesino’s voice and Carestino’s, with a prodigious fine taste and good action!’ contradicting Burney’s later comment that ‘his abilities during his stay in England seem to have made no deep impression’. Newburgh Hamilton, who also found the opera ‘very fine’ at a rehearsal, described it after the first performance as ‘a miracle’. Lord Shaftesbury was even more enthusiastic, delivering an extended euology of both opera and performance. He described the score as ‘rather grave but correct & labour’d [in a complimentary sense] to the highest degree ... the whole piece in every respect excellent & vastly pleasing ... I think there is rather more variety & spirit in it than in any of the preceeding [operas] ... [Annibali] prodigiously surpass’d my expectations ... he is by far a greater master of musick than any man I ever heard sing on a stage.’ Shaftesbury admitted that Annibali’s lower notes were very weak, but admired his keeping time, his acting and his cadenzas: he ‘always keeps within the air & scarce ever makes two alike throughout the opera’. The whole cast received praise except Beard, whose two arias were ‘two too many ... for he is absolutely good for nothing’. Outside Handel’s circle the reception was cool. Holdsworth wrote to Jennens on the 27th that the attendance was poor. Even Shaftesbury admitted that ‘the Town don’t much admire it’, and ‘most people (not Sir Wyndham [Knatchbull] Mr. Jennens   Anne Conolly (née Wentworth) to Lord Strafford, 13 January (BL Add. MS 31145, fol. 357); misdated in R. Loewenthal, ‘Handel and Newburgh Hamilton, New References in the Strafford Papers’, MT 112 (1971), 1065. She spelt the word ‘Meracle’.   Letter to James Harris, 18 January 1737 (Burrows and Dunhill, 22–3).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 358

06/10/2006 14:52:35

Arminio

359

&c) are of a quite different opinion as to Annibali &c from myself’. Arminio had six performances, the last on 12 February, and then slept for 198 years. Handel included four arias (‘Vado a morir’, ‘Niente spero’, ‘Sì, cadrò’ and ‘Con quel sangue’) in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo (25 February 1738) and two (‘Al par della mia sorte’, and ‘Con quel sangue’) in Jupiter in Argos (1 May 1739); all except ‘Niente spero’ had parodied texts. ‘Posso morir, ma vivere’ and ‘Fatto scorta’ were among the Italian arias he added to Semele on 1 December 1744. Frasi sang ‘Quella fiamma’ at a Musicians Fund benefit concert at the King’s Theatre on 30 April 1753. The first modern revival was at Leipzig on 23 February 1935, the 250th anniversary of Handel’s birth, when it was given in German as Hermann und Thusnelda. A different German version, which contrived to incorporate the final chorus of the Queen Anne Birthday Ode, was staged at Oldenburg in 1963. There have been two British productions, by Alan Kitching’s Unicorn Opera in 1972 and the London Handel Society in 1996. A recording under Alan Curtis was issued by Virgin Veritas in 2001.

Autograph The make-up of the manuscript (RM 20 a 8) and Handel’s foliation by gatherings indicate five insertions, four of them arias, each for a different character: ‘Non deve Roman petto’ (Tullio), ‘Non son sempre vane larve’ (Sigismondo), ‘Fatto scorta’ (Arminio), and ‘Voglio seguir’ (Ramise). They were added almost at once and seem designed merely to expand the singers’ parts, Tullio’s involving a cast change (the rest of his part is in the bass clef). None of them contributes significantly to the drama, and none of the texts comes from the source libretto. The fifth insertion (fol. 39) has four supplements to ‘Quella fiamma’, the two-bar echo in bars 6 and 7 and its later appearances, and the ritornello after the B section, short-circuiting the long initial ritornello. The autograph and all copies have the lower text in the B section of ‘Al par della mia sorte’ (HG 19). In ‘È vil segno’ the sign for the repeat comes after bar 8. Handel abandoned different opening paragraphs in ‘Duri lacci’ and ‘Quella fiamma’; the latter was less adventurous with a premature cadence in the dominant at bar 14. The tempo of ‘Ritorno alle ritorte’ was originally Andante larghetto, that of ‘Quando più minaccia’ perhaps Andante. Bars 1–13 and 14–23 of ‘Il sangue al cor’ are marked to be repeated. A stage direction s’abbraciono [sic] at bar 22 of the recitative is missing on HG 98. It is amusing to note that in the heading of III.i Handel wrote the word ‘nero’ (black) with a capital N. A pencil sketch on the verso of the last page (fol. 81), four bars in G major, triple time, appears to have no connection with the opera. The Fitzwilliam Museum has two autograph fragments: a discarded continuation of ‘Impara a non temer’ after bar 13 (HG 92, following fol. 69 of the autograph) in Mus. MS 262, pp. 23–4, fourteen and a half bars with the string parts not all filled in; and a sixteen-bar sketch with repeats, treble only, in A minor, in Mus. MS 263, p. 50. This was evidently the source of the main theme of the coro and the second strain of the minuet in the overture.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 359

06/10/2006 14:52:35

360

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Libretto ‘Arminius, An Opera; As it is perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. Composed by Mr. Handel ... Printed and Sold by T. Wood, in Little-Britain; and at the Theatre in Covent-Garden ... [Price One Shilling]’ 43 pp. The brief Argument (quoted above) and Dramatis Personae are in English only. ‘Ho veleno’ has only its first two lines, and ‘Non son sempre vane larve’, an entrance aria, lacks a da capo (though the B section text is printed), which suggests that these were Handel’s earliest cuts.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1007) is entirely in Smith’s hand. Handel added parodied texts to ‘Al par della mia sorte’ and ‘Vado a morir’ for use in Jupiter in Argos and Alessandro Severo respectively. Three of the four inserted arias in the autograph are also insertions here. The fourth, ‘Non son sempre’, is integral; it was presumably the first addition. Several cuts are shown: the B sections of ‘Non son sempre’ and ‘Ritorno alle ritorte’ and all but the first six bars of ‘Ho veleno’, as bracketed in HG, were pasted over, the segno in ‘È vil segno’ moved from bar 8 to bar 16, and the repeat signs after bars 13 and 22 of ‘Il sangue al cor’ scratched out. ‘Mira il ciel’ may also have been reduced to its A section. These changes were probably made during the brief run. In the Act II sinfonia the third and fourth staves are both for violas, though the viola 1 part is in the treble clef. The Lennard score, a neat copy by Hb1, probably dates from 1737. It must have been copied mainly from the autograph: Hb1 incorporated Handel’s instruction Sub litera A in the heading for I.vi (HG 22), and the repeat signs in ‘Il sangue al cor’ are present. ‘Non son sempre’ lacks its B section, but the other pieces shortened in the performing score are complete. In the B section of ‘Quella fiamma’ the second stave has the same music as the first, clearly an error. Most of the movements in Act III, from ‘Fatto scorta’ on, have full bass figuring. The Flower score (S2, late 1740s) was copied from the autograph. All the shortened arias are complete, the segno in ‘È vil segno’ comes after bar 8, the stage direction s’abbraciono (HG 98) is present as in no other copy, and S2 (not Jennens) supplied Handel’s dates at the end of each act. There is however no sign of the repeat marks in ‘Il sangue al cor’. The Aylesford volume RM 19 a 1, fols 111–14, has a Smith copy of the overture in keyboard arrangement, followed by an S2 copy of the recitative ‘Olà! custodi’ (HG 59–60) with figured bass and a note that the aria ‘Vado a morir’ follows. The Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland has S5 copies of the three duets (c.1744), confirming that the top stave in ‘Quando più minaccia’ is for recorders, not oboes (except in the coda). The Flower parts (S2, mid-1740s, earlier than the Flower score) – violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2 (including recorders), and cembalo; horns 1 + 2 at the University of Maryland – were copied mainly from the performing score, though the suppressed passages are present. The overture and ‘Fiaccherò’ are missing. The Act II sinfonia has two viola parts on separate systems, the first musically identical

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 360

06/10/2006 14:52:35

Arminio

361

with violin 3 in HG. The cello and cembalo parts mention the bassoons once only, at bar 18 of ‘Mira il ciel’. The oboe parts are instructive. Where the performing score is specific, as in the Act II sinfonia, ‘Quella fiamma’, ‘Mira il ciel’, ‘Fatto scorta’, and the duet ‘Ritorna nel core’, no difficulty arises. As usual the oboes are confined to the ritornellos; only for five bars (57–61) in ‘Fatto scorta’ do they play while the voice is singing. Where the performing score names no instruments S2 had to use his experience and intelligence. He generally made the right choice, confirmed by the autograph; but in ‘Non deve Roman petto’ he supplied oboe parts where the autograph calls for unison violins. In ‘Vado a morir’ (Tutti on the top stave in the autograph), ‘Impara a non temer’ and the coro (both Tutti on the top stave in autograph and performing score, not as printed in HG) – all pieces with two treble staves – both oboes take the top line with the first violins. This was Handel’s regular practice; he specifies it clearly in the overture, Act II sinfonia and ‘Fatto scorta’. Nowhere in these parts does the second oboe play with the second violins, though perhaps in the opening duet it should; no instruments are specified in the autograph, performing score or any copy, but Handel writes Viol, pianiss against both treble staves in bar 8 of the autograph. In ‘Quella fiamma’ oboe 1 has the top line with solos and tutti carefully marked, oboe 2 the oboe 1 ripieno part (in the ritornellos only). In ‘Quando più minaccia’ the oboe parts are marked Flauto 1 and 2 at the start, but Col Hautb. in the closing ritornello. An earlier set of string parts covering the complete opera (late 1730s) is divided between the Coke and Flower Collections: violins 1 and 2 and viola in the former (MS 17), ‘basso’ (cello) in the latter (MS v. 74). S2 copied the overture, Xi the two violins and the bass, a third hand the viola. ‘Non son sempre’ lacks its B section. ‘Vado a morir’ is Largo, ‘Il sangue al cor’ has repeats. The bass is silenced in ‘Ho veleno’ and in bars 18–21 of ‘Mira il ciel’, where the bassoons are left on their own. Nine dal segno arias have a da capo, but five other pieces are correct. The Coke MS also contains violin 2 and oboes 1 and 2 parts for the overture from another set. Walsh (the Younger) paid Handel £25 for the score, and on 22 January 1737 published proposals for issuing it by subscription at half a guinea, ‘Corrected by the Author’. It appeared on 12 February, the day of the last performance. The subscribers – 108-11 for 143-5 copies, according to different examples – included many familiar names and ‘The Musical Society Oxen’ [sic]. The score is unusually complete, omitting only the secco recitatives and the B section of ‘Non son sempre’; but as in other Walsh scores many dal segno arias are given a da capo and the instruments are seldom specified. ‘Il sangue al cor’ has repeats as in the autograph, an indication that Walsh obtained early material. The British Library copy G.164 has additional bass figuring in manuscript throughout. A flute arrangement followed in June. Walsh published the overture in seven parts and in keyboard arrangement on 6 April 1737. The only later score is Chrysander’s (1882).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 361

06/10/2006 14:52:35

ch a pter 20 Giustino

A

terse Argument chops up history more than usually fine. ‘At the Time that the Empress Ariadne, Widow of Zenon, raised Anastasius to the Empire, Vitalian the younger stirred up Asia Minor, and coming with a powerful Army, pass’d the Thracian Bosphorus, and besieged Constantinople. At the same Juncture Justin, leaving the Plow, entered the Field in favour of the Greek Emperor; and taking Vitalian Prisoner, he was deservedly crowned with the Imperial Laurel. On the foregoing Passages the present Drama is wrought.’ Act I opens in A magnificent Hall, prepared for the Coronation of Anastasius: Anastasius and Ariadne seated on the Imperial Throne. A Court of Knights and Ladies – Guards and Populace – A Band of Instruments on the Stage. Whilst Ariadne is crowning Anastasius with the Imperial Laurel, a chorus hails his reign as a future golden age. Amanzio, ‘General of the Imperial Arms’, warns them of the danger from Vitaliano. Anastasio wants to fight and goes to rise, but Ariadne withholds him. Polidarte, Vitaliano’s envoy, enters with Attendants and offers peace in return for Arianna’s hand in marriage to Vitaliano. Anastasio sends a defiant reply, and Arianna resolves to join him at the front. The set changes to A Country with Fruit-Trees, Justin with his Plow. He longs to leave agriculture for warfare but feels drowsy and lies down on his Plow to sleep. A gay Symphony, the Scene is suddenly brightened, and Fortune sitting on a Wheel which turns, descends in a grand Machine attended by Genii, who bring in their Hands Sceptres, Crowns, and Treasures. Fortune, echoed by a chorus of Genii, bids Giustino wake up, forsake cottage and meadow and go forth ‘to grace a Palace and adorn a Throne’, assuring him of her support. Fortune disappears, and Justin awakes and rises hastily. No sooner has he resolved to obey the summons than going out he meets Leocasta pursued by a Bear. He attacks the Bear and kills him. Leocasta, discerning ‘a Soul ill-suited to his homely Dress’, informs him that she is the Emperor’s sister and invites him to Court. In An Apartment Arianna orders Amanzio to follow her to Anastasio’s camp. Amanzio bids Fortune favour his deceitful plan. Anastasio orders Giustino to rescue Arianna, captured by ‘an unruly tribe’. On A vast Plain under Constantinople, cover’d with the Military Encampments of Vitalian, the latter calls his soldiers to arms. Polidarte reports the capture of Arianna during an unsuccessful night attack by the forces of Anastasio, who fled. She is brought in guarded and scorns Vitaliano’s offer of his hand and an empire. After threatening her he goes apart, but comes forward in a Rage when she abuses Polidarte as well, and orders her to be exposed to a sea monster. She is happy to die, regretting only the lack of a fond farewell to her husband, and is led off by the Guards.   See note 6 below.   The first scene in the source libretto is both a wedding and a coronation. Handel suppresses all mention of the wedding, perhaps to make Vitaliano’s proposal at least feasible.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 362

06/10/2006 14:52:36



Giustino

363

Act II. A Wood opening to a View of the Sea toss’d in a Storm, with Crags and Rocks. A Ship is seen at a Distance, which is wreck’d on the Shore, from which disembark Anastasio and Giustino. Feeling tired, they go into a cottage. Polidarte enters with Guards and Arianna, still defiant. The Guards chain her to a rock whilst Polidarte sings an aria, and all leave her. At a Distance is seen gradually to rise from the Sea a horrid Monster, which makes towards the Rock. As Arianna prays, the Monster goes to the Rock. Giustino hears her cries for help, echoed by unseen voices, and attacks the Monster. After a struggle he kills the Monster, and unlooses Arianna. Anastasio enters, astonished to see his wife, and they sing a love duet, after which he embraces Giustino. Amanzio appears in a boat with sailors, driven by the storm while searching for Anastasio’s fleet, and disembarks on the Shore. Arianna suggests they leave ‘this detested place’, and they imbark whilst the Mariners sing the Chorus wishing them a safe voyage. Vitaliano enters with Soldiers, finds the monster dead, and goes to look for Arianna. In A Garden Leocasta compares her secret love for Giustino to a ship in a storm in danger of striking a rock. Anastasio enters wearing a Crown of Laurels with Amanzio followed by Giustino with Vitaliano in Chains. Giustino boasts of a victory; Anastasio again embraces him, while Amanzio aside resents all credit going to a base peasant. On Giustino’s suggestion Anastasio orders Vitaliano to be dragged before Arianna, and the Guards lead him off. Giustino asks permission to give the enemy a final blow. Anastasio agrees and goes out with Amanzio. Giustino, putting his Hand on his Sword, anticipates his future fame. Arianna enters alone and sits down. Vitaliano is brought in chain’d and guarded. He declares his love and, approaching her, begs for one tender look before he dies. She rises angrily and orders the guards to confine him in a dungeon. Still proclaiming his love, he is led off. She ends the act with a contemptuous simile aria, comparing his love to a river lost in the ocean of her disdain. Act III begins in A Closet with Amanzio sowing suspicions of Giustino and Arianna in Anastasio’s mind. Anastasio stands in Suspense. Amanzio gives him a Diamond Girdle taken from Vitaliano. Anastasio tells him to watch Giustino. Vitaliano thanks his friends for rescuing him and looks forward to securing vengeance and Anastasio’s throne. In An Apartment Arianna, observed by Amanzio apart, thanks Giustino for his services and gives him the Girdle she had of Anastasius, which he puts on, singing about a breath of suspicion rising to a gale. Amanzio tells Anastasio that Arianna gave it to Giustino as a pledge of love. Anastasio assumes the worst, denounces his wife, and orders Giustino to surrender his sword to Amanzio. He refuses, but lays down   HG incorrectly applies this to Anastasio before his exit.   Mistranslated hastily in the English text.   So in the printed libretto. In Handel’s autograph the act begins, as in the HG score, with a sinfonia headed by a stage direction reading in translation: A suburban wood with a tower. Vitaliano is seen to descend from the tower by a rope, assisted by a band of supporters dressed as rustics, and they hide in the wood. This is followed by Vitaliano’s recitative ‘Amici, tutto devo’ and the aria ‘Il piacer della vendetta’ (HG 88–9). At a late stage during the composition Handel removed the Amanzio–Anastasio scene (HG 86–8) from its original position at the end of Act II and inserted it between the sinfonia and Vitaliano’s recitative and aria. It is not certain that he performed the sinfonia, with or without its accompanying gymnastics. Its presence in the performing score, the copies and the Walsh print (but not the Flower parts) suggests that he did, producing an awkward sequence: Vitaliano has to disappear and return later to thank his friends. Handel might of course have performed the sinfonia without action.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 363

06/10/2006 14:52:36

364

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the Sword at the feet of Anastasius, who sentences him to execution. Giustino is led away, and Anastasio dismisses Arianna as unworthy of his throne and bed. She suspects Amanzio but female pride requires her to keep a stiff upper lip. Leocasta laments the loss of Giustino so soon after he has won her love. Amanzio chuckles over his triumph and looks forward to receiving universal acclamation. The set changes to A horrid Mountain. Thanks to Leocasta’s intervention Giustino’s sentence has been commuted to exile. He reproaches fickle Fortune and lies down to sleep on a Stone. Vitaliano enters and is astonished to see Giustino asleep. As he goes to stab him, a sudden Flash of Lightning darts on the Mountain, which opens and discovers the Sepulchre of Vitalian the Elder, and a Voice issues from the Sepulchre, telling him not to strike down his brother, ‘for he alone can give you Life and Empire.’ ‘If he is really my brother,’ says Vitaliano, ‘he will have a star on his left arm.’ He looks at his left arm, and wakes him up. Giustino is surprised to learn that he is of noble stock. They embrace and set out to avenge the betrayed Anastasio and give Amanzio his deserts. A Garden of Pleasure, with a Machine in Prospect, representing the Temple of Fame, and a Throne on which Amansius goes to sit, crown’d with Laurel. He rejoices in his triumph. No sooner are Anastasio, Arianna and Leocasta brought in chain’d than Within is heard a Sound of Drums and Trumpets, and a Noise of Arms. Giustino, Vitaliano and Polidarte enter with Soldiers all with their drawn Swords ... As Amansius goes to fly, Justin holds his Sword at his Breast, and hinders him. He orders him to be loaded with chains and publicly beheaded. The Soldiers fetter and lead away Amansius, and Justin unlooses Anastasius and Ariadne, and Leocasta, and offering to kneel to Anastasius, he rises and embraces him. Arianna follows: as she kneels, Anastasio raises her. She assures him of her constant love. Giustino presents Vitaliano to him as his brother, and Vitaliano kisses his hand. They embrace. Anastasio salutes Giustino as joint Emperor and successor and gives him Leocasta as wife. All welcome a new Golden Age. This libretto has an interesting history. It was written by Count Nicolò Beregan, an eminent Venetian lawyer and man of letters (1627–1713) for Legrenzi, whose setting was produced at Venice in 1683. It was one of the most successful operas of its period and one of the most spectacular, featuring an elephant reputedly carrying twenty persons at the head of Vitaliano’s army in Act I and elaborate naval and land battles in Act II. It contained seventy-seven arias, most of them very short, and several subplots involving mythical figures, personifications, comic servants, confidants, ballets and a third brother of Giustino, Andronico, who courts the Emperor’s sister Eufemia   Almost all the characters are historical, but their behaviour is not. Anastasius I, described by Gibbon as ‘an aged domestic of the palace’, came to the throne and married his predecessor’s widow Ariadne (d. 515) in 491, and reigned till his death in 518. Justin I (450–527), an illiterate Bulgarian peasant who had risen to command the Imperial Guard, succeeded him at the age of sixty-eight. Both cut a poor figure in Gibbon. Justin converted to his own use money entrusted to him by the palace eunuch Amantius for bribing his soldiers. ‘Since the eunuch Amantius had been defrauded of his money, it became necessary to deprive him of his life.’ Vitalian, after a treaty of peace had concluded his rebellion against Anastasius in 513–15, was stabbed seventeen times at a royal banquet, apparently at the instance of Justin’s nephew and successor Justinian. Any circumstances less suited to inaugurate a Golden Age it would be hard to imagine.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 364

06/10/2006 14:52:36



Giustino

365

(= Leocasta) in female disguise and later tries to rape her. Legrenzi’s opera continued to be performed after his death; Francesco Bibiena designed special machinery for the 1695 Rome revival. Pietro Pariati reworked it for Albinoni (Bologna, 1711) and Vivaldi (Rome, 1724), removing all the subsidiary characters except Andronico. Vivaldi’s libretto was Handel’s source; his literary collaborator, if any, is not known. A comparison of the two librettos is revealing, not to Handel’s advantage. His two most conspicuous changes, the abbreviation of the recitatives and the elimination of Andronico, are largely responsible for the defects of the plot. Contraction of recitatives to satisfy the taste of the audiences was of course Handel’s regular practice. In Giustino he took it to extremes, reducing some 1,175 lines to just over 350 and telescoping them so ruthlessly as to make the action and the motivation of the characters often obscure and sometimes incomprehensible. The removal of Andronico, due perhaps to the want of a suitable singer (there are eight characters without him), besides placing Leocasta in limbo with very little to do, leaves yawning gaps in the first two acts. Both begin well, but deteriorate abruptly after the first half-dozen scenes where a substantial segment of the Leocasta–Andronico subplot drops out. In I.vii Arianna goes off to join Anastasio’s army, but after a three-line recitative and a short aria for Amanzio, with no change of set, Anastasio informs us that he has lost a battle, Arianna has been captured, and it is for Giustino to rescue her. A similar situation arises in II.vi. Vitaliano enters with troops looking for Arianna, utters a secco recitative in a ­situation imperatively demanding an aria and walks off, producing a classical anticlimax (in Vivaldi’s opera he sings ‘Qual torrente’). After a short solo scene for Leocasta Anastasio appears crowned with laurels, and we guess that Vitaliano has lost a battle (and, it subsequently transpires, a key piece of equipment); sure enough, he enters a prisoner in chains. To complicate matters, no set changes are indicated in any source for Scenes viii and ix, though they must be presumed. Then things get worse. Originally Act II ended with the scene in which Amanzio poisons Anastasio’s mind against Giustino and hands him Vitaliano’s jewelled girdle. Handel later transposed this to the beginning of Act III, as noted above. In the next scene (III.ii) Arianna bestows the girdle on Giustino, confirming Anastasio’s suspicions. But we never see it passing from Anastasio to Arianna (as we do in Vivaldi),10 whether as a gift or to test her fidelity; the fact is merely mentioned in a direction in the libretto. Since virtually the entire action of Act III hangs on it, the drama subsides broken-backed. It is strange that Handel, generally so careful in such matters of dramatic coherence, should have let things slip in this way. It is difficult to imagine him doing so in his glory years.   It received a gallant production, the first since the seventeenth century, with property ­elephant, at Bishop Otter College, Chichester, in 1986.   See Reinhard Strohm’s fine study ‘Vivaldi’s and Handel’s settings of Giustino’ in Music and Theatre, 131–58. Strohm edited Vivaldi’s score (Milan, 1991).   Thus bringing ‘Qual torrente’ to the end of Act II. Handel may have wanted a brilliant fast aria here after ending Act I with a slow one. 10  Handel omitted the last two scenes in Vivaldi’s Act II, which also include Andronico’s ­attempt to rape Leocasta and her rescue by Giustino. Did he not notice that he had at the same time knocked out an essential link?

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 365

06/10/2006 14:52:36

366

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Whatever its faults, Giustino has a flavour of its own. Although like Arminio, Berenice and Faramondo it belongs to the ‘Dark Age’ quasi-historical type that Handel had temporarily (and fruitfully) abandoned in 1733–36 for fantasy and classical legend, it retains one element from that milieu, and from the seventeenth-century Venetian source of the libretto. The supernatural, offering glimpses of a world beyond everyday experience, has always been one of the prerogatives of opera. It was particularly congenial to Handel, and seldom failed to elevate his music to new heights. Giustino’s dream of Fortune and her train – one of the most memorable scenes in Handel’s late operas – the distant voices that echo Arianna’s cries for help when she is chained like Andromeda to the rock, and to a lesser extent the utterance of the late Vitaliano senior from his mountain tomb belong to a climate of romance more typical of the seventeenth and late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries than to the political jockeying of Metastasian opera seria. Another such link is a picturesque element, reflected from time to time in the music. The range of scenes is exceptionally wide, from the pomp of an imperial coronation to a field with oxen ploughing, a vast plain, a wooded and marine landscape with two practical ships, a horrid mountain, a Temple of Fame, and in the original conception a suburban wood from which the tenor has to make a precarious escape. Add to this a shipwreck and the zoological element, the hero’s fights with a bear and a forerunner of the Loch Ness monster, and we have something like a recipe for a German Romantic opera. Of course, these things presented no obstacle to the Baroque theatre; their significance lies in their influence on the music. Handel is beginning to loosen the design. His overall plan is more flexible than Vivaldi’s, or than any of his own earlier operas with the possible exception of Orlando. Of its thirty arias,11 five are cavatinas (four of them reduced from da capo form in 1724) and one, the echo song, which goes back to 1683, a free arioso. There are four choruses, five accompagnatos, five sinfonias, and one remarkable scene in which nine movements are structurally linked. Moreover Handel was free from the temptation, which Vivaldi could seldom resist, to pop in arias that had pleased the public in earlier operas but barely fitted the new context. A small but significant detail is the number of occasions on which specific stage actions are enjoined not only in recitatives and sinfonias but in closed vocal movements: Arianna’s crowning of Anastasio during the first chorus, the guards chaining Arianna to the rock while Polidarte sings ‘Ritrosa bellezza’, and the manning and departure of the ship during the Act II sailors’ chorus. This movement, a barcarolle, with a perceptible tang of the open air, seems almost to stand out of its period. It has reminded at least two later scholars of Mozart, though not of the same movement or the same opera: Streatfeild suggests it as the model for ‘Placido è il mar’ in 11  Handel retained twenty-six of the forty-five set pieces in Vivaldi’s libretto, seven of them with modifications: one chorus, two duets (one as a free quintet) and twenty-three arias (one as a chorus, three transferred to different characters and four to different scenes). Besides ‘Qual torrente’, he shifted Arianna’s ‘Augelletti’ from Vivaldi’s II.viii to Leocasta in III.v, Giustino’s ‘Il mio cor’ to Arianna, and Leocasta’s ‘Sventurata navicella’ back from the last scene in Vivaldi’s Act II. Except ‘Il mio cor’, which could fit either character, these are all simile arias and therefore movable furniture.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 366

06/10/2006 14:52:36



Giustino

367

Idomeneo (in a similar context, also featuring a monster), while Strohm cites ‘Soave sia il vento’ in Così fan tutte. One can see the likeness to both.12 Although confined to four numbers, including the finale, the chorus leaves its mark on the opera. Both musically and dramatically Giustino is an uneven opera, rising very high in some scenes but in others falling into routine, with a scattering of substandard arias, especially in the second half of Act III. One has a suspicion that towards the end Handel was beginning to lose interest or to become aware, perhaps subconsciously, that he was offering the public a flawed article. But it is difficult to dismiss an opera with so much that is individual. The appearance of a pursuing bear is not the only detail that brings to mind, however remotely, the half-realist, half-romantic climate of Shakespeare’s late comedies. Inevitably the disjointedness of the libretto takes the edge off the characters; none has the vitality or depth of Handel’s major figures. Giustino, veering between somnolence and military bravado, and twice falling asleep on stage, is hardly an interesting hero; but Handel endows him with a superb opening scene, remarkable for psychological penetration, pictorial quality and dramatic and tonal organisation. The situation clearly inspired him; this is the one point where he expanded Vivaldi’s libretto.13 The episode comprises nine sections, at once continuous and balanced: three cavatinas, two accompanied and one secco recitative, a sinfonia, a chorus and a final clinching da capo aria. Handel does not attempt to depict Giustino as a peasant – after all he turns out to be nothing of the sort – but his first cavatina, ‘Può ben nascer’, besides establishing a sharp contrast with the gilded splendour of the coronation scene by a key switch from A to F, is exceptional in form and unique in scoring. The initial ritornello, including the repeat, runs to forty-four Larghetto bars in minuet rhythm, the same length as the vocal part, the coda to another sixteen. The former, lightly scored (as first conceived) for a consort of recorders, solo oboe and viola,14 paints the fresh rural scene with the utmost delicacy. When the voice enters, the accompaniment changes to two violins and continuo without harpsichord; but the final ritornello suddenly expands to nine parts, two recorders, one oboe, two violins, viola, tutti bassi and two horns – the only instance in Handel’s multitude of arias where horns make their first entry after the voice has fallen silent. The effect is magical (Ex. 55). If Giustino’s first cavatina could scarcely be more placid, his second, after a restless recitative inspired by frustrated ambition and general dissatisfaction, is a sleep aria with a difference. He is weary but not at peace. Handel indicates his mixed emotions by pitching the music in C minor – the only minor key aria in this very long Act until the last of all – based on slow (Largo) dotted figures drooping by thirds and fourths with low trills in all the parts. The contrast that follows is electrifying. 12  Quoted in ‘Handel’s Giustino, A Janus Opera?’, my contribution to Words on Music, Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter, ed. D. Rosen and C. Brook (New York, 2003), 79–80. 13  Vivaldi’s scene is much simpler and less dramatic, without chorus or equivalents for ‘Può ben nascer’ or ‘Se parla nel mio cor’. Fortuna’s aria (on a different text) is a formal da capo piece in two settings. 14  Handel liked to edge recorder or flute tone with a single oboe; compare ‘Will the sun forget to streak’ in Solomon and ‘Per me già di morire’ in La Resurrezione.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 367

06/10/2006 14:52:36

368

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The bass rises by a seventh and inaugurates a four-movement continuous section in B flat: a sinfonia for Fortune’s descent with genii, her cavatina and accompagnato, and a chorus with diminuendo coda as the instruments gradually drop out and their machine returns them to the skies (Ex. 56). The whole section is based on a single melody treated fugally in the sinfonia, as a bass to Fortune’s solo, in octaves as background to the chorus, and finally after a miniature stretto reduced to a single pianissimo line. The catchy little tune, compounded from fragments of Bononcini’s overture to Xerse, represents the rotating wheel on which Fortune sits and would make perfect background music to a bicycle race. Giustino at once wrenches the

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 368

06/10/2006 14:52:37



Giustino

369

tonality to the sharp side via a first inversion of C major and a string of trenchant progressions to clinch the sequence in the brilliant D major march aria ‘Se parla nel mio cor’, in which he anticipates his future military career (and which incorporates a borrowing from Pistocchi’s Narciso). Both accompagnato and aria seethe with trumpet rhythms, but Handel withholds the brass for a later occasion. The flipping fanfare figure ( ) echoes the sinfonia with four horns in the final scene of Giulio Cesare. The rising scale figures threaten to break at any moment into ‘Rule, Britannia’. After this the bear presents no difficulty and is despatched in a brief sinfonia (misplaced in HG). ‘Allor ch’io forte’ projects much the same message, now backed by the horns. The varied length of the ritornellos gives it a certain vitality, somewhat diminished by

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 369

06/10/2006 14:52:38

370

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the short square phrases and the extreme brevity of the B section (seven bars with continuo only), though this may be intended to suggest that Giustino is in a hurry to get down to business. The homophonic texture and pit-a-pat rhythms evoke the shade of the recently deceased Pergolesi. Giustino’s single aria in Act II, ‘Sull’altar’, tells us nothing new about his character, but is splendid music. The swaggering gait of the dotted main theme, combined with the rumbling semiquaver figure in the bass of bars 9–11, which spreads to the whole orchestra in the B section, gives the piece tremendous panache and Giustino a noble bearing. His confidence in his future is boundless; there is no irony here. Strohm derives the bass figure from Vivaldi’s setting; if so, Handel is careful not to make it too obvious. ‘Zeffiretto’ in III.ii, an aria of haunting beauty, is dramatically at odds with its context. After receiving Vitaliano’s girdle from Arianna and putting it on, Giustino compares the rise of a gentle breeze over a meadow to blind suspicion gradually poisoning the heart. It may be intended as dramatic irony (Giustino has no reason to suspect anything at this juncture), and the music stresses the gentleness of the breeze rather than the suspicion, but like many simile arias it is not quite on target. It looks as if Handel decided it was time to give Annibali a slow aria. Suspicion is suggested by the modulations to F minor and C minor in the B section, but the entire piece is governed by the exquisite initial ritornello with its gentle rocking motion that permeates the A section and is nicely varied at its close. It is the perfect co-efficient of the key of E flat. The F minor opening of Giustino’s accompagnato reproaching Fortune in the mountain scene comes in well after Amanzio’s G minor aria. ‘Sollevar il mondo’, in gigue rhythm, is Giustino’s weakest aria; the ritornello with its sudden change of register and rhythm in the fifth bar promises more than it fulfils. Anastasio is an anaemic monarch, though less so than Vivaldi’s corresponding figure, who can only be described in vulgar parlance as a wimp.15 No doubt it was necessary to give him a lower profile than the eponymous hero, though he is Giustino’s superior officer throughout the opera; but he always seems to miss the boat in a crisis, and he is easily deceived by Amanzio. His coronation aria, launched from a massive ritornello, gives the opera a suitable start in the Neapolitan style with its marching quaver bass varied by a rhythm that recurs constantly later. It is strongly reminiscent of Ariodante’s ‘Dopo notte’, and perhaps an attempt to hit the same target. Anastasio scarcely lives up to this start. In ‘Non si vanti’, faced with a fight, he seems intent on pumping up his courage and stressing his wronged majesty, and then deputes Giustino to do the job. Its most interesting feature is the ritornello design: a mere four bars at the outset, expanded to ten in the dominant with new material before the second statement of the text, and twelve at the end of the A section, after which the metre jumps from 3/8 to 4/4 and the tempo from Andante allegro (originally Andante larghetto) to Presto as his thoughts turn from his wife to his enemy. He seems to have little enthusiasm for battle and is duly defeated. The love duet with Arianna after her rescue falls well below Handel’s best, suffering from short phrases, excessive repetition and a consequent lack of passion. He may 15  Vivaldi gives him a soft-centred aria, not in the libretto, at the start of Act II and omits altogether his most positive utterance ‘Di re sdegnato’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 370

06/10/2006 14:52:39



Giustino

371

have been cautious about introducing a more substantial movement in the middle of an act. ‘Verdi lauri’ too is no more than adequate. Anastasio shows more spirit in Act III. ‘O fiero e rio sospetto’, however, is another partial misfit. He is trying to dispel Amanzio’s insinuations, but the aria is a dreamy pastoral, a lyrical siciliano of great charm, with a graceful canon at the start and a cadence at the end of the A section that anticipates the fragrance of ‘Where’er you walk’ (it had appeared in several early works, including La Resurrezione, and may have been suggested by the duet ‘Liebliche Sonne’ in Keiser’s Claudius). In ‘Di re sdegnato’ for the first time Anastasio plays the formidable monarch, ironically in a false cause. After the initial downward arpeggios, suggested perhaps by the opening of Vivaldi’s ‘Sull’altar’, the C minor semiquaver scales descending like a shower of missiles and later the buzzing violins, which almost monopolise the B section, are alive with menace; yet, thanks to his earlier behaviour, they seem the exasperated utterance of a weak emperor rather than the natural language of a strong one – which is not inappropriate. The evolution of the B section from ideas in the middle of the A section is a happy touch. Arianna, explored in more depth than the other characters, has some of the opera’s profoundest music, though neither her first nor her last aria, a late addition for Strada, contributes much. ‘Da’ tuoi begl’occhi’ overdoes the multiple descending scale figure that inhabits both sections and, like the rhythm quoted above from Anastasio’s preceding aria, becomes a mannerism in this opera.16 ‘Ti rendo questo cor’, while entirely conventional, might score a point if well sung. On the other hand ‘Mio dolce amato sposo’ not only crowns Act I with its greatest aria but increases the impact by its placing and mode: a minor-key Largo after ten consecutive pieces in major keys, nearly all with an Allegro marking. Handel had played this card with similar effect in Act I of Amadigi. It is a typical opera seria situation that seldom if ever failed to inspire him: the unhappy heroine, imprisoned by a lustful conqueror and facing a grisly death, yearns for her absent husband. The piece is packed with ideas,17 each of them contributing to a mood of desolate tragedy and so organised as to give an impression of continuous development. The sighing semiquavers of the opening are decorated and varied at the voice entry. The violins’ interlocking chromatic scale figures that follow haunt the A section but are never heard again in their original form. They are partly inverted before the B section and omitted altogether before the dal segno. Burney late in the century praised Handel’s ‘very new and curious use of chromatic intervals’; and indeed the piling up of emotion through an aching chromaticism has a flavour of Mozart’s ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’.18 Though quite short (fifty-four bars including the

16  Rapid scales, up or down and sometimes both, though of course a cliché, play a prominent part in at least seven arias as well as the Allegro of the overture. 17  The precise significance of the sudden accented forte chord on the second syllable of ‘fedel’ in bar 13, anticipated in the ritornello, is not clear. Perhaps it represents a stab of pain. 18  There was a good deal of aria switching in Arianna’s part. In Vivaldi’s opera she has eight arias in addition to the arioso, but only two, both in Act I, retain their position in Handel’s. ‘Per voi soave’ became a chorus and ‘Augelletti’ was transferred to Leocasta. Handel omitted the other four, but compensated Arianna with Vitaliano’s ‘Qual torrente’ and Giustino’s ‘Il mio cor’ as well as ‘Ti rendo’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 371

06/10/2006 14:52:39

372

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

repeat) this aria carries enough weight to balance what has gone before and to justify its position at the end of an unusually long and discursive Act. Arianna’s arioso appeal when threatened by the monster is all the more moving for its utter simplicity, a mere handful of notes without accompaniment, echoed in turn by two distant female voices, an effect unique in Handel and strangely moving in context. As Leichtentritt observes, the echoes increase the sense of loneliness and desolation. The monster begins to growl before the end of the recitative, but gives Giustino no more trouble than the bear. Arianna again ends the Act, this time with a spectacular display of virtuosity. ‘Qual torrente’, composed in E major without oboe obbligato (see below, under Autograph), is perhaps too obviously a showpiece, threatening to burst the bounds of its context, but there is no resisting it when well sung. ‘Il mio cor’, Arianna’s reaction to Anastasio’s unjust denunciation, brings a second Largo in the heartbreak mood of ‘Mio caro amato sposo’. This F minor lament rises to a superb climax towards the end of the A section as the drumming bass climbs by semitones, not quite regularly, from A natural to d flat, and is crowned by a ritornello that almost doubles the length of the opening and carries it up to a climactic c’’. The shape of the opening, broken phrases in slow dotted rhythm reaching a climax in the third bar, is another trademark of this opera; compare ‘Bel riposo’ and ‘Sull’altar’. Amanzio, a scheming alto villain with a touch of Iago, was originally a bass, with only two arias, the second, ‘Or che cinto’ in Act III, a brief and colourless cry of triumph that only just escapes self-parody. ‘È virtute’ on the other hand was an insertion by Handel and a necessary one to establish this disagreeable character at an early stage. It is a clever study of an arch-deceiver; the hollow octaves and unisons of the A section with its slithering ritornello, at once furtive and sinister, establish his shifty nature at a stroke. Though composed for bass, it works just as well in the higher register. Unfortunately Amanzio has no further opportunities. His extra Act III aria, ‘Dall’occaso in oriente’, an alto piece from the start, opens with a promising angular theme (lifted from Graun’s Passion ‘Kommt her und schaut’) but does little with it. With two leading castratos in the cast perhaps Amanzio has to keep a low profile. Leocasta likewise has her best aria first. Handel made two very different settings of ‘Nacque al bosco’, giving preference to the second in A major, for which he borrowed the tune from the same Graun Passion. The withdrawn, almost introspective mood, hesitant rhythms and prominent falling fourths of the discarded G minor setting are a strange response to her rescue from the bear, but so is the botanical simile of the text. All three of Leocasta’s arias are simile pieces, and thus unsuited to express character, nor are the last two memorable as music. ‘Sventurata navicella’ with its bouncy fourths (did Handel associate this interval with Leocasta?) does not even fit the simile, and garrulous birds are a poor reflection of her state of mind in Act III. Vitaliano has rather more life, and his tenor voice supplies a welcome contrast to the two castratos and travesti mezzo, but the absence of an aria in Act II (where Vivaldi gives him two, including ‘Qual torrente’) cuts him in half. ‘All’armi, O guerrieri’, a da capo aria in Vivaldi but printed as a recitative in Handel’s libretto, is an effective summons to battle, led by a solo trumpet which assumes command

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 372

06/10/2006 14:52:39



Giustino

373

with an upper dominant pedal. ‘Vanne, sì’ develops a good antithesis between the dismissive first phrase and the answer from pianissimo strings, avoiding too close a resemblance to Giustino’s military music. The principal motive of ‘Il piacer della vendetta’ goes right back to Almira,19 but works well here, throwing off scales in both directions and both sections with an expanded ritornello in between. Polidarte’s aria, though sententious and superfluous, with further scalar outbreaks, is livelier than the average space-filler. The change from 4/4 to 3/8 for the B section, with hemiola and contrasted scoring, raises it above the commonplace. Like most of Handel’s late operas Giustino has a fine overture and a compound finale, a free quintet and full coro based on the same melody, a minuet with a strong resemblance to that of the chorus ‘Tyrants now no more shall dread’ in Hercules. The quintet is a succession of solos and duets almost in the manner of a vaudeville, with the entries of the lower voices doubled at the octave, Giustino by violins, Leocasta by recorders. It is managed with great delicacy, supported only by a bass, until the full body of soloists, chorus and orchestra carry the tune, the movement and the opera to a radiant conclusion. The overture has no clear link with the plot, unless the oboe solos in the nimble fugue are meant to prefigure ‘Qual torrente’; both, and the short Adagio were late additions. As so often the fugue, on a curious subject marked by falling sevenths, is cheerfully irregular, the contrapuntal sections alternating with exuberant flourishes from the oboist. The sinfonias are all action pieces; only the shipwreck at the start of Act II is disconcertingly tame; ‘good composition, but not picturesque’, as Burney sagely observes. Handel may have omitted the best sinfonia, the G minor representation, stealthy and impressionistic, of Vitaliano’s escape from the tower, when he reshaped the end of Act II. The high violin fanfares unsupported by a bass could be intended to suggest the giddy height of the tower. The scoring, with recorders, horns and trumpets each appearing in three movements, is richer than in other late operas, as befits the Byzantine setting. Handel probably had the trumpets on stage in the coronation scene. Though the oboists no doubt doubled on recorders, and the original layout of ‘Può ben nascer’ may have been found impracticable, at least three upper-woodwind players are required in ‘Qual torrente’. The Sostenuto directions in two scenes (HG 63 and 100) are confirmation that secco recitatives were normally played with the chords sharply accented. The tonality reflects no settled plan. The predominance of the major mode – of forty-two set pieces, counting the overture as one and excluding Arianna’s echo arioso, only eight are in minor keys, and five of them are in Act III – is one pointer to the increasing prominence of the new galant style. Another is the comparative rarity of genuinely slow arias (barely half a dozen in tempos slower than Andante). This tendency, of which there are many further signs, explains Burney’s surprisingly high estimate of Giustino (‘so seldom acted and so little known’) as ‘one of the most ­agreeable of Handel’s dramatic productions’.

19  Strohm (‘Vivaldi’s and Handel’s Settings of Giustino’, 150) cites a close parallel in the same key (G minor), ‘La vendetta è un cibo’ in Silla. This is Handel’s response to the idea of vengeance, not a borrowing.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 373

06/10/2006 14:52:39

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

374

J. H. Roberts20 lists eleven arias in Giustino that derive from Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Bononcini, Sarro, Graun, Fiorè and Anon.; Strohm, at first disinclined to credit a link between Vivaldi’s and Handel’s Giustino settings,21 later found examples or echoes there,22 and others in Gasparini’s Faramondo.23 Most of the parallel passages are either incipits or commonplaces (but too many to be explained by coincidence). One or two of the most striking are cited above; for others see Appendix D. It is remarkable how often elements from two or more quite disparate sources become fused as they pass through Handel’s mind.24 The two scholars mentioned have started so many hares that it is impossible to pursue them here, fascinating though the pursuit might be. The elucidation of the process that generated music in Handel’s subconscious mind, if possible at all, would seem to require the services of a psychoanalyst, a computer, and perhaps the equivalent of an Enigma machine, as well as a corps of musicians.

History and Text Handel began the score on 14 August 1736, finishing the drafts of Act I on 29 August, Act II on 3 September, Act III on 7 September. At this point he left Giustino incomplete and turned to Arminio, composing that opera between 15 September and 14 October. He then returned to Giustino and completed it between 20 and 25 October. The reasons for the switch are not known; they may be connected with doubts about the availability of singers, or of the oboist Giuseppe Sammartini, who this year joined the household of the Prince of Wales; either might be connected with changes in the autograph. The oboe obbligato part was written for Sammartini. After a series of revivals, the première of Arminio and the composition of Berenice Handel rehearsed Giustino on 7 February, as we know from Lord Egmont’s diary, and gave the first performance at Covent Garden on the 16th, with the following cast: giustino Domenico Annibali (alto castrato) anastasio Gioacchino Conti (soprano castrato) arianna Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) leocasta Francesca Bertolli (contralto) amanzio Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) vitaliano John Beard (tenor) polidarte Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) fortuna William Savage (?treble) Reinhold probably sang the voice from the tomb in Act III. 20  Handel Sources, vols V–IX. See also Roberts, ‘Handel and Charles ­Jennens’s ­Italian Opera Manuscripts’, Music and Theatre, 159–202, especially 191 and 196–7. 21  Essays, 73. 22  ‘Vivaldi’s and Handel’s Settings of Giustino’, 143ff. 23  Essays, 87–8. 24  The extreme example is ‘Sì, la voglio’ in Serse, in which Handel managed to digest material from seven different sources (see p. 424 and Roberts, ‘Handel and Charles Jennens’s Italian Opera Manuscripts’, 202).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 374

06/10/2006 14:52:39



Giustino

375

Nothing is known of the reception, which was probably cool; Lord Shaftesbury said in 1760 that Handel ‘met with no Success’ in this season. There were nine performances, two of them in May, the last on 8 June, but Handel may not have conducted all of them. From mid-April he was seriously ill (see Chapter 15). The London Daily Post of 30 April reported that ‘Mr. Handel, who has been some time indisposed with the rheumatism, is in so fair a way of recovery, that it is hoped he will be able to accompany the opera of Justin on Wednesday next, the 4th of May’ at which the King and Queen were expected. It is not known whether he did so. Lampe’s very successful comic opera The Dragon of Wantley, which had its première at Covent Garden on 26 October 1737, is said to have been a parody of Giustino (it involves the disposal of a monster), but Henry Carey in the Preface to his libretto said it had been hanging about at Drury Lane for several years. These accounts are not incompatible; Carey or Lampe could have rewritten the text in 1737. Handel incorporated the chorus ‘Viva Augusto’ and seven arias – ‘Un vostro sguardo’, ‘Può ben nascer’, ‘Non si vanti’, ‘Vanne, sì’, ‘Sventurata navicella’, ‘Sull’altar’ and ‘Zeffiretto’, some of them with altered words – in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo (King’s Theatre, 25 February 1738), and the chorus ‘Corri vola’ for a chorus of shepherds in Jupiter in Argos (1 May 1739). According to his original plan25 he intended to use ‘Da’ tuoi begl’occhi’ and ‘Mio dolce amato sposo’26 as well. ‘Non si vanti’ and ‘Verdi lauri’ reappeared in his December 1744 revival of Semele. Some of the original scenery was still at Covent Garden in 1743; an inventory lists ‘6 columns to Fame’s temple’, ‘two oxen in Justin’, and ‘four furrows in Justin’. Giustino was produced in Brunswick in August 1741 in an arrangement by G. C. Schürmann, who with C. E. Simonetti translated the arias, recitatives and choruses and reorganised the text to remove deficiencies in the plot. See below under Librettos. Frances and Alan Kitching were responsible for the first modern productions, in a shortened version for schoolgirls at Our Lady’s Convent, Abingdon, in 1963, and more complete at the Abbey Hall there four years later. A Berlin production in 1984 that grossly distorted the opera enjoyed much success in Germany. A recording conducted by Nicholas McGegan, based on the Göttingen revival of the previous year, was issued by Harmonia Mundi in 1995.

Autograph The manuscript (RM 20 b 4) is untidy, especially at the start, as if written in a hurry, but the foliation by gatherings is regular, so that insertions are easily identified. As originally written, it lacked the bear sinfonia, Amanzio’s ‘Dall’occaso in oriente’ and Arianna’s ‘Ti rendo’. Amanzio’s part was in the bass clef throughout. The overture had no Adagio and no oboe solos in the Allegro. ‘Qual torrente’, likewise without oboe solos, was in E major and the preceding recitative a tone higher than in HG, cadencing in G sharp minor. ‘Nacque al bosco’ was in the G minor setting. The first 25  Outlined (incomplete) in Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258, 35–53 (Catalogue 176–8). 26  He wrote ‘Mio molto amato padre’ in a lapse of memory.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 375

06/10/2006 14:52:39

376

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

five bars of Giustino’s accompagnato ‘Fortuna! m’hai tradita’ (HG 104) were also in G minor. ‘Or che cinto’ was in B flat. Act II ended with the scene for Anastasio and Amanzio (HG 86–8), numbered 10. Act III began with the sinfonia on HG 85, followed by Vitaliano’s recitative and aria on HG 88–9. Handel brought the opera to its final form in several stages, mostly in the autograph, the last in the performing score. Those in the autograph fall into three groups: A: on the paper (C*70) used in most of the autograph: fols 27–9, version B of ‘Nacque al bosco’ in A major (HG 33–6) and fol. 79, ‘Dall’occaso in oriente’ (HG 102–3), the only music for Amanzio here in the alto clef. Presumably it was when he added this aria that Handel marked the first five bars of Giustino’s following accompagnato, likewise in G minor, down a tone. At the same time he transposed ‘Or che cinto’ (HG 108–9) from B flat down to G and raised the voice’s final cadence to avoid a low G. The G minor setting of ‘Nacque al bosco’ was shortened before being cancelled. B: on B 100 paper,27 fols 4–6 (Adagio of the overture and five insertions covering the obbligato oboe part in the Allegro) and 61–2 (three similar passages fitting the solo oboe into ‘Qual torrente’). Instructions to Smith for transposing ‘Qual torrente’ and the previous recitative, together with numerous modifications to the aria, including the upper cadence for the voice in the A section, are in red pencil, which appears to be unique in Handel’s autographs.28 C: also on B 100 paper, but after the performing score had been copied, fols 85–6 (‘Ti rendo’, preceded by a new lead from the recitative). The tempo of ‘Non si vanti’ is Andante larghetto, as in Walsh and Lennard; the performing score has HG’s Andante allegro, followed by the Flower score and parts. The manuscript contains many short cuts and contractions, especially in this aria (both sections), made at the filling-up stage. The autograph of the bear sinfonia is in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Mus. MS 262, p. 38, lines 6–10), which also contains a Smith copy of the overture’s Allegro in the original shorter form, possibly not intended for Giustino (Mus. MS 265, pp. 279–82), and five pages copied by Handel of excerpts from C. H. Graun’s Passion ‘Kommt her und schaut’,29 including two used in Giustino (Mus. MS 251, p. 23, not identified in the Catalogue).

Librettos 1737 London. ‘Justin, an Opera; As it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. Composed by Mr. Handel ... Printed and Sold by T. Wood, in LittleBritain; and at the Theatre in Covent Garden ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 47 pp. Title page, Argument (translated from Vivaldi’s libretto) and Dramatis Personae in English only. Savage is not named. Act III begins with Amanzio’s recitative ‘Signor, a’ tuoi trionfi’ headed Cabinetto (Closet). ‘All’armi, O guerrieri’ (I.x.) is printed as recitative. 27  This was a new paper variety, used principally in Handel’s next two major works, Berenice and the 1737 Trionfo del Tempo. 28  But he employed it again in the performing score of Messiah. 29  Reproduced by Roberts in Handel Sources, V, Appendix 1.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 376

06/10/2006 14:52:40



Giustino

377

1741 Brunswick. ‘Justinus in einer Opera vorgestellet Auf dem grossen Braunschweigischen Teatro ... Wolfenbüttel Druckts Christian Bartsch.’ Arias, overture and sinfonias by Handel. Recitatives and choruses in German, arias in Italian with German translation alongside. This is an interesting libretto, worth describing in some detail: it might assist modern revivals. Schürmann omitted only Amanzio’s arias ‘È virtute’ and ‘Dall’occaso’ and the sailors’ chorus, but recast the recitatives and changed the order of the arias in all three acts. He added four arias, of which two at least can be identified as Handel’s. Since there were also two dance entrées and a substantial Intermezzo in three scenes containing five arias and three duets, it must have been a long evening. The choruses, though in German, were probably sung to Handel’s music. The list of characters includes a large number of supers and dancers and an extra figure in Erastus, described as the Emperor’s admiral30 and a trusted friend of Amanzio. He does not appear in the nautical first half of Act II, where one might expect to encounter an admiral, especially as Anastasio’s entire fleet comes to grief at the start, but only in two short recitative scenes in Act III. Schürmann evidently knew Legrenzi’s opera in one or other of its versions, for some of his improvements go back to it. In Act I Scenes x and xi are moved back to follow vi, getting rid of the absurdity whereby Anastasio learns of Arianna’s defeat and capture when she has barely left the stage. Schürmann ends the act with the aria ‘Ho un certo rossore’ from Orlando sung by Leocasta, tying her more closely to the plot (she begins to fall for Giustino). In Act II Vitaliano has a badly needed aria in Scene vi and Arianna one in viii to compensate for the transfer of ‘Verdi lauri’ and ‘Qual torrente’ to Act III. The two new arias, ‘Il furor d’un cieco sdegno’ and ‘Non sarò ingrata al cielo’, could be Handel’s with parodied words or contributions by Schürmann. A stage battle follows, in which Vitaliano is taken prisoner, and the act ends, as in Handel’s first version, with Anastasio’s ‘O fiero e rio sospetto’. Act III has several extra or rearranged scenes at the start: the inhabitants of Constantinople celebrate the victory with a comic masque, presumably composed by Schürmann; Arianna orders Vitaliano’s imprisonment in the tower (from II.ix, ending with ‘Qual torrente’); Amanzio and the army bring in the booty, and Anastasio gives Arianna the jewel (‘Verdi lauri’, ‘Zeffiretto’); she confirms his suspicions by saying that Giustino deserves a reward for the victory; she gives him the jewel; Vitaliano escapes from the tower (‘Il piacer della vendetta’, ?preceded by sinfonia). The action then proceeds more or less as in HG, except that Amanzio, who must have been a bass, sings ‘Fiaccherò quel fiero orgoglio’ from Arminio, as equivalent for ‘Dall’occaso’; instead of going to sleep, Giustino falls wounded in a fight with the Emperor’s bodyguard, who are threatening to put his eyes out; and ‘Ti rendo’ is sung by Anastasio, who may have been a castrato. The production was evidently spectacular. The stage directions are elaborate and detailed. Vitaliano is seated on an elephant in Act I and a scythed chariot in Act II. He jumps down from the former when Arianna is brought in and is thrown out of the latter during the battle. The sun and moon, which have a part to play in the ploughing scene, are listed among the props. Despite these extravagances both the 30  This was promotion; in 1695 he was only a captain.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 377

06/10/2006 14:52:40

378

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

order of events and the pacing are a marked improvement on the incoherence of Handel’s 1737 libretto.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1020) was all copied by Smith, including the two insertions. Amanzio’s part is in the alto clef, except the short recitative in the first scene, which Smith may have copied before the part was assigned to Negri and did not think it necessary to modify. The AB changes in the autograph are already incorporated. The insertions are fol. 36 (bear sinfonia and recitative on HG 37) and 121–3 (‘Ti rendo’). The instrumentation of ‘Può ben nascer’ is changed to the version bracketed in HG with violins supplanting the recorders. Probably at the last minute the Amanzio–Anastasio scene, still numbered x, was switched from Act II to the beginning of Act III, but the sinfonia for Vitaliano’s escape was not removed or cancelled. The HG cut in ‘Zeffiretto’, bracketed in pencil but not pasted or crossed out, was made when the aria was used in Alessandro Severo. The Lennard score (Hb 1, 1737) was copied from the performing score at a very early date. The bear sinfonia is missing, but ‘Può ben nascer’ has the revised scoring. ‘Non si vanti’ is Andante larghetto like the autograph, which suggests that the tempo may have been changed at a late stage. For the Flower score (mid/late 1740s) S2 did some collation of autograph and performing score. From the former he took the original scoring of ‘Può ben nascer’, the direction for Giustino at the start of ‘Sull’altar’, and Handel’s dates, and by mistake copied Amanzio’s recitative at the bottom of HG 74 in the bass clef; but the bear sinfonia is present and ‘Non si vanti’ is Andante allegro. The Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland has an S5 copy of the duet ‘Mio bel tesoro’ (c.1744). The Flower parts (S2, c.mid-1740s) – cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2 including recorders (and horn parts at the University of Maryland) – omit the overture, first chorus, bear sinfonia, ‘Allor ch’io forte’, ‘All’armi, o guerrieri’, ‘Mio bel tesoro’, the Act III sinfonia and the fanfare on HG 104, but include the accompagnatos. ‘Può ben nascer’ has the revised scoring of the performing score, but the relevant pages appear to be a substitution. S2 tried to include as much as possible in this piece, sometimes writing two parts on the same page. Both the long ritornellos are headed Coro. Except where HG prints them on separate staves and in ‘Qual torrente’ where the first takes the solo part, the oboes are never divided. They share the top line with the first violins in ‘Se parla’, ‘Vanne, sì’, and the quintet ‘In braccio a te’, but are omitted (?accidentally) in ‘Sull’altar’. As usual they are confined to ritornellos, plus the punctuating chords in ‘Vanne, sì’. Walsh, who paid Handel his regular fee of 25 guineas, announced publication of the score by subscription for 30 March 1737, but it seems to have appeared three days later. There were 105 subscribers for 111 copies. The text is unusually complete, wanting only (apart from secco recitatives) the sinfonias on HG 37 and 110 and the two accompagnatos in Act III, but all seven dal segno arias lack their lead-back ritornellos. The scoring is fairly detailed, except in Act III, which seems to have been set in a hurry. That of ‘Può ben nascer’ is in the revised version. Its concluding ritornello

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 378

06/10/2006 14:52:40



Giustino

379

is printed as a separate movement (Coro). There are a few unauthentic tempo marks, including a surprising Allegro on the Act II duet. The overture in seven parts and in harpsichord arrangement appeared on 6 April, and a flute arrangement about the same time. In his Preface to the only full score (1883) Chrysander (unlike Handel) worries over consecutive fifths, but says nothing about more serious matters. He creates a muddle in I.vi by printing the bear sinfonia after ‘Nacque al bosco’; Handel first wrote the music on pp. 31–2, then substituted 37 followed by 33–6. The stage direction mettendo le mani sopra la spada on p. 75 applies not to Anastasio but to the first words of Giustino’s aria ‘Sull’altar’; this is clear in the autograph, but the direction is missing in the performing score, ambiguous in the libretto, misplaced in the English version. ‘Qual torrente’ (p. 80) is the reading of the autograph and all musical sources; ‘Quel’ is a mistake in the libretto. Between III.viii and ultima (bottom of p.109) five bars of recitative, present in all sources, are omitted (Ex. 57). In ‘Se parla’, ‘Sull’altar’, ‘Qual torrente’, the ritornello of ‘In braccio a te’ (p. 114) and perhaps ‘Vanne, sì’ Tutti applies to the top part only.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 379

06/10/2006 14:52:40

c h a p t e r 21 Berenice, Regina di Egitto

T

he scene is Alexandria in the year 80 bc and the background of the plot a dynastic struggle between Rome, governed by the dictator Sulla and represented by his ambassador Fabio, and Mithridates King of Pontus, Rome’s long-standing enemy. The young Berenice has recently been proclaimed Queen of Egypt on the death of her father Ptolemy VIII without male issue. Sulla and Mithridates (neither of whom appears in the opera), evidently not trusting a woman, each want her to marry a politically friendly nominee. Sulla’s candidate is Alessandro, a tame Egyptian (son of another Ptolemy) who has been brought up in Rome; that of Mithridates is Demetrio, described simply as ‘a Prince of Royal Blood’. Berenice is in love with Demetrio, and has to choose between marrying for love or for political expediency, since her throne is threatened by the dominant power of Rome. The brief Argument concludes: ‘To this historical Fact [Alexander’s embassy to Egypt as told in Book I of Appian’s Roman History] are added other similar Incidents, as will be seen in the Drama.’ Act I. A Hall with a Throne, and Satrapes, who sit. Berenice enters with Aristobulus (her Captain and Confidant) attended by Guards and Pages. All the Satrapes rise from their Seats. Struggling to control her passions, she tells Aristobolo to admit the Roman ambassador. She ascends the Throne, and the Satrapes sit. Fabio, entering with Alessandro and Roman Attendants, brings peaceful greetings from Sulla and the senate, takes Alexander by the Hand and presents him, and urges Berenice to marry him, a friend of Rome. She refuses to submit to any domination but that of her own heart, and goes out followed by the Satrapes, and by her Attendants. Alessandro has been struck by her beauty and proud demeanour, but Fabio brusquely advises him to transfer his affections to Berenice’s sister Selene, who also loves Demetrio. Alessandro should have ‘more manly Sense’ and ‘love where Profit, not where Fancy calls’, taking his cue from the bee that flits from flower to flower. Alessandro says he can love only Berenice. In a Garden of the Apartments of Selene Selene tells Demetrio that Berenice has ordered them never to meet again and urges him to depart. He refuses; he is in secret intelligence with Mithridates; they will soon depose Berenice, and Selene shall reign with him (Demetrio) as consort. No sooner has Demetrio gone out than Aristobolo enters looking for him; Rome has ordered Berenice to marry Alessandro without delay, or Demetrio must die. Selene is overcome with horror. Aristobolo observes that the people, wanting peace, are demanding Demetrio’s life, though Berenice’s love for him is his only crime. In a Gallery with Seats Berenice suspects that Rome wants Alessandro to marry Selene and determines to oppose this. Arsace, ‘a Vassal Prince’, enters at her bidding. She asks him if he has ever been in love; he says he loves Selene; she urges him to ‘avow the stifled Flame’ and promises her support. She then tells Selene that a virtuous and royal prince has just asked for her (Selene’s) hand in marriage, and the Roman senate and the Egyptian state require her consent. Selene, thinking

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 380

06/10/2006 14:52:40



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

381

it must be Demetrio, agrees, and is appalled when Arsace comes forward. Berenice interprets her blushes as a sign of love. Alone with Arsace, Selene decides to prevaricate and demands proof of his love, which he declares grows gigantic with hope. In a Court of the Royal Palace Alessandro is tortured by the thought that Berenice may love Demetrio, whom nevertheless he could even love for her sake. This is at once put to the test: Demetrius assaulted by the People at first within, then retiring, comes forward fighting. Then Berenice and Aristobulus with Guards. From another Part Fabius and Alexander. Alessandro, laying his Hand to his Sword, goes to help Demetrius and drives out the People. Berenice sends Aristobolo and the guards after them: love has given her wings to save Demetrio. Demetrio says he owes his life to Alessandro while Fabio exclaims in frustration. Aristobolo reports the people quelled. Exit Fabius at one Part, and Alexander returns at another. He asks no favour; it is a pleasure to serve even his rival to please his beloved. Berenice and Demetrio exclaim at his generosity and end the act with a duet whose meaning is obscure. Act II. A Garden of Pleasure to the Apartments of Berenice. Demetrio pines for his beloved (presumably Selene). Berenice looks forward to marrying him before nightfall, but he prevaricates: the honour is too great, and he fears the reaction of the Romans. Offended, she turns to go, but he calls her back, determined to dissemble. Fabio brings a new Roman demand: since Berenice will not marry Alessandro, Selene must. Berenice replies that Selene is already married – to Arsace. Demetrio is horrified, Fabio baffled. He folds a Corner of his Mantle to his Breast, and afterwards throws it open, signifying that Egypt has chosen war rather than peace. Demetrio declares that danger fills him with a thirst for glory. Berenice is delighted: she prefers him angry rather than languishing. Alone, Demetrio explodes with fury at Selene’s betrayal, resolves to summon Mithridates’ troops, overthrow Egypt and ‘force the Faithless from my Rival’s arms’. He summons the Furies to expel his memories of Selene. In a Court Arsace, having heard of the Roman plan to marry Selene to Alessandro, tells the latter that they are rivals. Alessandro assumes that Arsace loves Berenice. Before they have sorted this out, Aristobolo announces that Rome is threatening Egypt with war unless Alessandro marries Selene. Arsace is upset, but Alessandro with a show of gallantry renounces all interest in Selene (whom of course he does not love). Aristobolo tells Arsace he should sacrifice his love for his country’s good. Arsace, torn by emotion, nevertheless resolves to do so. Aristobolo denounces politics as a blight on human happiness. The scene changes to the Apartment of Selene. Demetrius with his Sword drawn, and Selene holding him. He is determined to kill Arsace, believing him to be Selene’s husband. Berenice enters with Guards and listens apart. She hears Demetrio tell Selene that for her sake he refused the crown of Egypt and Berenice’s hand. Berenice interrupts; Demetrio goes to kill himself, but Selene takes the Sword from him. Berenice demands the sword, denounces him as a traitor, and goes out, leaving him under arrest in charge of the guards. He learns that Selene is not married to Arsace and begs her pardon. As they are going out, they are met by Berenice and Arsaces. Berenice orders Selene to marry Arsace, thus punishing Demetrio for his treachery. Arsace however renounces his happiness for the public good and yields Selene to Alessandro, who enters with Fabio. Alessandro naturally refuses the offer: only love will give laws   This direction is omitted in the English text.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 381

06/10/2006 14:52:41

382

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

to the heart. He goes out, followed by a disgusted Fabio. Berenice orders Demetrio to be imprisoned and tortured, and goes out angrily. Demetrio rejoices that his faith and truth will survive anything, torture and death included. Selene turns on Arsace and denounces him as craven and unworthy of her love. Act III. The Apartment of Berenice with a Table, and on it the Sword of Demetrius. Berenice with Guards, and then Aristobulus with a Letter, which has fallen into Egyptian hands. In it Mithridates offers Demetrio all his powers and urges him, in the absence of a Roman army, to depose Berenice, make Selene Queen of Egypt and marry her. Demetrio is brought in, in Chains and guarded, prepared to meet his fate. Berenice however sets him free: at her orders a Guard takes off his Chains, and Aristobulus gives him his Sword. Scarcely waiting for his reaction she gives [him] the Letter. He declares that he was inspired by love and glories in it, whereupon she reverses her orders. Demetrio returns the Letter ... throws down his Sword, and is again chain’d. Confident of Selene’s love, he sings a defiant aria and departs under arrest. Berenice orders Aristobolo to summon ‘the grand Assembly’ in the temple of Isis. Fabio comes to take his leave, ill-satisfied; but Berenice gives [him] the Royal Signet as symbol of her and Egypt’s submission to Sulla and the senate. She will share her bed and throne with the man to whom Fabio gives the signet. Fabio remarks that Alessandro shall be King of Egypt in his own despite and leaves. Berenice, her resistance ended, ponders on the working of the ‘blind capricious Deity’. In the Royal Garden, where joins the Tower in which Demetrius is kept Prisoner Selene compares herself to a turtle-dove whose mate has been caught in a snare. She longs to release Demetrio but is confronted by Arsace again pleading his suit. She recalls him to his promise to serve her and names his task: if he frees Demetrio he can claim her as reward. Alessandro asks Arsace to give Berenice the royal signet, which he has received from Fabio; he would hate to accept it from any hand but Berenice’s. In a duet Arsace agrees to pass on the message. As they are going out they meet Fabius, who stays Alexander. Fabio summons him to the temple of Isis to give back the signet, and is horrified to hear that Arsace has just taken it. Alessandro says he will never accept such a gift from Rome. Aristobolo tells Berenice that all the satraps are assembled. Though shrinking from executing the man she loves, she orders Aristobolo to bring Demetrio’s severed head to the temple. A Temple, with the Image of Isis, where is the Assembly of Satrapes and People. A Throne with two Seats, Pages with the Royal Ensigns. Berenice follow’d by Guards, Selene and Arsaces; Then Alexander and Fabius, and afterwards Aristobulus, with Demetrius. Berenice condemns Demetrio to death. Selene offers her life for him, and Arsace his: he has used the royal signet to set Demetrio free. Alessandro’s explanation convinces Berenice that the Romans have chosen him as her husband; his refusal to accept the gift from any hand but hers converts her to loving him. She gives him her Hand, and both ascend the Throne; the Pages advancing, Berenice puts the Crown on the Head of Alexander. After a love duet Arsace claims the weeping Selene. Demetrio would rather die than lose his love, but at Alessandro’s request is pardoned by Berenice. Arsace, moved by pity, resigns Selene to Demetrio, and the opera ends with general rejoicing at the reconciliation of politics and love.

  It is clear from the source libretto that the reference is to Fortune, not the god of love.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 382

06/10/2006 14:52:41



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

383

The source of this libretto is Berenice regina di Egitto by the Florentine court poet Antonio Salvi, set by Giacomo Antonio Perti for the Medici court theatre at Pratolino in October 1709, when Handel may have heard it. Salvi’s Berenice is typical of the dynastic opera seria, in which persons of royal or aristocratic blood compete for a throne and their rivalry is complicated by amorous cross-currents, but everything is sorted out at the end. It is not known who adapted the libretto for Handel, or whether he did it himself; but it is a botched piece of work, one improbable situation succeeding another. It is often difficult to decide when the characters are lying and when telling the truth. This is largely due to the suppression of something like 60 per cent of Salvi’s recitative (nearly 1,000 lines were reduced to just over 400), and with it much of the explanatory matter that motivates the characters. Apart from this and the omission of ten arias, chiefly in the parts of Fabio, Arsace and Selene, Handel made few changes in Salvi’s libretto. Characteristically he reduced two arias at the beginning of scenes, Demetrio’s ‘Se non ho l’idol mio’ in II.i and Alessandro’s ‘Mio bel sol’ in II.v, from da capo form to cavatinas, and ensured that the final movements in the first two acts were sung by principal characters (Perti ended Act I with an aria for Fabio and Act II with one for Arsace). Only two of the thirty texts, Alessandro’s ‘Quell’oggetto’ in I.xii and the love duet in the last scene, were new. Two others were modified. The one striking change was the transference of ‘Chi t’intende?’ in III.iv from Fabio to Berenice. Instead of a detached comment on Berenice’s unexpected change of front, it becomes a vivid expression of the heartbreak behind her decision to renounce the man she loves, the most profound movement in the opera. Such a close adherence to the source libretto is not typical, especially when many of its texts bear only obliquely on the dramatic context. Where we should expect Handel to substitute positive expressions of emotion or resolution, strengthening the characterisation as well as the drama, he seems content to set the arias, with some notable exceptions, to agreeable music without attempting to plumb the depths. He was probably working under great pressure, from rivalry with the Opera of the Nobility (both companies were on the verge of collapse) and from ill-health. The weaknesses of Berenice are dramatic, not musical. There is no perceptible falling off in invention: almost every aria, even when tangential to the plot, has some subtle turn of phrase or structural detail. Burney, for whom drama and characterisation held little interest, ranked it very high and devoted several pages to a description of the score. What attracted Handel to the subject was surely the struggle in Berenice’s heart between love and political expediency. This – ‘le gare di politica e d’amore’ in the opera’s closing lines and the title of Ruggeri’s 1711 setting – should be the central theme; but it becomes obscured by side issues and does not emerge with the intensity   Two other composers set this libretto before Handel, G. M. Ruggeri (under the title Le gare di politica e d’amore) in 1711, Francesco Araia in 1734, both for Venice. There were a number of other Berenice operas during this period, but they had different heroines.   He read it in Handel’s autograph, for he includes Demetrio’s ‘Le vicende della sorte’ in the last scene, scrapped before the performing score was copied and the music used for the familiar C major setting of ‘Sì tra i ceppi’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 383

06/10/2006 14:52:41

384

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

that distinguishes Handel’s finest operas. For much of the first two acts Berenice’s behaviour is devious and equivocal when not positively deceitful; she utters more than one straight lie. No doubt she must twist and turn to preserve her throne and happiness, but in the process she loses not only her dignity but much of her credibility. She makes a good start; the first scene establishes her as a self-willed young queen, prepared to defy the power of Rome in her choice of husband. Her aria with its striding melody, emphatic negatives and flexible phrase-lengths, and neat flecks of subdominant colour, is splendidly resolute. She then loses direction. In ‘Dite amor’ she is patently insincere, telling Arsace that Selene’s blushes and confusion are caused by her love for him when she knows they are due to anger and embarrassment. The aria with its hesitant phrases, teasing cross-rhythms, and faint flavour of Partenope and Serse must be ironical in intention. Perhaps its best feature is the varied ritornello after the A section, beginning with a flattened seventh. Her duet with Demetrio at the end of the act is beautiful music, full of smooth triplets, the voices and string parts exquisitely interwoven in the serene key of E major. It sounds like a love duet – there is a resemblance to Ariodante’s cavatina in the garden scene – but that is by no means the situation: while Berenice loves Demetrio, his affections are fully engaged elsewhere. They are ostensibly reacting to Alessandro’s rescue of Demetrio. There is no question of irony here; the duet throws no light on either character. ‘Sempre dolci’ in Act II is again oblique. Berenice tells Demetrio that she likes to see him proud and angry, but the aria concentrates entirely on the first two lines, ‘I don’t want to see your beloved eyes always tender and amorous’, ignoring the negative and the rest of the text. It is placid and lyrical, with smooth modulations and copious triplets. One yearning phrase, a rising scale in dotted rhythm (bars 33–6, hinted at in the B section too), echoes Elmira’s ‘Vorrei, né pur saprei’ in Sosarme; another, with rising string arpeggios and sixths for the voice (bars 73ff.) looks forward to Semele. Handel’s intention may be to emphasise Berenice’s love for Demetrio. Her next aria, ‘Traditore’, is much more straightforward, a denunciation of Demetrio’s treachery, launched not only without ritornello but without the orchestra. The accompaniment is sparse and agitated; the slower harmonic rhythm of the B section makes an effective contrast. In Act III Berenice rises suddenly to the stature of a great tragic heroine. ‘Chi t’intende?’ is original in form, content and scoring. The irregular alternation of three different tempos in the A section (the B section adds a fourth), combined with the short-circuiting of the long ritornello before the dal segno, leaves the impression not of a da capo aria but of a freely organised scena. It has almost the impact of a mad scene, not unlike Rosmene’s ‘Miratela, che arriva’ in Imeneo, where another emotionally distracted heroine grapples with the resolution to sacrifice love for duty. The appearance of an elaborate oboe obbligato in this modestly scored and almost monochrome opera is startling, and still more so the eerie chromaticism of the solo at bar 5, which never returns in its original form. The oboe’s dialogue with strings and voice throws up a wide range of figuration – scales, arpeggios, a forest of trills – and the texture varies from the very spare – oboe alone, oboe and bass, oboe and voice, voice alone – to the warmth of the short interludes for four-part strings. The first

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 384

06/10/2006 14:52:41



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

385

phrase with its rising sixth seems more moving at each return. The music evokes with extraordinary intensity the heartache behind Berenice’s decision. One is tempted to say that this aria alone justifies revival of the opera (Ex. 58). In the autograph, and in Chrysander’s score, Berenice has an aria, ‘Avvertite mie pupille’, just before the last scene, hoping that her tears will not give her away when it comes to the crunch in the temple of Isis. It is a short Largo of intense poignancy, and the only aria Handel ever wrote in C sharp minor. For some reason he cut it before performance, and it has probably never been sung in the theatre. Its omission is a serious loss; apart from its quality as music, it deepens the character. Her love duet with Alessandro is flavourless, even perfunctory, reflecting perhaps the hollowness of this marriage. That surely is the message of the coro, a sombre and unusually substantial piece in D minor, a kind of minuet triste. The implication is that the statutory happy end is not all it seems. In Berenice, as in Imeneo, Handel leaves us with thoughts of the suffering involved in the heroine’s decision. It is a wry conclusion: political values carry more weight than the emotions of individuals. There may be more in it than that. Educated opinion in the eighteenth century was well informed about Roman and Greek history, and Handel and his audience could have known the sequel to this marriage. Nineteen days later Berenice was murdered by Alexander, who then perished in a popular insurrection. Both castrato parts contain rewarding music, but neither Demetrio nor Alessandro emerges as a strongly individual figure. Demetrio is the more interesting, especially in Act II, where he has three of his five arias. In Act I, apart from the duet at the end, he is confined to the love song ‘No, soffrir non può’, its graceful melody distinguished by an engaging octave leap in the first phrase, which in the ritornellos after the A and B sections receives an extra lift from a neatly interpolated triplet. Another happy touch is the flattened seventh over a tonic pedal towards the end of the A section. Demetrio begins Act II with a spacious cavatina, the first twelve bars of which, including the initial suspensions, are based on an aria (‘Speranze mie fermate’) in Giovanni Bononcini’s Xerse, which a year later was to supply much material for Handel’s setting of the same libretto. Demetrio responds to Berenice’s statement that Selene has married Arsace by damning Selene in a long accompagnato, the only one in the opera, and invoking the Furies in a big A minor aria, mostly in two parts. As usual when Handel is concerned with the underworld, this is full of fire and brimstone, with brilliant figuration and a menacing bass, though somewhat weakened by the fact that Demetrio has to wait for Fabio and Berenice each to sing an aria and go out before he can let fly. And we know that Selene, at any rate at this stage, is not unfaithful. When Berenice orders him to be tortured, Demetrio answers with a defiant aria (‘Sì, tra i ceppi’). Handel set this text twice, in contrasted modes. The first setting, Andante in C minor, is tragic and almost Bach-like with a rich five-part texture; Burney found it ‘dry and laboured’ and ‘long since banished from the opera, as undramatic’. The second, come alla breve in C major, is extroverted and jaunty, almost a gavotte. This hardly fits the text, the situation or the character as hitherto presented, which is not surprising since Handel conceived the music for a different context just   See p. 357.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 385

06/10/2006 14:52:41

386

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 386

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

06/10/2006 14:52:42



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

387

before the coro, when all the complications have been sorted out. Both arias are in Chrysander’s appendix. The first setting of ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’ is musically the more interesting, but the second was performed. It has a catchy tune that Handel perhaps thought too good to waste; it became the only popular song-hit in the opera. Early in Act III Demetrio goes, as he thinks, to his death with another defiant aria, a robust piece in F minor, again mostly in two parts. After that he fades out, as he must, since the prima donna is not for him. Alessandro is a one-dimensional figure, whose imperturbable uprightness would seem to qualify him for the fate of Aristides. His first aria, despite one or two fine harmonic touches, is long and uncompromisingly beefy; his second, ‘Quell’oggetto’, related to ‘Tu ben degno’ in Agrippina, has a well-worked four-part accompaniment but little else of consequence. In Act II he has what is in effect a double aria, a cavatina in E major followed, after an abrupt shift in the plot, by a full aria in E minor. The cavatina, ‘Mio bel sol’, is a lovely melodic paragraph with exquisite part-writing for strings, rather in the manner of ‘Return, O God of hosts’ in Samson. As first composed, the voice part ended with an astonishing melisma on the word ‘adorar’ containing leaps of a ninth and an eleventh (originally another ninth), perhaps designed to exploit some peculiar skill of Conti’s. This was never performed; Handel substituted the more concise B version (HG 50). The aria, ‘La bella mano’, is undercut by the context: Alessandro is simply renouncing a girl in whom he has no interest. The sarabande rhythm fails to fulfil its promise. ‘In quella sola’ in Act III, a typical Scarlattian minor-key siciliano, has the most distinguished music in Alessandro’s part (Handel seldom failed in this mode), with much plangent detail and a plunge from G minor to B flat minor at the start of the B section; but again it is dramatically adrift. Alessandro merely repeats what he has said in the previous scene (he will accept his fate from Berenice alone); and at this stage of the action an unmotivated aria of such emotional intensity is out of place. Berenice’s sister Selene does not cut an impressive figure, but she has some fine music. ‘Gelo, avvampo’, an exclamation of horror when her lover is threatened with death, is an impassioned G minor aria with an intermittent thrumming figure in the bass, powerful suspensions and an interesting ritornello structure: none at the start, where the voice enters unaccompanied, a long one after the A section developing material heard in the meantime, and a condensed version of this before the da capo. The broken phrases of the B section provide an apt contrast. Selene’s next aria, at the end of Act II, is ostensibly a rebuke to Arsace for subordinating love and faith to public duty. In Salvi’s libretto Selene addresses the A section to Berenice (still on stage), the B section to Arsace. Handel inverts the texts, modifying the original A section, and has the whole aria addressed to Arsace, though Selene has no interest in his love. Handel seems to have despaired of making sense of this, but he writes a delightful aria, the A section a lilting Andante in 9/8, all grace and delicacy, the B section a furious Allegro in 4/4 with buzzing repeated chords. As with ‘Mio bel sol’ he shortened it before performance, when Chrysander’s B version (HG 66) was sung.   When Aristides, hoping to send an unpopular enemy into exile, proposed an ostracism, the Athenian people ostracised Aristides himself because they were tired of hearing him called the Just.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 387

06/10/2006 14:52:43

388

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Burney was baffled by this aria, which he likened to something by C. P. E. Bach. The A section is at once a study in self-quotation and a reflection of the lasting impact of Reinhard Keiser. The catchy phrase with falling sevenths and fourths followed by a rise of first an octave, then a sixth (bars 6–7 and later) and the subsidiary idea at bar 21 both derive from ‘Kehre wieder’ in Keiser’s Octavia, but in reverse order, bar 21 from the opening, bars 6 and 7 from Keiser’s bars 30 and 31. The latter in particular haunted Handel’s memory for years, generally but not always accompanied by the former. It began its Handelian career in the big Rome cantata ‘Arresta il passo’ (aria ‘Fiamma bella’), was transferred to Agrippina (‘Ogni vento’), reappeared in Rodelinda (B section of ‘De’ miei scherni’) and after its sojourn in Berenice reached a wonderful apotheosis in Solomon (‘With thee the unshelter’d moor I’d tread’). Both ideas made a final appearance in ‘Happy Beauty’, added to The Triumph of Time and Truth in the last year of Handel’s life. In Act III Selene has another cavatina–cabaletta design, unified by key. The F minor cavatina ‘Tortorella, che rimira’, though a dramatic cliché, has a touching eloquence, the violins cooing and trilling in imitation of the turtle-dove and perching unexpectedly on an augmented sixth at the start of the closing ritornello. The ‘cabaletta’ in F major, in which she promises to reward Arsace with her hand if he rescues Demetrio, lacks colour and barely hints at her insincerity. The remaining three characters have two arias apiece. Arsace is almost as highminded as Alessandro and gains little reward for it. ‘Amore contro amore’ is the better of his arias, with a spirited violin accompaniment in running semiquavers that makes attractive play with a lift of a sixth; but his most interesting piece is ‘Le dirai’, a duet that propels the action forwards instead of holding time suspended. Alessandro utters only the first two words, repeating them several times in each section; Arsace answers with the message he is to convey to Berenice. It makes an agreeable change in the sequence of arias. Fabio and Aristobolo, the tenor and bass, not being involved in the emotional imbroglio, are free to comment on the behaviour of the others. They do so in terms with which we may be tempted to agree. Fabio thinks all the Egyptians are crazy; Aristobolo denounces politics as a blight on human happiness. Fabio, nicely drawn in the recitative, is suave but crafty – evidently a career diplomat – and repeatedly irritated by the court to which he is accredited. His bee aria, in which unison violins keep up a perpetual buzzing in triplets, is an amusing illustration of his cynical detachment. ‘Guerra e pace’, a cavatina, is businesslike but no more. Its most distinctive feature is the reinforced final ritornello, in which the opening phrase is treated in imitation. Aristobolo’s arias are typical of Handel’s writing for bass voice, brisk in minor keys with much unison and octave work and seldom expanding beyond two parts. Boschi received any number of them during the Royal Academy period. One of the highlights in Berenice is the overture. The Andante larghetto (not called a minuet) has always been popular on account of its haunting and beautifully poised melody. All four movements are characteristic, though Burney, who with reason considered the Andante larghetto ‘one of the most graceful and pleasing movements that has ever been composed’, is sniffy about the gigue. Both Act III sinfonias are excellent. The first was later worked up for the overture to the Fireworks Music;   There is a duet of similar design, ‘Se m’ascolti’, in Act II of Sosarme.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 388

06/10/2006 14:52:43



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

389

the second has a prancing gait well calculated to introduce the ceremonial in the temple of Isis. The scoring of the opera is restrained (Handel may have been economising in a financially tight season). In more than half the movements all the violins are in unison, the violas have even less independence than usual, the oboes are used sparingly (apart from the obbligato in ‘Chi t’intende?’ written for Giuseppe Sammartini, which stands out all the more in this austere environment), and there are no recorders, flutes, horns or trumpets.

History and Text Handel began the composition on 18 December 1736, finishing Act I in draft on 27 December, Act II on 7 January 1737, Act III on 18 January, and the complete fillingup on 27 January. The first performance took place at Covent Garden on 18 May, with the following cast: berenice Anna Strada del Pò (soprano) selene Francesca Bertolli (contralto) demetrio Domenico Annibali (alto castrato) alessandro Gioacchino Conti (soprano castrato) arsace Maria Caterina Negri (contralto) fabio John Beard (tenor) aristobolo Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) Lord Shaftesbury, who attended a rehearsal on the morning of 12 May, ‘received an incomparable delight’. He drew fine distinctions, describing Act I as ‘mostly in the agreeable strain, full of exquisite genteel airs’, Act II ‘more in the great taste & may (I think) properly be call’d sublime’, Act III ‘a mixture both of great & pleasing’. He had special praise for the overture, Demetrio’s Act II accompagnato (‘as fine as ever was made’), his aria ‘Su, Megera’, Berenice’s ‘Chi t’intende?’, ‘Le dirai’ (‘a pretty duet in the sprightly way’) and Alessandro’s ‘In quella’. Though always given to hyperbole where Handel was concerned, he picked out most of the best numbers. Berenice enjoyed less success than any of Handel’s earlier operas, with a mere four performances, the last on 15 June. Handel was probably unable to accompany any of them. Shaftesbury says that the younger Smith deputised for him. A year later he incorporated the arias ‘Amore contro amor’, ‘Vedi l’ape’ and ‘Quell’oggetto’ and the duet ‘Le dirai’, mostly with altered texts, in his pasticcio Alessandro Severo. Berenice was staged at Brunswick in February 1743 in an arrangement by G. C. Schürmann, the arias in Italian, the recitatives and a new coro in German (see below under Librettos). There have been three modern revivals, the first two by university groups in England in 1985 and 1993. An American recording conducted by Rudolph Palmer was issued by Newport Classics in 1995.

  Letter to James Harris, 12 May 1737 (Burrows and Dunhill, 29).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 389

06/10/2006 14:52:43

390

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 a 10) shows few important changes. The overture lacks the gigue; it was an afterthought added on a loose page now in the Fitzwilliam Museum (see below). The only insertion (fols 48–9) is the C major setting of ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’, adapted from Demetrio’s rejected aria ‘Le vicende della sorte’ in the last scene, entailing changes in the recitative (HG 102–4). ‘Mio bel sol’ and ‘Si poco è forte’ are in the longer A versions; the latter (but not the former) is shortened in pencil, and Berenice’s ‘Avvertite’ (HG 88) is cancelled. The directions for the viola to play with the bass or not at all, mentioned in Chrysander’s preface, were added later in different ink. Chrysander omits senza Viola in ‘Vedi l’ape’, the C major ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’ and the duet ‘Quel bel labbro’. Handel speeded up some of the tempos. ‘Dice amor’ and ‘Quel bel labbro’ were originally Larghetto (changed to Andante) and ‘Mio bel sol’ Largo (changed to Andante larghetto). On the other hand the tempo indications at bars 5, 24, 48 and 61 of ‘Chi t’intende?’ are Allegro in the autograph; Handel substituted the slower tempos in the performing score. He shortened ‘Dice amor’ and the duet ‘Se il mio amor’ appreciably at the filling up stage; bars 28–33 of the former with the tonic pedal were pasted over a much longer passage. Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 262 (p. 39) has the autograph of the overture’s gigue (headed ‘Gigue a l’overture de l’opera de Berenice’), and on the previous page the treble part of the same piece and a short sketch (1½ bars) for the bass of ‘Su, Megera’.

Librettos 1737 London. ‘Berenice, Queen of Egypt. An Opera. As it is Perform’d at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. Composed by Mr Handel ... Printed by T. Wood, in Little Britain; and are to be Sold at the Theatre in Covent Garden ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 49pp. Title, Argument and Dramatis Personae in English only. 1743 Brunswick. ‘Berenice Königin in Egypten In einer Oper vorgestellet auf den grossen Braunschweigischen Theatro in der Winter-Messe 1743 Wolfenbüttel druckts C. Bartsch ...’ Text in German only, except arias and duets (Italian with translation alongside); Handel not credited. Plot unchanged, but scene headings rather fuller (Pyramids in view II.i), two arias inserted and eight replaced by mostly similar texts using many of the same words in different metres, presumably set by Schürmann, perhaps because Handel’s style was considered dated, though Berenice was only six years old. Otherwise it is difficult to account for the suppression of ‘Gelo avvampo’, ‘Su, Megera’, ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’, ‘Chi t’intende?’ (replaced by a nautical simile aria) and ‘Tortorella, che rimira’.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1010), all in Smith’s hand apart from Handel’s annotations in ‘Chi t’intende?’, originally contained the longer versions of ‘Mio bel

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 390

06/10/2006 14:52:43



Berenice, Regina di Egitto

391

sol’ and ‘Si poco è forte’ and the C minor ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’, but not ‘Avvertite’ or ‘Le vicende’. The suppressed bars in the first two arias were pasted over and the joins modified: the C minor ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’ was torn out except for the opening and closing bars, and the C major setting added as an insertion (fols 67–9). Fol. 94 is also an insertion, correcting a mistake in the copy of ‘In quella sola’. The first and last page of ‘Guerra e pace’ are crossed out (hence Chrysander’s brackets), probably during the run; there could be a link with its attribution to William Savage in the Walsh score. The repeat signs in the Andante larghetto of the overture are cancelled in pencil. The only other contemporary score is the Lennard, copied by S5 in 1737 or soon after in a beautifully clear hand, probably from the performing score at one remove; there are a few minor differences, chiefly in tempo marks. S5 also copied (c.1744) the three duets in the Coopersmith Collection, ‘Le dirai’ ascribed to its later appearance in Alessandro Severo and with its revised text (‘Gli dirai’). There is an S1 copy of the overture for keyboard in RM 19 a 1, fols 123–5. If the Flower Collection had a score, it has disappeared. The Flower parts (cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello + bassoon, oboes 1 and 2), copied by S2, chiefly from the performing score (mid-1740s), lack the overture, ‘La bella mano’ and the coro. Bassoons are mentioned only as silenced in three Act I pieces where the score has Violoncell. The oboe parts are tricky since Handel often fails to make his intentions clear, and S2 and Chrysander leap to different conclusions, sometimes against available evidence. It is worth examining the matter in some detail in a score where, apart from Sammartini’s obbligato in ‘Chi t’intende?’, the oboes remain mostly in the shadows. Tutti or Tutti unis. on the top instrumental stave in autograph or performing score, as in ‘Quell’oggetto’ and the C minor ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’, implies that both oboes double the first violins; Chrysander misplaces the Tutti and in the latter aria omits the oboes. S2 is certainly correct in supplying oboe parts in ‘No, soffrir’ and ‘Per si bella cagion’, where Handel writes Viol. at the voice entry but Chrysander excludes oboes. S2 in turn makes mistakes, including oboes in ‘Guerra e pace’ (Viol. unis. in performing score) but omitting them in ‘Senza te sarebbe’ and the C minor ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’. His addition of a second oboe part in ‘Chi t’intende?’ (the first has the obbligato), doubling first violins in bars 44–6, 74–84, 90–4 and 108–10, makes sense. As usual the oboes are confined to ritornellos and short interstices in the vocal line, except in ‘Le dirai’, where they also play (with the violins) in bars 17–27, doubling Arsace’s part at the octave (a likely mistake: only the violins double elsewhere in the duet). The two Act III sinfonias present a contrast. In the C major (HG 70), the only movement in which S2 divides the oboes (as in the Walsh score) Chrysander confines the orchestra to strings; in the A major (HG 89) he splits them where S2 has both doubling first violins. A number of movements remain without Handel’s guidance, including the overture. The Walsh parts divide them in the introduction, whereas most of the operas from Radamisto on begin with all oboes doubling the first violins to give a strong top line. The Lennard copy has Tutti on the top line of the overture’s Allegro. On 28 May 1737 Walsh published proposals for printing the score by subscription, but it appeared on 18 June without a list of subscribers, no doubt because of

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 391

06/10/2006 14:52:43

392

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the opera’s cool reception. He published the overture in eight parts in his Seventh Collection (21 October 1738) and in keyboard arrangement in January 1739, but no score for flute. He paid Handel his usual fee of 25 guineas. The score is remarkably complete, even in the scoring, though the instruments are seldom specified, except in the C major sinfonia, ‘Chi t’intende?’ and the coro, and most dal segno arias are given a da capo. Of Fabio’s two arias, ‘Vedi l’ape’ is described as sung by Beard, ‘Guerra e pace’ by Savage. This is the only indication that Savage sang in Berenice. Unless it is a mistake, he may have replaced Beard at one or more performances; but the aria was perhaps cut during the run (see above). There was a Paris publication of the overture in four parts, c.1749. Chrysander’s edition (1883) is the only full score. His text is mostly accurate, apart from some indications of scoring. Besides those already mentioned, he puts the instruments in ‘Gelo, avvampo’ and the C major ‘Sì, tra i ceppi’ in brackets, although Handel specifies them in the autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 392

06/10/2006 14:52:43



ch a pter 22 The Last Oper as, 1738–1741

I

n September 1737 on doctor’s orders, but very reluctantly according to Mainwaring, Handel travelled to Aix-la-Chapelle to take a cure at the steam baths. The story of his profuse sweats and apparently miraculous recovery, and the nuns’ astonishment at his organ-playing, need not be repeated here. No sooner was he back, early in November, than he began the first of his two contracted operas, Faramondo, and after completing it on 24 December embarked on the second, Serse, on the 26th with only Christmas Day in between. Heidegger had opened the Haymarket season on 29 October with Arsace, a pasticcio, presumably arranged by G. B. Pescetti, the Nobility’s musical director, which drew a thin house. Caffarelli’s engagement as the new primo uomo had been announced as early as 1 May; the other singers were all survivors from the rival companies of the previous season. Heidegger had given only three performances when the death of Queen Caroline on 20 November closed the theatres until the New Year. A somewhat autumnal aura hovers over the 1737/38 season. The cantankerousness of the previous years had produced a public reaction. A writer in the Craftsman of 4 June had hoped that the Licensing Act would suppress Italian operas on both financial and moral grounds: they carried great sums of money out of the Kingdom, and they ‘soften and enervate the Minds of the People’. One thinks of Johnson’s condemnation of the genre as ‘an exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed’. Carey and Lampe’s burlesque The Dragon of Wantley, produced with no great success at the Little Haymarket in May 1737, became all the rage when Rich took it over at Covent Garden in October, running for sixty-nine performances and outstripping The Beggar’s Opera. In a letter of 19 October the future Frederick the Great of Prussia declared that ‘Handel’s great days are over, his inspiration is exhausted and his taste behind the times’. The theatre’s programme now offered in one house what had previously been presented in two, with Handel represented by his two new operas and Alessandro Severo, a ­pasticcio he assembled from his earlier work, and operas by Pescetti (La conquista del Vello d’Oro) and Veracini (Partenio) catering for Nobility supporters who preferred the newer   According to Joseph Müller-Blattau, ‘Händels Festkantate zur Fünfhundertjahrfeier der Stadt Elbing 1737’, 50 Jahre Göttinger Festspiele (Kassel, 1970), citing a letter from J. C. Smith to Matthew Dubourg, Handel and Smith travelled to Elbing in October for the performance of a pasticcio Hermann von Balcke based largely on arias from his operas. The event took place in November, but the letter, said to be in Chysander’s Nachlass, has never been produced and seems to have been a fiction.   Burrows and Dunhill, 28.   Life of John Hughes (Lives of the English Poets).   The cast is given incorrectly in Deutsch, correctly in HHB 4.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 393

06/10/2006 14:52:43

394

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Italian style. Despite the absence of competitors other than ballad operas, which the public evidently preferred, none of the Haymarket productions received more than eight performances. Caffarelli was widely admired but otherwise, according to Prince Cantemir in January, ‘our operas are going quite badly’. Meanwhile Handel was involved in another eruption of the quarrel between the King and the Prince of Wales. When at the turn of the year the King heard that Handel had accepted the Prince’s invitation to give concerts on Friday nights (perhaps a move to confirm their reconciliation), he forbade him to go near the Prince. Other events were more propitious. In April his statue by Roubiliac was installed in Vauxhall Gardens, an unprecedented honour for a living person, celebrated by a concert on 1 May at which ‘there was a considerable Appearance of Persons of both Sexes’. Earlier, on 28 March, he had conducted a concert of his music in the King’s Theatre for his own benefit. It was announced as an Oratorio, implying that it included choral music and sacred or edifying texts but no stage action. According to Burney Handel’s losses in previous seasons had compelled him to draw heavily on his savings to pay the performers, and his friends finally persuaded him ‘with great difficulty’ to take a benefit. It was a great success, and is variously reported to have brought him a clear profit of £800, £1,000 or £1,500. Not surprisingly, as Lord Shaftesbury wrote to James Harris on 8 April, he ‘continues in a high flow of spirits’. On 24 May 1738 Heidegger issued an appeal for subscribers to an opera season the following winter, ‘provided I can agree with the Performers, and that 200 subscriptions are procured’, with a closing date of 5 June, the day before the current season ended after thirty-nine performances. In a second announcement on 26 July he declared himself obliged to ‘give up the Undertaking for next Year ... by Reason of the Subscription not being full, and that I could not agree with the Singers th[ough] I offered One Thousand Guineas to One of them’. In between these announcements, on 17 June, Strada left London at the command of the Princess of Orange (Handel’s former pupil Anne), with a parting statement ‘that it is no ways owing to her [Strada], that the present Scheme for performing Opera’s next Winter in the Haymarket, under the Direction of Mr. Heydegger, has miscarried, as has been maliciously reported: she having agreed with Mr. Heydegger above a Month ago, as the   Lindgren, Zamboni, 169, note on Letter 368e.   Cited by R. Loewenthal, MT 112 (1973), 1066. In September 1737 the King had turned the Prince and Princess (pregnant with the future George III) out of St James’s Palace.   Burrows and Dunhill, 46.   Lady Brown (1692–1782), later to become notorious for organising opposition to Handel’s oratorios in the 1744/45 season, first breaks surface as one of the promoters of Heidegger’s scheme. A sojourn in Venice had turned her into a fanatic for Italian opera. Katherine Knatchbull told her half-brother James Harris on 22 November 1739 that Lady Brown had become a great friend of the King’s mistress Baroness von Wallmoden, adding: ‘She is one thought to study her own interest as cleverly as any one’. She may have been ‘the fine lady who admires and hates to excess; she doats on the dear little boy that dances, she detests Handel’s Oratorios’ (Anne Donellan to Elizabeth Robinson, April 1740). In 1744 she ‘wil [sic] bear nothing but Italian singers, and composers’ (Earl of Radnor to James Harris, 6 November 1744). (Burrows and Dunhill, 79, 204; Deutsch, 500.)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 394

06/10/2006 14:52:44



The Last Operas, 1738–1741

395

said Gentleman can testify’. It was probably Caffarelli who refused Heidegger’s offer. According to Burney Strada’s husband had been threatening Handel with arrest for non-payment of arrears of salary. There is no contemporary confirmation of this, but an explanation is certainly needed for the fact that she had not sung for Handel in the 1737/38 season, though she apparently remained in London till June 1738. Heidegger had collected 133 advance subscribers, well up to the average at this period;10 the failure to agree with singers, particularly perhaps with a leading castrato, may have been the main obstacle. At this time, and for the next three years, Handel gravitated between the two poles of Italian opera and English oratorio, towards which he had been veering for some time, and to some extent between vocal and instrumental music. He had developed the oratorio and the English ode as a profitable second string, but was clearly reluctant to abandon the form with which he had triumphed since his youth, and to which he had adhered against all odds throughout his struggles with the Opera of the Nobility. Two days before Heidegger’s cancellation, though undoubtedly aware of it, he started work on Saul and by 15 August11 had drafted two acts and the framework of the third, for which he proposed to adapt his Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline. He then paused, waiting perhaps for a visit from Jennens, his librettist, and on 9 September embarked on another opera, Imeneo. This in turn was interrupted by the arrival of Jennens on the 18th. Their meeting, described in a famous letter from Jennens to Lord Guernsey, resulted in a drastic overhaul of Saul with an almost entirely new Act III, completed on 27 September. Handel then transferred the Funeral Anthem with a few verbal changes into the first part of Israel in Eg ypt and composed the rest of that massive oratorio in a month. The idea may well have come from Jennens, who later called the libretto of Messiah ‘another Scripture Collection’ he had made for Handel. On 29 December the press announced that Handel had taken the King’s Theatre and would give oratorios there twice a week. He proceeded to do so, though not quite twice a week, from 16 January to 19 April 1739. In the first week of the new year the young Earl of Middlesex returned from the Continent, shortly followed by his mistress Lucia Panichi, an opera singer known as La Moscovita and by all accounts an indifferent one.12 Middlesex had ambitions as an impresario and, like Handel before him, came to an agreement with Rich at Covent Garden. On 10 March that theatre saw the production of Angelica e Medoro, a ‘Pastoral Opera’ by Pescetti, with Panichi in the female lead together with Antonia Marchesini, Cecilia Arne, Philip Rochetti, Waltz and Reinhold, all previous singers   History, II, 823. 10  See Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 266, note 34. 11  Jennens gives this date in his marginalia to Mainwaring, presumably taking it from the lost last page of the draft. 12  According to Hawkins (A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776; repr. 1853; facs. 1963), 888) Middlesex had paid Handel £1000 to indemnify him against loss ­(? or ­Strada’s husband) before the 1737/38 season. There is no confirmation of this, and it seems unlikely, though Middlesex was an impulsive young man. For his operatic activities, see Taylor, Italian Operagoing, Chapter 6, and C. Taylor, ‘From Losses to Lawsuit: Patronage of the Italian Opera in London by Lord Middlesex, 1739–45’, M & L 69 (1987), 1–25.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 395

06/10/2006 14:52:44

396

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

under Handel. It was repeated three times, on the last occasion on 11 April in a deliberate challenge to Handel, whose Israel in Eg ypt was performed the same night (with Drury Lane closed). It was on this occasion that Handel shortened the oratorio and interlarded the Old Testament with Italian arias sung by Francesina. Zamboni was contemptuous of all public spectacles this season. ‘I cannot tell you how bad they have been’, he wrote to Prince Cantemir on 9 February. ‘There are no operas, only some oratorios and concerts in the worst possible taste.’ And on 15 March: ‘Things continue to go from bad to worse. Everyone is tired of Handel’s oratorios’, and the singers in Angelica e Medoro ‘are insufferable’. Gastaldi told Cantemir on 9 April that it was empty after the first night, and that Panichi ‘sings out of tune’.13 Perhaps all this provoked Handel. On 19 April the London Daily Post reported the arrival on the 17th of the violinist Giovanni Plantanida and his wife, ‘Signiora Busterla [Costanza Posterla], a famous Italian Singer, [who] is to perform in the Opera’s that are intended to be perform’d by Mr. Handel after the [Easter] Holydays’.14 This must have been a sudden decision. Handel had given no indication of an opera season, and what was performed (on 1 and 5 May) was no ordinary opera but ‘a Dramatical Composition, call’d JUPITER IN ARGOS, Intermix’d with Chorus’s, and two Concerto’s on the Organ’. This has a distinct whiff of oratorio, and it is uncertain whether the piece was fully staged. It may have been played, like the bilingual Acis and Galatea and Parnasso in festa, with costumes and scenery but no action (it requires only a single set). It has always presented something of a puzzle owing to the loss of Handel’s performing score and the absence of any complete copy. Moreover the fragments of surviving autograph do not agree with the printed libretto, whose single surviving specimen15 does not name the cast. There was evidently a change of plan and a great scramble to get the job done in time. Handel began Jupiter in Argos as a pasticcio from his earlier work, based like Oreste and Alessandro Severo on an old libretto and linked by new secco recitatives. The autograph draft of the first act, containing the recitatives and cues for the insertion of pre-existing arias and choruses, survives, undated (Plate 13). He may have intended a leading part for Antonia Marchesini, who had sung in his operas the previous season and in Angelica e Medoro; but she threatened to leave the country and the stage.16 The arrival of Posterla with a soprano daughter (the product of her youth, not of her husband, to whom she had been married for two years) opened 13  Lindgren, Zamboni, 171–3. 14  Posterla, described as a virtuosa of the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, had sung frequently in Italy in 1718–32, chiefly in Naples, Milan, Venice and Livorno, and was to make a few later appearances in minor houses in 1745–49. Swiney in a letter to the Duke of Richmond on 28 ­December 1725 NS described her person and action as very passable, but with a small voice (Gibson, 362). 15  In the National Library of Scotland. 16  See Lindgren, Zamboni, 173. In letters from London to Prince Cantemir in Paris Giambattista Gastaldi wrote on 9 April that Marchesini ‘may return immediately to Italy, and they say that she may give up theatrical performances’, and on 16 July that her husband (the painter Giacomo Amiconi, whom she had married in May 1738) has been trying to get rid of her by sending her to Spain.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 396

06/10/2006 14:52:44



The Last Operas, 1738–1741

397

new possibilities. Handel now had two Italian singers; since neither had sung for him before, they required new music. The resulting score comprised excerpts from nine of his previous operas, the serenatas Acis and Galatea (1732) and Parnasso in festa, and the 1737 oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità, together with newly composed arias for Posterla and her daughter (three with music adapted from the unperformed draft of Imeneo and one leading to the new final coro) and three excerpts from Francesco Araia’s Lucio Vero (1735), which Posterla had brought from Russia.17 Handel told Lord Shaftesbury that he had only four days in which to do this. If so, it is possible that between signing the finale of Jupiter in Argos on 24 April and performing it on 1 May, he prepared a new version of Imeneo to follow Jupiter as his next production. That was undoubtedly his intention. Shaftesbury wrote to James Harris on 8 May: ‘We are to have nothing this week: but the next we are to hear the charming Helen, some of which you heard Handel play at my house.’ ‘Helen’ can only be a slip of memory or the pen for ‘Hymen’, the English title of Imeneo. There is, however, a more intriguing possibility. On 15/26 March Zamboni wrote to Cantemir from London: ‘Carestini has now arrived here, and great plans have been devised for this worthy champion.’ Gastaldi confirmed Carestini’s presence on 9 April: he ‘has been here for a month, says he came to England solely to have the pleasure of seeing his friends ... But the truth of the matter is that he counts on being hired here for next year’ – which he was, by Lord Middlesex, starting on 1 December. For one of Europe’s leading singers to travel to London nearly nine months ahead of a possible engagement, even if he wanted to pay a few visits, seems decidedly odd. It is surely conceivable that Handel either approached him in the first place or took advantage of his presence to embark on a revision of Imeneo, in which he would have sung the part of Tirinto. If so, it came to nothing. Three recently published letters to James Harris from his friends in London tell us what happened.18 On the first night of Jupiter in Argos the pit, but not the rest of the theatre, was crowded by persons curious to hear the new singers, but otherwise the piece fell flat. Posterla found favour, but not her inexperienced daughter.19 The family left London almost at once. Handel was forced to abandon Imeneo for the second time and closed his abortive opera season. It would be possible to reconstruct the score of Jupiter in Argos; it lacks only an overture, which Handel may never have composed, and secco recitatives for the last two acts. Whether it would be worth doing, except as a curiosity, is less certain. Lucchini’s libretto, a serenata set by Lotti and staged at Dresden in 1719, when Handel undoubtedly saw it, treats the disguised Jupiter’s amours with two mortal girls with a suitably light touch, though it ends with the King of Egypt disguised as a shepherd disposing of a bear and a tyrant in a few bars of recitative, whereupon Jupiter sheds his disguise and declares that it was all a bit of rustic fun. By introducing serious and even tragic arias, not to mention a mad scene 17  John H. Roberts, ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, HJb 47 (2001), 359. Posterla and Araia had been colleagues at the court of the Empress Anna of Russia in 1735–37. 18  Burrows and Dunhill, 69–71. 19  It is only from these letters that we know of the participation, and even the existence, of the daughter. She was perhaps the Chiara Posterla or Pusterli who sang in Rimini and Parma in 1743.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 397

06/10/2006 14:52:44

398

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

(though he left this to Araia), Handel produced an unsatisfactory hotchpotch. But a pasticcio is seldom anything else.20 The King’s Theatre was dark throughout the 1739/40 season. Handel spent the autumn composing the twelve concertos later published as Opus 6 and the Ode for St Cecilia’s Day. He then moved to the vacant theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where from 22 November he gave a widely spaced concert series consisting of English choral works, including the new L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato composed in January, seasoned with most of the new Opus 6 concertos; no opera, and only single performances of three oratorios. On 19 October England had declared war on Spain, to the annoyance of cognoscenti, since it distracted the public and interfered with the supply of Italian singers. ‘No opera, no nothing. All for war and Admiral Haddock’, Richard West wrote to Horace Walpole on 13 December (Haddock commanded the English Mediterranean Fleet). Middlesex with Rolli in tow, having collected seventy-eight subscribers and two castratos (Carestini and Andreoni) launched a rival enterprise at the Little Haymarket on 1 December with four performances of Pescetti’s serenata Diana and Endymion and two concerts at which Carestini sang a Salve Regina by Hasse. Gastaldi told Cantemir on 17 December that ‘the concert series is going very badly, but Handel, on the contrary, triumphs; and everyone runs after his music’.21 After Christmas Middlesex had the theatre enlarged ‘in order to perform Italian Operas there’, and from 22 January put on two pasticcios (Merode e Selinunte and Olimpia in Ebuda) and Pescetti’s Busiri, overo Il trionfo d’amore with his two castratos and his mistress, supplemented after Easter by dancing. The pasticcios had a fair number of performances, but Middlesex’s attempt to mount a season in 1740/41 collapsed when he acquired only twenty-one subscribers. This may have stimulated Handel to one more attempt. He was on the Continent from mid-July to late September 1740 and came back refreshed; ‘the travelling has done him great service’, Shaftesbury was told.22 Still at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he gave another sparse season featuring odes, the serenata Parnasso in festa, a single night of oratorio (Saul), and his last two operas. His new singers, Andreoni (inherited from Middlesex), Miss Edwards (variously described by the future Lord Radnor as ‘a new whoman’ [sic] and by Thomas Harris as ‘a little girl that belongs to Mrs. Clive’),23 and Maria Monza, who arrived just in time for Deidamia, were no great draw, though Monza’s deficiencies seem to have been physical rather than vocal. Imeneo, rewritten

20  For a full account of Jupiter in Argos see my contribution to the Gedenkschrift for Howard Serwer, ed. R. G. King (forthcoming). 21  Lindgren, Zamboni, 175. As a good Catholic Gastaldi was very shocked at hearing Salve Regina in a theatre, and that George II did not know what the words meant. 22  Burrows and Dunhill, 105. 23  Ibid., 105, 108. Orthography was evidently not the peerage’s strong point: Lord Shaftesbury was stumped by the word ‘orchestra’, which he spelt ‘orquestre’ (ibid., 22). ‘Whensday’ is another of Lord Radnor’s efforts. Or is this a key to eighteenth-century pronunciation?

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 398

06/10/2006 14:52:44



The Last Operas, 1738–1741

399

for yet another cast and advertised as an operetta, and Deidamia were both total failures, attaining two and three performances respectively.24 If Handel ever thought of leaving England permanently, it was at this time, when both opera and oratorio seemed to be losing their attraction. Burney referred to opera at this period as ‘a tawdry, expensive and meretricious lady’, now brought low.25 An unexplained incident mentioned in a letter to the London Daily Post of 4 April 1741 might have a bearing. The writer, signing himself J.B., defended Handel for perpetrating ‘a faux Pas made, but not meant’, attributing it to ‘a Pride, inseparable from great Men’ and urging the public to show that London ‘can pardon or forget the Feelings, or even the Faults of a great Genius’. In the autumn of 1739, in Lord Shaftesbury’s words, a report had circulated ‘to the great Detriment of our friend Handel’, that he ‘was very surly at Southampton & called out as he was playing on the organ, “Shut the doors or I will leave off instantly”’; but this scarcely qualifies as a faux pas, unless a member of the Royal Family was present.26 J.B. appealed to ‘all the polite Part of his disgusted Friends’ and ‘the Gentlemen who have taken offence at this great Man’s Conduct’ to attend his performance of L’Allegro ed il Penseroso on 8 April, ‘his last for this Season, and if Report be true, probably his last for ever in this Country’. Lord Egmont went ‘to hear Handel’s music for the last time, he intending to go to Spa in Germany’. In July he began composing Italian duets, a form popular at German courts. But then a new oratorio text from Jennens and an invitation to Dublin from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland changed the course of Handel’s life and of musical history. In the autumn of 1740 eight young aristocrats led by Lord Middlesex agreed to form what was in effect a second Opera of the Nobility, though without the sanction of the Royal Academy Charter, which had expired in July. They betook themselves to the King’s Theatre, where Heidegger obtained a licence to perform for four years from October 1741.27 Handel meanwhile was experiencing a sense of relief. ‘He laughs very much at the opera which is preparing for next winter,’ Thomas Dampier wrote on 30 July, ‘He has refused to have anything to do in the matter.’ Fresh from composing Messiah and Samson, on 31 October 1741 he attended Middlesex’s first night, Alessandro in Persia, a pasticcio arranged by Galuppi, shortly before leaving for Dublin, and told Jennens that ‘It made me very merry all along my journey’. The Middlesex opera soon fell into difficulties due to extravagance and inexperience, and Middlesex made repeated attempts to attract Handel. On 9 September 1742, after his return from Ireland, Handel wrote to Jennens: ‘The Report that the 24  A. H. Scouten,The London Stage, Part 3: 1729–1747, gives a performance of Deidamia on 24 January which seems to be a ghost. The last night, on 10 February, was at the Little Haymarket, where Handel had never performed before. The reason for this is not known. 25  History, II, 827. 26  Burrows and Dunhill, 78. 27  Taylor, Italian Operagoing, 258. On January 1740 (wrongly dated 1739 in Deutsch) the Lord Chamberlain had granted a licence to Angelo Cori, a Middlesex ally, to perform operas in any place under his jurisdiction.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 399

06/10/2006 14:52:44

400

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Direction of the Opera next Winter is committed to my Care, is groundless. The Gentlemen who have undertaken to middle [sic] with Harmony can not agree, and are quite in a Confusion.’ According to a letter from J. C. Smith senior to Lord Shaftesbury a year later (28 July 1743)28 Handel did undertake to compose two operas for Middlesex’s coming season at a fee of 1,000 guineas, if his health permitted. His health had indeed been uncertain: on 4 May Horace Walpole had told Horace Mann ‘Handel has had a palsy and can’t compose’. Nevertheless he managed to throw off Semele, Joseph and his Brethren and the Dettingen Te Deum and Anthem between June and September. Perhaps as a result, in Smith’s words, ‘he declined his promise and said that he could – or would do nothing for the Opera Directors, altho’ the Prince of Wales desired him at several times to accept of their offers, and compose for them, and said that by so doing He would not only oblige the King and the Royal Family but likewise all the Quality’. Middlesex resumed the pressure, offering to make the terms as easy as possible: 500 guineas if his health would allow him to compose only one opera, or 100 if he would adjust one of his old operas. If he still refused, Middlesex would perform some of his old operas and tell the public of his refusal to cooperate. In the end Handel lent the performing score of Alessandro, and Middlesex opened his season on 15 November with a much altered version of that opera under the title Rossane29 (Plates 15 and 16). Handel probably took the same line when the theatre proposed to stage Admeto in 1754, the last production of a Handel opera anywhere until 1920. He may have lent the autograph as well, for both scores are missing, perhaps destroyed in one of the endemic theatre fires.

28  HHB 4, 363–4. 29  See W. Dean, ‘Rossane: Pasticcio or Handel Opera?’ GHB 7 (1998), 143–55.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 400

06/10/2006 14:52:44



ch a pter 23 Far amondo

T

he Argument to the libretto, remarking that the story is ‘very diffusive’, attempts to summarise its principal elements. Some time in the past Teobaldo, general of Gustavo, King of the Cimbri, performed a Trovatore-type switch, exchanging his own son for Gustavo’s son Sveno in the hope that his kin would inherit the throne. The pseudo-Sveno was later killed in battle by Faramondo, King of the Franks, on whom Gustavo swears an oath of ‘everlasting revenge’. Faramondo falls in love with Gustavo’s daughter Rosimonda, who ‘tho’ she had a secret passion for him, endeavours his death, believing that he had killed her brother’. Gernando, King of the Svevi, his friend and ally, ‘who had conquered the Kingdom of the Cimbri for him’, also loves Rosimonda, and betrays Faramondo. Though the Argument does not mention it, Adolfo, another son of Gustavo, antagonises his father by falling in love with Faramondo’s sister Clotilde, who returns his devotion, and Gustavo, presumably a middle-aged widower, also pursues Clotilde. No date or place is specified. The libretto does not draw the usual distinction between historical fact and fiction, no doubt because the history is bogus. Act I opens in A cypress grove dedicated to vengeance, with an altar in the middle and preparations for a sacrifice. Gustavo, with Adolfo and soldiers in array, pours a vase of liquids on the altar and swears by the Elysian gods to wage perpetual war on Faramondo: whoever brings him his head, struck from his body, shall have Rosimonda and the Cimbrian throne. A short chorus calls for revenge. Teobaldo leads in to them Clotilde in chains. Gustavo condemns her to death, but a moment later stands in suspense and orders her release. The soldiers free her from her chains. She promises to be true to Adolfo provided he defends Faramondo. Adolfo begs forgiveness of Sveno’s spirit for loving his enemy’s sister; but love is all-powerful. The set changes to A Court in Rosimonda’s royal palace. Childerico (the unrecognised Sveno) comes forth on one side, defending himself against Pharamond’s soldiers; from the other side, Pharamond, with attendants, and Rosamond apart. Childerico is apparently Rosimonda’s bodyguard. Faramondo stops the fight, identifies himself and lets Childerico go. Rosimonda is astonished by Faramondo’s noble mien, and he is equally struck by her. She bids him kill her as he killed Sveno. He apologises for that, but she dismisses him: his presence adds to her grief. Gernando thanks Faramondo for giving him Rosimonda, presumably by defeating Gustavo and the Cimbri. Faramondo says he must first win her heart   The stage directions differ as between libretto, autograph and HG, and even between the Italian and English versions of the libretto. Handel’s autograph clarifies matters to some extent by placing I.v in Rosimonda’s palace instead of a bare courtyard, and II.xi in Rosimonda’s Cabinetti instead of just a closet. The libretto names no place at the start of Act II and locates III.vi in a wood (a standard set), which makes no sense. The directions cited here are quoted from the autograph when they differ or are absent from the libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 401

06/10/2006 14:52:44

402

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

and restore the kingdom and her liberty. He admits he is Gernando’s rival, but will behave honourably. Gernando decides to satisfy his love and Rosimonda’s revenge by killing Faramondo. He tells her that his men have in fact killed him, but a clashing of arms is heard, and Faramondo returns, having captured Gustavo’s palace. Gernando lays his hand to his sword, but Faramondo tells him to go free as a friend. He then offers himself to Rosimonda (and to give Gustavo back his kindom), but she feels bound by the oath of vengeance, though it bursts her heart to say so. He departs sadly but will return to die at her feet. She compares her wretched fate to a vessel driven on the rocks. (There must be a set change here, but none is specified.) Gustavo makes unwelcome advances to Clotilde, assuring her that Adolfo will yield her to him as his King and father. And then, Clotilde angrily replies, ‘I’ll equally despise the tyrant father, and the timid son’ and departs without an aria. Teobaldo tells Gustavo that Faramondo has come out from the walls ‘singly, and disarm’d’. Gustavo summons his soldiers to intercept him, and Teobaldo sings a gloating vengeance aria. In A Wood Clotilde, fearing treason, asks Adolfo to defend Faramondo. Adolphus on one side; Gustavus, with a drawn sword, not seeing him, and Pharamond alone. Gustavo aims at wounding Faramondo, but Adolfo stops him, and offers his breast to his father. Faramondo’s soldiers join him, and Gustavo is trapped. Faramondo, however, calls him friend and restores his crown and Rosimonda her liberty. Gustavo spurns the gift, exiles Adolfo (‘Bring me that head, and thou shall’t be my son’) and departs in a rage. Faramondo, his hopes in ruins, sends his soldiers away: if he should be killed, they may lament his fate but not avenge him by shedding blood. Act II. A Garden. Gustavo urges Rosimonda to accept Gernando, who enters with a proposal that they join forces against Faramondo. Gustavo offers him Rosimonda in return for Faramondo’s head. Gernando pays court to her and is indignantly rejected: if he brings her Faramondo’s head, she will have his next. He bids hope not desert him. Faramondo enters enemy lines to see Rosimonda before he dies. Clotilde conceals him between myrtles when Rosimonda approaches, and he overhears her agitation at the mention of his name. He emerges and begs to die at her feet. She is torn by contrary emotions, but cannot abjure her oath. He must die; and Teobaldo, entering with a drawn sword, goes to strike him, but is prevented by Rosimonda, who orders Faramondo to her apartments guarded by Childerico. He is happy now that he has seen Rosimonda. She rejects another appeal from Clotilde and goes out weeping, holding a handkerchief to her eyes. Clotilde compares herself to a ship driven to destruction by contrary winds. The Camp of Gustavus, with tents. Gustavus, with his guards. Adolfo learns that Faramondo has been captured and condemned to death. Gustavo rebukes Adolfo for returning from exile without permission and when he requests mercy for Faramondo orders his guards to arrest him. The guards fetter him. Adolfo says he will kiss his father’s hand before it kills him, and Exit, amidst the guards. Clotilde appeals to Gustavo on behalf of the two victims. He agrees to spare Faramondo if she will marry him (Gustavo); she indignantly refuses and departs in a rage. In Rosimonda’s Closet Teobaldo meets Childerico and demands access to Faramondo. Childerico refuses on Rosimonda’s orders. Teobaldo puzzles him by declaring that Sveno was his son and Childerico’s brother, but refuses to say more. Childerico remains unmoved and Teobaldo departs in a rage. Gernando enters laying hand on his sword and demands passage. Childerico

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 402

06/10/2006 14:52:45



Faramondo

403

again refuses, says that the gods will be his shield, and withdraws. Gernando swears to catch and punish him wherever he may hide. Rosimonda orders Childerico to produce his prisoner (i.e. Faramondo) and bring her his sword. Rosamond and Pharamond, with a guard, from which [sic] Rosamond receives the sword of Pharamond. She orders his fetters removed, confesses her love, gives him the sword, and tells him to hurry away. He goes reluctantly, and the act ends with a duet in which she does not discourage his hopes. Act III. The libretto gives no location; Handel’s autograph has Galleria nel palazzo di Villa, which makes no sense. Gustavo rages against his children, and is not appeased by their offers of sacrifice. Clotilde and Adolfo in suspense resolve to die together. Childerico, listening apart and tempted by honour to reveal his secret, promises to save them if they will trust him. They go off under a guard. A cluster of small hills; where, at a little distance, the camp of Pharamond is pitch’d. Gernando, overheard by Faramondo apart, plans to kidnap Rosimonda and orders Teobaldo to seize Gustavo. Teobaldo gives Faramondo a letter from Gustavo, which Faramondo reads in a low voice: Clotilde, Childerico, Adolfo and Rosimonda will all die if he does not return to his captivity. Faramondo agrees to come but not as Gustavo expects, and exhorts his soldiers to valour. He means to punish the tyrant, but breaks off when he remembers that Gustavo is the father of his beloved. He goes off, followed by his soldiers, with a military march. In Gustavo’s Royal Palace Teobaldo reports that Faramondo will come. Adolfo tells Gustavo that Gernando has kidnapped Rosimonda, and is given troops to recapture her, thereby atoning for his former sin. He goes out with his father’s guards, whereupon soldiers of Gernando, issuing from different parts, encompass the King and make him prisoner. Gustavo draws his sword. With the assistance of his soldiers [Teobaldo] disarms the King, and is about to fetter him, when Pharamond arrives ... the vizor of his helmet clos’d, and Adolfo with soldiers. The soldiers flying, desert Theobald, who is left alone ... Pharamond’s soldiers fetter him. Faramondo gives Gustavo back his sword. Gustavo embraces him, and in the interim enter Rosimonda and Clotilde. When Gustavo asks who has freed them, Rosimonda points to Faramondo, who lifts up his vizor. Gustavo is disgusted to find that he owes so much to his mortal enemy. He yields to prayers to abandon his hatred, but this cannot save Faramondo because of his oath. Rosimonda says she will die with him. Faramondo, happy to die, obtains Gustavo’s consent to the marriage of Adolfo and Clotilde and tells Gernando, whom his soldiers have captured, to return to his people, begging his pardon if his own love for Rosimonda has given offence. His generosity moves Clotilde and Adolfo to weep. Faramondo tells Gustavo to hurry up with the execution, or their grief will damage his reputation by making him die less bravely. Adolfo, alone with Clotilde, remembers Childerico’s offer of help and goes to find him. Clotilde looks forward to happiness after pain like a guiding star in a storm. Amphitheatre in the camp of Gustavus. Gustavo calls on the goddess of revenge to remind him of Sveno and his killer, and raises his sword to strike Pharamond, when Childeric enters and bids him hold his hand: Sveno was not his son, and Faramondo is innocent. Let Teobaldo be called as witness. The guards bring him in. Teobaldo confesses that he was Sveno’s father, and gives a paper to Gustavus, who reads   He copied it from the 1720 libretto, and may have taken ‘Villa’ for a place name. But the 1699 libretto reads Stanza nel Palagio di Villa di Rosimonda. Handel appears to make no distinction between the residences of Gustavo and his daughter.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 403

06/10/2006 14:52:45

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

404

in a low voice. Gustavus condemns him to death, but changes the sentence to exile when Childerico intercedes for him. Rosimonda enters, prepared to die; Gustavo leads her to Faramondo, who celebrates the triumph of virtue over hatred and love, echoed by the whole company. The source of this story is Faramond, ou l’histoire de France, by Gautier de Costes de la Calprenède (1610–63), courtier and author of long-winded pseudo-historical romances. Faramond, reputedly the first King of France (420–28), belongs to the world of Arthurian myth. Apostolo Zeno’s libretto, first set by C. F. Pollarolo for Venice in 1699, abjured the comic and magical elements characteristic of seventeenth­-­century opera and treated the story seriously as political and military history, crossed as usual by interlocking love intrigues. It was subsequently set by Porpora (Naples, 1719) and Francesco Gasparini (Rome, 1720). Table 10 Gasparini (1720)

Handel (1737)

Gustavo

6 arias

2 arias

Faramondo

6 arias, 1 duet

6 arias, 1 duet

Gernando

5 arias

4 arias

Adolfo

5 arias, 1 duet

3 arias, 1 duet (1 aria from Childerico with new B section)

Rosimonda

6 arias, 1 duet

4 arias, 1 duet

Clotilde

5 arias, 1 duet

4 arias, 1 duet

Teobaldo

1 aria

1 aria (from Gustavo with new B section)

Childerico

2 arias

0

cori

1

2

Total

39 movements

28 movements (excluding ­overture and sinfonias)

Gasparini’s libretto, Handel’s immediate source, made considerable alterations to Zeno; Handel’s was faithful to Gasparini’s, except in one crucial particular. As was to be expected, he reduced the aria ration of all the characters except Faramondo, Gustavo’s very considerably (see Table 10). Of the twenty-four arias in his libretto no fewer than twenty come from Gasparini’s (two of them transferred to different   He reads silently in Handel’s original (A) setting, though the libretto puts into his mouth sixteen lines of explanation. They date back to 1699, where Teobaldo delivers them in person. Evidently they were considered superfluous; but see below (p. 414).   It is dedicated to ‘Clementina, Queen of Great Britain’, the wife of James Stuart, the Old Pretender. Gasparini’s all-male cast comprised the tenor Fabri (Gernando) and probably seven castratos. Berenstadt sang Gustavo.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 404

06/10/2006 14:52:45



Faramondo

405

­characters with new B sections). So do both duets and the final coro. Of the four ‘new’ arias, all in Act II, ‘Combattuta da due venti’ is a rehash of a text in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Marco Attilio Regolo, and the opening line of ‘Sol la brama di vendetta’ (except the first word) comes from an aria for Clotilde in Gasparini’s II.x. The little coro in the first scene has only nine words. Handel scarcely needed an assistant poet. The libretto as it stands is hopelessly obscure; Dent found it almost unintelligible. Presumably the intended framework was a contrast between heathen savagery on the one hand and Augustan Enlightenment on the other, and their different conceptions of honour. Gustavo and at first Rosimonda feel bound by their oath, Faramondo by heroic ideals of generosity and forgiveness. But it all rings hollow because their behaviour is simply not credible, even in terms of the operatic stage. The trouble goes back to Gasparini’s libretto. Zeno began logically with Sveno’s death and Rosimonda’s promise to execute ‘orribile vendetta’ on his killer. Gasparini chopped off Zeno’s first six scenes, which introduce most of the characters, leaving the plot squirming like a worm without a head. Handel then made his one major change, the drastic abbreviation of the recitatives. This is common enough in his operas, especially the later ones, but never so crushingly as here. Gasparini’s libretto contains some 1,240 lines of recitative, Handel’s a mere 540. (Zeno’s in 1699 runs to more than 1,450, though a fair number are marked as cut.) As a result the plot becomes a whirlpool of inconsequence. Deprived of the dialogue that elucidates their motives, the characters behave like ventriloquists’ dummies, jerked into action by some unseen force. Little but violent action is left, much of it off-stage, and so beyond the audience’s grasp. What is this internecine tribal warfare all about? Why, and where, is Faramondo fighting the Cimbri? What are the walls from which he emerges in Act I, and why is he imprisoned by Rosimonda and not by Gustavo? The geography is chaotic. Do Gustavo and Rosimonda inhabit one palace, or two? What is Childerico’s position in the royal household? While it was inevitable that love interest should come to the fore, the two characters not amorously involved but essential to the story – Teobaldo, who started the trouble, and Childerico, who puts an end to it – are under-represented and almost elbowed out. Some of the action might be clearer in the theatre, but nothing could bring the whole contraption to life. Other details suggest clumsy workmanship, perhaps a rushed job: a string of angry exits in recitative where the situation asks for the release of steam in an aria, and simile pieces at unsuitable moments. It is no surprise that each heroine likens herself to a ship in trouble; but Gernando, Adolfo and Clotilde in turn hold up Act III by adducing more or less irrelevant parallels with the natural world. There are signs of botching in Act II. ‘Combattuta’ must have been designed originally for Rosimonda – it is she, not Clotilde, who at this point is torn by conflicting emotions – and ‘Sol la brama di vendetta’ for Clotilde, whom Gustavo has just insulted. The libretto actually gives this aria to Clotilde, and Rosimonda has the recitative immediately before ‘Combattuta’. All that was necessary to make this change in the libretto was to shift her exit back before the aria, a move that did not reach the English version, where Rosimonda by implication still has the aria. A possible reason for this manoeuvre   See J. H. Roberts, in Music and Theatre, 172ff.   In Zeno’s libretto he is described as Rosimonda’s ‘confidente’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 405

06/10/2006 14:52:45

406

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

was that Handel had discovered the gifts of his new prima donna Francesina, whom he cast for Clotilde, and saw in ‘Combattuta’ an opportunity for a brilliant soprano aria, whereas his Rosimonda was a mezzo-soprano. All this raises a suspicion that Handel’s eye was not consistently on the ball. He may have had his fill of Dark Age blood-and-thunder melodrama. Berenice and Arminio had been a come-down after the glories of the Ariosto operas, and though Giustino promised a new approach he had not yet found the lighter tone of Serse and Imeneo. Strohm suggests that the libretto of Faramondo may have been chosen by Heidegger, and that Handel set it unwillingly. However that may be, it is a very uneven opera, with half a dozen peaks where some facet set Handel’s genius alight, chiefly in Act II, but a good deal of routine matter. Another possible indication – though this is never a sure guide – is the exceptionally large number of borrowings, suggesting that he may have needed more than the usual push to set his engine in motion. John Roberts, the Sherlock Holmes of Handel scholarship, has identified nineteen movements (seventeen arias and both duets) in this connection: one each from Keiser’s La forza della virtù and Giovanni Bononcini’s Xerse (which was to give yeoman service in Handel’s next opera), two from Pistocchi’s Narciso, the remainder from three operas by Alessandro Scarlatti, Marco Attilio Regolo, Dafni and Griselda, the scores of which he obtained through Jennens. This is not a case of major larceny; few of the items concerned amount to more than brief snatches of melody, and some are period tags, but they are too numerous to be the result of coincidence. Several retain the original key, and one or two have similar texts (compare for example ‘Un’aura placida’ with ‘Vi respiro aurette placide’ in Dafni). Handel’s imagination seems to have juggled, perhaps subconsciously, with his sources, sometimes keeping fragments from more than one in the air at once. ‘Poi che pria di morire’ (HG 60) draws on three arias in Griselda, ‘Chi ben ama’ (HG 64) and ‘Vanne che più ti miro’ (HG 19) on two in Marco Attilio Regolo, ‘Nella terra’ (HG 76) and ‘Così suole’ (HG 90) on two in Dafni. This does not necessarily diminish the final result. Strohm points to another source, Gasparini’s setting of the same libretto, and calls in evidence ten movements from Handel’s Faramondo; there could be more, for Gasparini’s score survives only in fragments. Most of them are settings of the same text, and half are not in Roberts’s list. ‘Vanne che più ti miro’ seems to combine two snatches from Scarlatti with one from Gasparini. Many of these parallels are as much rhythmic as melodic, and again some are commonplaces, but they are enough to suggest that Handel had absorbed Gasparini’s score as well as those of the three Scarlatti operas. One borrowing from yet another source has been identified: the Minuet in the overture is based on the corresponding movement in Porpora’s Festa d’Imeneo, another subject soon to engage Handel’s attention.10   Essays, 84.   J. H. Roberts, Handel Sources, vols II, VII and VIII; Music and Theatre, 171ff; and for the ­Pistocchi borrowings Words on Music, ed. D. Rosen and C. Brook (New York, 2003), 253.   Essays, 84–91. 10  J. H. Roberts, ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, HJb 47 (2001), 350.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 406

06/10/2006 14:52:45



Faramondo

407

After a splendid overture, Handel endeavours to give the opera a kick-start with an accompagnato, the only one in the score, and a brief coro. Neither amounts to much, and the first phrase of the D major coro might as well be ‘Alleluia’ as ‘Pera, pera!’. Much of Act I scarcely rises above the pedestrian. Significantly, none of the characters, with the partial exception of Rosimonda, is memorably defined in his or her first aria, least of all Faramondo. The libretto presents him as a paragon of virtue, like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, but his clemency towards his enemies dwarfs that of Metastasio’s Titus. He lets Gustavo off the hook at the end of Act I (preventing the opera from coming to an untimely end) and more than once gives him back his sword, though surely aware of his savage propensities. He shows equal tenderness towards the double turncoat Gernando. This is a half-witted hero with a compulsive urge to cut off his nose to spite his face. His music, or most of it, is a different matter. Faramondo was Handel’s first part for Caffarelli, one of the great singers of the age and ranked by some above Farinelli, though he was said to be in indifferent voice and health during his single London season. Handel gave him plenty of material with which to shine; he has the finest music in the opera, though his first aria ‘Rival ti sono’, full of sequences and heavy cadences, merely tests his control of coloratura. ‘Sì, tornerò a morir’ on the other hand is a beautiful cavatina in typical E major mood, the vocal line punctuated by a violin figure prophetic of the accompaniment to the Queen of Sheba’s ‘Will the sun forget to streak’. Without initial ritornello, it is nicely rounded off by eight meditative bars at the end. Faramondo concludes the act with another attractive aria, ‘Se ben mi lusinga’. A bar of diminished seventh harmony later associated with the word ‘inganno’ (‘deceit’) adds spice to the smooth melody of the ritornello with its characteristic cross-rhythms over a marching bass and later initiates excursions from G major into A minor and G minor. A long dominant pedal and a return ritornello after the B section that raises the opening bars by an octave and omits the diminished seventh, so that it is all the more effective in the closing bars, gives the aria a happy balance. But it is psychologically wrong, a bouncy aria in a despondent situation. ‘Poi che pria di morire’, the opera’s single Largo movement, is another misfit. Rosimonda has just rejected Faramondo but protected him from an assault by Teobaldo (HG omits a crucial stage direction), a situation that seems to call for resolute action. Faramondo responds with plangent lyricism, more apt for a sickly lover than a military hero. But it is a lovely aria, his third without initial ritornello, balanced by an embroidered variation on the principal melody at the end of the A section. The decorated vocal line is profoundly eloquent, and so is the harmonic detail, a touch of the tonic (F) minor towards the end of the first part and a typically emotional Neapolitan climax after the move to A minor in the second. Faramondo and Rosimonda end the act with an extended cavatina that makes happy use of hemiola. A flute, in its sole appearance, doubles Rosimonda at the octave, perhaps because the stronger voice of Caffarelli has the upper part. Faramondo’s Act III aria ‘Voglio che sia l’indegno’ is Handel at his greatest, an intensely dramatic cameo of a man torn between contrary emotions. He has received Gustavo’s letter threatening to execute half the cast, including Rosimonda, unless he returns to captivity, and rages against the King, but suddenly remembers that he is

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 407

06/10/2006 14:52:45

408

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Rosimonda’s father. Precipitous downward scales covering two octaves and more, followed by jagged chromatic arpeggios, depict the extremes of fury and anguish in the ritornello. After an angry roulade in triplets on the word ‘sdegno’ he suddenly breaks off, and the chromatic arpeggios express his inner turbulence (Ex. 59). The continuation is marked by restless tonality, augmented and diminished intervals, angular unisons and ungainly vocal leaps (sevenths and ninths) as he wrestles with his conscience. The flying scales move in both directions and invade the B section as well. There are strong anticipations of Dejanira’s madness in Hercules and Storgè’s rage in Jephtha. Faramondo’s last aria, supported by the first appearance of horns and linked to a substantial coro on the same material, forms a massive finale. The rollicking rhythm, with more hemiola and the voice sounding off like an additional horn, seeks to validate an exceptionally flatulent happy end.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 408

06/10/2006 14:52:46



Faramondo

409

Gernando never comes into focus, dramatically or musically. Handel does not seem to know how to deal with him. His behaviour is contemptible – introduced as Faramondo’s friend and colleague, he performs an instant about-turn on learning of his interest in Rosimonda, plans to kill him, and later does the dirty on Gustavo as well – but his music illustrates none of this. At least two of his four arias ring false. The first, ‘Voglio che mora, sì’, has a certain flashy brilliance in its perpetual semiquaver motion throughout both sections, but little depth. In ‘Non ingannarmi’ he answers Rosimonda’s denunciation of his treachery in a bouncy rhythm recalling Tolomeo’s ‘Sì, spietata’ in Giulio Cesare, with orchestral figuration apt for a chorus of frogs. It is possible that Handel was trying to indicate a cocky defiance. ‘Nella terra’ rumbles along in the manner of Sullivan’s Handel parody in Princess Ida. ‘Così suole’ has a pretty tune prophetic of Amastre’s music in Handel’s next opera, but its botanical simile is misplaced in this conspiratorial context. Adolfo, written like Gernando for a woman en travesti, is a conventional harassed lover. ‘Chi ben ama’, a generalised statement, warbles amiably with a long ritornello that juxtaposes mild chromaticism and a nine-bar dominant pedal and modulates towards the supertonic when the voice takes it up. ‘Se a’ piedi’, in which Adolfo capitulates to his father, has a plaintive charm without much vitality, and the duet with Clotilde suffers from the shortness of its phrases, mitigated to some extent by suspensions. ‘Se ria procella’ begins with echoes of ‘Cangiò d’aspetto’ in Admeto and marks time in the manner of most simile pieces. This was Childerico’s aria in an earlier scene in 1720, but Handel supplies a new B section in which Adolfo ­ unexpectedly offers Faramondo some advice. Gustavo is a disappointment. Where he could have been a menacing foil to Faramondo, he is reduced to two arias, neither up to the usual standard of Handel’s bass parts, and comes over as a hollow blusterer, a parody of a tyrant. ‘Sol la brama’ with its spitting rhythms and interrupted cadences is the better of the two. Teobaldo has a single not very striking aria, Childerico not even that. The faint buffo flavour of ‘Vado a recar’ was doubtless tailored to Lottini, an intermezzo singer brought over by Lord Middlesex and inherited by Handel when Middlesex’s season failed. The ladies fare better. Both are typical long-suffering heroines, but Rosimonda develops in the course of the action. Submissive at first to her father’s oath, she is gradually won over by the warmth of Faramondo’s love. In ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’ she sends him away, but the many key changes, nearly all in the minor mode (the B section scarcely touches the relative major) and the agitated string figures that permeate the texture betray an inner conflict. Handel wrote three versions of this aria, the first two unfinished. He developed it from a straightforward outburst of rage, with a tenbar ritornello and no sign of the string figure, to an increasingly subtle penetration of Rosimonda’s tangled emotions, with the voice breaking in without preamble and the string figure assuming ever greater prominence.11 ‘Sento, che un giusto sdegno’ adds little, though the pauses between short phrases may reflect Rosimonda’s uncertainty. In ‘Sì, l’intendesti’ she comes to life with a vengeance, lacerating Gernando in a skilful manipulation of dramatic design; as her anger rises the ritornellos expand 11  See Roberts’s fascinating analysis, embracing not only Handel’s versions but their links with two arias from Marco Attilio Regolo, Music and Theatre, 174–81.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 409

06/10/2006 14:52:47

410

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

from three bars at the start to seven before the restatement of the text and sixteen, including material introduced by the voice, at the end of the A section, and the light initial scoring puts on increasing weight. Both voice and orchestra are punctuated at irregular intervals by the rhythm set to the word ‘Barbaro!’, the falling interval ranging from an octave to a fifth. (Handel had treated the word ‘Perfido’ similarly in Act III of Radamisto.) Twice Rosimonda runs down the scale to bottom A, signifying her contempt. The B section introduces another indignation gambit, a rising octave arpeggio followed by a downward scale. This too Handel had used before, in Agrippina (‘Col raggio’) and Atalanta (‘Di’ ad Irene’). It was to make an even greater impact in Saul (‘With rage I shall burst’). ‘Sappi, crudel’, addressed alternately to Faramondo and Gustavo, also bends the convention, the first four words gliding in unaccompanied after a half-close on the dominant. The rhythm is that of ‘Non le dirò’ in Serse, and Handel echoes Bononcini’s setting of those words in his Xerse. The single ritornello, after the A section, overflows with emotion as Handel further develops the material. Burney’s sniffiness (as usual ignoring the context) misses the point. Clotilde was Handel’s first part for Francesina, later a success in oratorio and the first Semele. Though only the seconda donna, she had a higher voice than Marchesini (Rosimonda) and a flexibility of utterance – in Burney’s words ‘that natural warble, and agility of voice’ and ‘lark-like execution’ – of which Handel was quick to take advantage. All her arias have substantial ritornellos and corresponding elaboration when the voice enters. The two in Act I are typical ‘warblers’, with decoration that flatters the singer without probing far below the surface. ‘Combattuta da due venti’ on the other hand is a tour de force, no ordinary simile aria but a spectacular showpiece with a ritornello that hints at ‘Martern aller Arten’ and foreshadows the style of Hasse. Short scale figures in both directions treated in canon over thrumming pedals on different degrees of the scale illustrate the contrary winds of the text. The idea is borrowed from a nautical aria in Marco Attilio Regolo. The same ­material serves both sections; the touch of the minor towards the end of the A section is particularly happy. In context however simile and sentiment would be much more apt in Rosimonda’s mouth. Clotilde’s last aria, ‘Un’aura placida’, is equally brilliant and extended (and dependent on borrowings) but less interesting. As elsewhere in Handel, the continuous babble of triplets in 3/8 time grows wearisome. Five arias and a duet deploy this metre. One or two further points about the arias are perhaps worth a mention. They tend to have either enormous initial ritornellos (seven and a duet with fifteen bars or more) or none at all (seven, quickening the pace but blurring the action). The proportion of full da capo to dal segno arias is unusually high: sixteen, including all in Act III, as against seven. There are very few slow movements, only one Largo and two Larghettos, but four Andantes and twenty Allegros, three of them qualified. By general consent the overture, unusually in E major, is one of Handel’s finest. All three sections are full of character. The prancing gait of the Larghetto yields suddenly to a quiet passage of gently shifting chords for strings alone. The effect is striking, but it is not clear what it represents. The fugue is free in form and climbs to a noble climax. The Minuet (not so titled) resembles those in the overtures to Berenice

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 410

06/10/2006 14:52:47



Faramondo

411

and Saul in its stately grace and is beautifully balanced, the initial melody returning over a dominant pedal. The two act-tune sinfonias, the first almost an Allemande, are good solid stuff and rather more worked out than many of their type. The scoring, apart from single appearances of flute and horns, is confined to strings and oboes, with bassoons implied, but the string writing is full of resource. There is no clear tonal plan. Act III oscillates between E and G, major and minor, linking perhaps with the overture, but the horns push the finale into F, a key ­associated with Faramondo in the earlier Acts.

History and Text Handel began the score on Tuesday 15 November 1737, finishing the drafts of Act I on Monday the 28th and Act II on 4 December, ‘Sunday evening, about 10 o’clock’; he was growing more fastidious in his dating. At this point he broke off to compose the noble funeral anthem ‘The ways of Zion do mourn’ for Queen Caroline, who had died on 20 November. He finished it on 12 December, conducted it at her funeral on the 17th, and completed the score of Faramondo on the 24th. The first performance took place at the King’s Theatre on 3 January 1738, with the following cast: faramondo Caffarelli (mezzo-soprano castrato) adolfo Margherita Chimenti, La Droghierina (soprano) gernando Antonia Merighi (contralto) gustavo Antonio Montagnana (bass) rosimonda Maria Antonia Marchesini, La Lucchesina (mezzo-soprano) clotilde Elisabeth Duparc, La Francesina (soprano) teobaldo Antonio Lottini (bass) childerico William Savage (?) Savage’s part is notated in the soprano clef, except in the final coro where he has the tenor. He may have sung his recitatives in the lower octave; it is not known when his voice broke. He was a bass by 1740. There were seven successive performances in January and another on 16 May.12 It was probably for that occasion that Handel revised the score, omitting Teobaldo and Childerico: the singers may not have been available (see below, p. 414). The reception was enthusiastic, at any rate at first. Faramondo is mentioned several times in the correspondence of the Wentworth family, children of the Earl of Strafford.13 Newburgh Hamilton, Strafford’s steward or agent, attended the first night and the 12  There is something odd about this performance, nearly four months after the main run. Was it mounted at the request of some royal or noble patron? Caffarelli, understandably, took exception. Four days later, in a letter to his mother recently discovered by David Hunter in the Berkshire Record Office, Reading, William Trumbull of Easthampstead (1708–60) reported that ‘there is a great Quarrel between Caffarielli & Hendel he having the last opera night playd every note the other sung just as you would to young singers, because the other had desired all his friends not to come to the opera’. 13  BL Add. MS 31145, fols 197–231.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 411

06/10/2006 14:52:47

412

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

previous day’s rehearsal. The fifteen-year-old Lord Wentworth, primed no doubt by Hamilton, wrote to his father on the 3rd: ‘To be sure it will [be] vastly full since there has not been one [opera for] so long a time & a new person [Caffarelli] to sing.’ According to the London Daily Post and Advertiser of the 4th, it was performed ‘to a splendid Audience, and met with general Applause. It being the first Time of Mr. Handel’s Appearance this Season, he was honour’d with extraordinary and repeated Signs of Approbation.’ The following day Lord Wentworth wrote: ‘Every body seems to like Pharamond the new opera vastly & they say Gaffrielli [sic] is a much better Person than Farenilli, but I do not hear any body likes his voice near as well as Farenelli’s.’ Lucy Wentworth confirmed the success on the 7th, observing that ‘Mr. Hamilton who woud not doe less than another body, when Mr. Handel was in ye Cass [Case], clap’d till his arms aked’. On the 12th, after hearing the opera two days earlier in the Duchess of Buckingham’s box, she added: ‘I like ye new man vastly, he’s very pritty & sings some songs as well in my Opinion as posible but I think he sometimes carrys his voice too high, the Opera is found fault with by some people but I think ’tis a very pritty one.’ However on the 14th, after enthusing over The Dragon of Wantley (‘Mr. Handel owns he thinks the tunes very well compos’d’), her brother gives a rather different picture: ‘The poor operas I doubt go on but Badly, for tho’ every body praises both Cafferielli & the opera yet it has never been full & if it is not now at first it will be very Empty towards the Latter End of the winter.’ Handel incorporated the arias ‘Mi parto lieta’, ‘Così suole’ and ‘Combattuta’ and the duet ‘Vado e vivo’ in Jupiter in Argos (May 1739), and the duet, slightly modified, in the 1742 Dublin revival of Imeneo. ‘Non ingannarmi’ in Jupiter in Argos is quite different from the aria beginning with those words in Faramondo, though Handel’s original scheme did include the latter.14 The overture was played at a King’s Theatre benefit for Miss Robinson on 29 April 1745. Beard sang ‘Sì l’intendesti’ on the same occasion, as did Francesina in a subscription concert at the Great Room, Dean Street, on 22 February 1752. The overture featured again in a Castle Society concert at Haberdashers Hall on 16 February 1758.15 Faramondo has never been revived in London, and posterity has shown little interest in it. There have been only two modern revivals, at Halle in a poor edition in 1976 and Reading University in 1981. A well-meant but ill-conceived attempt to improve the libretto undercuts the only commercial recording (Vox, 1996).

Autograph (RM 20 a 13) The handwriting and spacing are cramped, perhaps the result of illness; Handel had only recently returned to London from convalescence in Aix-la-Chapelle. His foliation by gatherings is regular, with but two insertions, fols 14–15 (first setting of ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’) and fol. 67 (second setting of ‘Così suole’). Handel added the 14  J. A. Fuller Maitland and A. H. Mann, Catalogue of the Music in the Fitzwilliam Museum ­(London, 1893), 177. 15  RMA Research Chronicle 34 (2001), 24.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 412

06/10/2006 14:52:47



Faramondo

413

oboe parts in the overture after the performing scores had been copied (but before the publication of the Walsh print); originally the only mention of the instrument was before the first bar. The tempo at the start was A tempo ordinario (changed to Larghetto), that of ‘Viva, sì’ Allegro (changed to Andante). The coro ‘Pera, pera!’ is written on five staves: three upper string parts, canto (two parts), alto, bass, [basso]. There is no tenor: HG alto and tenor should be second soprano and alto. It is not clear which characters are involved; those not listed as on stage probably sang from the wings. There could even have been a few soprano soldiers. The recitative of Scene v differs from HG and is followed by the incomplete first setting of ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’ with a ten-bar ritornello, shortened to six bars and then abandoned. This is followed by an unset scene in which Faramondo sends Childerico to tell Rosimonda that he intends to rescue her. ‘Vado a recar’ is in C major; Handel may have been unsure of Lottini’s voice. In Act II the B section of ‘Non ingannarmi’ as first written was ten bars shorter than on HG 57. Handel cancelled a cadence and da capo after the tenth bar on this page, marked the passage NB and wrote the continuation on a separate leaf, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Mus. MS 262, p. 46). He began ‘Poi che pria’ in D minor, Andante larghetto, on material later used for ‘Sol la brama’, but broke off after seven bars of ritornello and wrote the Largo setting underneath. ‘Sol la brama’ also had a false start (eight bars of ritornello) before Handel got the material under control, and so did the Act III sinfonia. The first setting of ‘Così suole’, Allegro 6/8 C major, not quite complete, is on fols 66 verso, 63 recto and verso (bound out of place) and 68 recto. It is very different from the E major setting and equally unsuited to the context, with a rocking 6/8 melody. Handel reshaped the opening of ‘Voglio che sia’ in the first stage of composition: the ritornello lacked the chromatic bars 6–9, and the voice part began with a falling fourth (B flat–F) in minims. The singers are named in the final coro: Francesina, Marchesini, Caffarelli and Chimenti (soprano), Merighi (alto), Savage (tenor), Montagnana and Lottini (bass). Originally Handel had Caffarelli doubling Merighi on the alto part. The recitatives on HG 74, 92, 109 and 115–16 are in the longer A versions. The autograph’s peculiar scene-numbering towards the end of the second and third acts does not indicate that scenes are missing but that Handel, doubtless in a hurry, followed the numbering of the 1720 libretto. In Act II he had run Gasparini’s first two scenes into one and omitted his ix, x, xii, xv and xvii; in Act III he had omitted i, iii, v, xv and xvii. Besides the continuation of ‘Non ingannarmi’, Fitzwilliam MS 262, 45–6 has the abortive second setting of ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’, nine bars fully scored and three more for voice and bass with a long roulade on the word ‘cresce’, which Handel evidently – and rightly – judged unsuited to Rosimonda’s agitated mood. At the bottom of p. 45 he noted the name and address of a doctor: ‘Mr. Duval Medecin in Poland Street’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 413

06/10/2006 14:52:47

414

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Libretto ‘Pharamond, An Opera As perform’d at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-Market ... Printed by J. Chrichley, near Charing-Cross. 1737. [Price One Shilling.]’ The Italian title calls it Drama per Musica. 69 pp. The Argument, a single paragraph in English and Italian, is much shorter than Zeno’s in the 1699 and 1720 librettos. As noted above, several scene headings differ from the autograph, which may have been superseded in the performance. That to the first scene specifies an idol, perhaps excluded for biblical reasons.

Copies and Editions The two performing scores, MA/1016 (Ham 1) and MA/169 (cembalo, Ham 2), supplement each other and give a complete coverage of the changes, nearly all cuts, made during the run. Both were copied before Handel added the oboe parts in the overture, Ham 1 by Smith with two insertions (fols 105, 131–2) by S1 and one (fol. 85) by Smith himself. Ham 2 is a composite, copied from Ham 1 by Smith (overture and Act III to end of Scene xii), S1 (Act I, last two scenes of Act III, the single insertion, fols 140–1, and some paste-overs in the last two acts), and S2 (Act II). The overture, Gustavo’s ‘Viva, sì’ and the Act III sinfonia are in full score, the remainder a reduction for voices and bass with occasional violin cues. In Ham 1 Chrysander added the oboe parts in the overture’s fugue from the autograph on blank staves below the bass. (They are not in later copies.) Transpositions marked for ‘Non ingannarmi’ (ex G, Handel) and the duet ‘Vado e vivo’ (ex A, copyist) probably reflect Handel’s first plan for Jupiter in Argos. All the changes were made on the same occasion, to exclude Teobaldo and Childerico, the instigator and the unraveller of the plot, leaving it more rudderless than ever. It therefore became necessary to restore the explanatory document read by Gustavo in the penultimate scene, though with a different text (see HG 117). The sole surviving line from those two parts, Teobaldo’s ‘Rammenti il tuo grado, Signor’ in III.vii, was transferred to Adolfo and altered for soprano in both performing scores. Only one aria, ‘Vado a recar’, was omitted, but the recitatives suffered heavily. Chrysander’s B versions in II.xi, III.ii, iv, xii and xiii and the bracketed passages in I.ii, v and III.iii reflect this occasion. But there were further cuts in II.i, vii (involving changes to the verbal text) and xiii and III.vi and ix. Scenes I.xiv (including the aria), II.xii (recitative) and III.viii and xiv disappeared altogether. Later copies show none of the cuts. For the Flower score (mid-1740s) S2 collated Ham 1 and the autograph, from which he copied Handel’s dates at the beginning and end of Act I and at the end of the opera, but gave the starting date as 14 November. He made mistakes, omitting the instrumentation for ‘Se ben mi lusinga’ and ‘Un’aura placida’, misleading himself when he came to extract the parts. The Lennard score (S5, c.1738/39), probably copied from Ham 1, has no significant variants. A score without recitatives in the Rowe Library at King’s College, Cambridge, was copied from Walsh by an Italian hand in the late eighteenth or nineteenth century. A prefatory note from W. C. Smith

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 414

06/10/2006 14:52:47



Faramondo

415

(1935) that the sinfonias are reduced is inaccurate. RM 19 a 1 contains S2 copies of the overture for keyboard, the fragmentary C major setting of ‘Così suole’ and the accompagnato ‘Ascolta’. S5 copies of the two duets (c.1744) are in the Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland. The Flower parts (S2, mid- or late 1740s), cembalo, violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2, lack only the horns, which are at the University of Maryland. The flute in ‘Vado e vivo’ is included in both oboe parts, though it is clearly a solo. S2 almost certainly extracted the parts from his own copy of the score. The overture and recitatives are omitted as usual, but so, for no discoverable reason, are four arias: ‘Chi ben ama’, ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’, ‘Mi parto lieta’ and ‘Combattuta’. S2 made a muddle of the oboe parts. He has both in unison with the first violins in ‘Conoscerò’, the Act II sinfonia, ‘Sol la brama’ (where Chrysander omits them, though the autograph and all sources have Tutti on the top line) and ‘Nella terra’ – correctly, except perhaps in ‘Nella terra’, where the sources give no guidance and there is a case for omitting them. In the five movements where he divides them he is certainly or probably wrong. They should be in unison in ‘Se ben mi lusinga’ (specified in the autograph) and the Act III sinfonia, and silenced in ‘Un’aura placida’ (as in autograph and both performing scores) where they are quite inappropriate, and almost certainly in ‘Rival ti sono’ and ‘Se ria procella’. Except in the final coro, where they have separate staves, they are never independent and play only in ritornellos and interstices of the vocal line. Bassoons are not mentioned. A separate set of parts for the overture in the Flower Collection (Smith, c.1738/39), violins 1 and 2, viola and basso, gives the score before the oboes were added. Parts for ‘Conoscerò’, ‘Se ben mi lusinga’ and ‘Se a’ piedi’, violins 1 and 2, viola, voice + bass, in a calligraphic hand in Vienna (Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek MS S.m.4034) were not taken from Walsh; they give correct dal segno, not da capo versions. Walsh, who paid Handel his usual fee of 25 guineas, was unusually quick off the mark with proposals for publication by subscription, on 7 January after a single performance. The volume appeared with a list of subscribers16 on 4 February. It omits only recitatives and gives a fair amount of orchestral detail but does not mention the flute in ‘Vado e vivo’. ‘Sol la brama’, though correctly in the bass clef, is attributed to Francesina;17 this was corrected in a second impression. All seven dal segno arias are given a space-saving da capo. Walsh followed up with a flute arrangement of some items on 22 February 1738, the overture in eight parts on 21 October 1738 and in keyboard arrangement (‘just publish’d’) on 18 January 1739. Jean Vincent published the overture in four parts ‘for violins, flutes and oboes’ in Paris in 1749. Chrysander’s score (1884) has a number of minor defects. It omits several cuts and stage directions (for example in I.ii and an important one in II.vii). The time 16  Deutsch (450) names twenty-three. David Hunter and Rose M. Mason, ‘Supporting Handel through Subscription to Publications. The Lists of Rodelinda and Faramondo Compared’ (Notes 56 (1999), 27–93), give the complete list of seventy-six with a detailed analysis of their backgrounds and professions. 17  This could be a relic of the original plan, according to which the aria was intended for Clotilde. Walsh might have received advance information.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 415

06/10/2006 14:52:47

416

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

signature on ‘Virtù, che rende’ (HG 118) should of course be 6/4, not 6/8. In ‘Conoscerò’ and ‘Sol la brama’ Tutti should be on the top stave, an indication, unless contradicted later, that both oboes double first violins. Where Handel names no instruments, the implication is that only strings play the upper parts.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 416

06/10/2006 14:52:48

chapter 24 serse

A

brief note To the Reader takes the place of the usual Argument. ‘The contexture of this Drama is so very easy, that it wou’d be troubling the reader to give him a long argument to explain it. Some imbicillities, and the temerity of Xerxes (such as his being deeply enamour’d with a plane tree, and the building a bridge over the Hellespont to unite Asia to Europe) are the basis of the story; the rest is fiction.’ This is a slight understatement. Herodotus deals with the plane tree incident and the Hellespont bridge in Book VII of his History (chapters 31, 33 and 34). In Book IX (chapter 108 et sequ.) Xerxes falls in love with his brother’s wife. The intrigue takes a more savage course than in the opera, and Amestris (Amastre) plays a far from edifying part. The printed libretto and Handel’s autograph are both rich in stage directions. They mostly complement each other and are amalgamated in the following plot summary (though the scene numbering differs), except as noted. The curtain rises on A summer house on one side of a garden, in the middle of which is a plane tree, and Xerxes under it. The King of Persia craves a blessing on the tree, which he stands and admires with rapture. His brother Arsamene enters in search of his beloved Romilda, accompanied by his servant Elviro, who looks drowzy. A short symphony is heard, and presently Romilda’s voice in the summer house; she mocks the King’s love for a tree, which can give him no more tangible return than the murmur of its leaves. Serse, captivated by the voice and hearing his name mentioned, at once has designs on the singer and cross-questions Arsamene about her identity. Arsamene prevaricates, pointing out that it is unlawful for a king to marry anyone but a queen. Serse, after vainly ordering his brother to plead his cause, goes off to do it himself. Arsamene, confident of Romilda’s love, warns her of Serse’s intention, thereby giving secret hope to her sister Atalanta, who also loves Arsamene and looks at him tenderly making big eyes [molti vezzi]. Serse invites Romilda to share his throne, overheard by Arsamene, who comes forward to protest and is forthwith banished. He departs with Elviro, who goes out shaking his head. Romilda remains pensive and motionless without looking at the King; Serse pleads his love, but she will never betray hers for Arsamene. The set changes to a Courtyard, where we encounter Amastre, sole Heiress of the Kingdom of Tagor, design’d Consort to Xerxes, disguised in a man’s habit, followed by a page. She too is sworn to fidelity. She withdraws to one side as Ariodate (a Prince, Vassal to Xerxes and father of Romilda and Atalanta) enters followed by soldiers, with prisoners, and colours, taken from the enemy. Serse congratulates him on his victory and promises that Romilda shall marry a prince ‘equal to Xerxes, and of Xerxes’ line’. Ariodate joyfully goes off with his followers; Serse sees the victory as a good omen for his own love. Amastre, with her page apart, at first thinks he is referring to her, and is mightily indignant when she finds he is not. She nearly betrays herself, accusing him in a loud voice of lying, but Serse, turning, dismisses her with the remark that this soldier seems a little odd in the head. Arsamene gives

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 417

06/10/2006 14:52:48

418

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Elviro a letter to Romilda asking for a meeting. Elviro on the point of going then returning, complains that his master’s conduct has landed him too in trouble and banishment. He thinks awhile, and then, as having fallen on an expedient goes off to deliver the letter. Amastre, disgusted at Serse’s treachery, plans vengeance. Atalanta advises Romilda to accept Serse, since Arsamene loves someone else. If so, Romilda replies, she will indeed turn her affections towards the King. Atalanta congratulates her on her prudence and says she herself will ask for Arsamene – not that she loves him, but she might bring herself to do so. Romilda sees through this and tells her not to deceive herself. Atalanta resolves to gain her ends by exploiting her charms. Act II. A square of the city. Amastre, and after her Elviro, who cries flowers, and speaks in a broken dialect (la lingua franca in the Italian text; the English translation gives him the sort of language Burney attributed to Handel). In this ironical scene, with both characters disguised, Amastre learns of the love triangle between Serse, Arsamene and Romilda. Elviro tries to escape, terrified that he has revealed too much, and Amastre goes off with a heavy heart. Atalanta enters at a distance. She begins to express the pangs of love, but is interrupted by Elviro calling his wares as he walks about. When she buys some flowers he reveals himself and gives her Arsamene’s letter to Romilda, which she promises to deliver. She tells him that Romilda has abandoned Arsamene for Serse; he boils with rage but takes to his heels at the approach of Serse. The King finds Atalanta reading Arsamene’s letter; he takes it and looks at the signature. She claims it is addressed to her: Arsamene is pretending to love Romilda in order to hide his affair with Atalanta. But, she warns Serse, Arsamene will deny it. Serse is amazed, then delighted, and willingly agrees to Atalanta marrying Arsamene. He gives the letter to Romilda. Believing it to be addressed to Atalanta, she is overwhelmed; but she must love Arsamene, even if he has betrayed her. Alone, she gives way to bitter resentment and jealousy. Elviro comes on Amastre going to kill herself. He stops her; when she calls on her faithless lover to take her life, he thinks her mad. He tells Arsamene, enquiring about the delivery of his letter, that Romilda now loves Serse. Arsamene bewails the loss of all he held dear. The next set is dominated by a bridge built over the sea, uniting the two shores. A chorus of mariners sings Serse’s praise. He orders Ariodate to marshal his forces; before the third day’s dawn he will cross the Hellespont into Europe. Meeting the dejected Arsamene, he tells him he can have his girl. Arsamene takes this as a bitter jest, especially when he is offered Atalanta. He stoutly demands Romilda. It is now Serse’s turn to disappoint Atalanta; she must forget Arsamene, who does not love her. But she cannot forget him; and the King reflects on the uncertainties, hopes and fears of love. Elviro, looking for his master, contemplates the bridge with alarm; a storm is rising and he prefers wine to water. He sings a drinking song as the bridge collapses. In a place of retirement contiguous to the town Serse on one side and Amastre on the other complain of the pangs of jealousy. In a scene full of ironical cross-purposes she claims to be a soldier wounded in Serse’s cause, he asks her to serve again, and she agrees to consider the matter. She withdraws to one side. Serse now demands an answer from Romilda. She puts love above wealth and fortune, and when he presses   So the libretto. The autograph is fuller: the bridge is built on boats in the middle of the sea joining Asia to Europe. Serse’s camp on the Asian shore. Storm at sea with lightning and thunderbolts, as the result of which the bridge is broken down. The last sentence is proleptic, looking ahead to the end of the scene.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 418

06/10/2006 14:52:48

Serse

419

her Amastre rushes forward, warns her not to trust him and puts herself in a posture of defence. Serse departs in anger. The guards attack Amastre, who defends herself. Romilda sends them away in Serse’s name and advises Amastre to follow in case he discovers her. Alone, she declares that her love will never swerve. Act III. A gallery. Arsamene and Romilda demand an explanation from Atalanta, who is full of excuses: it was to help them that she misled the King. When they fall into each other’s arms, she trots off to seek a new lover. At the approach of Serse Elviro runs off and Arsamene hides. Serse renews his siege of Romilda, asks why she released that soldier, and at last gains her consent to marry him if her father approves. He goes off contented; when Arsamene bitterly reproaches Romilda she falls into the arms of her women. Languishing, she says farewell to Arsamene: she loves him too much and can only die. Her women lead her off, supporting her. Arsamene is heartbroken. In a Grove Serse tells Ariodate that if he agrees Romilda shall have a royal consort. ‘A person whom thou’lt own Equal to us, and of our royal stem’ will visit his apartment, and she is to accept him. Ariodate assumes this refers to Arsamene and is delighted. Romilda in anger, who meets with Xerxes. She rejects his offered diadem: she was once loved by Arsamene – with kisses. Serse accuses her of inventing this to prevent their marriage, but decides to make sure and orders his guards to kill Arsamene. She shall be ‘widdow of that kiss’ and then marry him. Exit in rage. Romilda meets Amastre with a letter in her hand and asks ‘him’ to warn Arsamene of the sentence. In return Amastre gives Romilda the letter for the King, whom she still loves though his faithlessness torments her. Arsamene taxes Romilda with sending the warning to get rid of him; after a duet of mutual reproach they go out on different parts of the stage. The final set is A large temple, with the image of the sun. An altar lighted. A chorus of priests round the statue. Ariodate enters at the farther end of the stage with Romilda and Arsamene still quarrelling, and astonishes them by announcing that they are to be married on Serse’s orders. They quickly consent; after joining their hands he hurries off to inform the King while the chorus of priests acclaim the happy event. Serse decides it is time to inform Ariodate that he himself is the bridegroom, and is thunderstruck on learning that Romilda is already married to his brother. A page brings a letter to Xerxes, and speaks softly to him. Assuming it is from Romilda, he gives it disgustedly to Ariodate who reads it aloud. It is a dejected declaration of love and reproach. When Ariodate reads the signature – Amastre – Serse takes the letter in a passion and examines the subscription ... Ariodates withdraws to one side of the stage. This is the last straw: Serse invokes the furies to shake their poison over him. In going off, he is met by all the other characters. They try to appease him, but he draws his sword and orders Arsamene to kill Romilda. Amastre asks if she may ‘pierce th’ungrateful heart Which has with treachery repaid true love’. When Serse consents, she snatches the sword out of his hand, and claps it to his breast, announcing her identity. Serse is shamed into repentance, they embrace, and he asks all to forgive his anger.

  In the libretto Elviro detains Arsamene (trattiene).   So the libretto. A large illuminated hall in the autograph.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 419

06/10/2006 14:52:48

420

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Much opprobrium has been heaped on this libretto. Burney called it ‘one of the worst that Handel ever set to Music: for besides feeble writing, there is a mixture of tragiccomedy and buffoonry in it, which Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio had banished from the serious opera’ – though he had the honesty to add that ‘it gave Handel an opportunity of indulging his native love and genius for humour’. Burney’s vision was blinded by the taste of his age, which rejected most pre-Augustan art as primitive and childish; but his criticism as usual enshrines a truth. Several of Handel’s operas are based on seventeenth-century librettos, but they are generally purged of their comic and secondary scenes, modernised in layout and furnished with new aria texts to accord with later taste. This is only partly true of Serse. Burney could not see that the ‘tragi-comedy and buffoonry’ was retained deliberately, and that the character and strength of the opera depend on it. Later critics have dismissed the plot as absurd and labelled Serse Handel’s only comic opera, with the implication that he was straying from his proper path. This is a misconception. He had often guyed the heroic convention, and in Agrippina and Partenope produced at least two works that are nothing if not comic operas of the highest class. The novelty of Serse lies elsewhere. The antecedents of Serse have been examined in two scholarly articles by Harold S. Powers. The source is Nicolò Minato’s Xerse, set by Cavalli for Venice in 1654. Forty years later Silvio Stampiglia remodelled Minato’s libretto for Giovanni Bononcini’s first opera (Rome, 1694). The refurbishing of old librettos was of course commonplace throughout the Baroque period, but this threefold setting by three distinguished composers more than a generation apart is of exceptional interest. Since the main plot remained essentially unaltered, it is possible to compare their approach to the story and at the same time observe how their work reflected changes in the taste of audiences and the conventions of opera. Two of the operas are of outstanding merit, and Handel’s is a masterpiece. Moreover, as Powers demonstrated, its relationship to Bononcini’s is not confined to sharing a libretto. Minato took a scrap of ancient history and embroidered it with the trappings and intricacies of post-Renaissance drama. Needless to say, he made no attempt to evoke ancient Persia or the majesty of the great King who ‘sate on the rocky brow’ and met his Trafalgar at Salamis. The tone of his libretto is colloquial, even flippant. Venetian audiences liked complicated plots with several interrelated strands, a multiplicity of characters from high and low life (all of whom could be held up to ridicule), and a kaleidoscopic alternation between intensely emotional situations on the one hand and farce and satire on the other, with a touch of the supernatural thrown in. In addition to the seven characters of Handel’s opera Minato has seven more. Xerse, Romilda and Amastre each have an attendant with whom they can share their thoughts: Eumene, the King’s favourite eunuch, Clito, Romilda’s skittish page, and Aristone, Amastre’s uncle and elderly guardian. The other four are Periarco, ambassador from Amastre’s father the King of Susa, Sesostre and Scitalce, two Magi to whom Xerse entrusts the protection of the plane tree, and the captain of the royal guard. These peripheral figures add a few extra twists to the intrigue, but contribute nothing to the main plot.   ‘Il Serse trasformato’, MQ 47 (1961), 481–92, and 48 (1962), 73–92.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 420

06/10/2006 14:52:48

Serse

421

Its articulation is quite different from that of later opera. The libretto is laid out on the lines of a straight play (the tradition comes from Spanish drama). The characters meet and converse, and when one of them expresses emotion the recitative flowers into arioso or aria. While there are occasional adumbrations of the later recitativearia plan, arias are not specifically associated with exits. They can occur anywhere in the scene, which often ends with recitative. The arias are not structural elements in the design; indeed there is scarcely a hint of overall musical control. The challenge to the composer lay in his response to the words and the flickering emotions behind them, equally in the recitative and the more lyrical passages. The example of Monteverdi is still very much in evidence in the work of his disciple Cavalli. Xerse is one of his finest operas, and very close to Monteverdi not only in style but in quality. The music has freshness and sparkle; the recitatives are flexible, the arias more substantially built than in his earlier operas. The lighter pieces, especially those of Eumene and Clito, have the nimbleness and vivacity of so many servant scenes in Venetian opera; a duet in Act II for Clito and Elviro (fished out of the Hellespont) is very like the duet for the valet and the girl in L’incoronazione di Poppea. The profoundest music, as we might expect, occurs when one of the main characters is in the throes of powerful emotion, generally the pangs of frustrated love. Most of them undergo this, Arsamene and Romilda repeatedly, and Cavalli expresses it eloquently by means of cross-rhythms, contrasted tempos, suspensions and chromaticism. But he seems to respond to the text rather than the character who sings it, and writes very similar music for all of them, so that many arias are almost interchangeable, not the inalienable property of the character who sings them. The contrast between the potentially tragic Romilda and the capricious Adelanta (Atalanta) becomes blurred when the latter is given several arias of intense poignancy: ‘Voi mi dite’ (the same text in all three operas) and ‘Luci mie, voi che mirasti’ (almost Handelian in its breadth and passion) in Act II and ‘Dammi, Amor’ in Act III. The character is pulled out of focus. The extreme instance is Xerse’s last aria, ‘Lasciatemi morire’, when he realises that he has lost Romilda. This is a full-scale lament, the biggest and finest movement in the opera, but it contradicts the character as hitherto presented. He ends as a tragic hero rather than a deflated dupe. No doubt audiences of Cavalli’s day were not interested in consistency of characterisation. Nor perhaps were many in Handel’s day; but the contrast with Handel’s practice is immense. Stampiglia’s adaptation for Bononcini eliminates Periarco, the two Magi and the captain of the guard, and reduces the prominence of Eumene, Clito and Aristone; they each have two arias, whereas in Cavalli’s opera Eumene has eight, including duets. The part was clearly intended for a virtuoso singer. Cavalli’s opera has six high male parts, all (except perhaps Clito) sung by castratos. Bononcini’s opera was performed in 1694 by an all-male cast, since Papal ordinance banned women from the Roman stage. His high male parts are Xerse and Clito (soprano), Arsamene and Eumene (alto). Elviro and Aristone are tenors. Stampiglia strengthened the plot by cutting the scene in which Xerse entrusts the plane tree to the Magi, which in   It was also one of the most successful, given in at least seven Italian cities and in Paris within eleven years.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 421

06/10/2006 14:52:48

422

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Minato breaks the thread of the action between the King’s apostrophe to the tree and Romilda’s ridiculing him for it. Stampiglia omitted the last seven scenes in Act II, which are largely concerned with Periarco’s embassy to arrange the marriage of Amastre and Xerse and conclude with a military tattoo, substituting a solo scene for Arsamene lamenting his fate. He also abridged the verbosity of the closing stages of Act III after the action has finished. Much of this reflects the changing convention. Instead of the composer interpreting the words as he came to them, currente calamo, he began to press them into a preordained mould, governed by the da capo aria and the increasing prominence of the virtuoso singer, with the weight gravitating towards the end of each scene. As Powers notes, of the thirty-four arias in Minato’s libretto (excluding ariosos and short ensembles) only ten are followed by an exit. Stampiglia supplied sixty-two aria texts, the great majority of them new, of which more than two-thirds are followed by an exit, though the libretto does not always make this clear. He retained a good deal of the original text, especially in the recitative, but only eight of Minato’s arias. While the plot and the actions of the characters remain constant, the plan is more responsive to specifically musical demands. There is also a gain in dramatic coherence; Xerse does not end with a lament but with an outburst of baffled rage, ‘Crude furie degl’orridi abissi’. Handel’s libretto is a shortened version of Stampiglia’s. He and his collaborator (if he had one; he could have done the job himself) further tightened the structure, abolishing Eumene (though he was included in the original scheme), Clito and Aristone and making substantial cuts in Act III. Romilda, Arsamene and Atalanta each lose three arias, Amastre and Ariodate two, and Serse and Elviro one. Five of Stampiglia’s eight duets, several of them very short, also disappear. Of fifty vocal movements in Handel’s opera, including duets and accompagnatos, the words of forty-six were taken over from Stampiglia, in a few cases slightly modified. The only new texts were Elviro’s ‘Del mio caro Bacco’ and three of the four choruses; the fourth, ‘Già la tromba’, had been an aria for Ariodate. Bononcini has no choruses or even a final ensemble; he ends with an aria, ‘Cara voi siete’, addressed by Xerse to Amastre. Handel may have transferred this to Romilda to compensate her for the loss of three arias earlier in the act, but the switch is a dramatic gain. Although most of the changes were improvements – especially in the sluggish Act III, where Handel omitted three duets and no fewer than eleven arias (eight in succession at one point) – they did give rise to certain obscurities. The later scenes of Act II are bedevilled by the suppression of Eumene, who in Stampiglia rescues Amastre from the guards, and Romilda’s vacillation in Act III seems capricious instead of a manoeuvre to save Arsamene’s life. To a considerable extent Handel puts earlier developments into reverse. Neither the libretto nor the music of Serse is typical of its date, by which time the full-blown Metastasian opera seria was firmly established on the Continent. Fewer than half of the solo vocal movements have a da capo or dal segno, and three of these, including one of the biggest (‘Crude furie’), are not followed by an exit. On the other hand the twenty-one ariettas or ariosos, which vary between an interrupted snatch of song and a complete cavatina, include eight followed by an exit, one of which, ‘Nemmen con

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 422

06/10/2006 14:52:48

Serse

423

l’ombre’, precedes a change of set. Thus the proportion of exit pieces is lower than in Bononcini’s opera. The design differs markedly from that of all Handel’s other operas, and even more from the Metastasio pattern. Only the immature Almira, his one other opera to contain a buffo part, has a greater number of solo movements, and in none is the da capo so devalued. Not surprisingly, this abrupt change of direction caught contemporaries, and for a long time posterity, on the wrong foot. It is difficult to determine to what extent it was due to a conscious attempt to revive an obsolete form, to the fact that Handel’s score was partly dependent on Bononcini’s, or to a desire to revive his operatic fortunes by offering the public something more flexible than the usual opera seria of which it might be beginning to tire. Perhaps his motives were a mixture of all three. If in one sense Serse is a throwback to Venice and the seventeenth century, which had brought Handel his first public triumph in Agrippina, it has also, like Giustino, but on a different level, a Janus aspect. Rudolf Steglich, in his preface to the first Halle score (1958), claimed that it represents an important stage in the development of Baroque opera seria towards the dramma giocoso of Mozart under the influence of the Enlightenment. The movements he cites in support – ‘A piangere ognora’, ‘Ah tigre infedele’ and ‘L’amerete?’ – are among those most indebted both to Minato’s 1654 libretto and to Bononcini’s music, and are closer to Monteverdi than to Mozart. Nevertheless there is a connecting thread, however fortuitous, running through libretto and music (it is unlikely that Handel knew Cavalli’s opera or that Mozart knew Handel’s). The libretto, if not faultless, is neither trivial nor absurd. Like Mozart’s Da Ponte operas, Serse is a sophisticated comedy with passionate undertones that touch the springs of tragedy. Indeed the light bantering tone of the dialogue, a sort of chatty stichomythia, is not so very remote from Da Ponte. The musical link is not of style but of dramatic approach and creative affinity. Granted the artificial convention, in which the plot is spun by tergiversation and intrigue – a convention more proper to comedy than tragedy – the treatment of character and incident carries conviction on all levels. And it passes the supreme test: it springs to palpitating life in the theatre. The closest parallel with Mozart, between Elviro and Leporello, each at the start of the opera grumbling sleepily at being forced to attend his master’s love assignations, is not the most significant. Dent saw in Handel’s two sisters a foretaste of Fiordiligi and Dorabella; but the climate of Le nozze di Figaro is closer. Serse is as dangerous as the Count, and as comprehensively duped. Romilda has something of the Countess’s noble forbearance, and Atalanta a dash of Susanna’s devilry. There is even a faint anticipation in Amastre’s ‘Or che siete’ of two arias in Mozart’s first act, ‘Non so più’ and ‘Non più andrai’. Where the comparison breaks down, of course, is in the absence of anything corresponding to Mozart’s great ensembles. But for all the differences in idiom Serse ranks not far below Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas in the hierarchy of operatic comedy. It is at once the most backward-looking and most forward-looking of Handel’s operas. The extent of Handel’s indebtedness to Bononcini’s Xerse can be measured with the aid of Powers’s second article, which quotes most of the more striking parallels, and the reproduction of Bononcini’s complete score in Volume VIII of John Roberts’s Handel Sources. Handel seems to have passed Bononcini’s score through his

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 423

06/10/2006 14:52:49

424

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

i­magination and transfigured it, an ironical footnote to their rivalry in the 1720s. Many of his finest arias owe a hint, and sometimes more, to his predecessor. The fact that he had mined the same source in all seven of his preceding operas from Ariodante to Faramondo, as well as in Alexander’s Feast and the 1737 Il trionfo del Tempo, proves his acquaintance with it several years before his own setting, and suggests that the subject may have been his personal choice. Terence Best has shown that he used the copy of the score now in the British Library, not the printed libretto, as his source for the text. For details of Handel’s borrowings see Appendix D. In this connection tangential resemblances may be significant. The first four notes of ‘Sì, sì, mio ben’ and the first three of ‘A piangere ognora’ are the same in both operas, though the continuations are quite different; it is likely that a glance at Bononcini set Handel on his course. He also seems to have followed Bononcini’s track in the recitatives of the first four scenes of Act I. Nor is this all. The two scenes in Handel’s opera that strike us as most remarkable for flexibility of design, those that begin the first two acts, are based with some precision on Bononcini in layout, scoring and thematic material. They are also close to Minato (apart from the omission of the Magi episode); indeed these scenes are very similar in all three operas. The unusual sequence of keys (E minor, A major, G minor) in the confrontation between Serse and Romilda in II.iv and v is Bononcini’s. Handel saw that it was good and kept it. Several things are notable about these borrowings. All but one (‘Cagion son io’, which takes one of its subsidiary phrases from Bononcini’s aria ‘Perde il senno’) occur in settings of the same text. This is rare with Handel but not unique; there are examples in Tamerlano and Faramondo of material taken from Gasparini’s settings. Most of the Serse borrowings cover only a few bars, and not always consecutive bars. Handel has assimilated them and mixed them with material of his own. Some memorable instances are quoted below. Perhaps the most extraordinary is ‘Sì, la voglio’, the aria in which Arsamene reacts to Serse’s suggestion that he is not interested in Romilda. Roberts, in a detailed examination, shows that Handel quotes from Bononcini’s setting and two different arias in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Marco Attilio Regolo and ­indirectly from Keiser’s Claudius and two versions of an aria in his own Il trionfo del Tempo, as well as from an earlier setting in the Serse autograph. Yet the result not only sounds spontaneous; it is one of the most brilliant dramatic strokes in the opera. This is not the product of conscious patchwork, but of Handel’s subconscious mind working on a medley of ideas floating in his memory. It is not so much theft as a

  See Roberts’s Preface in Handel Sources.   See his Preface to the HHA edition, p. xv. This score (Add. MS 22101) had probably been acquired by John Blathwayt (1690–1754), one of the original Directors of the Royal Academy of Music, in Rome in 1707, when he attended concerts given by Ottoboni and Ruspoli and could have met Handel (Gibson, 57–61). He may have lent or given Handel the score c.1734. It is not known by what route it reached the British Library, where the leaves are bound and foliated in the wrong order. This is corrected in Roberts, Handel Sources, vol. VIII.   See also Powers’s second article (note 4 above).   Music and Theatre, 181–8, 202.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 424

06/10/2006 14:52:49

Serse

425

strange form of re-creation. Exactly why Handel needed to compose in this way is a puzzle that musical psychology has not yet solved. It is not easy to be fair to Bononcini’s score when placing it beside Handel’s; the contrast between a mediocre and a superabundant talent is too marked. We should perhaps remember that this was Bononcini’s first opera and nearly Handel’s last. Almost all Bononcini’s melodic ideas are short-breathed, narrow in compass and – above all – rhythmically impoverished. Where Handel will extend or develop an idea, Bononcini repeats it, often unvaried even in pitch. To take one example, his setting of Serse’s ‘Io le dirò che l’amo’ early in Act I runs to twenty-three bars but contains only two short and flavourless phrases. The voice sings the first four times unvaried (worked in a simple canon with the bass), three times a third higher in the relative major, then three times at the original pitch. The second phrase occurs nine times, sometimes with a brief flourish at the end. The lame result is in stark contrast with Handel’s flexible setting of the same words (Ex. 60a and b). This is by no means a unique example: an aria not in Handel’s opera, ‘Sento che l’alma mia’ sung by

Romilda in Act III, exists in two versions. Both have a rather otiose obbligato for solo violin, in both the voice begins by repeating the same one-bar phrase five times in identical rhythm, and brings it back many times later. Bononcini doodles with formulae; he seems unable to build a musical paragraph. Nevertheless his opera has flashes of inspiration. One of them is the unexpectedly spacious Largo, ‘Speranze mie fermate’, with which Amastre launches Act II (sixty-five bars against Handel’s nine), another a strange chromatic piece for Romilda in Act III, ‘Che barbara pietà’, headed Siciliana but in common time and moving

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 425

06/10/2006 14:52:49

426

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

with the gait of a recitative. It is scarcely a surprise that Handel had raided both before setting Serse, the first for a cavatina in Berenice, ‘Se non ho l’idol mio’, the second for Alcina’s great accompagnato ‘Ah! Ruggiero crudel’. He also took hints from Bononcini’s setting of the duet ‘Gran pena è gelosia’ as well as his ‘Sì, la voglio’, one of the liveliest and most dramatic arias in Xerse, which begins without recitative cadence or ritornello and has admirable string parts. This is exceptional; most of Bononcini’s arias are stereotyped, seldom omitting or misplacing an initial ritornello or exploiting the opportunities for contrast in the B section. Two-thirds of them have continuo support only, but half of these end with a four-part ritornello after the da capo, a scheme common at the turn of the century. Bononcini manages this well, often urging the melody to a new climax, so that the ritornello is the most interesting part of the aria. A few arias are more fully scored, with an obbligato for violin or cello; Xerse’s ‘Il core spera’ boasts a long fully written-out part for archlute. But when Bononcini does expand, it is seldom at the dictation of the plot. His musical climaxes scarcely ever coincide with dramatic climaxes (he has no accompagnatos) and he concludes the opera with a continuo aria lacking even a final ritornello. His first two acts each end with a perfunctory dance movement, for ‘struzzi’ (?ostriches) and comedians in Act I, sailors in Act II. Bononcini is at his happiest with the lighter characters, Ariodate and Adelanta. Ariodate has four arias (two more than in Handel), and they display a fair ration of bass vigour. Handel found useful material in the first of them, ‘Già la tromba’, for ‘Revenge, Timotheus cries’ in Alexander’s Feast. Dance rhythms are used appropriately for Adelanta, including a gigue (‘Non sempre la costanza’ in Act I) not unlike several Handel movements of this type, for example ‘Ne gigli’ in the cantata ‘Clori mia bella Clori’ (HWV 92). The settings of ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ and ‘No, se tu mi sprezzi’ have similar bouncy rhythms, though still fettered by two- and four-bar phrases. But despite occasional felicities Bononcini’s score shows little sign of the overall balance that distinguishes Handel’s style from very early in his career. In Act III he holds back the long-awaited resolution with a string of superfluous arias, several of them to make up the complement of a subsidiary singer. Where Handel cuts idle arias and distributes the rest according to the character’s importance in the plot, Bononcini thinks first of the singer. Moreover he misses obvious dramatic points: when Stampiglia brings back the words of the duet ‘Troppo oltraggi’ in Act III, Bononcini fails to clinch the reminiscence by quoting the music. Burney, unaware of the Bononcini borrowings,10 was disconcerted by the mixture of styles in Handel’s opera. While pointing to the many reflections of the ‘modern’ manner of Hasse and Vinci he declared that ‘there are more old-fashioned and worn-out passages in some of the songs, than in any other of [Handel’s] works of this period’, and ranked the opera ‘by no means ... with Handel’s best dramatic ­productions’. This stylistic discrepancy is unlikely to worry modern listeners, even supposing they are able to detect it. What is most remarkable is that a score drawing 10  Chrysander seems to have known of them, to judge from an enigmatic sentence in his Preface to the HG edition (‘An Italian opera, about forty or fifty years older, appears from the words and to some extent even from the music, to have been used’); but he was not letting on. He probably saw the same Bononcini score in the British Library that Handel used.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 426

06/10/2006 14:52:49

Serse

427

so copiously on the work of other men – and not only Bononcini: Roberts has since detected three borrowings from Pistocchi’s Narciso11 – should have emerged as an idiosyncratic masterpiece. Whatever Handel touches is apt to sound like Handel. Like the fabled medieval alchemist he transmutes base metal into gold. The seven characters in Handel’s opera are viewed symmetrically, three from a serious and three from a predominantly satirical angle, with the earthy humanity of Elviro holding the two groups in balance. The self-willed tyranny of the autocrat (Serse), the stupidity of the successful soldier (Ariodate) and the mischief-making of the coquette Atalanta are exposed and held up to ridicule. But the range of emotion is very wide, more so than in Agrippina and Partenope; the light structure of the music is deceptive. Arsamene, Romilda and Amastre suffer the pangs of frustrated or unrequited love, and as a consequence inherit the width of Handel’s sympathies. But so from time to time do Serse and Atalanta – though not to the extent of unbalancing the characterisation, as in Cavalli’s opera. It is the quicksilver play of these emotional shadows and cross-currents, and the juxtaposition of the grotesque and the heartrending, especially in Act II, that give the opera its fascination. Serse himself is presented as pompous, touchy and capricious, a royal ass. This is explicit in the libretto’s note to the reader and Romilda’s mockery in the first scene as well as in the fatuous ambiguity of his plans for the wedding. Such a man invites exposure when the consequences of his vanity and incompetence are visited on him. But the picture is modified in two important respects. Serse is a formidable figure: he commands absolute power, and can condemn his brother first to exile and later to death. Like the grimmer tyrants of Handel’s earlier operas, he is not to be trifled with. Something of this can be read in the prancing swagger of ‘Più che penso’. Secondly, if he is the slave of unworthy desires, he does feel them, the more so as the opera proceeds. Handel could not withhold all sympathy from brutal and uncouth figures, provided they were capable of passion. Much of Serse’s music is extraordinarily ­beautiful, and this goes some way to mitigate the harshness of his conduct. The quality of ‘Ombra mai fu’ requires little emphasis – ‘in a clear and majestic style, out of the reach of time and fashion’, as Burney prophetically put it. But four things need saying. Handel found the melodic germ in Bononcini’s version, which he expanded from twenty-eight bars to fifty-two; his setting of the words ‘di vegetabile cara ed amabile soave più’ at their second appearance (bars 29–34) is almost identical with Bononcini’s at their first (bars 7–12),12 but makes a far stronger impact in the new context. The tempo is Larghetto, not Largo, and should not be dragged. The music depends on the sonority of low-pitched strings in conjunction with a mezzosoprano voice; its magic evaporates if the voice part is sung in a lower octave. As the first formal movement after the overture it has the important function of setting the tone for what follows; its ironical confrontation of a ridiculous situation with an exquisite melody fulfils this perfectly, though the very familiarity of the piece may obscure the deftness of Handel’s art. 11  Words on Music, ed. D. Rosen and C. Brook (Hillsdale, NY, 2003), 253. 12  Both quoted by Powers in his second article, p. 87 (note 4 above).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 427

06/10/2006 14:52:50

428

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

At first Serse toys with Romilda, as with a new plaything. ‘Io le dirò’, another immortal tune, is light as a feather, and his first plea of love, ‘Di tacere’, though couched in G minor with a feint to B flat minor, does not engage him deeply.13 ‘Più che penso’ with its coiled elastic string figures, carried into the bass but not the upper parts of the B section, thereby reinforcing the impact of the da capo, is a splendid realisation of the words. The more he thinks of Romilda, the more his passions are aroused; the three unaccompanied ad libitum bars at the approach to the main cadences, first in the dominant and later in the tonic, suggest his fancy beginning to roam. Handel infuses Bononcini’s tame antiphonal opening with a breadth and rhythmic energy that is positively convulsive (Ex. 61a and b). By Act II Serse is in the toils, as the haunting little F minor arioso ‘È tormento troppo fiero’,14 taking its colour from the opening words, makes clear. This is one of several such pieces in the opera: short, simple, lightly accompanied (sometimes, as here, by bass alone), but of piercing beauty. If Handel is repaying his debt to the Venetians, he gives compound interest. In the tiny duet ‘L’amerete?’ he actually simplifies Bononcini, whose bass moves in crotchets throughout. Handel’s entire accompaniment consists of twenty-one notes, and he waves a magic wand over Bononcini’s vocal lines. Romilda’s cadence in E minor is followed at once by the A major ritornello of Serse’s first full-scale aria since ‘Più che penso’, ‘Se bramate d’amar’. This has a grandeur and range of emotion scarcely to be expected from the tree-worshipper of Act I (Ex. 62). The virile main theme, projected by the oboes and two-thirds of the violins, finds issue now in expressive coloratura, now in Adagio episodes (‘ma come, non so’, ‘quest’alma non può’) that interrupt both parts with a poignant enrichment of harmonic detail, different on each occasion. Most notable is the Neapolitan touch of B flat late in the A section (Ex. 63). This man is indeed in love. Burney draws attention to ‘a base in iterated quavers, very much in the style of Hasse and Vinci; indeed, no Music fifty years old can have a younger appearance’. Yet the Adagios borrow their plan, if not its execution, from Bononcini. In ‘Il core spera e teme’ Serse reflects on the vicissitudes of love; the serene E flat melody with its linked cadences and sumptuous string writing suggests a certain self-indulgence, but the sheer beauty of the music, especially the sequences towards the end of the A section, defies criticism.15 The duet with Amastre, effectively placed after Elviro’s drinking song (G minor following E minor, a typical shift for a change of set), reverts to something near tragedy. It is brief, unorthodox and ironical. Both complain of the pains and betrayals of love, but whereas Serse has Romilda in mind, the disguised Amastre is thinking of Serse, who has no idea of her proximity. Almost half the piece consists of ritornello; the voice parts are simple and unadorned, and only for two and a half bars at the end are they heard together. At this point, after 13  Handel had used the tune before in the Brockes Passion and Radamisto. 14  In Bononcini this is a full da capo aria with a reinforced final ritornello. Handel’s timing, at the start of a scene, is a great improvement. 15  There is a hint here of ‘Fell rage and black despair’ in Saul. Several other movements in Serse, notably in Arsamene’s music and the ‘Goliath’ octaves of ‘Gran pena è gelosia’, look ­forward to the oratorio composed later the same year.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 428

06/10/2006 14:52:50

Serse

429

the bleak octaves of the ritornello and the simple harmonic layout that follows, the Neapolitan sixth chord on ‘pena’ strikes with redoubled force. Serse’s love song in Act III, ‘Per rendermi beato’, reverts to a lighter tone – appropriately, for he thinks he has won and is happy to play the moth to Romilda’s flame. His final outburst, ‘Crude furie degl’orridi abissi’, with its leaping arpeggios and octaves and strings buzzing like an angry swarm of bees, is a brilliant send-up of all operatic invocations to the furies. There is no mistaking the note of parody, underlined by the major tonality and the swooping downward scales, not to mention the hyperbole of the words. These frantic expostulations, at once indignant and hilarious, strike the exact chord of impotent outrage. Once more Handel found his material

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 429

06/10/2006 14:52:51

430

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

in Bononcini, including the main theme and the idea for the violin arpeggios, but transformed it; the scales and the iterated quavers and semiquavers (Vinci again!) are new, and the formal and tonal structure greatly strengthened, as Powers has shown in a detailed analysis.16 ‘Curious, spirited, and original’ is Burney’s verdict. In contrast to his brother, Arsamene is a potentially tragic figure. So deeply felt is his music that although he has no substantial arias and (except in ‘Sì, la voglio’) no coloratura to speak of, he is in some respects the most memorable figure in the opera. This absence of vocal display, which perhaps had its origin in Marchesini’s limited powers, becomes a central feature of the characterisation, nicely set off by Serse’s longer and showier excursions. Five of Arsamene’s six solos are in triple or compound time, and apart from the linked pair in II.ix all are in minor keys. This is excluding his first utterance, ‘Tu le dirai che l’ami’, in which he repeats Serse’s music with new words applicable to what he believes to be his own situation – a mordant 16  ‘Il Serse trasformato II’, 82–6.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 430

06/10/2006 14:52:52

Serse

431

touch of double irony, as we soon discover.17 Both his subsequent arias in Act I are slow pieces in triple time with violin and bass support, devoid of frills. ‘Meglio in voi’ is his resigned acceptance of banishment, ‘Non so se sia la speme’ a lament for the loss of his beloved, the strong Neapolitan inflections creating a mood of desolate sadness. For ‘Meglio in voi’ Bononcini provided the main theme and the quaver accompaniment figure, but confined them to treble and bass respectively, whereas Handel interwove them throughout the aria (Ex. 64a and b). Bononcini receives a still more striking composition lesson in ‘Quella che tutta fé’ (II.vii). This little siciliano – it is only thirty-one bars long including the da capo – is one of the gems of Handel’s score, expressing Arsamene’s sense of betrayed faith when Elviro tells him that Romilda loves Serse. Nothing could sound more spontaneous. Yet Bononcini’s flat and rhythmically monotonous setting contains the seeds of almost everything: the rough contour of the main theme, narrower in span and in common time, the

17  The repeat is in Bononcini, but a fifth lower owing to the different pitch of the voices.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 431

06/10/2006 14:52:53

432

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

functional interval of a fourth in the bass, and the general plan of the aria. Powers18 analyses the ‘extraordinary motivic integration’ by which Handel not only combines Bononcini’s two ideas but makes one generate the other. The repetitive tread of the main theme he transforms into a characteristic swaying melody by varying the intervals, rhythm and harmony, adding such enrichments as the Neapolitan turn in bar 6 and the grand paragraph of the B section. The exquisite drop from F minor into E flat in bar 419 is foreshadowed in Bononcini, who however devalues it by repeating the same melodic pattern for the third time, whereas Handel’s rising interval on the second beat of the bar is different on each occasion (Ex. 65a and b).

The evolution of this aria is fascinating, quite apart from its Bononcinian ancestry. The first version in Handel’s autograph (Ex. 66a)20 had a six-bar ritornello (the inner parts not filled in), starting with the one bar he retained but with a striking ­chromatic extension, and a contrasted Allegro B section (Ex. 66b) in common time with a bass in reiterated quavers. Handel kept the melodic and harmonic outline of the B section in a very different rhythm and tempo, and brought it to a climax by using the rising chromatic scale figure of his rejected ritornello. Moreover bars 3 and 4 of the eventual A section replaced a single bar (x) that lacked the magic shift to E flat. Handel hit on this (picking up Bononcini’s hint) after he had written the 18  ‘Il Serse trasformato II’, 88–90. 19  This was a favourite gambit. Handel had employed it, in the same key and with equally potent effect in Ottone (‘Affanni del pensier’) and the instrumental cantata HWV 97 (‘O dolce mia speranza’, later transferred to Floridante). 20  Appendix 5 in the new HHA edition.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 432

06/10/2006 14:52:53

Serse

433

Neapolitan G flat bar that crowns it so beautifully. The first version ran to thirty-six bars (without da capo), compared with twenty for the final aria. The scene in which Serse offers his brother the wrong girl shows Arsamene in a new light. He enters dejected with another spare Larghetto in triple time, ‘Per dar fine’ (G major after the repeat of the sailors’ chorus in F, as the plot takes a new turn); Burney thought it ‘very much in the style of a French air tendre of the last age’. The arioso droops to the tonic minor, almost like a Schubert song, and is too dispirited to return. Serse briskly assures Arsamene that all is well: he can have Atalanta, since he does not want Romilda. This fires Arsamene to ‘Sì, la voglio’, his sole aria in common time, fast tempo and a major key (apart from ‘Per dar fine’, which cannot sustain it) and his one burst of coloratura. It is an electrifying stroke, musically and dramatically, thanks to the care with which the context has been prepared. The sudden Allegro, opening without ritornello, the upper strings emphasising the off beats, not only galvanises a character in danger of lapsing into a congenital underdog, but completes a satisfying cavatina–cabaletta pattern with

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 433

06/10/2006 14:52:54

434

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

a return to the G major of ‘Per dar fine’.21 The coloratura expresses his resolution with admirable energy, reinforced by the clattering repeated chords of the B section as he invokes the denizens of the underworld. The remarkable synthesis in this aria has already been mentioned. The first version in the autograph is again longer and more leisurely, and much corrected, though Handel did not complete the skeleton draft.22 It runs to thirty-five bars without reaching the end of the A section, which totals thirty bars in final form; Handel doubtless scrapped it to give greater snap to 21  Bononcini established no link between the two arias. His setting of ‘Per dar fine’, a brilliant F major Vivace in 3/8 with a patter of semiquavers, seems oddly unsuitable. His ‘Sì, la voglio’ is in D major. 22  HHA edition, Appendix 6.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 434

06/10/2006 14:52:56

Serse

435

Arsamene’s reaction. The final version also threatened to get out of hand and was cut by seventeen bars. Again Burney’s sensitive nose detected a cross-bred rat: ‘an old melody, with a very modern accompaniment’. Arsamene’s aria in Act III, ‘Amor, tiranno amor’, is another amorous plaint, very like ‘Non so se sia’ except that the Neapolitan colour is absent and the accompaniment is in four parts. It adds nothing to the character; the early part of this act is the one slack stretch of the score. The quarrel duet with Romilda is a powerfully dramatic movement in truncated da capo form; after a long B section the A major first part slips back, not in its leisurely exposition but with the swift cut and thrust initiated at bar 19. As in many Handel ensembles of opposition, the upper parts (two violins) are independent and screw up the tension by cutting across the voices. The ironical two-bar reference to this duet in the recitative just before Ariodate tells the lovers they are to be married at Serse’s command is a happy touch. The two sisters, like the two brothers, act as foils to one another. While Romilda’s portrait is primarily serious and Atalanta’s light and satirical, neither is restricted to a single range of emotion. Romilda indeed is that rare phenomenon, an ill-treated heroine with a sense of humour. Her first appearance is unusual. After Serse’s apostrophe to the tree and Elviro’s grumbles to Arsamene we hear a twelve-bar sinfonia, exquisitely scored for two recorders, muted upper strings and pizzicato basses doubled piano by bassoon. Master and servant listen entranced, as well they might, to the sensuous murmur of the double thirds. The sinfonia pauses on the dominant, then begins again, and after hesitating at the same point is extended and developed in a shapely binary design. We first hear Romilda off-stage,23 like a Puccini heroine, in an arioso mocking the barrenness of the King’s infatuation for a vegetable. The music, after two false starts, turns out to be a further extension of the sinfonia, and the melody in thirds identifies itself as the voice of the tree. Both sinfonia and arioso are interrupted by snatches of recitative from the watchers, first the eager Arsamene and sleepy Elviro, then – when Romilda mentions his name – the King himself, who is instantly enraptured. As he asks the embarrassed Arsamene who it is, she sings again, accompanied this time by the recorders in unison and the strings without mutes (violins only till the final ritornello). The teasing melody, in 6/8 time with cross-rhythms in the second half of the bar and sly echoes between voice, recorders and later violins, inflames Serse beyond the point of no return. The whole scene, including ‘Ombra mai fu’ with its accompagnato and the tiny double aria ‘Io le dirò’, sung by the two brothers in turn, is a miracle of musico-dramatic art. Like most of Handel’s openings, besides setting the temper of the score, it launches the plot and establishes the leading characters (four of them); but the extreme fluidity of design, unencumbered by rigid forms, da capos or exits, with the heroine concealed, is unique in his operas. There is no sinfonia in Cavalli’s manuscript (one may have been inserted in performance); he sets the interruptions in the same metre as the aria, not as a secco contrast. The Stampiglia–Bononcini version has the same layout as Handel’s and was clearly its model in plan and many details, notably the sinfonia 23  She may be visible to the audience in her summerhouse, but not to the other characters. She is not (as in the 1985 English National Opera production, widely circulated on video) giving a public concert.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 435

06/10/2006 14:52:56

436

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

(Concerto di Flauti, scored for two recorders in thirds and continuo) and the threefold opening of Romilda’s ‘O voi che penate’; but whereas Handel preserved Bononcini’s first two intervals (a rising fourth and sixth), he changed the last, another sixth, into an octave. The resemblance extends to the repetition of the first part of the sinfonia – though Handel’s is longer as well as richer, 12 + 22 bars instead of 6 + 8 – and the scoring and plan of ‘Va godendo’ (a minuet in 3/8) with the voice leading, imitated by the recorders in unison, and a fully scored final ritornello. Both composers used the recorders in the same three movements of this scene and nowhere else in the opera. There is no mention of mutes, pizzicato or bassoons in Bononcini. Handel further sharpened the contrast between the full accompaniment of sinfonia and ariosos and whispered comments of the watchers by leaving most of the latter without continuo support.24 Exceptionally Romilda concludes the first set not with a full aria but with a cavatina, which would be unthinkable in a heroic opera. But if ‘Nemmen con l’ombre’ is short in span, it is superb in quality, with a noble melody from the same stable as the Berenice Minuet and a violin accompaniment in slurred semiquavers marked Larghetto e pianissimo. Only in the final ritornello, where Handel adds the full body of strings and gives the tune for the first time to the orchestra,25 is there a forte mark. We are left in no doubt of Romilda’s love for Arsamene. ‘Se l’idol mio’, addressed to Atalanta, is less striking, though it expresses well enough Romilda’s mingled resolution and apprehension, the smooth violin thirds of the second part setting off the angularities and unisons of the first, and contrasts nicely with Atalanta’s ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ at the end of the act. In Act II Romilda rises to her full stature. When Serse reveals Arsamene’s apparent betrayal, her first reaction is the touching declaration of faith in the duet, ‘L’amerete?’ But no sooner has Serse gone than she gives vent to her bitterness, jealousy and despair in an accompagnato and aria that would grace any heroic opera. The recitative is packed with those searching progressions that Handel reserved for outbursts of intense passion. The aria begins without ritornello or accompaniment as if Romilda cannot wait for the instruments;26 the contrasts of loud and soft, unisons and full harmony, jagged rhythms and torrential scales, are typical of the jealousy Affekt (compare ‘Gelosia, spietata Aletto’ in Admeto in the same key and ‘È gelosia’ in Alcina). The restless tonality of the short B section spurns the relative major. The key, G minor, stands at the furthest extreme from Serse’s in ‘Se bramate’, and the whole scene, from before the duet, has no secco recitative at all. The act ends with two consecutive arias for Romilda, in A minor and A major. This is not quite a cavatina-cabaletta structure: both arias are in da capo form, and the intermediate action with Amastre and the guards disturbs the unity, which, however, Handel may have sought to restore through the tonality. ‘Val più contento core’ is not specially distinguished. His original idea, cancelled in the autograph, was to divide the continuo into two antiphonal groups, each with its own ­ harpsichord. 24  For a comparative analysis of the three settings, see Powers, ‘Il Serse trasformato II’, 74–7. 25  This was a second thought; he began by copying the opening ritornello. 26  Bononcini also set the aria as a G minor Andante without ritornello, but there is no ­common material. This was another aria that gave Handel trouble.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 436

06/10/2006 14:52:56

Serse

437

‘Chi cede al furore’ on the other hand is enough to immortalise Romilda as an operatic character. Her plight – an embattled heroine resolved never to betray her faith – inspired Handel to create this irresistible paean of a melody, twenty bars long, soaring over the entire soprano compass of a twelfth from d’ to a’’. When in the middle of the A section he resumes it from the beginning in the tonic, the second strain expands and proliferates in a huge paragraph with the crowning quaver figure divided between the voice and unison violins. The piece is pure melody; though 127 bars long, the A section never ventures beyond the dominant, and even the B section is reluctant to leave the home coverts. In Act III Romilda does momentarily swerve; we might have expected an anguished aria of farewell at her exit in Scene iv. But there are enough pieces of this kind in the opera, including one for Arsamene in the same scene, and Handel was wise not to risk blurring the impression he created at the end of Act II, and which he confirms in the last aria, ‘Caro voi siete’. Here Romilda is back in the warmth of A major (the key of three of her arias, as well as the duet with Arsamene), blessed with another delightful melody, which like ‘Va godendo’ plays with a prettily syncopated variant of 6/8 rhythm.27 It serves appropriately for the coro as well, with new material in the vocal parts but the same instrumental figures binding the two pieces together in a gracious finale. Atalanta is one of opera’s immortal flirts. She believes in living by her charms and is not above stealing her sister’s lover; but she is capable of genuine emotion, as Handel shows by a touch here and there. She is more lightly drawn than Romilda; of her six solos, only two have a da capo, and one of these is so short that it ranks as an arietta rather than an aria. Her first utterance, ‘Sì, sì, mio ben’, has an equivocal flavour. Ostensibly describing to Arsamene Romilda’s love for him, she in fact gives expression to her own. Handel writes a plaintive F sharp minor siciliano, full of Neapolitan inflections and without ritornello. It is touchingly beautiful; but by interposing a couple of secco bars towards the end, stressing Atalanta’s vicarious posture, Handel prevents it becoming too serious and establishing the character on the wrong lines. ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ at the end of the act shows her in her true colours, sharpening her little claws and shamelessly proclaiming the means by which she stoops to conquer. The delicious ritornello with its pussyfoot repeated and staccato quavers, followed by the leaping violin figures for the coy glances designed to ensnare her victims, tells the whole story before the voice comes in (Ex. 67). Trills and a saucy upward scale-figure are presently called in to decorate the approach to a cadence. Handel may have derived a hint or two from Bononcini’s first part; he lifted the initial two bars of his B section and continued them with an improved line and rhythm. Neither the triplet nor the leaps of a fifth, a minor sixth and an octave are in Bononcini, whose widest step is a minor third (Ex. 68a and b). As a character study the aria makes a perfect foil to Romilda’s at the end of Act II. Both have a very short B section without upper instruments, and the purpose is the same: to offer the minimum of contrast before the da capo, for each enshrines the mood that gives the key to the character. 27  Bononcini’s aria, in 3/8, was the model in a number of rhythmic and melodic details, as well as in key. But it is sung by Xerse to Amastre.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 437

06/10/2006 14:52:56

438

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

In Act II we see Atalanta from more than one angle. The tiny ‘A piangere ognora’ on a ground bass (the structural principle of this scene) promises beautiful things, but is cut off almost at once for the same reason that recitative is interpolated into ‘Sì, sì, mio ben’. In ‘Dirà che amor’ the kittenish side returns to the fore, again associated with a seductive tune, which subsumes the first part in a single paragraph without modulation or accidental. As in so many of Handel’s melodies, the top note (a’’ – the only time it occurs in Atalanta’s music) is consummately placed. The aria is Atalanta’s warning to Serse that though Arsamene really loves her he will deny it; and a repetition of the entire aria a moment later with more emphatic words emphasises the brazenness of the lie. (This also occurs in Bononcini’s opera.) When presently Serse exposes her bluff, she reacts with the most deeply felt music in the part (all the chief characters except Amastre have their profoundest music in the second half of this act). For all her butterfly habits she cannot at once forget Arsamene, and the long cavatina ‘Voi mi dite che non l’ami’ tells us that behind her scheming there is a heart. The characteristic tune, differently treated (in common instead of triple time) in the Andante of the almost contemporary Concerto Grosso in B flat (Op. 6 no. 7),28 makes a moving impression here, and is most beautifully extended in the eleven-bar final ritornello. Atalanta’s one contribution to Act III, the arietta ‘No, se tu mi sprezzi’, returns her conclusively to her spiritual tonic as she flounces off in search of a new lover.29 Amastre, as befits her courage and assumed sex, is given resolute, rather stern music. She is a little slow to come to life, but the stiff D minor octaves of ‘Se cangio spoglia’ project her situation (inward and outward) firmly enough, and ‘Saprà delle mie offese’ is a vengeance aria charged with rhythmic energy. The bare texture of the first part, based on arpeggio and scale figures with more octave stamping, contrasts well with the full accompaniment and repeated chords of the second, against which the voice develops melodic and rhythmic ideas heard earlier, giving a strong sense 28  Both melodies derive from the aria ‘Le mie prede mi son care’ in Steffani’s opera La libertà contenta (1693). Colin Timms, ‘What did Handel learn from Steffani’s Operas?’ (GHB 9 (2002), 57) identifies the link with the concerto, as did Crotch in a footnote to his keyboard arrangement of Handel’s Twelve Grand Concertos (c.1826), but not that with Serse. 29  Both Cavalli and Bononcini give her a later aria, but it adds nothing and indeed confuses the picture.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 438

06/10/2006 14:52:57

Serse

439

of unity in variety. Amastre inaugurates the more emotional climate of Act II with one of those vivid fragments in which the opera is so rich, a nine-bar arioso in pure C major. The depth of her love for Serse shines through ‘Or che siete, speranze, tradite’, an aria of touching sadness tinged with passion. The rhythmically reiterated two-bar phrases paint the numbness of her heart, and are prevented from becoming mechanical by the more flexibly articulated bass. We next see her on the point of suicide; but Elviro turns her rage once more on Serse, whom she denounces in a powerful F sharp minor cavatina, ‘Anima infida’. The material is singularly varied, angular strides and leaps alternating with rapid repeated notes and chords over a running quaver bass; Burney signalised it as ‘a fine mixture of old and new passages and effects, with a Corelli base, and a modern accompaniment’. Amastre is too angry for a ritornello at the start, but her emotion overflows in a splendid instrumental coda that develops all the principal ideas, including the first phrase of the voice (hitherto its exclusive property), in a powerful new synthesis. Amastre’s finest solo, however, is the last, ‘Cagion son io’, in which she recognises that she is the cause of her own grief, for she cannot help loving her betrayer. This is another cavatina of disarming simplicity,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 439

06/10/2006 14:52:57

440

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

with the upper strings doubling the voice almost throughout and only the barest harmony. Everything hangs on the melodic line, whose irregular phrase-lengths and syncopations (hemiola) suggest a catch in the throat of the singer. Towards the end Handel slipped in a borrowing from his youth: the distinctive phrase with rising sevenths over a pedal (bars 23–5) occurs in a different metre but the same key at bars 17–22 of Narciso’s aria ‘Volo pronto’ in Agrippina. Ariodate’s two arias depict the bluff, not over-intelligent soldier in Handel’s usual bass manner (compare Ercole in Admeto, who likewise operates in flat minor keys). The complacent downward scales in ‘Soggetti al mio volere’ recall ‘O ruddier than the cherry’, but are more directly anticipated in Bononcini’s setting. Elviro is an unusual figure in Handel, though he has many parallels in the tradition of intermezzo and opera buffa. While his status and conduct are close to Leporello’s, his music springs from a more vernacular origin (Lottini was an intermezzo singer). His songs are all short and easy; the da capo is not for him, and his voice for the most part either hugs the instrumental bass or, when he plays the flower-seller, enunciates the most rudimentary phrases above it. Handel may have picked up the gawky 3/4 tune of ‘Ah! chi voler fiora’ from the streets of London. He told Lady Luxborough that hints for some of his best songs came from this source,30 and one such cry, taken down from a match-seller ‘near a brandy shop St. Giles’s in Tyburn Road’, survives in his autograph in the Fitzwilliam Museum31 (Ex. 69a and b). There is an oddity

here. A little later we find Elviro singing the same words to a new melodic fragment in 6/8 over a descending scale in quavers that threatens to behave like that favourite academic gambit, a ground. This idea, taken over from Bononcini, recurs several times during the scene, which it helps to bind together. It behaves irregularly, as we might expect, never reappearing in quite the same form and annexing several keys, major and minor. Its final occurrence, after Atalanta has cut off Elviro’s outburst ‘Ah! tigre infedele’ on the dominant and sent him packing at the approach of Serse, makes 30  See her letter of 16 October 1748 to William Shenstone (Deutsch, 653). 31  Fitzwilliam Catalogue, 217.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 440

06/10/2006 14:52:58

Serse

441

a witty exit line. Since Elviro a little earlier has broken up an arioso of Atalanta’s, it also rounds off a dramatic tit for tat. Why did Handel not bring back the 3/4 melody? Because he had not yet thought of it. His first idea here was in 3/8 (soon altered to 6/8), and was at the same time the source of the 6/8 echoes and a derivative of Bononcini’s setting.32 Handel improved the latter, adding a pert little ritornello that breaks in at irregular intervals, then scrapped this in favour of the 3/4 version; he left the echoes of an arietta that no longer occurs in the score. (Ex. 70a and b). The whole episode, inherited from Minato (who makes even more of it), is as fluid in construction as the opening of Act I. Of the first six solos in the act (excluding Elviro’s 6/8 fragments) only one runs its full course as a da capo aria, and the seventh (‘Dirà che amor’) runs it twice. Several are either interrupted or very brief. At least two, ‘A piangere ognora’ and ‘Ah! tigre infedele’, are modelled on Bononcini’s settings, and the layout with Elviro’s repeated

calling of his wares is likewise Bononcini’s. Yet Handel gives it a personal and more unified stamp, partly by altering the proportions (Bononcini’s ‘Speranze mie fermate’ is very much longer, and his music for ‘Ah! tigre infedele’ comes back a second time) and partly by hinting at a ground bass structure in several of the solos. After his big scene Elviro fades out, apart from his pithy reactions to the storm on the Hellespont (his drinking song ‘Del mio caro Bacco’ amusingly sprouts a new tune with ‘Waltzing Matilda’ proclivities in the ritornellos after each of its binary sections); but he has left his mark. He has a comic scene with Clito in the last act of 32  HHA edition, Appendix 2.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 441

06/10/2006 14:52:58

442

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Bononcini’s opera. In Cavalli he tries to steal the gold decorations on Xerse’s plane tree and is frustrated by the Magi. The three choruses – soldiers in Act I, sailors in Act II, priests in Act III – are musically slight, as usual in the operas (there were probably not more than two or three singers to a part); but their impact is not negligible. This is due to the contrast in colour (orchestral as well as vocal; a single trumpet plays in two of them, a pair of horns in the third), and still more to their placing. Each is repeated so as to frame one of the three public scenes, the return of Ariodate’s victorious army, the bridging of the Hellespont and the marriage, supplying the personal plot with a background in relief. The instrumental movements are of higher quality. The overture is suitably light-fingered, with a neat catch in the rhythm of the Allegro and a genial 6/8 gigue. The Act I sinfonia, apart from its magical scoring and an open-air flavour characteristic of Handel’s garden scenes, is dramatically important. That which opens Act III is a beautiful example of the sonority Handel could draw from three-part strings; Dent found ‘a quite unusual melodiousness and charm ... with suggestions of both Scarlatti and Purcell’. Frequent reference has been made to the flexibility of design – mingling of forms, junction and interruption of movements, the decline of the da capo, use of recurring motives to unify the action (opening sets of Acts I and II) and for dramatic irony (III.x), the unorthodox structure of all three duets (as in Orlando there are none of the honeyed congruences of the Royal Academy operas)33 – and to its source in the seventeenth century. This is not the whole explanation. There is a link with the more organic methods Handel was beginning to employ in the oratorios of the 1730s, notably Athalia and Saul, and on another level with the limited capacities of his 1738 company, more suited to slighter, less taxing pronouncements than the big virtuoso aria. Only Caffarelli and to a lesser degree Francesina had claims to be singers of the front rank. Montagnana’s powers were in steep decline; Merighi too had seen better days; the technique of the others was modest. This is obvious from an inspection of the score; yet it operates not as a limiting factor but as a source of strength, especially in characterisation. Handel possessed that rare faculty of genius not only for discovering the most suitable material, but for doing so at the right time. An inspired economy likewise distinguishes the scoring, based in the solo music almost exclusively on strings and continuo. Handel adds a little brass in the ceremonial choruses, and oboes in the overture, choruses and very sparingly in the arias.34 Otherwise the only picturesque touch is the use of recorders in the garden scene. Yet he is able to achieve striking effects by expanding the string layout, whether in the B section of an aria (‘Saprà delle mie offese’, ‘Se l’idol mio’) or in the final ritornello (‘Nemmen con l’ombre’, ‘Val più contento core’). The minor mode, apt for unrequited passion, is prominent in the first two acts. Their sustained opening scenes are confined to flat keys, but all three acts end emphatically on the sharp side. There is 33  Also to be noted is the frequency with which one character’s aria follows the recitative of another, whether as answer or comment. This tends to quicken the dramatic pace. 34  Chrysander includes them only in ‘Dirà che amor’ and ‘Se bramate’; but see under Flower parts below.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 442

06/10/2006 14:52:58

Serse

443

a special appropriateness in the establishment of A major, the key of Romilda’s great declaration of faith, as an ultimate tonic.

History and Text Having completed Faramondo on 24 December 1737, Handel rested only for Christmas Day before beginning Serse on Monday the 26th (he wrote Sunday the 25th on the first page of the autograph but crossed it out). He finished Act I on 9 January 1738, Act II on 25 January, Act III on 6 February and the fully realised score on 14 February – a slow rate of striking by his standards. The first performance took place at the King’s Theatre on 15 April, with the following cast: serse Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano) (mezzo-soprano castrato) arsamene Maria Antonia Marchesini (mezzo-soprano) romilda Elisabeth Duparc (Francesina) (soprano) atalanta Margherita Chimenti (soprano) amastre Antonia Merighi (contralto) ariodate Antonio Montagnana (bass) elviro Antonio Lottini (bass) To judge from a remark by John Upton,35 orchestra and chorus were both weak in numbers. Otherwise the only contemporary comment comes from Lord Shaftesbury in a letter to James Harris on 4 May: ‘Xerxes is beyond all doubt a fine composition. The singers perform it very indifferently which is a great disadvantage to it; the airs too, for brevity’s sake as the opera would otherwise be too long fall without any recitativ’ intervening from one into another that tis difficult to understand till it comes by frequent hearing to be well known. My own judgment is that it is a capital opera notwithstanding tis called a ballad one’.36 Clearly audiences were disappointed or puzzled. There were four more performances, the last on 2 May, after which Serse slept for 186 years. ‘Va godendo’ was included in the pasticcio Lucio Vero at the King’s Theatre in 1747, and at some unknown date ‘Ombra mai fu’ escaped into notoriety as that organist’s plaything ‘Handel’s Largo’. Otherwise Serse was ignored until Oskar Hagen produced it at Göttingen in 1924 in a grotesque version. This enjoyed immediate and wide success in Germany, receiving at least ninety performances in fifteen cities before the end of 1926. Serse has been staged more frequently than any Handel opera except Giulio Cesare, and by 2005 had attained nearly 200 productions. Many of them, including all based on the Hagen version (still on view at the Munich Opera as late as 1965) and the popular Joachim Herz production (Leipzig 1972, performed all over Europe), seriously distorted the opera. Stage directors, especially in major opera houses, have seemed unable to resist the temptation to play this subtle opera of character as farce and cumber it with irrelevances, even when, as in the acclaimed 35  Burrows and Dunhill, 50. 36  Ibid., 49.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 443

06/10/2006 14:52:59

444

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

English National Opera revival of 1985 and later, the score was treated with respect and given complete, demonstrating that cuts in Handel’s finest operas are both damaging and unnecessary. Nine recordings of varying quality have appeared, some taken from live performances, the latest (Virgin Veritas, 2004) under William Christie. ‘Or che siete, speranze tradite’ makes a surprising appearance in the film The Great Mr Handel (1942), where Handel rehearses the aria (in an English version) with Mrs Cibber (!) and insists upon observance of the inconsistent notation (dotted rhythm in the orchestra, even quavers in the vocal line).

Autograph Burney wrote of the autograph (RM 20 c 7): ‘Appearances remain in his foul score of a mind disturbed, if not diseased. There are more passages, and even whole pages, cancelled in this score, than in any of his former operas.’ This is a libel. For one thing, several other autographs, for example Giulio Cesare, Riccardo Primo and Saul, are much more confused. Secondly there is no evidence of mental disturbance, only of a severe artistic conscience. The foliation is scrupulous, the insertions (fols 22, 35, 48, 53–4 and 74) cued to the relevant gatherings with exceptional care. Indeed this autograph could serve as the basis for a study of how Handel’s mind worked during composition. Some of the cancellations are due to late changes in the libretto, some to second thoughts, others to a conflict between the musical urge to expand and the dramatic requirements of brevity and a swiftly moving action. Handel tended to begin by developing an idea, often from Bononcini, and then subjecting the result to ruthless compression. It is fascinating to watch this struggle, and to observe how again and again Handel’s eye for the proportions of a scene conquers the impulse to give the music its head. In the flower-selling episode the brief settings of ‘Speranze mie fermate’ (nine bars), ‘A piangere ognora’ (four bars) and ‘Ah! tigre infedele’ (sixteen bars) were all the product of rigorous contraction. ‘A piangere ognora’ was first set to the music of ‘E tormento’, but Handel must have changed his mind quickly, for the latter is in its place on the verso of the next leaf. As already noted, ‘Ah! chi voler fiora’ received a new setting, and three important arias in Act II, ‘È gelosia’, ‘Quella che tutta fe’ and ‘Sì, la voglio’, were extensively rewritten. Incomplete versions of all three survive, in the eventual keys, but at much greater length.37 Otherwise the pieces most ruthlessly cut were ‘O voi che penate’ (19 bars), ‘Io le dirò’ (13 bars from a total of 32), ‘Meglio in voi’ (56 bars from a total of 111), ‘Più che penso’ (15 bars) and ‘Speranze mie fermate’ (6 bars from a total of 15). ‘Non so se sia’ and ‘Saprà delle mie offese’ each had its opening ritornello shortened by eight bars. ‘Chi cede al furore’ lost 16 bars towards the end of the A section, but the little echo in bars 35 and 36 is an insertion. Handel at one point transposed the recorder sinfonia, ‘O voi che penate’ and ‘Va godendo’ down a semitone, but cancelled the direction. Changes of tempo and 37  See HHA score, Appendix 4–6. Part of the abandoned ‘È gelosia’ is on fol. 74 verso, since Handel used the other side for the added B section of ‘Per rendermi beato’.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 444

06/10/2006 14:52:59

Serse

445

metre can be revealing, for example Larghetto to Andante on ‘Più che penso’ and the reverse on ‘Non so se sia’. Largo e piano on the 3/4 ‘Ah! chi voler fiora’ became Andante larghetto. Handel first placed the Adagio in the B section of ‘Se bramate’ five bars earlier where the note values change, as in the A section. The time signature of ‘No, se tu mi sprezzi’ was originally 3/8, that of ‘Cagion son io’ 3/4; in each aria Handel altered the upper parts but not the bass. He clearly indicated that the ritornello bracketed by Chrysander in the chorus ‘Chi infelice’ (HG 111) was not to be included the second time, but Smith copied it into the performing score in error. ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ shows interesting improvements in detail and a reduced B section. While a constant striving for terseness is the outstanding feature of the autograph, two da capo arias in Act III, ‘Per rendermi beato’ and ‘Del ciel d’amore’, were expanded from cavatinas at a late stage. Except for the pencil cancellation of the B section of ‘Più che penso’, which suggests that Handel at some stage planned to reduce it to a cavatina (but it is complete in both performing scores), all major modifications to the autograph precede the copying of the performing scores. The changes to the libretto chiefly concern Eumene, who was retained in the original plan. Many recitatives were prepared for him (words and tenor clef) in the first two acts, but Handel set none of them, and he disappeared before the skeleton of Act III was written. The consequent reordering was extensive and sometimes damaging (for example in II.xiii). Ariodate received some of Eumene’s lines, but much was cut and rearranged. There is a good deal more of Stampiglia in Handel’s autograph than in the 1738 printed libretto. The statement in Squire’s Catalogue that Amastre was originally called Eumene is incorrect. Among the Fitzwilliam sketches are one bar of the voice part of ‘Io le dirò’ in B flat (Mus.MS 262, p. 46), two shots at the melody afterwards used for ‘Va godendo’, and a complete treble-and-bass sketch for the gigue in the overture (Mus.MS 263, p. 47). The ‘Va godendo’ melody, in 3/8 without words, seems to have been conceived as an instrumental movement, perhaps a Minuet in the overture. The gigue sketch differs at the cadence of each half; characteristically the final form is shorter than the original.

Libretto 1738. ‘Xerxes an Opera. As perform’d at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-Market. Composed by Frederick Handel ... Printed by J. Chrichley, near Charing-Cross ... [Price One Shilling.]’ 67 pp. Title in English only, cast and text in both languages. Elviro listed as ‘a facetious Fellow’, Lottini misprinted as Ottini. This, like Cluer’s score of Giulio Cesare, is one of the few indications that Handel, like Bach, was known by his second Christian name. The copy in the National Library of Scotland has marks (as far as the end of II.ii) suggesting that its owner was studying the part of Elviro.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 445

06/10/2006 14:52:59

446

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Copies and Editions There are two performing scores in Hamburg, MA 1052a (Ham 1), copied by Smith, and MA 1052 (Ham 2), a cembalo score copied by S1 (Acts I and III) and Smith (Act II). The latter is the more interesting: it contains (in pencil) some additional bass figuring in the recitatives, dynamics and fermatas. Most of them seem to have been written by the continuo player as reminders, but they throw a little light on Handel’s performance practice; the fermatas are not as shown in the printed scores, and the octave leaps in the bass of ‘Quella che tutta fé’ are marked forte in bars 6, 12 and 13 even though they occur not in the ritornellos but while the voice is singing. Segue is noted after ‘Per dar fine’ in II.ix. Handel himself made one interesting change in Ham 2, though whether before the first performance or during the run it is impossible to determine: by altering ‘Chi cede al furore’ from a dal segno to a da capo aria he gave maximum exposure to the glorious opening ritornello. Neither score contains insertions. Chrysander used Ham 1 as a copy text and left a number of annotations. Contemporary manuscript copies are in the Bodleian (S1 and S2 with two gaps supplied by a much later hand, no recitatives, 1738), Lennard (S5, c.1738) and Flower (S2, c.1749). None contains significant variants, but the Bodleian copy (Mus d 221) is of some interest; Terence Best has shown that it was based on the autograph and Ham 1 and used as a copy text for Walsh’s edition. The Flower score, like most of those supplied to Jennens, was copied from the autograph. The Flower parts on the other hand (cembalo, violins 1 and 2, cello, oboes 1 and 2 including flauti) were copied by S2 from Ham 1 about six years earlier (c. 1743). They are very incomplete, omitting the first three choruses, the duets ‘L’amerò’ and ‘Gran pena e gelosia’ and fourteen arias and ariosos. The oboes are given little freedom, playing only in half a dozen movements, both (except in the opening ritornello of ‘Or che siete’) in unison with the first violins in ritornellos and when the voice is silent. Their inclusion in the Act III sinfonia is a mistake. The bassoon is mentioned once, in the cello part in the sinfonia in I.ii. The Coke Collection has a set of four parts for the overture (MS 91, c.1746–7), and BL RM 19 a 1 a keyboard arrangement of it (c.1738–40), both S2. There is an S2 copy of the Act III duet in the Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland (c.1744). On 24 April Walsh advertised a proposal for publishing the score by subscription. There was apparently little demand, for it appeared on 30 May (Xerxes an Opera) without a list of subscribers. The text is exceptionally full, including all the short ariosos and omitting only secco recitatives. Some modified tempo marks – Presto on the overture’s Gigue, Allegro on ‘Dirà che amor’, Andante on ‘No, se tu mi sprezzi’ and ‘Crude furie’ – may have Handel’s authority, since the Bodleian copy text was carefully assembled from autograph and performing score. Walsh published the overture in eight parts on 21 October 1738 and a simple keyboard arrangement on 18 January 1739. He paid Handel his usual fee of 25 guineas. A set of four parts for the overture was published in Paris c.1749. Chrysander as usual based his edition (1884) on the performing score and reproduced many of its mistakes. He omitted a number of stage directions in the autograph;

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 446

06/10/2006 14:52:59

Serse

447

the most explicit is Parte con Elviro, che va crollando la testa after Arsamene’s ‘Meglio in voi’ in I.v. Serse was the first opera published by the HHA before its reorganisation, edited by Rudolf Steglich (1958). It differs little from Chrysander. The preface mentions Minato’s libretto and a German translation by Christian Postel (Der mächtige Monarch der Perser Xerxes in Abydus, set by Förtsch for Hamburg in 1689), but not Bononcini’s opera. In his realisation the editor saw fit to modify many of Handel’s recitative cadences to end on the dominant of the following aria, upsetting the tonal articulation of the opera. It has since been replaced by a new score edited by Terence Best (2003), a model of its kind. A vocal score (Peters, 1924), arranged by Oskar Hagen for the first modern revival at a time when Handel’s operas were thought to need a face-lift before they were fit for the stage, is a historical curiosity. Arias are switched capriciously between characters and scenes, undercutting both the musical and the dramatic design. The numerous omissions include many of the finest arias, among them ‘È tormento’, ‘È gelosia’, ‘Per dar fine’, ‘Sì, la voglio’, ‘Il core spera’, ‘Chi cede al furore’ and ‘Cagion son io’. Those that survive are subjected to extraordinary butchery. All the longer pieces and several of the shorter are mutilated. ‘Io le dirò’ becomes a duet for tenor and baritone. ‘Anima infida’ is given a bogus ritornello and parked at the end of Act II. ‘Voi mi dite’ is transferred to Romilda in place of ‘È gelosia’, and the B section of ‘Quella che tutta fé’ to Atalanta. Ariodate and especially Elviro are pushed into the foreground; ‘Signor, lasciate’ receives a gratuitous second and third stanza. The recitatives are almost entirely recomposed. The preface states that all changes were dictated by stage experience. The result is a grinning parody.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 447

06/10/2006 14:52:59

ch a p t e r 25 Imeneo

T

he Argument, translated almost literally from the source libretto, clarifies some details before the action begins. ‘Hymeneus was a Youth of Athens, who fell in Love with a noble Damsel [Rosmene], without Hope of ever obtaining her; yet he assiduously pursued her, and often found Means to be with her and other of her Companions, by dressing himself in a female Dress, so that his Fraud could not be suspected. ‘Thus it happen’d, that he, with his Beloved (and many others [including Clomiri], who went forth from Athens to a Sacrifice to Eleusinian Ceres) were forced away by some Pyrates, who came on them by surprize; and when they had got many Miles distant with ’em, rejoicing in their Prey, and spent with Toil, went ashoar; and retiring to a Place where they thought themselves safe, lay down to sleep. Hymeneus taking that Opportunity to deliver himself, and the captive Virgins, had the good Fortune to kill all the Pyrates before any one could awake; and returning to the City, promis’d to restore to the Athenians their lost Children, if they would give her, he so lov’d, to him for a Wife ...’. Act I. The scene of all three Acts is A Pleasant Garden (Deliziosa). Tirinto laments the loss of Rosmene, to whom he is betrothed. Argenio, who has lost his daughter Clomiri, says there is no news of the captured virgins. Both pray to Ceres for help. A chorus of Athenians announces the approach of Imeneo with good tidings. Tirinto is going in search of Rosmene, when Imeneo enters, briefly explains his successful rescue and asks for Rosmene as a reward. Argenio, to Tirinto’s distress, ­promises his support. Rosmene and Clomiri enter, and a scene of mingled welcome and embarrassment follows: both men love Rosmene, and Clomiri loves Imeneo. Argenio gives a warning against jealousy. Imeneo tells Rosmene she ought to accept him for saving her life. She replies, addressing each in turn, that she is grateful to Imeneo but loves Tirinto. Imeneo asks Tirinto to give her up. He refuses: that is asking too much. Imeneo brushes aside Clomiri’s gratitude for the rescue. Pretending to speak on behalf of another, she bids him love where he is loved. Alone, Imeneo reassures himself that ‘Athens the Wise will never prove ungrateful’ and will award him the ‘turtle fair’ he has rescued. The Act ends with a repeat of the welcoming chorus. Act II. Rosmene prays to the gods for help. Argenio tells her that the senate, as well as reason, requires her to marry Imeneo, and when she pleads the claims of love accuses her of ‘mere Perverseness’ and reads her a lesson on obedience to parents and country, citing the story of Androcles and the lion as an example of the rewards of gratitude. Rosmene warns Clomiri of the agonies of love. Tirinto learns from Clomiri of Rosmene’s distress and begins to feel the pangs of jealousy like an approaching storm. Imeneo tells Clomiri how grateful he is to her father for making   His relationship to Rosmene is not quite clear; he seems to act as her guardian.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 448

06/10/2006 14:52:59



Imeneo

449

his cause prevail with the senate. She promises to tell Rosmene and thinks she will be delighted, evidently having no idea of her true feelings. Imeneo, alone, reflects on the pains of love: he who plays with a rose is pricked, and the moth is burned by the candle. He is going out, but stops when he sees Rosmene. Argenio tells the two lovers that Athens only advises; the choice is Rosmene’s. In a trio each pleads with her; she feels drawn to both, but torn between love and gratitude can give no final answer. The chorus declare that Imeneo will win. Act III opens on the same situation. The lovers continue to plead; Rosmene would like to decide, but pity for the loser holds her back. She offers to go, and they detain her. She promises to leave the decision to her heart. Each lover resolves to die if he loses. Tirinto feels suspense as before a storm. Clomiri, while wishing Imeneo well in his wooing of Rosmene, confesses that the girl who loves him and whose cause she has been pleading is herself. Rosmene, the hour of decision at hand, resolves to ‘act in Folly’s Show what Wisdom prompts’ and feigns herself mad. Imeneo, horrified by her distraught manner, begs her, if she destroys his peace, to kill him as well. He goes; she meets Tirinto, and the scene is duplicated: as she walks distractedly, he repeats Imeneo’s request to the same music. Clomiri and Argenio are lamenting Rosmene’s condition when she enters and tells the lovers to attend her decision. They repeat their request, this time in a duet. She makes a wild speech, invoking assistance from the awful shade of Rhadamanthus, judge of the dead. At the climax she collapses and is held by Tirinto and Imeneo. In a short cavatina she comes down in favour of Imeneo and prattles on, comparing her choice with that of Paris confronted with three goddesses. Both lovers think she is raving. She denies it: she is like a ship approaching a well-loved shore, then suddenly driven by winds to another land. How can she give offence when she is the sport of fate? She gives her hand to Imeneo, who blesses his luck, and tells Tirinto to receive the blow calmly. He makes no reply. The chorus point a sombre moral: the virtuous heart obeys the voice of reason and duty, and if it has nourished a love not so approved, abandons it and seeks another. That is a summary of the libretto issued in connection with the first performance. In the absence of that document, unknown until the National Library of Scotland acquired a copy in 1938, it would be hard to determine the musical text heard in 1740 owing to the confused state of the sources, especially the autograph and performing score, which taken together present a concatenation of three or four versions composed for different casts before the opera reached the stage, further complicated by changes made for the Dublin revival of 1742. Chrysander’s score is more than usually muddled, and Squire, attempting to describe the autograph in his Catalogue of the Royal Music Library, virtually gave up the ghost. Anthony Lewis’s vocal score, the first published score after Chrysander’s, is an idiosyncratic selection   This direction is missing in the English text of the libretto.   Cecil Hill, Handel’s ‘Imeneo’: A Pre-Edition Study (Armidale, NSW, 1987) made a valiant attempt to sort things out. He printed the relevant librettos and much previously unpublished music, but his detailed account is difficult to follow and not wholly accurate.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 449

06/10/2006 14:52:59

450

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

from several stages of the opera’s composition and its revival. Both omit music that Handel performed in 1740 and include music that he rejected. Now, thanks chiefly to an important article by John Roberts, it is possible to relate the complex textual history of the opera in detail (though a few points still admit differences of interpret­ ation), and Handel’s performing versions are accessible in Donald Burrows’s edition for the HHA, together with an orderly presentation of the unused material. In the circumstances it is not surprising that Imeneo has had a meagre press. Streatfeild dismissed it in a single phrase, ‘in Imeneo there is little to detain us’, though Burney picked out half a dozen of the best movements for praise. Leichtentritt was led astray by Chrysander’s attribution of important arias to wrong characters. Dent raised the spectre of a good deal of ballet (there is none at all) and rated the scene of Rosmene’s pretended insanity as ‘very amusing’. Yet Imeneo is a little ­masterpiece, the best of the post-Alcina operas with the exception of Serse. Handel’s source was not an opera seria libretto but a ‘Componimento Dramatico’ or Serenata in two parts, written by Silvio Stampiglia, composed by Nicola Porpora, and performed at Naples in 1723 to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Montemiletto to a lady from the Duchy of Parma. Stampiglia based his plot on the Greek legend of Hymen, god of marriage, as told by the fourth-century Latin writer Servius in his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid. Handel created a three-act design by bisecting Stampiglia’s first part, which ended with the trio ‘Consolami mio bene’. Otherwise he made few changes, apart from shortening the recitative. In his first draft he probably set twenty-three of Stampiglia’s twenty-six set pieces (including Rosmene’s accompagnato ‘Miratela’), omitted three arias in the second part, and added a single new one for Clomiri in Act III. The 1740 score, after some rearrangement, still retained twenty, but included four late insertions, the three choruses and Rosmene’s cavatina ‘Deh! m’ajutate’, the only pieces not based on Stampiglia. Handel retained the outline of the libretto but modified the balance, reducing the parts of Imeneo and Argenio by two arias each and those of Tirinto and Clomiri by one but slightly expanding Rosmene’s. He advertised Imeneo as an operetta, perhaps the earliest use of the term, though the libretto calls it Drama per Musica. The diminutive may allude to its brevity, its light tone, the absence of spectacle (a single stock set serves for all three acts)   J. H. Roberts, ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, HJb 47 (2001), 337–84.   The libretto had been written earlier, perhaps for another wedding: the censor’s Imprimatur is dated 26 March 1717, but no setting before Porpora’s is known. The Naples cast was highly ­distinguished, comprising the young Farinelli (Tirinto), Marianna Benti Bulgarelli (Rosmene); two singers later familiar in London, Antonia Merighi (Imeneo, an alto part) and Annibale Pio Fabri (Argenio, in this version Clomiri’s brother); and Fabri’s wife Anna Bombaciara (Clomiri). Porpora’s score, slightly expanded and divided into three acts as Imeneo in Atene, was produced in Venice (S. Samuele) in 1726 and four other Italian cities up to 1731, and later in Vienna. In ­Handel’s first draft Argenio is Clomiri’s brother; by 1739 he is her father.   Roberts (‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, 345) has shown that he worked from Porpora’s score, not the printed libretto.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 450

06/10/2006 14:52:59



Imeneo

451

or to distance it from the opera seria class to which most of Handel’s earlier stage works belonged. Thanks to its origins in a serenata, it has the simplest plot of any of Handel’s operas, posing no intricate entanglements or heroic intrigues. There is very little action, merely a prolonged conflict between love and duty in the heart of one character. The subplot, such as it is, Clomiri’s adolescent love for Imeneo, is well integrated, taking second place but casting oblique light on the central theme. The language of the libretto is clear, free from conceits and far-fetched similes. The arias employ a refreshing variety of metres, opening the way to an equally welcome flexibility of forms, especially in Act III. Imeneo illustrates what may be called the Mozartian side of Handel’s creative personality, in which emotional depths are plumbed beneath a surface of light comedy. It inhabits the same climate as Serse, though it lacks the buffo element represented by Elviro. The bitter-sweet flavour of the dénouement owes more to Handel than to Stampiglia. According to the legend Hymen, hailed as the god of marriage, pursued his beloved after disposing of her captors; Stampiglia introduces a rival in Tirinto, who moreover is engaged to Rosmene. Imeneo must start from scratch but still wins. Stampiglia has no chorus: everyone, including Tirinto, ends by saluting the lucky pair (‘Viva, viva Imeneo, viva Rosmene’). Handel must at once have seen the opportunities for irony here. By the superb quality and passion of the music he gives to Tirinto he makes him the hero (the altered distribution of arias is significant), accentuating the love-versus-duty conflict, and ends the opera with a sombre moralising chorus in a minor key. He even gives an advance hint by setting the chorus at the end of Act II, which prophesies Imeneo’s victory, also in the minor. Imeneo is the only Handel opera in which the second and third acts both end in minor keys; but in a number of other works with wide variations in temper and dramatic content – Amadigi, Tamerlano, Alexander Balus, Theodora, The Choice of Hercules (another conflict between pleasure and duty) – the minor-key conclusion reflects Handel’s consciousness that a central character who has captured his sympathy is on the losing side or has to sacrifice his/her happiness, leaving in the minds of the audience a potent sense of the irony of the human condition. Though a failure in its own day, and despite its light framework and predominantly conversational tone, Imeneo can convey a subtle and surprisingly modern, indeed timeless, message. Although Imeneo has the title role and Tirinto the most emotionally charged music, Rosmene’s dilemma is the hub on which the plot turns. She alone retains all her set pieces in the source, and even has one more. All her music in the first two acts, including the trio of which she is the fulcrum, is in minor keys. So is her last aria (she has four of the five minor-key arias in the opera as performed). This might suggest emotional involvement. Yet she is a somewhat ambivalent figure. She is engaged to Tirinto, but how deeply does she love him? Her first aria, her single solo in Act I, is addressed to both lovers in turn, as is almost her entire part, except in the first   Handel originally set this chorus to a different text, lacking in ironical pungency: if all­ owerful destiny forces a man to break his faith, he is guiltless. It was replaced before the p ­performing score was copied. Neither text comes from Stampiglia.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 451

06/10/2006 14:53:00

452

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

two scenes of Act II. She has no scene alone with either and no straight love music. ‘Ingrata mai non fui’ with its alternation of minor and major suggests indecision and lacks the note of passion one would expect if her heart were seriously engaged in either direction. The light tone and thin accompanying texture, with a spare bass line, pianissimo violin echoes and the surprising extensions for unaccompanied solo violin in the ritornello after the A section, have an ironical flavour, as if she were teasing them and rather enjoying it. There is more feeling in the short prayer, supported by solo cello, that opens Act II. Her argument with Argenio shows a leaning towards Tirinto, to whom after all she is betrothed, and so by implication does ‘Semplicetta’, in which she warns Clomiri of the snares of love. Again the accompaniment is very light; none at all in the first half of the B section. The cross-rhythms of the ritornello give a little colour to a rather plain aria. In the trio Rosmene sits on the fence. Like the trio that ends Act I of Orlando, this is a beautifully balanced dramatic ensemble in which two characters confront the third but nothing is resolved. The da capo thus serves a functional purpose, and expressive suspensions illustrate the impasse (Ex. 71). The gradual contraction of the long initial ritornello averts any danger of stagnation. By the start of Act III Rosmene has perhaps made her decision, but she is not ready to divulge it. ‘In mezzo a voi dui’, based on the same favourite cross-rhythm as the nightingale chorus in Solomon and many other pieces, is her happiest aria; there is not a trace of anguish; the byplay between the rustling violin figure at bar 7 and the syncopated voice part, which eventually change places, breathes nothing but contentment. From this point she seeks to deflect the onus of decision-making, first to her heart as if it were an independent agent, then to the ghostly figure of Rhadamanthus, and finally by a simile to a ship at the mercy of the currents. One’s final impression is of a rather weak character, unable to make up her own mind, who probably loves Tirinto but not passionately enough to withstand pressure from Imeneo, Argenio and the senate and their demands for gratitude and duty. The mad scene in accompanied recitative in which she takes refuge is an astonishing tour de force. There is certainly an element of parody in that the outer action is feigned. But it has a Hamlet-like ambiguity, and a touch of horror in her appeal to Rhadamanthus: are her emotions genuine or feigned, or a mixture of the two? Handel suggests genuine passion by glancing back to Bajazet’s death scene in Tamerlano with its harmonic surprises and wrenching modulations. The final section, beginning with a phrase of great tenderness in E major (‘ne divide dal mio core il mio cor’), moving via an enharmonic modulation from F sharp major towards F minor and G minor and ending in E minor, paints a vivid picture of the genuine pain underlying Rosmene’s assumed mental derangement. It incorporates several bars of almost exact quotation from the opening of Bajazet’s accompagnato, at the same pitch and with the same enharmonic modulation.   For the early history of the operatic mad scene, an offspring of the commedia dell’arte, and the gradual infusion of more serious elements, see Paolo Fabbri, ‘On the Origins of an Operatic Topos: The Mad-Scene’, in ‘Con che soavità’: Studies in Italian Opera, Song and Dance, 1580–1740, ed. I. Fenlon and T. Carter (Oxford, 1995), 157–95.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 452

06/10/2006 14:53:00



Imeneo

453

After that Rosmene is drained. The little cavatina ‘Al voler di tua fortuna’ has a touching simplicity illustrating Handel’s ability to make a profound statement in few notes, Blake’s ‘world in a grain of sand’ (compare ‘Egli è tuo’ in Rodrigo and ‘Io già sento’ in Amadigi). ‘Io son quella navicella’ begins with a phrase for voice alone, later put to very different purpose in Belshazzar (‘wallowing in excessive feast’). Several details – sudden pauses, abrupt changes of harmonic direction, the exact repetition of the voice’s last two bars at the end of the A section – hint at exhaustion or perhaps light-headedness. The chorus append the prim moral almost at once. The duet ‘Per le porte del tormento’, included in the first two printed editions, has no place in the 1740 score.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 453

06/10/2006 14:53:01

454

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Tirinto is a less complex but more committed figure. There is never any doubt about his love for Rosmene or the warmth and sympathy with which Handel viewed him. Not only does he have the opera’s two grandest and most powerful arias, but he launches it with two more, both of haunting beauty, which, besides establishing him as a deeply involved lover, set the tone of what follows by their combination of delicacy with intense feeling. There is no question here, as there is for example in Arianna, of a simple tune declining into triviality. ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’, a lament with only continuo accompaniment, anticipates Gluck in its use of the major mode to express longing and loss (compare ‘Che farò senza Eurydice’ and ‘O malheureuse Iphigénie’). The source libretto has a four-line text with da capo; Handel omits the second couplet but preserves the form by using secco recitative for the B section and repeating the cavatina, thus carrying the action forward while stressing the firmness of Tirinto’s love. The all-pervasive rising sixth at the start and the constantly changing phrase-lengths give the piece its distinctive tinta and the written-out repeat is crowned by a delicious little coda in which the violins enter for the first time and elevate to the treble a figure hitherto the property of the bass. ‘Se potessero’ extends and develops the same mood, still in the major mode. Indeed all the music of this intensely emotional character, the trio apart, is in major keys. Handel could not resist using again the lovely melody he had evolved for David’s ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless’ in Saul.10 Key and harmonic outline, F major with touches of the subdominant, are the same, but the material is developed more fully here. Eloquent divisions heard first on the violins in the ritornello are taken over by the voice and return to crown the yearning B section, serving at once as structural link and opportunity for vocal elaboration. Rising sevenths and octaves as well as sixths distinguish the vocal line, interwoven string parts within a narrow compass give warmth to the texture, and another delicious coda, a mere two bars, closes the A section. In ‘Mi chiederesti’ Tirinto is still sure of his ground in refusing to give up Rosmene. The aria has many neat touches, a cocky little tune, occasional expansion of the unison violin accompaniment into two parts, and interrupted cadences like a catch in the throat that extend the three ritornellos, each to a different length. Not till the third scene of Act II does Tirinto smell a rat; then his incipient jealousy blazes forth in the magnificent C major bravura aria ‘Sorge nell’alma’, with one of those climbing arpeggio-based melodies, accompanied by continuous buzzing strings, that seem to sweep all before them like a tidal wave (the aria with which Berenice ends Act II of Scipione is another prime example). The unobtrusive opening on upper strings, with the basses withheld till the seventh bar, suggests the slow rise of Tirinto’s anger, a hint of distant thunder perhaps before the storm breaks. It blazes anew when the A section, after reaching the dominant and glancing into C minor, plunges with thrilling effect into E major for the second statement of the text before working its way back via F major and G minor. The buzzing strings bring to mind ‘Why do the nations?’ in the same key and with a similar rising arpeggio theme for the voice,   This satisfying design was not achieved at once. The 1740 recitative is Chrysander’s C, a mere five bars; earlier versions were much longer. 10  For its evolution see the Note on Borrowings at the end of this chapter.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 454

06/10/2006 14:53:01



Imeneo

455

not the only prognostication of Messiah in the score of Imeneo. Dent found this aria ‘quite unlike Handel’, citing a Vinci-type cadence in the middle of the A section. The Vinci resemblance is unquestionable, but Handel had incorporated this element into his style some years earlier, for example in the arias for Carestini in 1734–5, and had been familiar with it as early as 1725, when he performed Vinci’s music in the pasticcio Elpidia. Tirinto’s next aria, ‘Pieno il core’ (Chrysander’s Version B), another impassioned outburst though in a slow tempo, is equally impressive (Ex. 72). The three ideas of the ritornello supply the material for the entire aria, and the friction between them as they are variously contrasted and combined in a cleverly wrought and surprisingly sonorous texture without the assistance of any instrument other than violins and basses, develops immense power. The opening figure (a) recalls ‘Qual portento’, Ruggiero’s response to the magic transformation of the landscape in Act II of Alcina (see Ex. 52); (b) punctuates almost every bar, sometimes inverted or extended into scales in either direction, as at the climax of the A section. Here the voice part, whose long phrases, cunningly varied in length, have hitherto tended to droop, suddenly rises in great leaps before collapsing into a contracted version of the ritornello (Ex. 73). The B section seems to relax, but only for two bars. Figure (b) then returns accompanied by fragments of (a), and the voice scuttles back to the da capo by way of an outburst of semiquavers on the word ‘saetta’ (arrow) and a faint reference to the A section climax. The aria strikes like the crack of doom on the lover threatened by the loss of his beloved. After this Tirinto has only the jaunty little arioso ‘Se la mia pace’, shared with Imeneo in turn and together. The temperature veers back to witty comedy, in sharp contrast to what comes before and after. Tirinto’s silence when the blow falls is more eloquent than a protest.

Imeneo by contrast is a cold fish. His identification with the god of marriage is nowhere mentioned, not surprisingly, for his conduct hardly shows him in the favourable light appropriate to a god (not that the Greek gods always behaved like gentlemen). He kills the pirates in their sleep, and induces Rosmene to break her engagement by means amounting almost to moral blackmail. The English Argument accuses him

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 455

06/10/2006 14:53:01

456

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

bluntly of fraud (though the word is not in the Italian original) and concludes by saying that he and Rosmene lived happily ever after; that presumably was de rigueur in the Naples serenata in honour of a wedding. Handel’s conclusion however leaves a question mark in the listener’s mind. He puts Imeneo in his place by reducing his ration from four arias to two as against six each for Tirinto and Rosmene. Neither of Imeneo’s arias probes far below the surface, and both are marked by a conspicuous lack of passion, though he is presented as a lover. ‘Esser mia dovrà la bella’, adorned like Rosmene’s Act I aria with ironical echoes, as if the violins are mocking his complacency, is the more distinguished, thanks to the rhythmic bite of the opening and unsymmetrical phrase-lengths that repeatedly deceive the ear. Nothing could be more sententious than ‘Chi scherza colle rose’, and Handel slyly underlines the point by having him repeat phrases like a pedantic schoolmaster (bars 20–1, 23–4, 28–9, 44–5). Perhaps he also suggests a certain lack of imagination by accompanying him only with violins at the octave and silencing the basses for long stretches, including the entire B section. Clomiri is clearly very young;11 Rosmene in II.ii speaks to her as an elder sister. Too shy to confess her love for Imeneo openly, she pretends to plead on behalf of another, and only in Act III admits the truth. Imeneo of course is not interested. All three of her arias have great charm, but none has anything approaching the passion of Tirinto’s: she will soon recover from her weakness for Imeneo. The texture, especially of the first two, is light and transparent. The pretty dancing melody and simple triplet roulades of ‘V’è un infelice’, with only a solo cello (pianissimo) on the bass line, give an enchanting sketch of the naive young girl. The double bass is again silenced in ‘È si vaga’ (HG version B), which has a neat turn to the tonic minor on the second line of text. In ‘Se ricordar’ (HG version B) Clomiri speaks in her own person. The principal melody is rather prim in its three-bar phrases, but there is more feeling in the B section with its sustained string chords and suspensions, and the voice part is 11  But see below, p. 462.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 456

06/10/2006 14:53:02



Imeneo

457

more showy. In Clomiri’s last two arias Handel in the performing score crossed out most of the violin part while the voice is singing (as indicated in HG), probably just before performance. Miss Edwards evidently had a very light voice. Argenio has little to do except play the heavy father. His two arias however are splendid. The placing of ‘Di cieca notte’ so soon after the rejoicings at the captives’ rescue, where it casts a sudden chill over the proceedings, is arguably a miscalculation. A warning against jealousy would come more suitably later in the action, and that is where Stampiglia placed it and where Handel originally set it, for Imeneo in Act III after Clomiri’s ‘Se ricordar’ as he tries to warn Tirinto off. For modern ears it has a special resonance as the model for ‘The people that walked in darkness’ in Messiah, sharing the same sombre key of B minor, the same hollow octaves (symbolising darkness) and many of the same progressions, but in a different metre. The Imeneo aria is if anything the darker of the two; its octaves are more relentless, and the dislocated rhythm of the long division on the word ‘fa’ suggests disorientation, throwing into relief the four-part harmony of the A section coda. ‘Sull’arena’ is equally impressive. The scoring, in two parts almost throughout, looks thin on paper, but the sonorous unison of all the upper strings, combined with the quasi-canonic entries of the ubiquitous main theme, spaced at one, two or three-bar intervals, produces an effect of surprising richness, set against the varying rhythms of the voice part. The nearest parallel perhaps is Mathan’s aria ‘Hark, his thunders round me roll’ in Act III of Athalia. The almost continuous semiquaver figuration may have been suggested by the image of the lion stalking into the arena, but the music transcends the image. The voice’s (optional) two-octave drop at the A section cadences casts the mind back to Lucifer in La Resurrezione. The early copies and the Walsh Songs imply that Reinhold took the low F. The chorus of Athenians plays no part in the action (they are never mentioned in the stage directions and could even have sung from the wings) but adds variety to the score and helps to place the personal conflict in a moral framework, allowing Handel his own comment on the proceedings. All three of its contributions, as so often in Handel’s shorter choruses, are based on dance rhythms. The Act I bourrée ‘Viva Imeneo’ with its bounding melody combined with a little simple counterpoint, perfectly expresses the general relief at the rescue of the prisoners after the apprehensive tension of the first scene. Handel uses it three times to bind the Act together and give it perspective; the Athenians are more concerned for their daughters’ safety than with their affairs of the heart. ‘È troppo bel trofeo’, a serious and wholly homophonic gavotte, links up with the trio to produce a sombre finale to Act II, at once a prophecy and a recall to duty. The stiff sequences and repetitions embody the complacency of the stern moralist. The finale is a minuet triste, again homophonic. The minor key, in conjunction with that of ‘È troppo bel trofeo’, confirms Handel’s comment on the personal sufferings that may be involved in submission to the call of duty. Imeneo has a fine overture. The G major introduction boasts a strong climbing theme and a memorable plunge from the dominant to a diminished seventh on G sharp. The muscular Allegro is more strictly fugal than usual. The tonality of the Minuet, beginning sempre piano in the tonic minor, moving in the second half to

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 457

06/10/2006 14:53:02

458

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

B flat and ending forte in G major, prefigures the equivocal tone of the opera. It is a simple but effective device. Handel evidently had a very small orchestra consisting only of oboes, strings and continuo with no doubt a bassoon or two, though that instrument is never mentioned in the sources. (The rejected aria ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’ has two treble recorders, which would have been played by the oboists.) The airy texture suits the subject as well as the inexperience of at least two of the singers. Frequent doubling of voice and violins, a bass line sometimes reduced to a single cello, and an unusual amount of one-part writing, point in the same direction. The oboes, always in unison except perhaps in the overture’s fugue, are given little to do and are never independent. They should double the first violins in the ritornellos of ‘Ingrata mai’ and ‘Semplicetta’; in both arias Handel’s single mention of violins at the start of the second treble stave, which would normally mean that oboes play elsewhere in the movement, is almost certainly a slip; it is never repeated at corresponding points later. The oboes should be silent in ‘Se ricordar’ where early sources specify strings only. Handel included them in the first setting of ‘V’è un infelice’ but not in the version that he performed. The 1740 key scheme is not entirely clear owing to numerous transpositions indicated in the sources, especially the performing score. Earlier plans were nullified by changes in the intended casts. Act I is firmly located in G major, the key of the overture, first aria, all three choruses and possibly the last two arias. The opera ends in its relative minor after more emphasis on G in the repeated ‘Se la mia pace’. Act II at first was tonally balanced, with a D minor sinfonia at the start as well as a substantial chunk of D minor at the end, but Handel later transferred the sinfonia to Deidamia.

History and Text For all its apparent simplicity Imeneo’s gestation was long and complex. More than one explanation is possible for its difficult birth. Donald Burrows has suggested that Handel wished to have an opera on a suitable subject available to celebrate the possible wedding of one of George II’s eligible daughters; he had had to compose Atalanta in a hurry and mount a special spring season in honour of the Prince of Wales’s marriage in May 1736. What seems certain is that the successive drafts of Imeneo were composed at least in part for different casts, and that this, in conjunction with Handel’s economical habit of employing discarded music in fresh contexts and thus putting it out of commission, was responsible for the multiplicity and confusion of the versions. Handel began the score on 9 September 1738 (date on first version of the overture) in the middle of composing Saul. A visit from Charles Jennens, the librettist of Saul, on the 18th resulted in heavy revisions of that score, which Handel completed on the 27th. Meanwhile he had continued to work on Imeneo, dating his incomplete first draft, which contained no recitatives or choruses, 14 September at the end of Act I, 17 September after Act II, and 20 September after Act III, leaving space for an unwritten final chorus. There was some sharing of material between Saul and Imeneo (see the note on borrowings at the end of this chapter). He probably stopped

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 458

06/10/2006 14:53:02



Imeneo

459

at this point, seeing no immediate prospect of performance, since Heidegger had cancelled the projected 1738/39 opera season. Instead he turned to oratorio and gave the first performances of Saul and Israel in Eg ypt. It seems to have been the arrival of Costanza Posterla and her daughter on 19 April 1739 that led him to announce a return to opera after Easter (but see Chapter 22, p. 396). For whatever reason his planned production of Imeneo did not take place. Carestini, if he was approached, did not oblige, and the Posterlas soon departed, leaving Handel’s second draft wingless. During the following year he made further attempts to revise and complete Imeneo,12 and finally succeeded, dating the final chorus 10 October at the end of the original draft. On 15 November 1740, a week before the first night, Anne Donellan wrote to Elizabeth Robinson: ‘Handel next week has a new opera, which those who have heard the rehearsal say is very pretty. Tell Pen the “Lion Song” is in it.’ Handel must have played ‘Sull’arena’ to Mrs Pendarves privately. He gave the first performance (‘an Operetta, call’d Hymen’) at the Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 22 November, with the following cast: rosmene Elisabeth Duparc, La Francesina (soprano) tirinto Giovanni Battista Andreoni (mezzo-soprano castrato) clomiri Miss Edwards13 (soprano) imeneo William Savage (bass) argenio Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) On the same evening Thomas Harris wrote to his brother James: ‘I have just now bin at Mr. Handel’s operetta, at which were the King and all the St. James’s royall family and a very good house. I don’t think it mett with the applause it deserves, as I think there are a great many good songs in it ... Almost all our musical friends were there, and are all well; but some of us wish again for oratorio’s.’14 A second performance a week later was postponed when Francesina was taken ill, and finally took place ‘by Command of the Prince of Wales’ on 13 December, when the announcement added that ‘Strict Orders have been given for Fires to be kept in the House to make 12  Roberts (‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’) suggests that in the autumn Handel planned to perform Imeneo as a serenata in English, and reverted to Stampiglia’s two-part design. He certainly contemplated an English version at some stage. He scribbled the first words of an English translation over the voice’s opening bars in ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’ and ‘La beltà che t’innamora’ on fols 1 and 7 of the main autograph. They are difficult to read, but appear to be ‘Ah, Rosmene, thy absence ... who can tell?’ and ‘Soon the fair for whom you languish’. He is unlikely to have done this for Dublin, since he had used up ‘La beltà’ in Il Moderato in January 1740. 13  Her first name is not known (but see Biographical Dictionary). She subsequently married the actor Thomas Mozeen. According to Jennens in a letter to James Harris (5 December 1741) she accompanied Handel to Dublin in 1741; if so, she was back in London by March 1742. Savage, a late substitute, had sung small treble, alto and tenor parts in Handel’s operas and oratorios, but not previously as a bass. 14  Burrows and Dunhill, 108.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 459

06/10/2006 14:53:02

460

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

it warm’. In another letter15 to James Harris (29 December) Jennens was far from warm: ‘We have had nothing new yet but the Operetta of Hymen, in my opinion the worst of all Handel’s Compositions, yet half the Songs are good.’ Jennens, who was deficient in humour, evidently disliked the tone of the opera. Although he reported that according to the music publisher John Walsh ‘Hymen will be reviv’d, with a new part in it for Monsa [sic], who was not in it before’, London would have to wait till 1972 for its next appearance on its boards. Handel did however revive it in radically altered form on his visit to Dublin. Announced as ‘a new Serenata’, it was planned for 10 March 1742 but twice postponed owing to Mrs Cibber’s sudden illness. It was finally performed, in concert form in Italian ‘with Concertos on the Organ and other Instruments’, in the New Musick-Hall in Fishamble Street on 24 March and repeated on the 31st. The cast is not documented, but Mrs. Cibber certainly sang Tirinto’s part and Cristina Avoglio probably Rosmene’s. Imeneo reverted to a tenor, as in Handel’s first two drafts, but not to identical music. He was probably sung by one Calloghan or Callaghan, whose name appears in the performing scores of Esther and Alexander’s Feast, which Handel performed in Dublin in spring 1742.16 Clomiri was cut down to a few bars of recitative. Full details are listed below, but one point needs special emphasis because it has affected many modern revivals. While undermining both plot and characters, the Dublin changes had a more subtle effect; by introducing two love duets for Rosmene and Tirinto, ‘Vado e vivo’, a slightly different version of a duet in Faramondo at the end of Act I and ‘Per le porte del tormento’ from Sosarme immediately before the final chorus, Handel subverted the nature of the opera, turning a wry comedy into a personal tragedy. Rosmene is now as much in love with Tirinto as he with her. The first duet suggests as much; in the second, a movement of haunting beauty, they accept their fate with breaking hearts before parting for ever. From one angle this duet fits like a glove. Was it recalled to Handel’s memory by its tonal aptness (E major yielding to the E minor of the chorus), all the more moving for the juxtaposition? By a perhaps subconscious association between the couplet ‘Non v’è rose senza spine/ Ne piacer senza martir’ and Imeneo’s ‘Chi scherza colle rose’, establishing a further ironical link? Or was Handel so much in thrall to Tirinto’s suffering that he piled on the agony? In view of his casual treatment of the rest of the score it seems unlikely that he rethought it from the beginning. Had he revived it later in London we might have known more. The convention whereby the castrato must take part in the final duet, a serious handicap in Deidamia, works brilliantly here. Anthony Lewis’s solution, to combine the Dublin duets with the bulk of the 1740 score, though inauthentic, proved very moving in the theatre. The Dublin performances were evidently popular. At a benefit concert for Cecilia Arne at the same venue on 21 July Mrs Cibber sang ‘Chi scherza colle rose’ and ‘Un guardo solo’ (originally in Deidamia), and the two duets with Mrs Arne. The concert was received ‘with so great an Applause, that the whole Company [audience] desired it might be performed again next Wednesday’ (the 18th). 15  Ibid., 110. 16  D. Burrows, ‘Handel’s Dublin Performances’, Irish Musical Studies, ed. P. F. Devine and H. White (Dublin, 1996). Deutsch does not mention him.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 460

06/10/2006 14:53:03



Imeneo

461

Imeneo then slept for more than two centuries. The first modern productions were at Halle in 1960, in a version by Waldtraut Lewin and Kurt Hübenthal hamstrung by wrong attributions in Chrysander’s edition, and Birmingham in 1961 in Lewis’s arrangement. Some twenty later productions, chiefly in Germany and the United States, have been based on one or other of those versions, but London in 1984 and Karlsruhe in 1989 restored the 1740 score, reconstructed by Anthony Hicks. Imeneo has since reached Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Wellington (New Zealand). The best of several commercial recordings and the only one to follow Handel’s 1740 performing version, conducted by Andreas Spering, was issued by CRO in 2004.

Autograph The autograph (RM 20 b 5) presents a baffling aspect. It is incomplete, and its arrangement is chaotic. Some arias appear in two or three settings, others not at all. The voice range of the characters is not consistent. Some recitatives have words but no music; others have music but only an occasional word of text; elsewhere blank staves appear where a recitative is due. John Roberts was the first to demonstrate that there must have been an intermediate draft or drafts to account for the removal at different stages of material used in other works, and the performing score shows that further changes were made in 1740 up till the eve of the first performance. Paper with the watermark B 140, not used in 1738 though still available in 1740, helps to identify the 1739 additions. During these three years the personnel of Handel’s company changed more than once. Casts planned in the 1738 and 1739 drafts can only be conjectured, but at least three of the five parts, Imeneo, Tirinto and Clomiri, were taken in 1740 by singers different from those envisaged earlier. Imeneo, a tenor in 1738 and 1739, became a bass at a very late stage in 1740. Andreoni, who sang Tirinto in 1740, was not in London in 1738, nor was Caffarelli, Handel’s castrato in the previous season. Andreoni arrived in late 1739 but sang with Carestini in Lord Middlesex’s rival company at the Little Haymarket till May 1740. The likeliest candidate for Tirinto in 1738 is Maria Antonia Marchesini (La Lucchesina), a mezzo-soprano who had taken a male part in Serse and was in London until at least late spring 1739 (see Chapter 22). Her compass elsewhere in Handel was a’–g’’, but in bars 59–63 of ‘Sorge nell’alma’ Tirinto has a single a’’ at the top of a sequential passage. However, as pointed out by Roberts,17 in the 1738 autograph Handel undermined the sequence in order to avoid the a’’ (Ex. 74a). Later he extended it to its natural climax (Ex. 74b), then vacillated between the two before finally settling on the latter. A possible solution is that he wrote it for Marchesini (1738), raised it for Carestini (March or early April 1739), lowered it for Posterla, whose voice (to judge from their parts in Jupiter in Argos) was lower than her daughter’s (late April) and raised it again for Andreoni (1740). Rosmene was probably assigned to Francesina from the start, Imeneo to Beard until shortly before the 1740 performance, and Argenio to Waltz or Reinhold.

17  ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, 342.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 461

06/10/2006 14:53:03

462

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The part of Clomiri merits special consideration. The texts of her three arias are quite straightforward, yet all survive in at least three different versions. Why did Handel take (or have) so much trouble over this simple part? Two explanations suggest themselves. First, the 1738, 1739 and 1740 versions were undoubtedly conceived for three, perhaps four different singers, a high soprano with a compass of f ’–b b’’ (?Mrs Arne) in 1738, a lower voice (c#’–g’’, probably Posterla junior) in 1739, and a light soprano (e’–a’’) in 1740. Edwards may not have been Handel’s first choice in 1740. Clomiri’s first two arias were transposed down and then up at a late stage, and Handel in the performing score added higher alternatives in her recitatives throughout the opera, probably for Edwards. Secondly, his conception of the character changed. He could after all have simply transposed her arias, as he did with Imeneo’s. In 1738 and 1739 Clomiri is a more mature woman than the adolescent girl of 1740 and more deeply involved with Imeneo. In 1738 she has two arias in minor keys, including the plangent C minor siciliano ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’ (later discarded), an appeal to the breezes to forward her love. In the 1738 ‘È si vaga’ (A minor, HG version A, p. 56) as she pretends to congratulate Imeneo on behalf of his fictitious admirer, the short abrupt phrases and agitated rhythms betray her true feelings. The difference is most apparent in ‘V’è un infelice’: a change from B flat in 1738 to A minor (coloured by the word ‘infelice’) in 1739, but a chirpy G major reworking of the B flat version in 1740 (transposed to F for performance), rendered more skittish by late amendments to the performing score. Handel’s ear was particularly acute in such niceties of characterisation. Clomiri in 1740 is not giving too much thought to the supposititious girl she claims to represent; she is not far off flirting with Imeneo. On beginning work in 1738 Handel seems to have considered retaining Stampiglia’s division into two parts, for he numbered the scenes continuously throughout the first two acts and headed Act III Parte 2da , but he soon changed his mind and added dates at the end of each act. He composed even more rapidly than usual, reaching the point where he stopped in the last scene in twelve days, though this of course was a first draft without recitatives. Subsequently he made many changes to the recitatives, words and music, at all stages, cutting, expanding, switching from scene to scene and sometimes from character to character. They are far too numerous and confusing to be detailed here, but can be found in the HHA edition.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 462

06/10/2006 14:53:03



Imeneo

463

The 1738 Draft (HHA Appendix II, 177–236) The manuscript was made up as follows: RM 20 g 11, fols 122–4 (first version of overture); RM 20 b 5, fols 1–2; Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258, pp. 15–18 (‘Se potessero’);18 lacuna; RM 20 b 5, fols 12–14, 20, 16–17, 22–35, 37–8, 40–4, 47–51, 10, 8–9; lacuna, partly filled by Fitzwilliam Mus. MS 258, pp. 29–32 (‘Se d’amore amanti siete’); RM 20 b 5, fols 56–62 recto. 62 verso and 63 were left blank. Handel wrote no music for the recitatives, and the full verbal text with clefs and characters’ names (tenor for Imeneo) only in the first scene of Act I and in Act III after the opening scene. Elsewhere he left blanks to be filled in later. He had followed this policy in the first Act of Poro and much of Alcina, presumably because the recitative text had not been finally settled. The overture had a different introduction, a different Minuet in G major throughout, and a thirteen-bar Lentement between the Allegro and the Minuet. Handel probably replaced the introduction because he had used it as the basis of the opening of the concerto Op. 6 no. 1, but he retained the Allegro despite having used it, transposed but otherwise unchanged, in Op. 6 no. 9. (This concerto included yet another version of the Minuet.) Act I began with ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’ as a cavatina without repeat or instrumental coda. A lacuna occupied later by ‘Cieca notte’ may have been filled by a lost setting for Argenio of ‘La beltà che t’innamora’ (see below). ‘Ingrata mai’ and ‘Mi chiederesti’ were followed by the first setting of ‘V’è un infelice’, Andante larghetto in B flat. These last two arias were originally much longer. ‘Esser mia dovrà’ is for tenor in A and ended the Act. Act II began with the D minor sinfonia later transferred to Act II of Deidamia. ‘Sull’arena’ was followed by ‘Semplicetta’ in a much more extended form than that printed in HG. Handel cut it severely, first in ink probably in 1738, then by thirty bars in pencil, almost certainly in 1740 to remove passages used in the third movement of Op. 6 no. 5. He had two shots at ‘Sorge nell’alma’, both in C major on the same material. The first, of which only the initial page survives with the instrumental parts not quite complete, had a different text, beginning ‘Sorge tal-’. The second greatly strengthens the rhythms of the ritornello. The first setting of ‘È si vaga’, Andante 18  There is some doubt about the date of this aria. According to Burrows and Ronish the paper of the autograph has a rare watermark (B 130) not otherwise found in the Imeneo music and identified elsewhere only in part of the F major trio sonata Op. 5 no. 6, which shares a movement with the organ concerto in the same key (HWV 295), completed on 2 April 1739. Handel may have added ‘Se potessero’ to the score about that time or a little earlier. In HHA (273), however, Burrows locates it in the first gathering, presumably with watermark C 50. Handel adapted it for Jupiter in Argos (completed on 24 April) with a new text and some pencil changes to the autograph, and wrote out the modified voice part on Fitzwilliam 262, p. 59. It was not included in Smith’s copy of Act I of the performing score. Probably in 1740 Handel considered restoring it to Imeneo in a new context (II.iii) in place of ‘Sorge nell’alma’; a cancelled note on fol. 30 of the autograph mentions both Imeneo and Jupiter texts and appears to indicate that the music should be taken from Jupiter and the words from Imeneo. Shortly before performance it was restored to its original place, but with the voice part again modified and showing traces of the Jupiter version, perhaps because the original autograph had been temporarily mislaid. In that form it reached the performing score and HG.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 463

06/10/2006 14:53:03

464

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

(originally Allegro) 3/4 A minor (HG 56) supplied material for the fourth movement of Op. 6 no. 4, probably the reason why Handel reset the aria to entirely different music before performance. ‘Chi scherza’ is in F for tenor (HG 64), and the trio has Imeneo’s part for tenor but taking the lower alternatives on HG 69–70. This ends the act. In Act III ‘In mezzo a voi dui’ was followed by subsequently rewritten settings of ‘Pieno il core’ (HG 80) and ‘Se ricordar ten vuoi’, Andante B flat (HG 85). This aria was bound in Act I of the autograph because it is physically joined to ‘Di cieca notte’, which was composed in D minor for Imeneo (tenor) in this scene. At this point there is a gap in the autograph material probably filled in part by an aria for Clomiri in Fitzwilliam 258: ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’, Andante 12/8 C minor with two recorders, their sole appearance in Imeneo (HHA 220). It may have been a substitute for ‘Se in vece del tuo core’, Clomiri’s aria at this point in Stampiglia’s libretto, after which Imeneo and Tirinto in turn address an aria to Rosmene, who interrupts and goes out. The lovers react identically with ‘Se la mia pace’, a four-line da capo aria in Stampiglia. Apart from reducing ‘Se la mia pace’ to its initial couplet, Handel must have set all of this, but only the last fifteen bars of Tirinto’s interrupted aria (‘È come l’armellino’, Larghetto 12/8 B minor) survive (HHA 231). His ‘Se la mia pace’ is already in G major, but the duet version is in A with tenor Imeneo. In the final scene Stampiglia’s libretto contains two passages of recitative, seven lines for Rosmene beginning ‘Guardo in grembo del nave’ before ‘Io son quella navicella’, and a dozen lines prolonging the final recitative and ending the opera with everyone exclaiming ‘Viva Imeneo, viva Rosmene’. Handel copied all this into the autograph but did not set either passage and subsequently crossed out both. He had laid out the former for an accompagnato. One motive for the suppression, and that of ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’ and the parallel arias ending with ‘Se la mia pace’, may have been to tighten up the climax of the drama. But the extension of the last recitative, in which Tirinto meekly shakes hands with Imeneo, who observes that if Tirinto and Clomiri were not so pig-headed they would marry, though doubtless acceptable in a wedding serenata, would have disastrously undercut Handel’s conception of Tirinto’s character and the opera as a whole. He can hardly have intended to end without a formal coro, but after the recitative and six empty staves he wrote Fine dell’Opera den 20 September 1738 at the bottom of fol. 62 recto, leaving the verso and fol. 63 blank.

The (April) 1739 Draft (HHA Appendix III, 239–262) Handel’s principal objectives in this draft were to compose the recitatives and rewrite Clomiri’s part for a new singer, probably Posterla junior. The inserted leaves are RM 20 g 11, fol. 125;19 RM 20 b 5, fols 7, 11, 15, 21, 36, 39; and Fitzwilliam 258, pp. 25–7, but many changes, additions, transpositions and reorderings are indicated on the 1738 draft, including recitatives in the blank spaces Handel had left for them. He 19  So Burrows and Ronish with a different watermark (C 40) from fols 122–4 (C50); but in HHA (273) Burrows gives 125 as conjunct with 122.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 464

06/10/2006 14:53:03



Imeneo

465

evidently composed them in a hurry, for in the first two Acts he wrote only the music and a few key words of text. Since some of them were changed later, his intentions at this point are not always clear. The overture’s G minor–major Minuet was probably composed at this stage. ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’ assumed its ultimate form as a da capo aria with recitative B section, though not the recitative eventually placed there. At some point Handel seems to have considered turning it into a dal segno aria by omitting the da capo ritornello. He composed a new aria, ‘La beltà che t’innamora’, Andante 3/4 F major, for Argenio in I.ii. An earlier setting of this may have filled the 1738 lacuna; the words are Stampiglia’s, and Handel is more likely to have kept them from the beginning than gone back to them after using another text. He may have considered beginning Act III with the D minor sinfonia eventually used in Deidamia; he wrote (and cancelled) a cue for it at the end of Act II, where it makes no sense, unless he was treating the last two Acts as one. This would support Roberts’s contention that Handel reverted to Porpora’s two-part form in 1739. All three of Clomiri’s arias received new settings. The cue for ‘V’è un infelice’ in A minor at the bottom of fol. 15 appears to be marked ‘the Boy’. Did Handel seriously consider having Clomiri sung by a boy? It seems unlikely; but he may have meant to use the aria in another context. The new ‘È si vaga’, Andante 6/8 (originally 3/8) G major (HG 58) was heavily revised and marked for transposition to A but subsequently rewritten. The second setting of ‘Se ricordar’, in A major without opening ritornello (Fitzwilliam 258, pp. 25–7), is related to the first, though the main theme is new. Handel prepared staves for a four-part accompaniment, but only voice and bass are complete, with occasional entries for violins. This seems to be the point at which he ceased work in 1739, presumably because hope for an early production had been abandoned. A likely reason is that he no longer had a singer for Tirinto. It was only when Lord Middlesex’s failure to raise a subscription for the 1740/41 season released Andreoni that Handel returned seriously to Imeneo.

Changes in 1740 Autograph material: Fitzwilliam 258, p. 13; RM 20 b 5, fols 3–6, 18–19, 45–6, 52–5; Fitzwilliam 258, p. 34 (recitative HG 10, Version C). Handel’s 1740 changes were made in two or more stages. The most radical was the insertion of choruses, the Act III finale on pages left blank at the end of the 1738 draft. An abandoned opening for ‘Vien Imeneo’ survives on fol. 3 of the autograph. The overture received a new introduction, ‘Pieno il core’ a new setting (HG 82, HHA 95). ‘Se potessero’ reverted to its original place after passing through Jupiter in Argos and lodging in Act II of Imeneo. ‘Di cieca notte’ was transposed to B minor for Argenio and shifted from Act III to Act I. At some time in 1740 Handel thought of transferring ‘La beltà che t’innamora’ to II.ii in place of ‘Sull’arena’ (where it would have required a new text), but cancelled his note in the autograph. He sketched the start of a new setting (ten bars of the voice part without words) at the bottom of fol.11 recto, no doubt after adapting the original setting for Il Moderato in January. At a very

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 465

06/10/2006 14:53:03

466

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

late stage Beard became unavailable.20 Handel recast Imeneo’s part for bass (he was still a tenor when the Act I choruses were copied). This involved much rewriting and changes of clefs, in autograph and performing score. Handel now added the recitatives of Act III on the skeleton prepared in 1738, changing Imeneo’s clef. Once more Clomiri’s three arias were recomposed. The third ‘V’è un infelice’ (HHA 265), Andante 3/8 G major, altered to Larghetto 3/4, with a note in autograph and performing score specifying transposition to F but contradicted in the latter by come sta, had a less exuberant voice part than that printed in HG. The third ‘È si vaga’ (version B, HG 58, HHA 74), Andante 3/8 A major in the autograph, on similar material to the second, was copied in the performing score in G (and so printed by Walsh) but then marked ex A. Handel seems to have been in more than one mind about the close of the B section; the copies and Walsh give divergent readings in the last eleven bars. Most of the doubling violin part in both sections of the aria is crossed out in the autograph and performing score, perhaps so as not to cover Miss Edwards’s light voice. The third ‘Se ricordar’ (HG 87, HHA 100) retains the key of the second and uses material from both earlier settings. Again most of the violin part is crossed out, this time in the performing score only. The various transpositions may have been due to Handel’s unfamiliarity with Miss Edwards’s voice or to her late engagement after Handel had written the part for another singer with a lower compass.

Changes in 1742 (HHA Appendix I, 125–74) It seems best to consider these here, though only the duet ‘Vado e vivo’ had a fresh autograph (Fitzwilliam 258, pp. 19–23).21 The score was drastically cut down and the part of Clomiri almost eliminated; she was left a few bars of recitative in II.ii and III.ult. and could have been sung by one of the chorus – if there was a chorus – or even omitted without damage. The recitatives in I.i and ii, II.i and III.vi and ult., were shortened and those in I.v., II.iii and III.iii and iv omitted altogether, some seventy-five lines in all. Likewise omitted were both repetitions of the Act I chorus, and the arias ‘Mi chiederesti’, ‘V’è un infelice’, ‘Deh! m’ajutate’, ‘Pieno il core’ and ‘Se ricordar’. Act II underwent a weird upheaval. After ‘Semplicetta’ in Scene ii Tirinto sang Clomiri’s part in Scene iv, including ‘È si vaga’ in E major (version C, HG 60, HHA 139); this was followed by ‘Sorge nell’alma’ for Imeneo with the voice down an octave and ‘Chi scherza’ for Tirinto in C major with the voice up a seventh. Mrs Cibber sang ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’ in F, ‘Se potessero’ in E flat, and two or three transposed arias from Deidamia, ‘D’amor ne’ primi istanti’ in E flat in place of ‘Mi chiederesti’,22 ‘Un guardo solo’ in D, with a new eight-bar ritornello after the B section, in the middle of III.vii of the 1740 score (HHA 161), and possibly ‘Due 20  He had scandalised society by marrying the daughter of an earl during the first run of Saul and retired with her to the Continent in early summer 1740. She was said to be heavily in debt. He did not sing in London in 1740 after April. 21  Each of the six autograph fragments in Fitzwilliam 258 has a different watermark. It is not hard to guess how they came to be detached. 22  Originally this aria was included, transposed down to D.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 466

06/10/2006 14:53:04



Imeneo

467

bell’alme’ in E flat at the start of Act II (HHA 136).23 Donald Burrows has suggested that Handel, not having the autograph of Faramondo with him in Dublin, reconstructed ‘Vado e vivo’ from memory. He had already used it in Jupiter in Argos.

Librettos 1740. ‘Imeneo Drama per Musica. Da Rappresentarsi Nel Regio Teatro, di Lincoln’sInn-Fields ... Printed by T. Wood, in Little-Britain; and are to be sold at the Theatre ... [Pr. 1s.]’ 39 pp. Argument in English only. Cast not named, but entered in contemporary MS in National Library of Scotland copy. 1742 Dublin. ‘Hymen, A Serenata Compos’d by Mr. Handel.’ 35 pp. No imprint or date. Cast not named. Argument in English as 1740, but text in both languages. Clomiri’s name is included in many scene headings even when her part is omitted. Besides the cuts and insertions listed above, the repeat of ‘La mia bella perduta Rosmene’ is omitted, but a note by Handel in the performing score implies that it was sung. The English version of the duet ‘Vado e vivo’ is very inaccurate.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/123) is all in Smith’s hand except fol. 111 recto, a modified recitative for 1742 in the last scene in the hand of S4 (Handel must have taken both copyists to Dublin). A great many changes, additions, cancellations and transpositions were entered by Handel himself. Act I, probably copied in spring 1739 when Handel had written most of his second draft, is a bewildering palimpsest, containing more insertions, some superimposed one upon another, than original matter, of which only seventeen folios (3–9, 28–31, 36–8 and 43–5) remain. (Fols 10, 25 and 32–5 and a number of transpositions belong to 1742.) Imeneo’s part was copied for tenor; Handel rewrote his recitatives in the bass clef, but marked ‘Esser mia dovrà’ for transposition from A to G. The overture was copied with its 1738 introduction, which was thus replaced later than the Lentement and Minuet sections. Changes to the recitative cadence before ‘V’è un infelice’ indicate that it was copied in the second (A minor) setting,24 though no trace of this remains. It is replaced by the third setting in G, which was then transformed into a fourth (as HG 35) by means of pasted slips carrying the triplet decorations in bars 29–34, 49–56 and 85–8. The later acts, copied after the 1740 score had been finalised, are more straight­ forward. Except fol. 48 (‘Deh! m’ajutate’) all insertions (fols 49a, 65–70, 95a and 97–100) date from 1742. The Deidamia arias ‘D’amor ne’ primi istanti’ and ‘Un guardo solo’ and the Sosarme duet are included, but not ‘Due bell’alme’ or ‘Vado e vivo’. 23  Handel wrote the opening words as a cue in the performing score. A fragment of a (?discarded) Smith copy (bars 59–69), transposed down a fifth, is accidentally preserved on the last page (fol. 146 verso) of Tenbury 347, the performing score of Messiah. The words are not in the Dublin libretto. 24  Handel at some time changed the previous recitative cadence in the autograph from E major to D minor, which suggests that he intended to restore the B flat setting, but this never reached the performing score.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 467

06/10/2006 14:53:04

468

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Handel added a lead-back ritornello after the B section of ‘Un guardo solo’ on fol. 100. The tempo Allo on the Sosarme duet, which cannot be correct, was written by Smith and accepted by Chrysander. The Shaftesbury and Granville copies are identical in choice of movements but differ in detail. Both give the 1740 version and derive from the performing score before it received the 1742 amendments, and probably date from 1741. Shaftesbury (S2) is perhaps the earlier; it has Imeneo as a bass, except in ‘Esser mia dovrà’ which is in A major for tenor, though introduced by a bass recitative; Granville (S5) also has the aria in A but in the bass clef. Shaftesbury has ‘È si vaga’ in G as HG 58, though it follows a C sharp minor cadence. Granville has it in A. The doubling violin passages in that aria and in ‘Se ricordar’ crossed out by Handel in the performing score and printed in small notes in HG, are omitted in Shaftesbury but present in Granville. Shaftesbury has the lower alternatives in Clomiri’s recitatives, Granville the higher. In ‘Se la mia pace’ both have the lower alternatives for Tirinto; the higher were added in 1740 for Andreoni. The Flower copy (S2, c.1750) is a composite, based principally on the autograph supplemented by occasional raids on the performing score. As well as inconsequent cadence relationships it contains three 1738 versions that Handel rejected – the first settings of ‘V’è un infelice’ (B flat), ‘È si vaga’ (A minor) and ‘Pieno il core’ (HG 80) – and the D minor sinfonia transferred to Deidamia. Imeneo is a tenor as far as Act III, Scene 1, thereafter a bass, as in the amended autograph draft. Clomiri has only the lower notes in her recitatives. S2 copied Handel’s dates from the autograph. RM 18 c 11, fols 167–214 (S2, c.1741) contains copies, figured throughout by Jennens, of the overture, choruses, trio, duet ‘Se la mia pace’, accompagnato ‘Miratela’ and the arias ‘La mia bella’, ‘V’è un infelice’ (final version), ‘Deh! m’ajutate’ and ‘Sorge nell’alma’. These are the items omitted from Walsh’s Favourite Songs, which they were evidently intended to supplement. Two arias, ‘Ingrata mai’ and ‘Al voler’, copied by S4 in RM 19 d 12, likewise date from about 1741. Walsh’s Favourite Songs in the Operetta call’d Hymen, advertised on 18 April 1741, comprise fifteen arias in their eventual keys except that ‘È si vaga’ is in G major as HG 58. A flute arrangement of ten pieces, some transposed, followed ten days later, the overture in eight parts in July 1743 and arranged for harpsichord in December 1743. All the Walsh publications derive from the performing score. The Flower parts (S2, late 1740s) are complete in one sense but very incomplete in another. All survive (violins 1 and 2, viola, cello, oboes 1 and 2, cembalo), but as so often the selection of movements is capricious. The omissions are the overture, the choruses in the first two Acts, all three appearances of ‘Se la mia pace’, and the arias ‘Ingrata mai’, ‘V’è un infelice’, ‘Sorge nell’alma’, ‘In mezzo a voi dui’, ‘Al voler’ and ‘Io son quella navicella’, but the seventeen numbered pieces include Imeneo’s two arias in their tenor versions, both settings of ‘Pieno il core’, and two other rejected pieces, ‘La beltà che t’innamora’ (the cembalo part copiously figured) and the first (A minor) setting of ‘È si vaga’. The two violin parts are among the few sources to give ‘Miratela’ its Adagio tempo mark. Oboes are included only in the trio, where both double the first violins throughout (they should probably be silent except in the ritornellos) and the Act III coro, where both double the soprano line. The cancelled

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 468

06/10/2006 14:53:04



Imeneo

469

passages are included in ‘Se ricordar’, but the sources differ in the interpretation of the string parts owing to compression in the autograph. The Flower Collection also has the two violin parts for ‘Ingrata mai’, copied probably c.1741, in a miscellaneous volume belonging to Jennens’s cousin, Lord Guernsey. Chrysander’s score (1885) leaves the opera in confusion. His Preface claims the performing score as ‘really the reliable original’ but he does not follow it; nor does he print all the autograph material. He seems not to have consulted the Fitzwilliam source. He names two singers for ‘Di cieca notte’, both incorrect, and makes mistakes in the scoring. Anthony Lewis’s vocal score (1980) is practical, but not a guide to Handel’s performances; it mixes material from several versions. Imeneo is a tenor, with his arias in 1738 keys (but not his duet with Tirinto). Two of Clomiri’s arias, but not ‘V’è un infelice’, are in their rejected 1738 settings. The duet ‘Vado e vivo’ was published here for the first time, introduced by a four-bar recitative that appears to be vintage Lewis (words and music). The HHA score edited by Donald Burrows (2002) skilfully disentangles the various versions, but a few details will probably always remain in doubt.

Note on Borrowings The score of Imeneo throws some light on Handel’s borrowing technique. He incorporated material from (a) his own early work (the main theme of the chorus ‘Vien Imeneo’ comes straight from the 1707 chamber duet ‘Che vai pensando’), (b) his recently performed work (Saul),25 (c) the work of another composer (Porpora’s setting of the same libretto), (d) music he had recently composed but either abandoned or saw no immediate prospect of performing. In (a) and (d) he could act with impunity, since no one could make the connection, though the results have proved of great interest to posterity. In (b) and (c) he often took pains to cover his tracks. John Roberts has shown26 that he dipped six times into Porpora’s Imeneo: once in Faramondo (1737), twice in Saul and three times, without change of text, in Imeneo. One of these pursued a devious course from Porpora’s ‘Se potessero’ to Handel’s via David’s ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless’, and then into Jupiter in Argos and back to Imeneo. Handel’s second (A minor) setting of ‘V’è un infelice’ made use of Porpora’s main theme (but Handel never performed this version). In ‘Esser mia dovrà’ however he was careful to conceal the debt.27 Porpora had not only spent several years in London, he had produced a second wedding serenata on the same subject, La festa d’Imeneo, for the Opera of the Nobility in May 1736. Handel did not borrow from it. A parallel situation arises with further Saul borrowings. As already noted, Handel composed the first draft of Imeneo before he had finished with Saul, and there were transferences in both directions, in addition to the migration of ‘Se potessero’ (he must have been so enamoured of the beautiful melody of this aria that he allowed 25  The opening of ‘Se ricordar’ (first and third versions) almost quotes that of ‘Sei cara, sei bella’ in the 1736 cantata ‘Cecilia, volgi un sguardo’ (= ‘Sweet accents’ in ‘Look down, harmonious Saint’), but they soon diverge. 26  ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’. 349ff and Exx. 3–6. 27  See Roberts’s Exx. 3 and 4, ibid.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 469

06/10/2006 14:53:04

470

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

it to stand in both opera and oratorio). The equally lovely sequence ‘In sweetest harmony’ – ‘O fatal day’ in the Saul Elegy draws on two movements in the first draft of Imeneo, the Lent section of the overture and the first setting of ‘Pieno il core’, especially the rapid run up a fourth that pervades the whole aria and the long lingering cadence of its ritornello. When he returned to Imeneo Handel struck out the Lent and rewrote the aria turning the upward into a downward run and removing the cadence figure. (Saul had been before the public so recently that the borrowing might have been recognised, leading to a charge of failing invention.) In addition Rosmene’s ‘In mezzo a voi dui’ almost certainly preceded the aria setting of ‘The time at length is come’,28 a late insertion in Saul, where the word-setting is exceptionally awkward, even taking account of Handel’s occasional eccentricity in that respect. On the other hand ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’ has two antecedents in Saul, ‘Love from such a parent sprung’, an air for Michal in the original draft of Act II, and the first setting of Merab’s ‘Capricious man’ (where the music is utterly at odds with the text), an addition to the same act. In the Imeneo aria Handel yoked the A section of ‘Love from such a parent’ to the B section of ‘Capricious man’. The A sections of both Saul arias are based on the same melody, which recurs, always in C minor and 12/8 time, in the Imeneo aria and in the Siciliana of the Concerto Grosso Op. 6 no. 8. Handel rejected all three of these arias, but there is a half-hidden echo (in D minor) in the aria ‘Già sai che l’usignol’,29 which he performed in Jupiter in Argos. That by no means exhausts the tally of music shared between Imeneo and other works composed during the same period. Having temporarily abandoned the first draft early in 1739, Handel found a billet for three of its arias in Jupiter in Argos; ‘Se potessero’ and the first (B flat) setting of ‘V’è un infelice’ became ‘Nel passar da un laccio’ and ‘Non ingannarmi, cara speranza’ respectively with little change except to the words, and the first (B flat) setting of ‘Se ricordar’ was recomposed as ‘Il braccio al tuo spavento’. Jupiter in Argos in its turn bequeathed ‘Deh! m’ajutate’, up a third from F minor and slightly extended at the end, to Imeneo. In late September and October 1739, with Imeneo still hanging fire, Handel incorporated several items, some of them recomposed, in the Op. 6 concertos: the overture’s introduction in no. 1, the first (A minor) setting of ‘È si vaga’ in no. 4, ‘Semplicetta’ in no. 5, ‘Se d’amore’ in no. 8, and the Allegro and Minuet in the overture (transposed) and a theme from ‘Sorge nell’alma’ (bars 7ff ) in no. 9. The last aria had contributed the same theme to the second movement of the organ concerto in F major (HWV 295), completed on 2 April 1739. Finally ‘La beltà che t’innamora’ was pressed into service, with little change and in the same key, for ‘Come, with native lustre shine’ in Il Moderato ( January 1740), the second (A minor) setting of ‘Se ricordar’ for ‘D’amor ne’ primi istanti’ in Deidamia (October–November 1740) together with the Act II sinfonia, and ‘Di cieca notte’ for ‘The people that walked in darkness’ in Messiah. The Deidamia aria was back in Imeneo in 1742.

28  According to Roberts (Handel Sources, vol. IX, p. xvi) this is based on an aria in Orlandini’s Paride (1720), in which case we have another circuitous borrowing. 29  The autograph of this aria is in Fitzwilliam 258, pp. 87–8.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 470

06/10/2006 14:53:04



ch a pter 26 Deidamia

T

he scene is the Aegean island of Scyros during the Trojan War. Lycomede the King has concealed the young Achille (Achilles) among the women attending his daughter Deidamia to oblige his friend Peleus, Achille’s father, since an oracle has prophesied that Achille will die at Troy. The curtain rises on the Portico of the Palace, near the Sea, with a Throne of Marble. Lycomedes upon the Throne; Ulysses, Phoenix and Nestor, who come ashore. These three have been sent by Agamemnon as ‘Ambassadors of all Greece’ to recover Achille, whom the priest Calchas has declared essential to the capture of Troy. Ulisse, ‘who feigns himself to be Antilochus the son of Nestor’, acts as chief spokesman. He explains the origins of the Trojan War and asks for moral support; Lycomede promises sixty ships. When Ulisse enquires about Achille, Lycomede admits that he came to Scyros but says he returned in the same ship. Ulisse takes this for an excuse and urges the King to remember his Greek nationality and not give aid to the enemy. Fenice (Phoenix), King of Argos, points out that Paris abused the same Greek virtue of hospitality that Lycomede upholds. Lycomede is reluctant to betray his promise to Peleus. In a Gallery with a view of the Country Deidamia, with other noble Virgins at various works (presumably with the needle), reflects on the pleasures of love and asks where Pirra is. Her friend Nerea says she last saw her in pursuit of a hind. Deidamia fears she may have met with some accident, perhaps engineered by Artemis, and sends one of her virgins to fetch her, meanwhile singing a more explicit love song. Nerea comments with some distaste on Pirra’s hatred of their female tasks: ‘at last she’ll turn an Amazon and follow war’. Pirra, who of course is the disguised Achille, enters with a song in praise of hunting and urges them to take some healthy fresh air. Deidamia sends her attendants off to pick flowers and reproaches Achille: his ‘too rough and manly sports’ will give away their love. She begs him to remember their vows. Though resolved to keep faith, he refuses to exclude other pleasures, especially the calls of honour; a bird may often visit his mate, but he keeps his freedom. In a Chamber Deidamia and Nerea discuss the Greek ambassadors and their errand. Fearful of losing Achille, Deidamia asks Nerea to watch Antiloco, whom she sees approaching. Ulisse flatters Deidamia and talks about the war. When Deidamia remarks that Helen ‘does not seem a worthy cause, of weight enough for such a general war’, Ulisse replies that it is a matter of honour; moreover the loss of a wife is a great grief which all men should unite in avenging, since ‘the case may be their own’. Deidamia decides that Achille must be kept away from these crafty Greeks and rejoices ‘in a conceal’d, most sweet, and mutual love’. She contrasts her own wariness with the improvidence of a nightingale that conceals its nest ‘on branches trembling high in air’ [sic] but has not learned that its constant comings and goings give the secret away.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 471

06/10/2006 14:53:04

472

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

Act II. In a Garden Achille sees Deidamia conversing with a warrior whose noble bearing and armour greatly excite him; he hides to listen. Ulisse flatters Deidamia’s beauty: if Paris had landed on Scyros he would never have involved ‘all Greece, and Asia, in a bloody war’. She sees through his repeated protestations of love and fences with him; but Achille has misinterpreted what he heard. He tells her brusquely to go off with her new lover; he will follow her example and find a new mistress. Deidamia is inclined to take his jealousy for a proof of love. Nerea brings news that Lycomede has arranged a hunt in honour of the visitors and wants them to be ‘the huntress Nymphs’. Deidamia fears that Pirra will betray herself. Nerea adds that Fenice has been making advances to her, and suggests that by appearing to respond to Fenice and Antiloco they may distract them from Pirra. Deidamia accepts this strategy, but begins to have fears: what if Achille really means to leave her? Lycomede tells Ulisse that this is wonderful hunting country; he himself is too old to enjoy the sport that was once his supreme pleasure, but heaven has granted him ‘ease and sweet retirement’. The Hunters and Huntresses appear. In a chorus the men compare hunting with war, the women offer love and repose after their exertions. After the Chorus follows a short hunting symphony. The scene changes to a Forest. Fenice, waiting for a stag, gladly grants Nerea’s request to be allowed the first blow. She laughs at his declaration of love, demanding stronger proof than words. Ulisse tells Fenice that an unknown nymph has killed the stag and gone to find another. He is convinced that only ‘young Achilles in a woman’s dress’ could have struck the blow, and that Deidamia loves him. Fenice agrees that love may give her away. Ulisse meets Pirra, pretends to make love to her, and questions her about Deidamia. Pirra’s attitude – that she likes lovers’ courtship, ‘yet none shall have an empire o’er my heart’ – impresses Ulisse, who finds in her ‘a soul above thy sex’. While Deidamia listens aside, Ulisse addresses an allusive aria to each in turn. Deidamia remonstrates with Achille for breaking his promise to avoid the Greeks. He says he could not resist the spectacle of a famous hero making love to him. She bitterly upbraids him for betraying her, but he is not seriously worried and prepares to resume the hunt. Fenice now offers to share the throne of Argos with Pirra. The light-hearted reply, that deer are much more rewarding than love, convinces him that she is no nymph. A distant horn signals the end of the hunt, and the Chorus of Huntsmen and Nymphs acclaim Jove’s decree that rest shall follow toil in hunting as in war. Act III. In a Terrass Walk Nerea twits Fenice’s inconstancy in paying court to Pirra as well as herself and in going to fight at Troy before he has properly won her. He says he must prove himself worthy of her. She feels it would be a mistake to refuse a good offer while it is open. The scene changes to a Gallery. Lycomede, ‘as is his custom, After his food, is now retir’d to sleep’. Ulisse and Fenice, hoping to trap Achille, bring gifts for the ladies. Pirra rejects silks, ribbons and brocades, but is delighted by quiver, bow, shield and helmet. He eagerly takes the helmet and puts it on. Despite Deidamia’s attempts to interfere he seizes and brandishes a twoedged sword. Suddenly trumpets sound as for an assault. Ulisse says a mob is attacking the palace; Achille swears to defend it. Ulisse seizes the chance to tell him of the Greek attack on Troy and its repulse by Hector. Achille at once declares his identity; he will avenge the Greek defeat. Ulisse tries to comfort Deidamia, who curses him:

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 472

06/10/2006 14:53:04

Deidamia

473

may raging tempests prevent his return to Ithaca. He congratulates himself on his cunning, so much more efficacious than brute strength. The scene changes to an Apartment. Lycomede, having hidden Achille out of friendship, now out of patriotism cannot hinder his departure. Deidamia begs forgiveness for having loved Achille. Lycomede replies that he would never have placed him near her had he not thought him worthy of her love. Let them enjoy each other, but only till Achille departs, since he is fated to fall at Troy. Achille finds her sunk in despair. She indignantly rejects him; she prefers Antiloco, who enters at that moment. Achille resigns her to him, but Ulisse, revealing his identity, hopes they will be as happy as himself and Penelope, whom he left for the sake of his country. His reminder that the joys of love are followed by heavy cares brings little consolation to Deidamia. When she tells Achille that death awaits him at Troy he ridicules the oracle, which ‘speaks just what Calchas will’. Fate and fortune are empty names: let them enjoy the present to the full. She begs him to comfort her if he wants her to survive. In the Royal Hall Nerea and Fenice resume their quarrel, she taunting him with ‘politici amori’, he protesting his utter devotion; but when he offers her the throne of Argos she accepts with alacrity. Enter the rest of the Characters. Lycomede calls Ulisse to witness that he has been true both to Peleus and to Greece, and tells him to join the hands of Deidamia and Achille. Ulisse does so in a duet with Deidamia. The chorus bid the lovers make the most of the present; if they are separated, they can always find new partners. The post-Homeric story of Achilles in Scyros was popular with librettists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Settings by Legrenzi and Draghi appeared in 1663, in Ferrara and Vienna respectively, and Metastasio’s version, written for Caldara in 1736, was subsequently set by other composers. The opportunities for transvestist disguise and sexual innuendo had a natural attraction for practitioners of opera seria with its dependence on soprano or alto heroes, and Rolli was not slow to exploit them. If his libretto was based on an earlier (?Venetian) original, it has not been identified; a residue may survive in the mute and superfluous Nestor, who is scarcely needed to lend credibility to Ulisse’s disguise (presumably the latter’s reputation for cunning prevents him appearing under his own colours). Rolli’s source was not Bentivoglio’s libretto for Legrenzi, nor Metastasio, who approaches the subject with his usual high seriousness, nor Gay’s posthumous ballad opera Achilles (1733), which later formed the basis of Arne’s Achilles in Petticoats (1773). In Gay’s version Lycomedes is unaware of Pyrrha’s identity and tries to rape her, with predictable results; Deidamia does not appear till half way through the opera and is pregnant by Achilles, who has been itching to get to Troy from the first and uses the arrival of Ulysses with his gifts (late in Act III) as a convenient means of circumventing his mother’s precautions. Rolli treats the story as a sophisticated ironical comedy which only the sufferings of the heroine redeem from outright cynicism. Apart from Deidamia and her father, none of the characters evinces any emotion beyond a superficial level. Achille is a   There are one or two possible verbal echoes of C. S. Capeci’s Tetide in Sciro, set by ­Domenico Scarlatti (Rome, 1712), but the plots are quite different.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 473

06/10/2006 14:53:05

474

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

thoughtless boy, Ulisse a self-confessed politician, the secondary lovers more than usually conventional. Yet the libretto is a skilful and consistent piece of work, free from involutions of plot and language. Its equivocal tone, seasoned with wit, is never offensive (Gay’s is much coarser). The parallel between hunting and war in Act II is neatly turned and gives some backbone to the plot. The element of parody is not disguised; Achille’s opinion that Calchas faked the oracle, as Dent remarks, would have horrified Metastasio. Levity at the expense of classical and historical figures had of course been a commonplace of Venetian opera; Rolli follows the method of Agrippina in placing them in undignified postures rather than the earlier tradition by which their servants mock them in asides to the audience. He also employs an amusing brand of literary irony by appealing to the audience’s knowledge of future events. Achille’s destiny at Troy is an obvious example; more subtle is the hint that Ulisse’s wanderings on the way back to Ithaca (in fact the entire action of the Odyssey) are the product of Deidamia’s curse. In its compound of flippancy and serious emotion, its ‘off-beat’ flavour and the light bantering tone of most of the dialogue, the libretto seems a natural successor to Serse and Imeneo, and may have been deliberately framed as such. It should have suited Handel down to the ground. Yet Deidamia is a disappointing opera, a sad culmination to his long and glorious career in the theatre. Despite half a dozen beautiful arias a good deal of the music sounds tired, wanting in tension and marred by long stretches of mechanical sequences and accompaniment figures. The notes come spinning out, but the governing brain seems preoccupied, as if Handel, having glimpsed in Saul the measureless possibilities of the dramatic oratorio, found the routine of opera seria more bother than it was worth to transcend. If this is the explanation, we cannot be surprised. But the nature of the plot imposed a technical handicap. There were obvious advantages in casting Achilles for a woman, and Rolli as well as Handel clearly had this in mind from the start. As a result the one castrato in the company had to play Ulisse, who pulls the dramatic strings but is not at any time emotionally involved. This was to battle against the tide of the opera seria convention, in which personal emotion is the driving force of every principal character. A castrato who does not make love (except as a ruse de guerre) is almost unknown, and unique in Handel. But since he is the primo uomo he must have plenty to sing, and his part is padded out of all proportion to his dramatic merits. He is worth two or three arias; he has six, not to mention a duet and a substantial solo in the Act II chorus. No doubt Handel might have overcome this difficulty, as he overcame others as intractable, if his powers had been operating at full stretch; but Ulisse gave him little to bite on, and he failed. The discrepancy is most glaring at the end of the opera, where, as in the final version of Imeneo, a wry coro is preceded by a duet in which one of the newly united pair remains silent. In both operas this unbalancing of the structure corresponds to an ironic twist in the story, even if it was conditioned by the conventional requirement that the primo uomo, though in neither case does he get the girl, must share the limelight with the prima donna. But whereas the climax of Imeneo communicates a dramatic truth, that of Deidamia is lopsided and unsatisfactory. A trio (as in Gay’s Achilles) and a coro with an undercurrent of pathetic emotion, perhaps in a minor key,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 474

06/10/2006 14:53:05

Deidamia

475

could have met all requirements; if there must be a duet, we want to hear Achille, not Ulisse. Nor do most of the other characters seem to have roused in Handel more than a flicker of interest, probably for a similar reason; their feelings seldom penetrate beneath the surface, even when they are not feigned. Deidamia herself is a shining exception. Handel would not be Handel if he failed to respond to a heroine who is suddenly deprived of her lover for political reasons which she cannot be expected to understand. Apart from one aria for Lycomede and one for Ulisse, all the finest music in the opera falls to her. She alone emerges as a full-length portrait, a high-spirited girl in whom misfortune strikes a flame of passion and defiance. As experience harrows her heart, her music assumes an increasing strength and eloquence. When she first appears, destiny is still smiling on the well-camouflaged union with Achille. Handel gives her two consecutive cavatinas in this scene, both with continuo accompaniment, the light touch reflecting the intimate note of contentment. This is underlined in ‘Due bell’alme inamorate’ by the use of the lute with concertino cellos and harpsi­ chord in the continuo (no double bass or bassoons). ‘Ma chi sa’, sung aside, is little more than a heightening of the recitative; but the minor key and changes of tempo (Larghetto – Andante – Adagio – Andante in twenty-two bars) warn us that her heart is engaged. Later, as she waits for Achille, she happily repeats ‘Due bell’alme’, the tempo now Largo instead of Larghetto. The flexible form of this scene looks forward to the arioso of Gluck. In ‘Quando accenderan’ the minor key and an occasional touch in the harmony suggest the dawn of anxiety as Deidamia recalls Achille to his vows; but the ornament is facile. The same is true of ‘Nasconde l’usignolo’, a conventional bird aria in which scale figures serve as a mechanical representation of flight. The music, though effective, is not much more distinguished than Rolli’s natural history. Act II reveals a different Deidamia. Her fears reach full utterance in the poignant and beautiful F sharp minor aria ‘Se il timore’. The bare texture – continuo and unison violins in the first part, continuo alone in the second – is a source of strength rather than a limitation; the division of the violins in the ritornello after the A section, which has no thematic connection with the opening but takes up the suspensions first heard in bars 20–3 and screws them into a concentrated statement of despair, makes an effect out of all proportion to the forces employed (Ex. 75). ‘Va, perfido’ combines charm and subtlety in high degree. The material is not specially striking, but the unpredictable silent bars (with fermata) and sighing Adagios (‘Ah! barbaro!’) evoke most vividly the heartache behind Deidamia’s anger at Achille’s betrayal. This is no spitfire, but a love-sick girl torn by hesitation and anxiety. Dent’s choice of the epithet ‘school-girlish’ is strangely wide of the mark; it would be more applicable to Nerea or even Achille. The most remarkable of Deidamia’s arias is ‘M’hai resa infelice’, in which, shortcircuiting the recitative cadence, she curses Ulisse; it is psychologically apt that she should lash him in far less measured terms than Achille. Here Handel fuses two   Dent arranged the duet as a trio for the Handel Opera Society’s production in 1955.   There is an exact parallel in Act III of Admeto, where in the earliest source Antigona’s ‘Io ti bacio’ is Larghetto when first sung, Largo when repeated (see pp. 43, 61).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 475

06/10/2006 14:53:05

476

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

contrasted strains, one Largo in triple time, the other Allegro in 4/4, not according to the regular da capo formula but in an alternation that prefigures sonata form. There is no development, but the Allegro ‘second subject’ appears first in the relative major and then, after a recapitulation of the Largo, in the tonic. Both restatements are shortened, and the design rounded off with a six-bar instrumental coda. While each theme has character, it is their accommodation to the tonal scheme that gives the aria its potency. Deidamia’s appeal to Achille, ‘Consolami se brami’, in terms prophetic of ‘Every valley’, is tender and touching but avoids the warmth that a more certain future might have evoked. The 12/8 duet with Ulisse, apart from four exquisite bars in common time (Adagio e pianissimo) at the entry of the voices, is verbose and superficial. The gigue-like tune, related to a movement in the G major Water Music, is pretty enough, but the music has no feeling. Perhaps we should not be surprised: how could Deidamia put much into a duet with the man whose trickery has so abridged her happiness? Achille is lightly drawn. He is of course a young boy barely over the threshold of puberty, of the same age-group as Cherubino; he has not outgrown a childish delight in brandishing weapons. Handel is careful not to suggest the headstrong hero he was to become. None of his five arias strikes deep; he knows nothing of the secrets of the human heart. His pleasure is in first sensations, and elementary ones at that. The boyish tone is unmistakable in his very slight entrance aria, and the rest of the part conforms with this. He has no full aria in Act II; in ‘Lasciami’ Handel sends him into the wings with a brief cavatina lacking an opening ritornello. His biggest and only bravura piece, ‘Ai Greci questa spada’, is a clever representation of a youth pricked by military ambition and lacks the resonance of maturity. Most significantly he has no love song. When he mentions love he places it second to freedom (‘Se pensi’) or hunting (‘Sì, m’appaga’). Not only is he not in love with Deidamia, whom he treats as the plaything of an hour; he is still incapable of love, and unlike Cherubino has not experienced its first stirrings. Although Handel has drawn him with perfect consistency, in terms of a light soprano voice, neither the character nor the music grips attention. Handel did not warm to a personality untouched by passion.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 476

06/10/2006 14:53:05

Deidamia

477

A similar limitation cramps Ulisse, who may have strong feelings but is allowed no opportunity to demonstrate anything beyond diplomacy and craftiness. He makes a dry unsympathetic impression. His first aria, ‘Grecia tu offendi’, lives up to its marking, Pomposo. There is a touch of self-parody here and in the empty passagework and interminable divisions of ‘No, quella beltà’ and ‘Come all’urto’; these are among the least inspired arias in any Handel opera. Ulisse does have his moment of glory in ‘Perdere il bene amato’, by far the finest music in Act I, where his expatiation on the causes of the Trojan War allows Handel to paint a moving picture of the sufferings of a deserted husband. The emotion is no less potent for being vicarious. Both sections of the aria are extensively developed. The first has a lovely melody, a characteristic pull towards the subdominant, and expressive touches of harmonic chiaroscuro, especially on the word ‘morte’; the second supplies a powerful contrast in rhythm, texture and tempo (Furioso). Otherwise there is little to remark in Ulisse’s music apart from such incidental felicities as the extended ritornello after the A section of ‘Un guardo solo’ and the leisurely progress from D minor to B minor that begins the B section of the A major aria ‘Or pensate’. Nerea seems to have been intended as a successor to the kittenish Atalanta in Serse, but her music has nothing like the same vivacity and grace. Nor does she deserve the largesse of six arias. Originally the part contained Chrysander’s A settings of ‘Diè lusinghe’, ‘Sì, che desio’ and ‘Non vuò perdere’ and the A section only of ‘Quanto ingannata’. Before performance Handel supplied the latter with a B section and da capo and recomposed the other three arias for Monza, evidently a singer of high capacity with a wider compass at both ends than the unknown first incumbent (two octaves, b–b’’, instead of d’–a’’). In neither version does the character spring to life. The A settings of her two Act I arias are exceptionally dull and conventional. She is slightly better served in the later acts, where each of her arias possesses a mild charm, but not enough to establish her as a distinct personality. The A setting of ‘Non vuò perdere’ was improved beyond recognition when adapted for ‘Straight mine eye’ in L’Allegro three weeks after the production of Deidamia. The arias composed for Monza are scarcely more interesting; all three are spun out to intolerable length with an excess of otiose figuration. This is Handel on autopilot. Curiously they are quite different in mood from the A settings, and in two of them the mode is changed, though the second ‘Diè lusinghe’ has one undistinguished theme in common with the first. The second ‘Sì, che desio’ suggests an attempt to reuse the successful formula of ‘Vedrò fra poco’ in Admeto in a minor key. One sequence has a faint anticipation of the duet ‘Go, baffled coward’ in Samson. Fenice is the higher of the two basses, and would be classed today as a baritone. He is a colourless figure. Handel, as he showed in Imeneo, was not at ease with a young bass lover, a type scarcely known in opera seria (amorous tyrants were a different matter). ‘Degno più di tua beltà’, a binary cavatina with repeats and a melody prophetic of ‘Tune the soft melodious lute’ in Jephtha, is perhaps the best of his three arias, though ‘Al tardar della vendetta’ contains some effective working of contrasted rhythms and a nicely varied return to the da capo. Lycomede, a genuine bass, has only two arias but makes a much more positive impression. Both arias have sonorous   The first word incorrectly printed ‘Di’ by Chrysander, followed by HHB 1 and others.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 477

06/10/2006 14:53:05

478

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

four-part accompaniments (without the harpsichord in ‘Nel riposo e nel contento’) and a good deal of stepwise movement, with prominent scale figures sometimes in contrary motion; the first violins solemnly climb down two octaves and a fifth in the A section of ‘Nelle nubi’. ‘Nel riposo e nel contento’ is one of Handel’s most haunting evocations of serene old age, lightly tinged with regret, which grow more frequent in his later years (compare ‘Tears such as tender fathers shed’ in Deborah and ‘Shall I in Mamre’s fertile plain’ in Joshua). The design, with no ritornello at the start but (as in the preceding aria, ‘Se il timore’) a long and beautiful one after the A section and a shorter but no less expressive return to the da capo, is exceptionally happy. Handel (like Verdi) seldom fell below the highest standard in father–daughter relationships; the kindly old King is a worthy parent for Deidamia. The dramatic layout has one or two interesting features. As in so many of Handel’s operas the opening is admirably contrived. The curtain rises in the middle of the overture, whose third movement, a March (compare Scipione and Ezio), converts the minor mode into the major and launches us firmly into the action. It represents the landing of the Greek ambassadors in the harbour of Scyros, and Handel places the horns, trumpets and drums on the ship, which must have been well upstage beyond the scenery grooves. As in Giulio Cesare and Ariodante he thus has stage and pit orchestras and deploys them antiphonally, combining them in the last four bars. The later acts begin with sinfonias of the act-tune type (that in Act II is a noble piece of distinctly Purcellian cut), and three short fanfares are called for in the recitative but not written out, two for horns in II.vi and II.x, one for trumpets in III.ii. As in other late operas a small chorus is required, chiefly for the substantial movement in the middle of Act II, but also for the middle voices in the final coro. The latter is a perfunctory piece (Handel missed the chance to press home the irony by setting it in a minor key), but ‘Dalla guerra la caccia’ has considerable interest. It is exceptionally long for an opera chorus (115 bars with shortened da capo); it embraces prominent solos for Ulisse and Deidamia; the unison second part charmingly sets off the rich texture of the first, which is itself divided between tutti and unaccompanied solos for Ulisse. The words, underlining the parallel between hunting and war, have a symbolic aptness, especially as hunting could be taken to comprehend the pursuit of women as well as game. Moreover the chorus has a structural value; Handel uses it as a link to cover a change of scene. This was rare in his operas (but compare the sinfonia for the assault in Act I of Radamisto); his normal method, the scenery being changed in view of the audience, was to mark the transition by a contrast of tonality. A shortened form of the chorus, with new words but without the solos, makes a neat close to the act after the hunt is over. Deidamia is the only Handel opera, apart from Silla and the first version of Radamisto, without an accompagnato. But the rigour of the da capo is somewhat relaxed. Seven (originally eight) pieces lack a regular repeat, and several of them are not singlechamber or binary cavatinas of the usual type but more substantial arias. The most striking and prophetic is ‘M’hai resa infelice’. Each act has a rudimentary tonal scheme (Act I D minor/major–A, Act II D minor–F, Act III C–G), but the choice of keys shows a narrow range and an odd distribution. Few works of Handel make such sparing use of the minor mode – eight times in thirty-four vocal numbers (seven of

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 478

06/10/2006 14:53:06

Deidamia

479

them in C minor or G minor) and only once, but to great effect, in Act III. Four of the eight occur in Deidamia’s part. The scoring has points of interest, though the choice of instruments (apart perhaps from the lute, which according to Burney was making its last appearance in a London opera) is conventional. Horns, trumpets and drums appear together in the March; otherwise, outside unwritten fanfares, the brass are confined to horns in the two hunting choruses. There are no recorders or flutes. The cellist Andrea Caporale is named in one aria (‘Come all’urto’), but his part is not a true solo; Handel uses him, and sometimes the bassoons, to strengthen the viola line, which tended to be weak in his opera orchestra. It is not clear why Chrysander excludes the oboes from ‘Al tardar della vendetta’, ‘Diè lusinghe’ (B), ‘Presso ad occhi’’ and ‘Va, perfido’, where the evidence of autograph and performing score (confirmed by the Flower parts) is conclusive that they play in the ritornellos, both oboes taking the top line. Nothing supports Chrysander’s suggestion that Handel’s V. in the course of an aria denotes a solo. In two arias Handel detaches two second violins to play with the firsts; Smith in the performing score, followed by Chrysander, calls them concertini, but Handel’s instructions in the autograph are clear: 1 primi 2 Viol. co i primi Violini at bar 9 of ‘Diè lusinghe’ (B), V.1 et 2 secondi (with both oboes) in ‘Sì, che desio’ (B). This direction is not unique to Deidamia; it occurs for example in Orlando (‘Quando spieghi’). Not infrequently Handel divides the violins in three, the first two groups taking the top line while the third plays with the violas. These are among many examples of Handel’s preference for a strong treble line. Again and again, in this opera as elsewhere, he has both oboes doubling the first violins (in the ritornellos) leaving only the second violins on the stave below, or both oboes and first and second violins on the top line, while the thirds either play a subsidiary part or double the violas. Roberts (Handel Sources) lists borrowings from Keiser’s Claudius (2), Gasparini’s Amleto (2) and G. Bononcini’s Xerse. Except for the fugue in the overture, derived from Keiser, they are not extensive. Handel also drew on several of his earlier works. See Appendix D.

History and Text Handel began the composition on 27 October 1740, finishing Act I on 1 November, Act II on 7 November; he began Act III on 14 November (he wrote ‘October’ by mistake) and completed it on the 20th, two days before the production of Imeneo. These dates may refer to the first draft rather than the filling in. The opera was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 10 January 1741, with the following cast: deidamia Elisabeth Duparc detta la Francesina (soprano) nerea Maria Monza (soprano) achille Miss Edwards (soprano) ulisse Giovanni Battista Andreoni (mezzo-soprano castrato)   It generally comprised only two players: see Handel’s Operas I, 154 and 303.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 479

06/10/2006 14:53:06

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

480

fenice William Savage (bass) lycomede Henry Theodore Reinhold (bass) There were only three performances, the third (10 February) at the Little Haymarket Theatre, the only occasion on which Handel performed there. The reason for this is not known; all his other performances this season, between 8 November 1740 and 8 April 1741, were at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. No contemporary reactions to the opera are known, but Jennens had advance reservations about one of the singers. He wrote to James Harris on 29 December 1740: ‘[Handel] has a fine opera to come out on Saturday sev’nnight, called Deidamia, which might perhaps have tolerable success, but that it will be turn’d into farce by Miss Edwards, a little girl ­representing Achilles’. Burney, who ranked Deidamia ‘among the happiest of Handel’s dramatic ­productions’ and the limping first act ‘equally excellent with that of any of his early operas’, blamed the failure on the singers, who ‘had but little power of exciting rapture’. Andreoni and Francesina ‘were only singers of the second class ... and the rest were below criticism’. This judgement, not based on first-hand experience, should be treated with reserve. Handel did not compose Monza’s music for an incapable singer. Mrs Pendarves, who must have heard her in private, wrote to her sister on 13 December: ‘Her voice is between Cuzzoni’s and Strada’s – strong, but not harsh, her person ­miserably bad, being very low, and excessively crooked.’ Handel incorporated ‘Un guardo solo’ and ‘D’amor nei primi istanti’ and possibly ‘Due bell’alme’ in transposed keys in his Dublin revival of Imeneo in 1742. The overture was played at a Manchester Subscription Concert on 20 August 1745; but it was more than two centuries before Deidamia returned to the stage, at Halle in 1953. Since then it has been revived with some frequency, especially in Germany, attaining thirty-five productions to 2005. It was the first opera staged by the Handel Opera Society in London (1955), in a translation by Edward J. Dent. Deidamia has been twice recorded, conducted by Rudolph Palmer (Albany Records, 2001) and Alan Curtis (Virgin Veritas, 2003).

Autograph (RM 20 a 11) Handel’s foliation by gatherings begins on fol. 3, which carries the starting date (angefangen Octobr 27, 1740). The inserted leaves are fols 1–2 (first two movements of the overture, possibly designed for another work), 13–15, 22–5, 59 and 76–8 (the four additions for Monza as Nerea); 17 (the recitative on HG 26 and instructions for repeat of ‘Due bell’alme’ on the recto and a blank verso has every appearance of being an insertion). If it is conjunct with fol. 11 (Burrows and Ronish) Handel must have left a blank folio between ‘Diè lusinghe’ (A) and ‘Seguir di selva’ (Scene iii) before continuing. Both halves of the March are marked to be repeated. ‘Diè lusinghe’ A is scored for Tutti /Viola e V.3 (Chrysander missed this because the aria is not in the performing score). Handel did not write out ‘Due bell’alme’ a second time; the slight   A. H. Scouten, The London Stage, erroneously lists a fourth, on 24 January.   Burrows and Dunhill, 110.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 480

06/10/2006 14:53:06

Deidamia

481

differences on HG 26, including the tempo mark, come from the performing score. The opening sinfonia of Act II was composed for Imeneo and is in the autograph of that opera (RM 20 b 5, fol. 24) but cued in here (fol. 32). The autograph has comparatively few cancellations, though the approach to the A section cadences of ‘D’amor nei primi istanti’ and ‘No, quella beltà’ (marked verso Deid. over the first bar) gave Handel a good deal of trouble. Autograph, performing score and libretto all have the lower text in bar 15 of ‘Seguir di selva in selva’ (HG 27). The B setting of ‘Sì che desio’ was even longer as first composed; Handel cut the ritornellos by some sixteen bars. As an example of his care for dynamics, in bar 26 of this aria both violin parts are marked pianissimo (not in HG) while the viola and bass are piano. ‘Non ti credo’ is a dal segno aria. Handel began ‘Presso ad occhi’ in 2/4 time, changed his mind in the middle of the A section, and cancelled alternate bar lines. The original tempo mark of ‘Perdere il bene amato’ was Larghetto, that of ‘Quanto ingannata’ Allegro (with a 3/8 signature). At some stage, perhaps after the first performance, Handel made extensive cuts in ‘Come all’urto’, crossing out bars 30–77, 133–8, and 174–88 in pencil, adjusting the verbal text in the B section, and shortening both parts of this lengthy aria by a total of 69 bars. The Fitzwilliam Museum (Mus. MS 258, p. 55) has a cancelled early draft for the continuation of ‘Un guardo solo’ from bars 1–16 on fol. 33 of the autograph. It breaks off at bar 77, comprising forty-six bars as opposed to sixty-one. Handel evidently did not complete it, for the verso (p. 56) is blank. Pages 57–60 of the same volume, carrying the aria ‘Va, perfido’ (HG 88), Handel’s gathering number 12, and the following recitative lacking its first four bars (a later addition to the performing score) are probably a replacement for a lost original. They have a different watermark from the rest of the manuscript.

Libretto 1741. ‘Melodrama di P.R. [Paolo Rolli] F.R.S. Londra Per J. Chrichley ... [Price One Shilling].’ 63 pp. There is no Argument and no mention of Handel. The names of several singers are misspelt; Reinhold appears as ‘Reynolds’.

Copies and Editions The performing score (Hamburg MA/1013), in Smith’s hand with a few modifications by Handel, chiefly in Act III, differs little from the autograph. The insertions for Monza, involving some recopying of adjacent passages, are on fols 22–6, 37–43, 106–7 and 136–9; fol. 27 (the repeat of ‘Due bell’alme’) is also an insertion. There is no sign of the A versions of ‘Diè lusinghe’ and ‘Sì, che desio’; the first six bars of ‘Non vuò perdere’ (A) survive but were pasted over. Handel cued in the new B section of ‘Quanto ingannata’ on fol. 108 (a second Part) and wrote the word perdera over the   Riccardo Primo, also by Rolli, is the only other Handel libretto so described, but there ­appears to be no distinction between this and the more usual Dramma per Musica.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 481

06/10/2006 14:53:06

482

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

last vocal phrase of the A section before the new material was copied. The first four bars of the recitative after ‘Va, perfido’ (II.x, HG 92), missing from the autograph, are on a pasted-in slip. The repeat signs in the March have been roughly cancelled, and the dal segno in ‘Non ti credo’ changed to da capo. The instrumental indications in ‘Come all’urto’ differ from HG. At the start the top line is Viol 1º senza H (but Tutti at bar 17 when the basses enter), the second stave Viol 2º, the third Bassons viola e violonc. Sigr Capor. At bar 65 the top stave is forte e H1, the second tutti forte, interpreted by Chrysander as e Ob. II. The implication is that the oboes are divided in bars 65–73 but not in the rest of the aria. The only other complete copy is Granville (S5, early 1740s), which has no important variants. Nerea’s arias are in the Monza version. The March has no repeats, and the lute is not mentioned in ‘Due bell’alme’. RM 18 c 11, fols 215–25, has S2 copies (c.1741) of Deidamia’s two cavatinas and the chorus ‘Della guerra la caccia’ including the solos, taken from the performing score with additional figuring by Jennens. The Coopersmith Collection at the University of Maryland has an S5 copy of the duet ‘Ama, nell’armi’ (c.1744). The Flower parts (S2, c.1743), copied from the autograph or a lost score deriving from it, are incomplete in two respects. They omit the overture, Deidamia’s two cavatinas in I.ii, the arias ‘Un guardo solo’, ‘Se il timore’ and ‘Quanto ingannata’, and the two Act II choruses, but include both settings of Nerea’s arias. The surviving parts are violins 1 and 2, violin 3 + viola, cello + bassoon, and oboes 1 and 2; the keyboard part is missing. The brass parts of the March are present in a printed copy. In some movements (not quite identical with those in HG) violin 3 and viola have separate parts on the same or facing pages, identical except for clef and compass. The cello part is occasionally (and inconsistently) marked senza Basson. In ‘Degno più’ the cello and bassoon parts are separate but on the same stave. In ‘Come all’urto’ they have separate staves, but since the cello part, not marked as a solo, doubles the viola in this aria, the true bass is omitted when not played by the bassoon. Except in the coro, the oboe parts are in unison throughout. They play with the first violins in every movement except ‘Come all’urto’, where they double the first violins in bars 17–24, 65–73 (erroneously) and 117–40, the second violins in bars 32–64 and 82–112. They are generally confined as usual to ritornellos, but in ‘Sì, che desio’ (A) and much of ‘Va, perfido’ they play while the voice is singing. This is probably a mistake. The Act II sinfonia is marked A tempo giusto (as in the autograph of Imeneo), the B version of ‘Non vuò perdere’ Andante. Although the parts cannot be proved to have Handel’s authority, and they leave one or two details in doubt, they are consistent with his practice. The Coke Collection has a very incomplete set of parts, evidently copied in Germany from the Walsh print, for three numbers, ‘Come all’urto’, the duet ‘Ama, nell’armi’ and the final coro. BL Add. MS 3074–6 contain parts (two violins and bass) for the Act II sinfonia (called Sonata) and ‘Perdere il bene amato’, also copied from Walsh. Four days after the first performance Walsh published a proposal to issue the score to subscribers (‘in a short Time’), but this plan was soon abandoned. On 29

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 482

06/10/2006 14:53:06

Deidamia

483

January he advertised a ‘First Collection’ of songs, comprising the overture and Act I, at four shillings. The complete opera (at half a guinea) followed on 21 February (‘Those Gentlemen, etc. who have the first Act of the above Work, may have the remaining Part separate to compleat their Opera’), a flute or violin arrangement in May 1741, the overture in eight parts in July 1743 and in keyboard arrangement in December 1743. Walsh omitted only the recitatives, the cavatina ‘Ma chi sa’ and the two choruses in Act II. Nerea’s part is in the Monza version. The March has repeats. The text is derived partly from the autograph, partly from the performing score. Chrysander’s score (1885) has a number of minor errors and omissions, most of them reproduced from the performing score. The upper text on HG 27, bar 15, is an incorrect emendation by Chrysander, who misunderstood the Italian. About 1945 Bärenreiter published an undated vocal score, edited with a German translation by Rudolf Steglich, one of a number of publications preparatory to the foundation of a full Halle edition. The vocal score is complete, apart from the B settings of ‘Diè lusinghe’ and ‘Non vuò perdere’, but is hardly a model of scholarship. Intended as a performing edition, it includes a liberal supply of appoggiaturas, ornaments and cadenzas and suggested insertions for the fanfares, one of them a movement from the Water Music (identified as from the Fireworks Music). But, as in his edition of Serse, the editor slows the pace and undermines the tonal articulation by spinning out recitative cadences, sometimes with modulatory links, when Handel approaches an aria other than from the dominant. The instructions on the correct approach to each aria betray a sad insensitivity to the dramatic temper of words and music. The part of Ulisse is assigned to a tenor. The HHA score edited by Terence Best (2001) sweeps away errors and supplies suitable brass flourishes for the fanfares.

  See Annette Landgraf, ‘Halle und die Hallische Händel-Ausgabe’, Georg Friedrich Händel: ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934–1993), ed. K. Hortschansky and K. Musketa (Halle, 1995), 315–42.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 483

06/10/2006 14:53:06

epilogue 1 from or atorio to oper a

I

n the course of more than half a century devoted largely to the study of Handel’s dramatic works I found my attitude changing. The experience of taking part in a stage production of Saul nearly seventy years ago, and seeing other oratorios in similar action, astonished me by their powerful presentation of many-layered conflicts, personal, national and moral, in terms that seemed to demand the visual theatre. Here surely was dramatic genius of the highest order. In approaching the operas I felt initially, what countless others have felt, and many perhaps still feel, disappointment that what was present in abundance in the oratorios was wanting in the operas: variety of form and texture, due to the extreme rarity not only of choruses but of ensembles of any kind, and (it would seem) a desolating reliance on two elements, dry recitative and da capo aria. The comparatively few variants in the way of accompagnatos, cavatinas and sinfonias did not seem sufficient to leaven the lump. Thinness of texture appeared to be compounded by weak forward drive. It presently dawned on me that the mighty dramatist of the oratorios was unlikely to have sprung from nowhere. If works designed for a theatre of the imagination could make such an impact when transferred to the boards, the composer must have possessed or somehow acquired an instinct for the dramatic. From his earliest days at the Hamburg Gänsemarkt opera, playing in the orchestra as well as composing for the stage, Handel had been above all else a man of the theatre. The creator of more than forty operas, nearly all before the main oratorio period, must surely have learned a great deal about what was effective in the theatre, how to harness plot and music to its strengths and limitations, even if it was not the theatre of today. It should not then be difficult to reproduce those effects. One factor known to theatre historians but seldom observed today is that in Handel’s theatre set changes within acts – generally two or three in his operas – were effected in full view of the audience by the rotation of wings, borders and backflats while the music continued without interruption to the end of the act. Handel exploited this by tonal means, moving to an unrelated key as the scenery changed. That may seem an obvious thing to do, but it has a quickening effect on the action and the audience’s attention, always provided that the impact is not lost. Often the new scene begins with a recitative, but the effect is most striking when the orchestra is involved. For example, Act I of Giulio Cesare contains a scene change from Cleopatra’s apartment, with her brother Tolomeo railing against the absent Caesar in a defiant E flat major aria, to Caesar alone in his camp, contemplating the urn containing the murdered Pompey’s ashes and reflecting on man’s uncertain destiny. The extrovert clatter of E flat major is succeeded by a sombre G sharp minor. In Act III of the same opera Cleopatra, a prisoner in chains, laments her fate and her lover’s presumed death in a lost battle in the E major aria ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’ and leaves the stage;

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 484

06/10/2006 14:53:06



Epilogue 1

485

whereupon Caesar enters, presumably from the other side, alive after all, on the most surprising of unrelated keys, F major. These are brilliant theatrical strokes, but they go for nothing if the music comes to a full stop while the scene-shifters get busy or the conductor and/or the singer, perhaps after a rallentando, pauses to milk the applause. It then struck me that this might supply the key to what I was seeking, the dramatic impulse that drove the operas. If continuity was important here, why not in the rest of the opera? Modern productions tend, perhaps unconsciously, to view the aria as the principal unit, allowing pauses to creep in between scenes, between recitative and aria, or between aria and the following recitative, so that the wind goes out of the opera’s sails, tension droops, and forward movement falters. Or, to change the metaphor, the opera proceeds like a vehicle whose progress is constantly inhibited by hostile traffic lights. That cannot have been Handel’s intention. Experience has shown that a quickening of the opera’s overall tempo to eliminate pauses and prevent the impulse from sagging not only achieves a considerable saving in time, reducing the need for damaging cuts, but galvanises the entire score. Especially in his most satisfying operas – by far the majority – Handel was clearly thinking in long spans on a scale far beyond the confines of the aria. In a good performance music and drama go hand in hand in continuous motion. The overall speed is flexible, especially in the recitatives, the sinews that bind the opera together. They were defined at the time as a kind of tuneable speaking, and presumably uttered approximately at the pace of the spoken word, varied of course by the sense of the text and often indicated by the movement of the supporting harmony. Telescoped cadences, a comparatively modern rediscovery, helped to keep the opera on the move. Handel was perforce operating against the grain of a narrow convention, but that carries the advantage that, in the hands of a great artist, a comparatively minor deviation from the norm can exert a major effect. By simply raising the curtain in the middle of the overture, treating its last movement as the first of the action, he could give the opera a flying start, doing away with preliminary or explanatory matter in the source. Nor is it difficult to see his dramatic vision at work in the detailed shaping of arias and the flexible treatment of preliminary, intermediate and dal segno ritornellos or their suppression. There are many indications in his autographs and contemporary copies of his care for theatrical detail. Comparison with printed librettos shows that he had a powerful visual as well as aural imagination and made changes in stage directions with a view to their theatrical impact. Many are not in Chrysander’s edition; some, as well as such instructions as segue subito between ­movements, appear in contemporary copies that probably reflect Handel’s practice.   No doubt this happened in Handel’s day, as in ours, but that does not devalue Handel’s design.   This was demonstrated by a production of Giulio Cesare at the Barber Institute of Birmingham University in 1977, staged complete with all voices at the correct pitch, perhaps for the first time since 1724. It is the longest of Handel’s operas, estimated by a distinguished conductor to last for nearly six hours. The Birmingham production, including two 15-minute intervals, was timed at just under 4¾ hours. The audience was manifestly gripped throughout.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 485

06/10/2006 14:53:07

486

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

The view that the operas cannot stand on their own feet but need gingering up if they are to pass muster today doubtless derives in part from a superficial examination of the scores, but also from the fact that contemporary commentators tended to focus on the singer at the expense of the drama. Burney, the most copious and influential eighteenth-century writer on the subject, was alive to the music but discussed each opera aria by aria almost exclusively in terms of the singer, scarcely ever mentioning the character or the action. The one thing he could not estimate, because he never heard any of Handel’s theatre performances, was the overall tempo. Of course the singers were a major attraction, but Handel is known to have been firm with even the greatest when they proved recalcitrant and was fully capable of maintaining the opera’s dramatic backbone while allowing his stars to shine. Acceleration of the opera’s overall pace reinforces the impact of another of Handel’s operatic gifts, perhaps the greatest of all, the wide and deep range of his characters. Donald Grout in his Short History of Opera declared that ‘the number and variety of [Handel’s opera arias] is so great, and the powers of capturing the most subtle nuances of feeling so outstanding, that one is tempted to believe there is no emotion of which humanity is capable that has not found musical expression somewhere in Handel’s operas’. As I hope this volume and its predecessor have shown, that ability to explore the recesses of the human heart extends far beyond the aria and disposes of the canard that Handel’s characters do not develop. Cleopatra, Grimoaldo in Rodelinda and Ruggiero in Alcina (to name but a few) are transformed by their experiences in the course of the action, and we can observe the process as clearly as in the work of any other opera composer. Of all the leading opera composers Handel comes nearest to Mozart in his ability to explore the hair-line between comedy and tragedy, and to cross it without curdling the one or debasing the other. Each combines euphony with a finely tempered irony and moves with absolute surefootedness between the sinister and the farcical, the flippant and the tragic. Both possess something of Keats’s negative capability, the power to enter other states of being and interpret them from within; in painting the frailties and foibles of human nature, they reveal the complex truths and turbulent passions beneath, so that while we laugh at the characters’ antics we also feel with them. Of the three qualities that entitle Handel to share the highest rank in the operatic firmament, as claimed in the opening paragraph of the first chapter of the first volume in this study – subtlety of characterisation, theatrical flair and an almost inexhaustible flow of lyrical invention – perhaps only the last has been universally recognised. Lyrical invention is a wonderful thing, but not enough to float a masterpiece, or Schubert’s operas would top the bill today. A varied approach to the other two helps to account for the somewhat tangled history of Handel’s operas in the modern theatre.

  A Short History of Opera (New York, 1947; Lith printing 1956), 174.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 486

06/10/2006 14:53:07



epilogue 2 HANDEL’S OPERAS ON THE MODERN STAGE

T

he revival of Handel’s operas in the modern theatre, after not one of them had been performed anywhere between 1754, when Handel was still living, and 1920, has been among the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the art. Moreover the movement is still expanding at what one might liken to compound interest. But it is not a straightforward story, and not all its implications are fully understood. There were hurdles, both musical and dramatic, to be surmounted. The art had moved from opera seria to Gesamtkunstwerk, leaving a huge gap to be bridged by public taste. Looking back, one must conclude that the movement got off on the wrong foot, and has not always retained its balance since. In 1920 a shaky start was inevitable. When in that year Oskar Hagen and his colleagues at Göttingen set the ball rolling with their production of Rodelinda, followed soon after by Ottone, Giulio Cesare and Serse, their achievement could be likened to Samuel Johnson’s comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on his hinder legs: it was not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all. An idiom based on the solo singer, the da capo aria, secco recitatives, castrato heroes and an almost total absence of ensembles was the absolute antithesis of the current fashion for huge orchestras, rich post-Romantic harmony and plots heavy with symbolism as exemplified by Wagner’s successors and the operas of Strauss, Pfitzner and Schreker. It is hardly surprising that Hagen virtually rewrote Handel’s operas, rescoring them (recitatives included) for a massive orchestra, making devastating cuts, chopping up every aria by shortening ritornellos and abolishing da capos, rewriting stage directions wholesale, dragging in music from elsewhere, and transposing all high male parts down an octave, seemingly from a distaste for the unnatural and unmanly voice of the castrato. These versions were immensely popular in Germany and produced in dozens of cities over the next few years. A pattern was set, and arrangements of further operas by different companies soon followed. By the outbreak of the Second World War nineteen of Handel’s operas had been revived in German theatres, nine of them at Göttingen. The more extreme distortions were dropped fairly soon, but Hagen’s arrangements (modified) could still be heard in Munich and elsewhere in   The Giulio Cesare performed at the King’s Theatre in 1787 was a pasticcio, arranged by Samuel Arnold for the gratification of George III, containing little music from that opera. The Almira sometimes listed as staged at Hamburg in 1885 and repeated elsewhere was a single short scene.   A personal experience can illustrate this. I was present at the first British productions since Handel’s own of all three of his great Ariosto operas, which have now attained a total of more than 200 worldwide.   Up to 1929 Giulio Cesare received separate productions in 34 cities, Rodelinda in 27, Serse in 16, Ottone in 13, all in or based on Hagen’s versions. Some were taken to other cities as well.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 487

06/10/2006 14:53:07

488

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

the 1960s. The annual Handel Festival at Halle, founded in 1952, continued for some years to perform the operas with inflated scoring, slow ponderously accented recitatives, long pauses for scene changes during acts and automatic octave transposition. The results can be studied in a 1959 Halle recording of Poro, heavy with superimposed brass, which even renamed some of the characters, or in ten German recordings of Giulio Cesare up to 1970, where an opera composed for six high voices with two small bass parts is torpedoed and sunk by five basses and a tenor. Germany did at least show interest in the operas, leaving the English-speaking countries far behind. There Handel remained fixed like Jehovah in his everlasting seat, revered as a great choral and religious composer, a pillar of the state and the Anglican Church, erected in the eighteenth century and reinforced ever since by the frequent repetition of three or four oratorios. Up to 1955, by which time Germany had seen twenty-five of the operas on the stage, precisely four had been presented in Britain, each in a single production by an amateur or ad hoc company, and three of the same four likewise in the United States – all between the wars and not one in a regular opera house. In Britain the oratorios, appreciated sooner for their dramatic qualities, had received far more stage performances than the operas. The climate began to change with the foundation in 1955 of the Handel Opera Society in London, with Charles Farncombe as conductor, followed four years later by two further enterprises, the brave attempt by Frances and Alan Kitching at Abingdon to recreate the flavour of a Baroque performance, albeit on a diminutive scale, and the first of a series of productions at the Barber Institute of Birmingham University, conducted by Anthony Lewis and Ivor Keys. None of these offered much in the way of spectacle. The staging was elementary, though there was some firstrate singing, especially at Birmingham; their significance lay in their demonstration (despite occasional backsliding) of the crucial importance of restoring heroic male parts to the correct pitch. About the same time a reaction against the ponderous blowzy treatment of the orchestra traditionally inflicted on Baroque music (that of Bach in particular) was giving place to a more historically orientated style based on smaller orchestras, lighter textures, springier rhythms and in due course idiomatic ornamentation, vocal and instrumental, led by practical scholars such as Thurston Dart, Arnold Goldsbrough’s English Chamber Orchestra and Neville Marriner’s Academy of St Martin-in-theFields (founded in 1959). Among other things this allowed the countless felicities of Handel’s orchestration to shine through the murk. A few years later Christopher Hogwood went one step further, substituting period instruments (or facsimiles) for their modern equivalents. The movement was soon international, but its effect on   A partial exception was Herman Roth’s version of Tamerlano, first staged at Karlsruhe in 1924 and published in vocal score, in which Tamerlano was sung by a bass but Andronico by a woman. Roth also made a version of Alcina retaining Ruggiero’s pitch. But both parts sank in later productions.   A large selection of the leading basses and baritones of the period, including Cesare ­Siepi, Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Boris Christoff, Otto Wiener, Kostas Paskalis, Walter Berry, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Norman Treigle can be heard in Senesino’s part. The great Wagnerian basses Rudolf Bockelmann and Hans Hotter sang it on stage.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 488

06/10/2006 14:53:07



Epilogue 2

489

Handel’s operas was unevenly distributed. In Germany octave transposition of high male parts, even those composed for and originally sung by women (which included military heroes like Radamisto and Roman Emperors like Valentiniano in Ezio), had ossified into a tradition that compromised one of Handel’s supreme virtues, the range, depth and subtlety of his insight into human character. Like all good opera composers, he used the pitch of the voice as an essential element. If the leading male characters (often two and sometimes three in the same opera) disport themselves in the wrong octave, the scoring might have to be adjusted and the balance not only of the voices but of the whole opera goes overboard. A lively young hero may come across as a gruff tyrant. ‘Qual torrente’, Caesar’s brilliant aria in Act III of Giulio Cesare, consisting largely of rapid coloratura low in the alto register, suggests when sung by even a world-famous baritone not so much a summons to battle as a man with a sore throat gargling in his bathroom. Hellmuth Christian Wolff, a specialist in Baroque opera and an apostle of ‘authenticity’, in his 1957 book Die Händel-Oper auf der modernen Bühne, an illustrated survey of German revivals up to 1956, never once mentions the problem of the castrato; it was simply not an issue. His nearest approach is the statement that Achille in Deidamia is a castrato part, which it is not. In course of time Germany became castrato-conscious and developed a healthy race of counter-tenors. The musical improvement was palpable; but as one end of the dramatic see-saw went up, the other began to sink. Having escaped from one pit, Handel’s operas all too often fell into another, dug by that increasingly prominent modern phenomenon, the stage director. He perhaps sees himself confronted by a tabula rasa, with a choice of alternatives ranging between two extremes: to study the scores in relation to Handel’s theatre and endeavour to produce a modern equivalent, not necessarily by the same means, in a form that the composer would at least have recognised, or to use them as the basis of a modern entertainment regardless of their period associations. We have seen both approaches today, the former more often from smaller bodies, the latter in prestigious opera houses, principally but not exclusively in Germany and the United States. If Handel ranks among the supreme masters of the operatic art, of which doubts have been expressed in some quarters, there is no question which approach is to be preferred, at least until historically orientated productions have entered the repertory and perhaps become dulled by repetition. If a director were to set Falstaff in a shipyard or Fidelio in a brothel, no lasting damage would be done, except perhaps to the director’s reputation, since their proper locations are familiar, and they would soon bounce back. That is not yet the case with Handel’s operas. The principal obligation of the director should surely be to the composer, and sometimes through him to the librettist if the two have forged a strong link. (Handel’s librettos, which can vary in   Perhaps I may add, as a footnote to history, that when in a lecture at the 1979 Halle Festival I urged the necessity of restoring all high male parts to their original pitch I was interrupted by the director of a leading German opera house with the emphatic pronouncement ‘That will never happen here!’ There had been a few such performances in Germany, chiefly at festivals or by visiting companies, but they were very rare, even when the parts had been written for women.   There was no such person in Handel’s day, when the staging was managed by the librettist (if present) or in his absence perhaps by the composer.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 489

06/10/2006 14:53:07

490

Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741

quality as much as those of any other period, have been too little studied, and even treated with scarcely disguised contempt. It is true that he sometimes cut them down to the point of obscurity in his efforts to appease his audience’s dislike of recitative in a foreign language, but a surprising number of them work in the theatre.) The Leipzig production of Serse, toured all round Europe from 1972 for dozens of performances with almost universal acclaim, redistributed arias between scenes and acts, reducing both plot and characters to mincemeat. A similar fate befell two 1973 productions published in vocal score, Radamisto at Halle (though the arrangement dated from 1955) and a New York Giulio Cesare, where (to give one example) Cleopatra’s heartfelt lament ‘Piangerò’ was transported from Act III to her first scene with Caesar in Act I in which she is acting a deliberate lie. It would be instructive to know what motivates the director who imposes a ‘concept’ on a Handel opera. Does he suppose he is breathing life into a corpse? If the opera works on its own terms, especially if it has been hailed as a masterpiece, what can a concept add? If one rejects the notion of an ego trip, one must conclude that the director holds a low opinion of Handel’s operatic art, without having studied it in depth, and so assumes a free hand to let his fancy roam. His first response seems to be: what kind of slant can I give to this old stuff ? What about a touch of Freud in Alcina and Ariodante? Or a whiff of Brecht in Giustino? The implication is that Handel cannot stand on his own feet, even in his finest operas. The concept production seems to have originated in Germany, where it was sometimes loaded with pretentious symbolism. (It was not of course confined to Handel, but spread like a rash over the whole body of opera.) For a time the USA was backward in its Handel productions; in 1966 another New York production, at the City Opera, laid a heavy hand on Giulio Cesare, octave transpositions and all. But presently there arose a posse of directors with an evident urge to épater les bourgeois and even to discharge missiles at their own country. Handel’s Caesar was presented as a footloose American President threatening the Middle East with bombs and battleships. So crass were some of these productions as to raise a suspicion – sometimes more than a suspicion – that the concept interested the director more than the opera. Worst of all is the director who clamps a concept on the opera and does not scruple to alter the text to fit it. The Hamburg Opera’s production of Giulio Cesare in February 2005 offered an egregious example. The concept, contradicted again and again in the text, was that the opera, apart from some extraneous buffoonery, must have a tragic end. (In fact this is one of the few Handel operas with a happy end that arises naturally from the action.) So Cleopatra’s triumphant and joyous aria ‘Da tempeste’ was played as a mad scene, and the words of the coro, which contradict the conception, were simply omitted, reducing the finale to nonsense. One contemporary production, the English National Opera Xerxes (Serse), first staged in 1985 and often revived, seemed to face both ways. The opera is a beautifully balanced character study on several levels from the near-farcical to the profound, observed with an ironic detachment that does not exclude passionate emotion and expressed in music so flexible that it threatens to overthrow the da capo convention. The musical performance was idiomatic, the technical direction skilled, and the score given complete. But the director superimposed a chorus of rubbernecks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 490

06/10/2006 14:53:07



Epilogue 2

491

wandering through the action gawping at an exhibition of classical antiquities, sometimes distracting attention during an aria and killing at least one beautiful movement by a cheap joke. (Was this a sly hit at an ‘antique’ convention?) The inevitable result was to undercut the characters and diminish the opera that Handel wrote. One might as sensibly introduce a chorus of conspirators in Così fan tutte. It must be conceded that this and similar productions are popular with the public, who do not know when or if they are being sold a pup, and seldom receive assistance from critics who know no better. This is not an argument for a dry academic approach or for outlawing anachronism altogether – after all, Handel performed his operas in contemporary costume with a few exotic accessories – or even for condemning the current fad for updating plots, though that seldom works: incompatible details obtrude and introduce grit into the machine, as in Glyndebourne’s flirting with Hollywood in its 1988 Rodelinda. The power of the operas to grip a modern audience without such adventitious aids as firmly as those of any other period, provided the director can emulate the flexibility obtainable in Handel’s theatre, has been demonstrated. Unfortunately prestigious opera houses, with rare exceptions, have been disinclined to trust the composer, and it has often been left to lesser bodies with fewer resources to make the point. It is clear from the multiplication of revivals that the public in many countries enjoys Handel’s operas and welcomes them into the repertory. But something is missing. He is accepted as a splendid entertainer – it is not difficult to tickle the public ear if you have a few good tunes to play with – but seldom permitted to exercise his full power as a front-rank dramatic composer. The present position is ironical. The musical realisation of Handel’s art goes forward from strength to strength as more and more conductors, singers and instrumentalists become familiar with his style, whereas too many stage directors could be likened to footballers who, after working their way skilfully through the opposition defence till the goal is at their mercy, blast the ball high over the bar into the crowd.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 491

06/10/2006 14:53:07

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 492

06/10/2006 14:53:07

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 493

06/10/2006 14:53:08

1726 1726 1727 1728 1728 1729 1730 1730/1 1731 1732 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1736 1736 1736/7 1737 1738 1738–40 1740

Alessandro Admeto Riccardo primo Siroe Tolomeo Lotario Partenope Poro Ezio Sosarme Orlando Arianna in Creta Ariodante Alcina Atalanta Arminio Giustino Berenice Faramondo Serse Imeneo Deidamia 12 8 4 7 6 3 9 8 11 11 3 12 5 17 9 8 15 12 13 10 8 12 203

62

Da capo

6 5 6 2 3 4 2 1 4 2 10 3 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 3 1 –

Accompagnatos2

291

13 18 22 17 15 22 19 13 14 9 16 12 17 8 8 15 7 9 9 10 7 11

Dal segno

3

– – – – – – – –

1

– –

1 1

– – – – – – – – –

Rondo

Solos

85

1 3 3 1 4 2 3 2 – 1 5 1 4 2 3 3 7 4 2 21 6 7

Ariosos, cavatinas, etc.

13

5 1 2 – – – – – – – – – 1 – – – – – – 4 – –

Fragments

40

3 1 1 – 2 1 2 3 – 3 3 2 4 – 1 3 1 3 2 3 1 1

Duets3

4

–

1

– – – – – –

1

– –

1

– – –

1

– – – – – –

Trios

1 This table refers to the scores as first performed, not as printed or first composed. Exact musical repeats are excluded. 2 Excluding those constituting B sections of da capo arias. 3 Excluding those forming parts of cori. 4 Overtures excluded. 5 Vaudeville.

Total

Date of composition

Title

structur al analysis1

a ppen dix a

2

– – – – – – 1 – 15 – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Quartets

2

– – – – – – – – – – 1 – – – – – 1 – – – – –

Quintets

51

3 1 1 1 1 2 4 1 1 2 1 1 3 4 5 1 4 1 2 4 5 3

Cori

79

– 3 5 5 3 2 3 3 13 7 5 1 5 2 2 2 – 3

5 5 3 2

Instrumental4

835

48 42 42 30 31 37 46 33 34 31 44 34 48 41 32 32 44 32 31 57 29 37

Totals

a ppen dix b instrumentation s rec tr rec b rec tr

Title Alessandro Admeto Riccardo primo

hn

tpt

timp vn

vla

2 2 2

1 1 1

2 2 2

2

3 3 3

2 2 2 2

1 1 2 1

2 2 2

2 2 2

1 2 1

2 2 2

1

2 2

1 1

2 2

2

2

1

2

2 2 3 3

1 [1] [1] [1]

2 2 2 2

2 2 2 2 2

[1] [1] 1 [1] 1

1 1

1

1

2

1 2

Poro Ezio Sosarme

2 2

Orlando Arianna in   Creta Ariodante

2

1 2

2 1

Berenice Faramondo Serse Imeneo Deidamia

Key to s rec tr rec b rec tr b tr ob

bsn

2

Siroe Tolomeo Lotario Partenope

Alcina Atalanta Arminio Giustino

b tr ob

2 2 2

1

1 2

abbreviated instrument names: sopranino recorder treble recorder ‘Basso dei flauti’ transverse flute traverso basso oboe

bsn hn tpt timp vn vla

cb

1 1 1

va vc mar 1 1 1

1 1

3 3 3 3

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

1

‘Tamburi’ in stage direction

1 1 2

3 3 3

1 2 1

1 1 2

1 1 2

1

1 aria for 4 violas unis.

3 2

1 1

1 2

1 1

3

1

2

1

3 2 3 3

1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

3 3 3 2 3

1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 2

1 1 1 1 1

3

1

2

3

1

2

2 2

1

2

2

bassoon horn trumpet timpani violins violas

1

?2

2

va mar vc cb lute/thb

lute/ Remarks thb

1 1 1

2 clarinets in 1st version

stage orchestra in finale

recorders cancelled in performing score

1

stage orchestra in 1st scene

violetta marina cello contrabassi lute / theorbo

Note  This table indicates the numbers of parts, not the number of players required; no extra allowance is made for ripieni. Many of Handel’s players doubled on several instruments, especially among the woodwind. Trumpets were often ­accompanied by timpani even when no part was written. A lute or theorbo may have been a regular member of the continuo group. Handel regularly used two harpsichords in his operas, but this is seldom specified in the scores.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 494

06/10/2006 14:53:08

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 495

06/10/2006 14:53:08

1727 1728 1729 1730 1731/2 6 3

London London Brunswick Hamburg Hamburg

London

19

31 Jan., 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 28 Feb., 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21, 25 Mar., 4, 15, 18 Apr. 30 Sept., 3, 7, 14, 17 Oct., 4 Nov. 25, 28 May, 1 June Aug. 23 Jan., 22 May, 6 Sept. 3 Oct., 18 Jan., 26 June, 25 Aug. 1732

London London

London Brunswick London London

Hamburg

London

8 4

1727

1747 1748

4+ 2 6 16

26, 30 Dec., 2, 6 Jan. 1728 17 Aug. 25, 28 Nov., 2, 19, 26, 30 Dec. 15, 19, 26, 29 Nov., 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 27, 31 Dec.; 6, 10, 13, 17 Mar. 1744 24, 28 Feb., 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21 Mar. 20, 27 Feb., 8, 12 Mar.

1727/8 1728 1732 1743/4

13

2+

5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 31 May, 4, 7 June

No. of Place perfs

18, 21 Nov. +

1726 1726

1726

Date

ALESSANDRO

none known no imprint Christian Bartsch Stromer Piscator

no imprint

as Rossane, not under Handel as Rossane, not under Handel ADMETO

G. Woodfall none known

as Rossane, not under Handel

Thomas Edlin Stromer

no imprint

Libretto

none known Christian Bartsch T. Wood no imprint

as Der hochmüthige Alexander

as Der hochmüthige Alexander, tr. C. G. Wendt; partly Steffani

Remarks

GB 4, 12; US 1; B 1; G 2 G 3, 5 US 1; G 1, 2,2 3; A 1 US 1; G 1, 8

GB 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15; US 1, 2,2 8,2 9, 14; F 1

GB 1, 3; US 15

G3 GB 13, 14; F 1 GB 1, 3, 10, 14; US 1, 15; F 1; I 2

GB 1,2 4, 5, 8, 9, 12,2 14, 16; US 5,2 8, 9, 10; C 1; F 1 GB 1,2 9, 14, 15; US 14, 18; C 1; I 3 GB 1; US 1; G 1,3 2, 7; B 1

Location of librettos

Note Unless stated otherwise, London performances are at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. Hamburg performances (incomplete) are at the Theater am Gänsemarkt. Dates of continental performances are New Style. A superscript 2 (or 3) in the last column indicates the presence of two (or three) copies. See end of this appendix for key to location of librettos.

Performances during Handel’s Life

a ppen dix c

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 496

06/10/2006 14:53:08

Brunswick Brunswick

London London London

Feb.

Feb.

17, 20, 24, 27 Feb., 2, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30 Mar., 2, 6, 9, 13, 23, 27 Apr. Aug. 9 Feb.

30 Apr., 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21 May 19, 23, 26, 30 May, 6, 13 June 2, 9, 13, 16 Jan.

1729

1729

1734

1728

1728 1730 1733

1729/30 2, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 23 Dec., 3, 10, 13 Jan. 1730

1730 1735

11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 28 Nov., 2, 5, 9, 12, 16 Dec. 3 Feb.

1727

10

7 6 4

18

11

5

London

London

Brunswick

Brunswick

Hamburg

London

Brunswick Hamburg Hamburg Brunswick London

Feb. 4 Dec., 26 May, 7 Oct., 15 Nov. 1734 6 July, 4 June 1736 Aug. 12, 16, 19, 23 Mar.; 6 Apr.

London

1732 1733/4 1735/6 1739 1754

6

7, 11, 14, 18 Dec., 8, 11 Jan. 1732

No. of Place perfs

1731/2

Date

LOTARIO

TOLOMEO

SIROE

arr. Telemann as Der Misslungene Braut-Wechsel Oder Richardus I König von England, tr. C. G. Wendt as Richardus gennant Das Löwen-Herz König in Engelland as Brunswick 1729

RICCARDO PRIMO

under Vanneschi

Remarks

T. Wood (2 issues, A and B )

no imprint T. Wood 1730 reprinted with insertions

Christian Bartsch Christian Bartsch

no imprint (3 issues)

Christian Bartsch

GB 12 (AB), 4 (A), 6 (A), 8 (A), 13 (A, defective),14; US 3 (A), 7 (A), 8, 10 (A); C 1 (A); F 1 (A); I 1

GB 1,2 4, 13, 14; US 3, 4 (defective), 5,2 7, 8 GB 10, 13, 14; US 5, 8 GB 3, 4; US 5; F 1

G 3, 5, 6 G3

GB 1,2 3, 9, 14, 15, 16; US 1, 3, 5,2 8,3 10, 14

G 3,2 12

G 3, 4

Christian Bartsch

Stromer

GB 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14; US 1, 2, 5,2 6, 7, 8,2 11, 14, 17; C 1; F 1; G 2, 9 US 1; B 1; NL 1; G 1, 2,2 11

G 1, 3 GB 14; US 15, 16

Christian Bartsch G. Woodfall

no imprint

G 5, 12

GB 1; US 10; F 1 (defective)

Location of librettos

T. Wood (‘The Second Edition’) Christian Bartsch

Libretto

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 497

06/10/2006 14:53:08

Feb.

1 Oct. 15 June (?)

1 Aug. 28 Oct., 17 Nov., 28 Dec. 13 Jan., 4 (?) May, 22 June, 23 Aug., 14 Oct. 13 Jan., 10 Feb., 20, 27 June, 8 Sept. 25, 30 Jan., 15, 16 Feb., 17 May, 8, 14, 27 June, 9 July, 15 Aug. 29 Jan., 2, 5, 9 Feb.

1732

1732 1733

1733 1733 1734

25 Feb., 12 June, 9 July

Aug. 7, 21 Jan., 9 Feb., 1, 22 June, 16 Nov. 24 May, 4, 17 June, 11, 28 Oct.

1732

1732 1733 1734

1731

2, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 23, 27 Feb., 2, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 23, 27 Mar. 23, 27, 30 Nov., 4 Dec.

1731

1737

1735 1736

7

12, 15, 19, 29 Dec., 2, 5, 9 Jan. 1731 Feb. 12 Sept.

1730/1 1731 1731

6 5

Brunswick Hamburg Hamburg

Hamburg

London

4 3

London

16

PARTENOPE

as Triumph der Grossmuth und Treue, oder Cleofida Königin von Indien, tr. C. G. Wendt, recits. Telemann as Poro ed Alessandro as Hamburg 1732 above as Hamburg 1732 above

PORO

recits. Keiser, tr. C. G. Wendt

recits. Keiser, tr. C. G. Wendt

Birthday of Emperor Charles VI Wedding (on 12 June) of future Frederick the Great

Birthday of Dowager Duchess of Brunswick

Remarks

London, Covent Garden

Hamburg Hamburg

5 10 4

Wolfenbüttel Hamburg Hamburg

Wolfenbüttel Salzthal

Brunswick

London Brunswick Salzthal

London

3 5

?1 ?1

?1

7

24, 28 Feb., 3, 7, 10, 14, 17 Mar.

No. of Place perfs

1730

Date

US 1; G 3 (defective), 4, 5

GB 1,2 4, 8, 13, 14; US 1, 4, 5, 8; C 1; F 1; I1 GB 13; US 1

Location of librettos

GB 12; US 1; B 1; NL 1; G 1, 2,2 3, 10

Wolfenbüttel, C. Bartsch G 3, 5, 6

T. Wood (2 issues, A and B) Stromer (2 issues)

GB 1, 4, 10, 14, 16; US 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14; C 1; F 1 GB 13 (A); F 1 (B)

GB 10 (damaged), 14; F 1

T. Wood (‘The Third Edition’)

T. Wood

GB 1; B 1; G 2, 3, 8

GB 12; US 1; G 1; A 1

Trausold

Spieringk

Wolfenbüttel, Christian GB 4; G 3, 5, 12 Bartsch with Prologo; no imprint G 4, 5 (Prologo only) no imprint G 3 (defective), 12

no imprint

as last with extra page

T. Wood

Libretto

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 498

06/10/2006 14:53:09

15, 18, 22, 25, 29 Jan.

15, 19, 22, 26, 29 Feb.; 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, 21 Mar. 27, 30 Apr., 4 May

1736/7

1732

1732

26, 29 Jan., 2, 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26 Feb., 2, 5, 9, 12 Mar., 16, 20 Apr. 27, 30 Nov., 4, 7, 11 Dec.

Aug.

Feb.

8, 11, 15, 18, 22, 29 Jan., 5, 12, 20, 24 Feb., 3 Mar.

1734

1737

1738

1735

1734

27 Jan., 3, 6, 10, 17, 20 Feb., 21, 24 Apr., 1, 4 May

1733

1734

1736

1735

27 Jan., 17 Feb., 11 July, 3, 13 Oct., 9, 14 Nov. 11 June, 10 July, 20 Sept., 11 Oct., 15 Nov. 8, 15, 22 Dec., 5 Jan. 1737

Date

11

London, Covent Garden Brunswick

5

London, Covent Garden

Brunswick

London

16

London

London

3

10

London

11

London

London, Covent Garden

4

5

Hamburg

5

as Hamburg 1732 above

ARIODANTE

ARIANNA IN CRETA

ORLANDO

SOSARME

EZIO

as Hamburg 1732 above

Hamburg

Remarks

7

No. of Place perfs

T. Wood (dated 1734)

T. Wood (2 issues: A 1733, B 1734) T. Wood (‘The Second Edition’) Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch

T. Wood (dated 1732)

probably issued, but none known

T. Wood

T. Wood

T. Wood (‘The Fourth Edition’, 3 issues A, B and C)

Stromer

Libretto

GB 13, 14;2 F 1 (defective)

G 42

G 3, 5, 7

GB 1 (A), 3 (B), 4, 13 (defective), 142 (AA, 1 defective); US 8 (A), 19(A); F 12 (AB) F1

GB 1, 4; US 6; F 1

GB 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 13, 14; US 6, 7, 8,2 10, 17; F1

GB 1, 4, 10, 13, 14, 16; US 5, 8, 10, 15;2 F 1; G 1

GB 2 (C), 3 (A), 10 (B); US 1 (A); F 1 (B)

GB 1; G 1; A 1

Location of librettos

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 499

06/10/2006 14:53:09

16, 19, 23, 25, 30 Apr., 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 28 May, 4, 12, 18, 25, 28 June, 2 July

6, 10, 13 Nov.

10, 21 June

Feb.

Aug.

12, 15, 19, 22, 26, 29 May, 2, 6 June

20, 27 Nov.

12, 15, 19, 22, 26 Jan., 12 Feb.

16, 19, 22, 25 Feb., 2, 4 Mar., 4, 7 May, 8 June Aug.

1735

1736

1737

1738

1738

1736

1736

1737

1737

1741

5, 7 May

1736

Date

9

6

2

8

2

ARMINIO

ATALANTA

‘In der Sommer-Messe’

GIUSTINO London, Covent Garden Brunswick Adds. G. C. Schürmann, tr. C. E. Simonetti and Schürmann

London, Covent Garden

London, Covent Garden London, Covent Garden

Brunswick

London, Covent Garden London, Covent Garden Brunswick ‘In der Winter-Messe’

3

ALCINA London, Covent Garden

London, Covent Garden

Remarks

18

2

No. of Place perfs GB 5

T. Wood

GB 2, 13, 14; US 13; F 1 (defective); G 1 G3

Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch

GB 14; US 13; F 1

GB 5, 14

GB 1, 3; US 8 [?], 13; F 1 [?]

G 2, 32

G 3, 4, 5

T. Wood

T. Wood

T. Wood (B)

T. Wood (2 issues: A)

Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch

T. Wood (2 issues: A GB 1 (A), 4 (A), 8 (B), 9 (B), 14 (A), 16 (A); scene numbers confused; US 1 (A), 8,2 13 (B); F 1 B scene numbers corrected) T. Wood (‘The Third GB 14; US 1; F 1; G 1 Edition’) none known

Location of librettos

Libretto

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 500

06/10/2006 14:53:09

5

2

3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 Jan., 16 May

15, 18, 22, 25 Apr., 2 May

22 Nov., 13 Dec.

24, 31 Mar.

10, 17 Jan., 10 Feb.

1738

1738

1740

1742

1741

3

2

8

Feb.

1743

4

18, 21, 25 May, 15 June

Remarks

SERSE

FARAMONDO

DEIDAMIA London, 10 Feb. perf. at Little Theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Haymarket Fields

IMENEO London, Lincoln’s Inn Fields Dublin, As Serenata without action Music Hall, Fishamble St.

London

London

BERENICE London, Covent Garden Brunswick Arr. and tr. G. C. Schürmann

No. of Place perfs

1737

Date

G3

Wolfenbüttel, Christian Bartsch

J. Chrichley

no date or imprint

T. Wood

J. Chrichley

GB 14; F 1

GB 1, 10; US 7

GB 14

GB 14; US 7, 15; F 1; I 1

J. Chrichley (dated 1737) GB 1, 4, 14; US 8, 13; F 1

GB 14; US 8

Location of librettos

T. Wood

Libretto

Location of Librettos

Great Britain (GB) 1 London, British Library 2 London, Royal College of Music 3 London, Victoria and Albert Museum (Theatre Museum) 4 London, Foundling Museum (Gerald Coke Handel Collection) 5 London, Handel House Museum 6 London, University College Library 7 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 8 Cambridge, King’s College (Rowe Library) 9 Cambridge, University Library 10 Oxford, Bodleian Library 11 Oxford, Worcester College Library 12 Manchester Central Library (Flower Collection) 13 Birmingham Central Library 14 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland 15 Mellerstain House, Berwickshire, Scotland 16 John Greenacombe (private collection) United States of America (US) 1 Washington (DC), Library of Congress 2 Washington (DC), Folger Shakespeare Library 3 Boston Public Library 4 New York Public Library 5 Chicago, Newberry Library (inc. Howard Mayer Brown Collection) 6 Chicago, University Library 7 San Marino, California, The Huntington Library 8 Princeton, University Library 9 New Haven, Yale University Library 10 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Library (inc. Neils-Ward Collection) 11 Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Library 12 Santa Barbara, University of California 13 Berkeley, University of California, Music Library 14 Los Angeles, University of California, William A. Clark Library 15 Los Angeles, University of California, Music Library 16 Bloomington, Indiana University Lilly Library 17 Philadelphia, The Library Company of Philadelphia 18 San Francisco State University Library (Frank V. de Bellis collection)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 501

06/10/2006 14:53:09

502

Appendix C

19 Columbia, Mo., University of Missouri, Ellis Library Canada (C) 1 Toronto, University of Toronto, Faculty of Music Belgium (B) 1 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) France (F) 1 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Schoelcher Collection) The Netherlands (NL) 1 The Hague, Gemeentemuseum Germany (G) 1 Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky 2 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek 3 Hanover, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek (Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek) 4 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek 5 Brunswick, Stadtbibliothek 6 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 7 Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek [? some holdings destroyed in fire of 2 September 2004] 8 Eutin, Landesbibliothek 9 Jena, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Universitätsbibliothek 10 Kiel, Universitätsbibliothek 11 Schwerin, Mecklenburgische Wissenschaftliche Allgemeinbibliothek 12 Wolfenbüttel, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Austria (A) 1 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Italy (I) 1 Bologna, Conservatorio di Musica G. B. Martini 2 Rome, Conservatorio di Musica S. Cecilia 3 Turin, Università degli Studi, Biblioteca Centrale della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 502

06/10/2006 14:53:09

a ppen dix d BORROWINGS

There will always be differences of opinion about what constitutes a borrowing, as opposed to a chance resemblance or a parallel treatment occasioned by similar ideas in the verbal text. Many borderline cases are excluded here. Bar references are not given except where the borrowed passage is internal or difficult to find. Most concordances with instrumental works are omitted, since few of them can be exactly dated; but it is likely that some precede the use of the same material in the operas. Concordances with later works are likewise excluded. All music is by Handel unless another composer is named. Numbers in brackets refer to Baselt’s Verzeichnis (Händel-Handbuch, vol. 1). HWV numbers are given for cantatas and other smaller works. Cantatas in Telemann’s Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst are identified by ‘HGD’ followed by the number of the cantata in the edition by Gustav Fock: Der Harmonische Gottesdienst. 72 Solokantaten in Telemann: Musikalische Werke (Vols 2–5; Kassel, 1953–7). This appendix owes a substantial debt to Dr John H. Roberts, who has corrected and supplemented it from his extensive knowledge of the subject.

Overture, introduction Act I

ALESSANDRO Flute sonata in D major, HWV 378, 1st movement

‘Fra (Tra) le stragi’ (3) ‘Men fedele e men costante’ (11)

Steffani: La superbia d’Alessandro, ‘Fra le stragi’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Vien serpendo nel mio petto’

‘Un lusinghiero’ (12)

Cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143), ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Conosco che sei bella’ Concerto grosso in B flat (Op. 3 no. 2), Minuet

‘A sprone, a fren leggiero’ (15) Duet ‘Placa l’alma’ (18)

‘Che tirannia d’Amor’ (24) ‘Dica il falso’ (30)

Steffani: La superbia d’Alessandro, duet ‘Amo, spero’ Keiser: Octavia, ‘Ruhig sein’ Agrippina, ‘Vaghe fonti’ Muzio Scevola, ‘Volate più’ (B section) Keiser: L’inganno fedele, ‘Grausames Schicksal!’ Alessandro autograph, ‘Spesso sarà bella tiranna’

Act III

‘Provo sono’ (39)

Cantata ‘Sei pur bella’ (HWV 160a), ‘Nascermi sento’

Act II

‘Vedrò fra poco’ (28)

Act III

‘Sì, ti bacio’ (33) ‘Spirti fieri’ (Anh. 9)

Act II

‘Si m’è contrario il cielo’ (9, 22) ‘Ti vedrò regnar’ (12)

Act II

Duet ‘Amo, spero’ (autograph) ‘Sempre fido’ (23a)

{

ADMETO Cantata ‘Solitudini care’ (HWV 163), ‘Sei bugiarda’ Giulio Cesare (autograph), ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’, 1st setting Rodrigo, ‘Spirti fieri dell’alme guerrieri’ RICCARDO PRIMO

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 503

Keiser: La forza della virtù, ‘Mit einem schönen Ende’ J. K. Kerll: Canzona 6

06/10/2006 14:53:09

Appendix D

504

Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Caro, torna a me’ Cantata ‘Fra pensieri quel pensiero’ (HWV 115), 1st aria Riccardo Primo (1st version), duet ‘Quanto goda l’alma’

‘Caro, vieni a me’ (15) ‘Dell’onor di giuste imprese’ (20) Duet ‘T’amo, sì’ (24) Act III

‘Per mia vendetta’ (26) ‘All’orror delle procelle’ (28) ‘Morte, vieni’ (29) ‘Quel innocente afflitto’ (30) ‘Nel mondo e nell’abisso’ (32) ‘Atterrato il muro cada ... Alla vittoria’ (34) ‘Il volo così fido’ (36) ‘Tutta brillanti rai’ (37) ‘Volgete ogni desir’ (39)

Act I

‘Se il mio paterno amore’ (2) ‘D’ogni amator’ (3)

{

{ { { {

‘Se il labbro’ (4) ‘Chi è più fedele’ (8) ‘Or mi perdo di speranza’ (9)

Telemann: HGD 2, ‘Folternde Rache’ Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Io più soffrir non so’ Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Nubiloso fra tempeste’ Cantata ‘Ah! che pur troppo’ (HWV 77), ‘Col partir la bella Clori’ Giulio Cesare, ‘Nel tuo seno’ Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Quando non vede la cara madre’ Cantata ‘Tra le fiamme’ (HWV 170), ‘Voli per l’aria’ Telemann: HGD 1, ‘Halt ein mit deine Wetterstrahle’ Riccardo Primo (1st version), Sinfonia Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Son qual colombo amante’ Telemann: HGD 3, ‘Ihr Völker, hört’ Telemann: HGD 29, ‘Verbreite nun wieder’ Riccardo Primo (1st version), ‘Di me non ti lagnar’

SIROE Genserico, ‘Quando contento’ Genserico, ‘Son come un arboscello’ Telemann: HGD 37, ‘Wer sehnet sich’ Genserico, ‘Di’ pur se il cor si piega’ Genserico, ‘Stimo fedele’ Genserico, ‘Ho nel seno’

Act II

‘Mi lagnerò tacendo’ (11) ‘Mi crede infedele’ (12) ‘Sgombra dell’anima’ (13) ‘Fra l’orror’ (14)

Rinaldo 1717, ‘Ogni tua bella stilla’ Telemann: HGD 38, ‘Ihr seligen Stunden’ Telemann: HGD 36, ‘Stille die Tränen’ Telemann: HGD 7, ‘Tod und Moder’

Act III

‘Dolcissimo amore’ (30)

Cantata ‘Zeffiretto’ (HWV 177), ‘Auretta vezzosa’

Act I

Overture ‘Se talor miri un fior’, 1st setting (6)

TOLOMEO Genserico, overture Telemann: HGD 4, ‘In gering- und rauhen Schalen’

{

‘Aure, portate’ (13a) ‘Dite, che fa’ (17) ‘Piangi pur’ (18)

Telemann: HGD 63, ‘O unaussprechliches Ergötzen’ Telemann: HGD 3, ‘Halleluja!’ Brockes Passion, ‘Dem Himmel gleicht’ Tolomeo autograph, ‘Addio, Osmino, addio’ Air for two-rowed harpsichord in G minor (HWV 466)

Act III

‘Son qual rocca’ (26) ‘Torni omai la pace’ (27a) Duet ‘Tutto contento’ (30) Chorus ‘Applauda ogn’uno’ (31)

Telemann: HGD 50, ‘Die stärkende Wirkung’ Telemann: HGD 68, ‘Lauter Wonne’ Telemann: HGD 5, ‘Durch Stillesein und Hoffen’ Genserico, chorus, ‘Applauda ogn’uno’

Act I

‘Già mi sembra’ (9)

Act II

‘Menti eterne’ (16) ‘Bella non mi negar’ (19) ‘D’una torbida sorgente’ (21)

Telemann: HGD 60, ‘Brich auf, O starker Herr’ Telemann: HGD 57, ‘Verlass den Bau’ Telemann: HGD 7, ‘Erscheine, Gott, in deinem Tempel’

Act III

‘Vedrò più liete’ (31)

Telemann: HGD 38, ‘Süsse Kindschaft’

Act I

‘Sento amor’ (7)

Act II

‘Quanto è felice’ (12)

‘T’appresta forse amore’ (8)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 504

LOTARIO Telemann: HGD 6, ‘Nur getrost, gelassne Seelen!’

PARTENOPE Telemann: HGD 19, ‘Gott will Mensch und sterblich werden’ Keiser: Claudius, duet ‘Liebliche Sonne’ Scipione, ‘T’aspetta fuor dell’onde’

{

06/10/2006 14:53:09

Appendix D

‘Anch’io pugnar saprò’ (12)

{

‘Barbaro fato, sì’ (22)

{

‘Furie son’ (26) ‘Qual farfalletta’ (29) ‘Furibondo sprira il vento’ (30) Act III

Quartet ‘Non è incauto’ (32) ‘Nobil core’ (38) Sinfonia (44) ‘Sì, scherza, sì’ (45)

Act I

‘È prezzo leggiero’ (2)

Act II

Duet ‘Caro / Dolce amico amplesso’ (14)

‘Se il ciel mi divide’ (18)

Act III

Telemann: HGD 34, ‘Ermuntert die Herzen’ Cantata ‘Mentre il tutto è in furore’ (HWV 130), ‘Dove, in mezzo alle stragi’ Il pastor fido, ‘Sol nel mezzo’ Telemann: HGD 34, ‘Ermuntert die Herzen’

‘Io seguo sol fiero’ (15)

Act II

‘Mio ben, ricordati’ (27) ‘Son confusa pastorella’ (28) Duet ‘Caro, vieni al mio seno’ (31)

{

{ {

Almira, ‘Chi sa, mia speme’ Cantata ‘Arresta il passo’ (HWV 83), ‘Sento che il Dio bambin’ Telemann: HGD 24, ‘Ja, wiederholt nur eure Tücke’ Cantata ‘Tra le fiamme’ (HWV 170), 1st aria Cantata ‘Donna che in ciel’ (HWV 233), ‘Sorga pure’ Amadigi, ‘Vado, corro’ Scipione, ‘Son pellegrino’ Scipione, ‘Generoso chi sol brama’ Cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143), ‘Astro clemente’ (2nd half of A section) Riccardo Primo, ‘Atterrato il muro cada’ Telemann: HGD 5, ‘Ewige Liebe’ Lotario, ‘Io vedo, sì’ (fragment)

PORO Telemann: HGD 71, ‘Unverzagt in allem Leide’

{

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (HWV 72), same text Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Vado co’ miei martiri’ Oboe concerto in G minor (HWV 287), 4th movement Prelude ed Allegro in A minor for keyboard (HWV 576), 2nd movement Trio sonata in G minor, Op. 2 no. 5 (HWV 390), 4th movement

{

Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Dov’è Narciso’ Telemann: HGD 16, ‘Wandelt in der Liebe’ Cantata ‘Amarilli vezzosa’ (HWV 82), duet ‘Sì, sì, lasciami ingrata’ Agrippina (autograph), ‘No, no, ch’io non apprezzo’

Overture

EZIO Titus l’Empereur, overture

Act II

Sinfonia (12a) ‘Quel finger affetto’ (17) ‘Nasce al bosco’, B section (19) ‘Finché per te mi palpita’ (20)

Cantata ‘Ah! crudel nel pianto mio’ (HWV 78), Sinfonia A. Scarlatti: Pompeo, ‘Bellezza che s’ama’ Cantata ‘Spande ancor’ (HWV 165), 1st aria A. Scarlatti: Pompeo, ‘Rendimi la mia pace’

Act III

Sinfonia (23)

Suite in D minor for keyboard (HWV 436), Allemande A. Scarlatti: Pompeo, ‘Sonno placido nume’ Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Col fulgido splendor’ Titus l’Empereur, ‘Mi restano le lagrime’ Keiser: Claudius, ‘Wehet dann, sanfte Lüfte’ Keiser: L’inganno fedele, ‘Grausames Schicksal!’

‘Guarda pria’ (24) ‘Peni tu per un’ingrata’ (25) ‘Se la mia vita’ (26) ‘Ah! non son io che parlo’ (30)

Overture, fugue

{

SOSARME J. K. Kerll (?): ‘Halter’ (‘Steyrischer Hirt’) for keyboard

Act I

‘Rendi’l sereno al ciglio’ (4) ‘Fra l’ombre’ (6)

Keiser: Claudius, ‘Plagnati del destino’ Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (HWV 72), ‘Fra l’ombre’

Act II

‘Se discordia ci disciolse’ (15) ‘Sento il cor’ (17) ‘Alle sfere della gloria’ (19)

Telemann: HGD 35, ‘Ein Wasserstrahl’ Sosarme, ‘So ch’il ciel’, 1st setting Telemann: HGD 35, ‘Ein Wasserstrahl’

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 505

505

06/10/2006 14:53:10

Appendix D

506

Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Ogni petto arde d’amore’

‘Vola l’augello’ (22)

Overture, introduction Act I

‘Non fu già men forte Alcide’ (6) Duet ‘Ritornava al suo bel viso’ (10) ‘Oh care parolette’ (13) Trio ‘Consolati, oh bella’ (16)

Act II

‘Tra caligini profonde’ (20)

ORLANDO J. K. Kerll: Canzona 4

{

{

Ritornello, Scene x (before 24)

Overture, fugue

Keiser: Octavia, ‘Chi non sa’ Il trionfo del Tempo, ‘Tu del ciel ministro eletto’ Teseo, ‘Chi ritorna alla mia mente’ Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Se ancor non m’intendete’ Chamber duet ‘Langue, geme’ (HWV 188), ‘Ma poi quando vede’ Almira, ‘Move il passi alle ruine’ Cantata ‘Sarei troppo felice’ (HWV 157), ‘Giusto ciel se non ho sorte’ Motet ‘Coelestis dum spirat aura’ (HWV 231), ‘Alleluia’ Chamber duet ‘Tanti strali al sen’ (HWV 197) Agrippina, ‘Io di Roma il Giove sono’ Acis and Galatea, ‘Cease to beauty’ Radamisto (autograph), ‘Senza luce, senza guida’ Teseo, ritornello, Act III.vii

ARIANNA IN CRETA J. K. Kerll: Canzona 3

Act I

‘Deh! lascia un tal desio’ (4) ‘Nel pugnar col mostro infido’ (5) ‘Sdegnata sei con me’ (8)

A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Vorrei senza dolor lasciarti’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Non mi abbatte la fierezza’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Che bella tirannia’

Act II

‘Non ha difesa’ (12) ‘Qual leon, che fere irato’ (14) ‘Al fine amore’ (16) ‘Se nel bosco’ (21)

A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Non mi abbatte la fierezza’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Come va l’ape’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Non vi vorrei conoscere’ Fiorè (?): aria ‘Rondinella sconsolata’

Act III

‘Un tenero pensiero’ (23)

Scarlatti: Dafni, duet ‘Gran difesa’ { A.Admeto, duet ‘Alma mia’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Se il mio dolor’ Il trionfo del Tempo, duet ‘Il voler nel fior degl’anni’ Vignati: Ambleto, ‘Sciolta dal lido’

‘Turbato il mar’ (27) Duet ‘Mira adesso questo seno’ (29) ‘Bella sorge la speranza’ (30)

Act I

‘Qui d’amor nel suo linguaggio’ (5) ‘Con l’ali di speranza’ (9) ‘Spero per voi’ (10)

‘Il primo ardor’ (12)

Duet and Chorus ‘Se rinasce’ (14) Ballo, Allegro (19) Act II

ARIODANTE Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Non è sì debole’ Telemann: HGD 44, ‘Kein Vogel kann’ C. F. Pollarolo: Ariodante, ‘Spero per voi’ G. Bononcini: La regina creduta re, ‘Porta le braccia e’l seno’ Keiser: cantata ‘Kommt ihr angenehmen Stunden!’, ‘Entflieht ihr traurigen Gedancken’ Cantata ‘Sei pur bella’ (HWV 160b, 160c), ‘È certo allor’ Tamerlano, duet ‘Vedrò ch’un dì’ Scipione, ‘Mi par sognar’ (incomplete) Telemann: Musique de table, III Suite, Allegresse Telemann: Musique de table, I Suite, Air

{

{

Sinfonia (20) ‘Tu preparati a morire’ (21) ‘Se l’inganno’ (25) ‘Più contento e più felice’ (26b) ‘Il tuo sangue’ (28) ‘Il mio crudel martoro’ (30)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 506

{ {

Steffani: La libertà contenta, ‘Notte, amica al cieco dio’ Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Fiera strage’ Keiser: Octavia, ‘Vaghi lumi’ Cantata ‘Dalla guerra amorosa’ (HWV 102), ‘Non v’alletti un occhio nero’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Sì, la voglio’ Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Fiera strage’ C. F. Pollarolo: Ariodante, ‘Il mio crudel martoro’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Sento che l’alma mia’

06/10/2006 14:53:10

Appendix D

Ballo, Entrée des songes agréables (31)

Ballo, Entrée des songes funestes, Allegro (33)

Ballo, Entrée des songes agréables effrayés (34) Act III

Act I

Chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’, 1st setting (2b) Chorus ‘Questo è il cielo’, 2nd setting (2a) Gavotte (3) ‘Dì, cor mio’ (7) ‘Di te mi rido’ (9) ‘È gelosia’ (10) ‘Bramo di trionfar’ (11)

{ {

ALCINA Telemann: Musique de table, I Suite, Ouverture Arianna in Creta, revival (November 1734) Bononcini: Xerse, Sinfonia avanti l’opera, 1st movement { G.Organ concerto, Op. 4 no. 4, 1st movement

{

‘Sì, son quella’ (13)

{

‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ (15) ‘Qual portento’ (17) ‘Pensa a chi geme’ (18) ‘Mi lusinga’ (20) ‘Ama, sospira’ (21) ‘È un folle, è un vile affetto’ (25)

{

‘Un momento di contento’ (31) ‘Ma quando tornerai’ (32) ‘Sta nell’Ircana’ (33) ‘All’alma fedel’ (34) ‘Mi restano le lagrime’ (35)

Cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143), ‘Chi mi chiama’

{

{

‘Barbara! io ben lo so’ (37)

{

Chorus ‘Dall’orror di notte cieca’ (39)

{

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 507

Telemann: Musique de table, I Concerto, Gratioso Telemann: Musique de table, I Suite, Rondeau Cantata ‘Dolce pur d’amor l’affanno’ (HWV 109) Telemann: HGD 38, ‘Ihr seligen Stunden’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Gran pena è gelosia’ Keiser: La forza della virtù, ‘Flieget und eilt’ Keiser: cantata ‘L’amata del mio sen’, ‘Torno, o sonno’ Telemann: HGD 11, ‘Halt ein, o Mensch’ Gasparini: Bajazet, ‘Non è si fido al nido’ G. Bononcini: La regina creduta re, ‘Son d’Egitto’ Amadigi, ‘Notte amica’ Telemann: HGD 38, ‘Ihr seligen Stunden’ Cantata ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143), ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ Alessandro, ‘Un lusinghiero dolce pensiero’

Claudius, ‘Halt ein erregter Geist’ { Keiser: Cantata ‘Cor fedele’ (HWV 96), ‘Quell’erbetta’

Accompagnato ‘Ah! Ruggiero crudel’ (27) Act III

Keiser: Procris und Cephalus, ‘Ihr allein’ Cantata ‘Mentre il tutto è in furore’ (HWV 130), ‘Combatti e poi ritorna’ Agrippina, ‘Fa quanto vuoi’ Teseo, ‘Qual tigre e qual Megera’ Tamerlano, ‘Più d’una tigre altera’ Keiser: Claudius, ‘Caro, son tua’ Il trionfo del Tempo, ‘Voglio cangiar desio’ C. F. Pollarolo: Ariodante, ‘Cieca notte’ C. F. Pollarolo: Ariodante, ‘Dopo notte’

‘Semplicetto! a donna credi?’ (12)

‘La bocca vaga’ (14)

Act II

‘Cerco in vano’ (bars 13-18) { Tamerlano, Tolomeo, ‘Torna sol per un momento’

‘Cieca notte’ (40) ‘Dopo notte’ (47)

Overture, 1st movement Overture, Musette

507

Telemann: HGD 9, ‘Liebe, die vom Himmel stammet’ Telemann: HGD 12, ‘Lass dir an meiner Gnade g’nügen’ Cantata ‘Cor fedele’ (HWV 96), 1st aria Cantata ‘Vedendo amor’ (HWV 175), ‘Rise Eurilla’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Che barbara pietà’ Cesti: Tito, ‘È più dolce quell’amore’ Keiser: Claudius, ‘Ich sterb vergnügt’ Athalia, duet ‘My spirits fail’ Cantata ‘Mentre il tutto è in furore’ (HWV 130), ‘Combatti, e poi ritorna’ Telemann: HGD 2, ‘Schmeckt und sehet’ Cantata ‘Manca pur’ (HWV 129), ‘All’amor mio’ Ezio, ‘Ecco alle mie catene’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Se bramate d’amar’ Cantata ‘Cor fedele’ (HWV 96), ‘Barbaro, tu non credi’ Floridante, ‘Barbaro! t’odio a morte’ Cantata ‘La terra è liberata’ (HWV 122), ‘Cara pianta’ Sonata in G minor (HWV 404), 1st movement

06/10/2006 14:53:10

Appendix D

508

Overture, 1st movement Act I ‘S’è tuo piacer’ (3)

‘Impara, ingrata’ (4) ‘Al varco, o pastori’ (6) ‘Riportai gloriosa palma’ (8) ‘Non sarà poco’ (9) Act II

Chorus ‘Oggi rimbombano’ (10) ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’ (11) Duet ‘Amarilli?’/‘Oh dei, che vuoi?’ (12) ‘Di’ ad Irene’ (15) ‘M’allontano, sdegnose pupille’ (16) ‘Se nasce un rivoletto’ (17)

Act III

Sinfonia (18)

ATALANTA Telemann: Musique de table, II Suite, Ouverture Telemann: Musique de table, I Concerto, 1st Allegro

{

{

{

{ Nebucadnezar, duet ‘Wehle, rede, sprich von Hertzen’ { G.Keiser: Bononcini: Xerse, Sinfonia avanti l’opera, Allegro

{ {

Act I Duet ‘Il fuggir, cara mia vita’ (1)

G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘È tuo quel core’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Tornate a serenatevi’ Keiser: Octavia, ‘Costante ognor così’ La Resurrezione, ‘O voi dell’Erebo’ Agrippina, ‘Col raggio placido’ Sarro: Ginevra, principessa di Scozia, ‘Placida auretta’ Keiser: Claudius, ‘Flüchtige Sinnen’ Il trionfo del Tempo, ‘Chiudi, chiudi’ Radamisto, ‘Mirerò quel vago volto’

Scarlatti: Dafni, Preludio, 1st movement { A.Cantata ‘Alla caccia’ (HWV 79), March Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Alma forte’, 2nd setting Radamisto, duet ‘Se teco vive il cor’ Telemann: HGD 10, ‘Erleuchte mich’ (ex Acis 1736, Esther 1736)

‘Custodite, o dolci sogni’ (22) Duet ‘Cara / Caro, nel tuo bel volto’ (24b) ‘Sol prova contenti’ (26)

Overture, fugue

Graun, Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Wer meinen strengen Schuld’ Graun, Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Also ist’s geschrieben’ Graun, Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Sehet, wir gehen hinauf ’ Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, ‘Impara, ingrata’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Io t’invoco’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Lascia l’armi’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Se l’idol mio’ Telemann: HGD 46, ‘Schaut in dieses Sonnenlicht’

ARMINIO Cantata ‘Oh numi eterni’ (HWV 145), ‘Alla salma infedel’

{

‘Non deve Roman petto’ (2) ‘Al lume di due rai’ (3)

Chamber duet ‘A mirarvi io sono intento’ (HWV 178) Utrecht Jubilate, duet ‘Be ye sure’ Anthem ‘Let God arise’ (HWV 256b), ‘O sing unto God’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Un dì ti sentirò’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Dirà che amor per me’

‘Vado a morir’ (18)

A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Ombre ciechi’ Gasparini: Amleto, ‘Quando io torni’ Porta: Numitore, ‘Sol m’affanna’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Non mi abbatte da fierezza’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Ho in seno due fiammelle’

Act III

‘Fatto scorta’ (27)

Vinci: Didone, ‘Prendo ardire’

Act I

‘Un vostro sguardo’ (2) ‘Da tuoi begl’occhi impara’ (3)

Act II

‘Duri lacci!’ (13) ‘Sì, cadrò’ (14) ‘Quella fiamma’ (17)

‘Può ben nascer’ (4) ‘Corri, vola’ (6) ‘Se parla nel mio cor’ (10)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 508

{

GIUSTINO Gasparini: Bajazet, ‘Quando il fato è più spietato’ Die verwandelte Daphne (?), Allemande (HWV 3534) G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Va godendo’ Gasparini: Faramondo, ‘Chi ben ama’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, Sinfonia avanti l’opera, 1st movement A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Quel ch’ha di dolce amor’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Un dì ti sentirò’

{

{

06/10/2006 14:53:10

Appendix D

‘Nacque al bosco’, 2nd setting (11b)

Act II

Act III

‘All’armi, o guerrieri’ (15) ‘Vanne, sì’ (16) ‘Mio dolce amato sposo’ (17)

Graun: Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, duet ‘Jesu wirstu zu mir sprechen’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Ti conosco, o rio destino’ anon.: aria ‘Vaghi fiori’ Vinci: Didone, ‘Se vuoi ch’io mora’

‘Ritrosa bellezza’ (19), B section Chorus ‘Per voi soave e bella’ (23) ‘Sventurata navicella’ (24) ‘Sull’altar’ (26) ‘Quel torrente che s’innalza’ (27)

Recorder sonata in B minor, Op. 1 no. 9 (HWV367), Minuet Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, ‘Se i monti andar vedrai’ Sarro: Ginevra, principessa di Scozia, ‘Placida auretta’ Vivaldi: Giustino, ‘Su l’altar’ Fiorè: aria ‘Scherza di fiore in fiore’

‘Il piacer della vendetta’ (30) ‘Zeffiretto che scorre’ (31)

‘Più non vo’ tra sì e no’ { Almira, Motet ‘Coelestis dum spirat aura’, ‘Tam patrono singulari’ Didone, ‘Se dalle stelle’ { Vinci: Vinci: Didone, ‘Se vuoi ch’io mora’

‘Di re sdegnato’ (32) ‘Il mio cor’ (33) ‘Dall’occaso in oriente’ (35) ‘Sollevar il mondo’ (38) ‘Or che cinto ho il crin’ (39) Chorus ‘In braccio a te la calma’ (42)

Act I

‘No, che servire altrui’ (1) ‘Vedi l’ape’ (2) ‘Dice amor’ (7)

‘Quell’oggetto’ (9)

Act II

‘Chi t’intende?’ (25) ‘Tortorella che rimira’ (26) Chorus ‘Con verace dolce pace’ (34)

Overture, Minuet Act I

{

‘Chi ben ama’ (5) ‘Vanne, che più ti miro’ (3 versions) (6) ‘Rival ti sono’ (7) ‘Voglio che mora’ (8) ‘Sì, tornerò a morir’ (9) ‘Vado a recar la morte’ (11)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 509

Vivaldi: Giustino, ‘Su l’altar’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘È gelosia quella tiranna’ Graun: Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Mein Knecht der Gerechte’ Vinci: Didone, ‘Son qual fiume’ Vivaldi: Giustino, ‘Il piacer della vendetta’ A. Scarlatti: Pompeo, ‘Bellezza che s’ama’ Vivaldi: Giustino, ‘In braccio a te la calma’

BERENICE Graun, Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Sehet, wir gehen hinauf ’ Telemann: HGD 46, ‘Wort des Vaters’ Telemann: HGD 49, ‘Gleich dem Balsam’ Cantata ‘Ah! che pur troppo è vero’ (HWV 77), ‘Da che perso’ Rodrigo, ‘Fra le spine’ Agrippina, ‘Tu ben degno’ Giulio Cesare in Egitto 1725, ‘Scorta siate’ Tamerlano, ‘Conservate per mia figlia’

{

‘Se non ho l’idol mio’ (11) ‘Su, Megera’ (15) ‘Amore contro amor’ (18)

‘Si poco è forte’ (22)

Act III

509

{

G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Speranze mie fermate’ Porta: Numitore, ‘Torni, o sole’ Graun, Passion, ‘Kommt her und schaut’, ‘Ihr Jünger Jesu lernt die Tücke’ Keiser: Octavia, ‘Kehre wieder’ Cantata ‘Arresta il passo’ (HWV 83), ‘Fiamma bella’ Agrippina, ‘Ogni vento’ Rodelinda, ‘De’ miei scherni’

Claudius, ‘Will der holden Sternen Schein’ { IlKeiser: trionfo del Tempo, ‘Io sperai trovar nel vero’ Telemann: HGD 28, ‘Ihr Sterblichen!’ Keiser: Claudius, overture FARAMONDO Porpora: Imeneo, Overture, Minuet M. A. Regolo, ‘È un inganno’ { A.A. Scarlatti: Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Se del fiume’ M. A. Regolo, ‘Corri, vola’ { A.A. Scarlatti: Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Deh per pietade’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, Keiser: La forza della virtù, A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo,

‘Vado, sì’ ‘Sponde amiche’ ‘Mit einem schönen Ende’ ‘Se non sa qual vento il guida’

06/10/2006 14:53:10

Appendix D

510 ‘Mi parto lieta’ (12) Act II ‘Sì, l’intendesti’ (15), B section

{

‘Poi che pria di morire’ (17)

{

‘Combattuta da due venti’ (18)

{

‘Se a’ piedi tuoi morrò’ (19) ‘Nella terra’ (21)

{

Duet ‘Vado e vivo’ (22) Act III ‘Così suole a rio vicina’ (25)

{

‘Voglio che sia l’indegno’ (26) ‘Sappi, crudel, io t’amo’ (28) ‘Un’aura placida’ (29) Aria and chorus ‘Virtù che rende’ (30-31)

Act I

‘Ombra mai fu’ (2) ‘O voi che penate’ (4) ‘Sì, sì, mio ben’ (7) ‘Meglio in voi’ (8) ‘Di tacere e di schernirmi’ (9) ‘Soggetto al mio volere’ (11) ‘Più che penso’ (14) ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ (19)

Act II

Keiser: Octavia, ‘Costante ognor così’ La Resurrezione, ‘O voi dell’Erebo’ Agrippina, ‘Col raggio placido’ Atalanta, ‘Di’ ad Irene’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Occhi belli’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘In voler ciò che tu brami’ A. Scarlatti: Griselda, ‘Amanti che piangete’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Son qual nave’ Arianna in Creta, ‘Nel pugnar col mostro infido’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Sconsolato rusignuolo’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘O lasciate ch’io sveni’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Sconsolato rusignuolo’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Son ben tenera’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Sono amante’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘So ben io’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Occhi belli, occhi vezzosi’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Lascia il pino’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Io le dirò che l’amo’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Vi respiro aurette placide’ Gasparini: Bajazet, ‘Non è si fido al nido’

SERSE G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Ombra mai fu’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘O voi che penate’ A. Scarlatti: Dafni, ‘Arderò si nel mio foco’ Athalia, ‘O Lord, whom we adore’, 1st setting Anthem ‘O praise the Lord with one consent’ (HWV 254), ‘God’s tender mercy’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Meglio in voi’ Brockes Passion, ‘Wisch ab der Tränen’ Radamisto I, ‘Non sarà quest’alma mia’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Soggetti al mio volere’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Più che penso’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Vado, sì’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Un cenno leggiadretto’ (B section)

{ { {

‘Voi mi dite’ (36) Duet ‘Gran pena è gelosia’ (40)

G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Ah! chi voler fiora’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Or che siete speranze tradite’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Ah! tigre infedele’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Un dì ti sentirò’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘L’amerete?’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Se bramate’ (Adagio sections) Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Or che morto è Narciso’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Quella che tutta fè’ German aria 1, ‘Künft’ger Zeiten eitler Kummer’ Cantata ‘Sei pur bella’ (HWV 160c), 1st aria G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Sì, la voglio’ Keiser: Claudius, ‘Caro, son tua’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Tutta sdegno’ A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Voglio a terra’ Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, ‘Voglio cangiar desio’ Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità, ‘Voglio cangiar desio’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Un dì ti sentirò’ Steffani: La libertà contenta, ‘Le mie prede mi son care’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Gran pena è gelosia’

Sinfonia (43)

Allemande in F for keyboard (HWV 476)

‘Ah! chi voler fiora’, 6/8 setting (21) ‘Or che siete speranze tradite’ (22) ‘Ah! tigre infedele’ (24) ‘Dirà che amor per me’ (26) Duet ‘L’amerete?’ (27) ‘Se bramate’ (28) ‘Anima infida’ (31) ‘Quella che tutta fè’ (32) ‘Per dar fine alla mia pena’ (34)

‘Sì, la voglio’ (35)

Act III

A. Scarlatti: M. A. Regolo, ‘Vanne infida’

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 510

{

{

06/10/2006 14:53:11

Appendix D

‘Cagion son io’ (48)

{

‘Crude furie’ (51) Aria and Chorus ‘Caro voi siete’ (52)

511

Keiser: cantata ‘L’anima del mio cor’, ‘Torna o sonno’ Agrippina, ‘Volo pronto’, bars 23-35 G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Perde il senno’ Muzio Scevola, ‘Non ti fidar’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Crude furie’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Cara voi siete’

IMENEO

Act I

‘Se potessero’ (2b)

Imeneo, ‘Se potessero’ { Porpora: Saul: ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless’

Chorus ‘Vien Imeneo’ (3, etc.) ‘V’è un infelice’, 2nd setting (8a) ‘Esser mia dovrà’ (9)

Chamber duet, ‘Che vai pensando’ (HWV 184) Porpora: Imeneo, ‘V’è un infelice’ Porpora: Imeneo, ‘Esser mia dovrà’

Act II

‘Deh! m’ajutate, oh dei!’ (11)

Jupiter in Argos, ‘Deh! m’ajutate, oh dei!’

Act III

‘In mezzo a voi dui’ (20)

Orlandini: Paride, ‘Non può più saldarsi’ Cantata ‘Look down, harmonious saint’ (HWV 124), ‘Sweet accents’ Cantata ‘Cecilia, volgi un sguardo’ (HWV 89), ‘Sei cara, sei bella’ Pistocchi: Narciso, ‘Quando t’amai’ Porpora: Imeneo, ‘Se la mia pace’ Tamerlano, accompagnato ‘Sì, figlia, io moro’ Saul (autograph), ‘Love from such a parent sprung’ Saul (autograph), ‘Capricious man’, 1st setting

‘Se ricordar ten vuoi’ (22)

‘Se la mia pace’ (23, 25) Accompagnato ‘Miratela’ (26), bars 26-32 ‘Se d’amore amanti siete’ (Anh. 5)

Overture, Allegro

{ { {

DEIDAMIA Keiser: Claudius, overture J. K. Kerll: Canzona 3

{

{

‘Perdere il bene amato’ (11)

Almira, ‘Gönne nach den Thränengüssen’ Cantata ‘Ninfe e pastori’ (HWV 139), ‘Ha nel volto’ Almira, ‘Leset, ihr funkelnden Augen’ G. Bononcini: Xerse, ‘Sento che l’alma mia’

Act II

Sinfonia (13) ‘D’amor nei primi istanti’ (16)

Imeneo, 1738 autograph draft Imeneo, ‘Se ricordar’, fragment (A major) (HWV 41, Anh. 22)

Act III

‘M’hai resa infelice’ (30)

Keiser: Claudius, ‘Ich sterb vergnügt’ Gasparini: Amleto, ‘Cinto d’amiche rose’ Gasparini: Amleto, ‘Non è sì fido’ Cantata ‘Nel dolce dell’oblio’ (HWV 134), ‘Giacché il sonno’ Cantata ‘Venne voglia ad amore’ (HWV 176), ‘Pose Clori ed Amarilli’ Concerto grosso in C major (HWV 318), 4th movement Water Music, ‘Country Dance’ (HWV 350/22)

Act I ‘Di lusinghe, di dolcezza’, 1st setting (6b)

‘Come all’urto aggressor’ (31) ‘Or pensate, amanti cori’ (32) ‘Non vuò perdere l’istante’, 1st setting (34b) ‘Non vuò perdere l’istante’, 2nd setting (34a) Duet ‘Ama nell’armi’ (35)

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 511

{

06/10/2006 14:53:11

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 512

06/10/2006 14:53:11

Dresden, Staatsoper Chichester, Assembly Rooms Halle Neuwied-Engers, Schloss Engers

Brunswick Halle, Landestheater

Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre Birmingham, Barber Institute Colchester, University Theatre

Basel, Kleine Bühne Moscow Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Mannheim, Nationaltheater Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall

1959, 8 Mar. 1981, 7 July 1983, 10 Apr. 2004, 10 June

1925, 14 Oct. 1958, 14 Dec.

1964, 7 May 1968, 16 May 1973, 10 Nov.

1985, 18 Dec. 1989, 11 Nov. 1990, 17 Feb.

1997, 16 May 1999, 18 Apr.

Place

Date

Wolfram Koloseus / Jana A. Höpfner Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson

Frances and Alan Kitching Anthony Lewis / Dennis Maunder Essex Univ. Music Soc., David Winton / Ian Granville Bell Hans-Martin Linde / Erich Holliger Paul Lando / Albert Scheibler Charles Farncombe / Heinz Balthes

ADMETO Franz Mikorey / Hans Strohbach Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert

ALESSANDRO Rudolf Neuhaus / Erhard Fischer Opera 70, Ian Graham-Jones / Michael Waite Christian Kluttig / Andreas Baumann Alan Curtis, Giovanni Togni/ Georges Delnon

Company, Conductor, Producer

5 4

6 3+ 7

in Italian in Italian, semi-staged in Italian tr. Höpfner Jones

8 2 5

5 11

31 2 16 8

No. of perfs.

Hans Dütschke W. Lewin, H. Gurgel, Rückert Geoffrey Dunn Geoffrey Dunn Winton

J. Beythien and E. Sprink tr. David Osmond-Smith Beythien – Sprink Chamber version (Curtis & Delnon) shortened

Editor/Translator

This appendix is greatly indebted to Professor Manfred Rätzer (Halle).

Modern Stage Productions to end of 2005

a ppen dix e

+ 3 public rehearsals

revived 1990; also Cologne revived 1991; also Halle

also Birmingham (Elgar Room) 1974

also Faringdon (Buscot Park)

revived 1985 also Potsdam and Mainz

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 513

06/10/2006 14:53:11

London, Sadler’s Wells

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Colchester, Methodist Church

Limassol, Kurion Amphitheatre Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

Gera Halle, Landestheater London, Britten Theatre

Venice, Scuola Grande S. Giovanni Evangelista

1964, 8 July

1970, 21 June 1972, 14 Sept.

1991, 6 July

1996, 31 May

1925, 25 Dec. 1962, 21 Jan. 1993, 23 Nov.

2000, 28 Dec.

1938, 19 June

Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert Opernstudio der Hochschule für Musik, Rainer Hecht, Gerhard Schäfer / Joachim Poley Nicholas Kraemer / Alan Kitching Musica nel Chiostro, Nicholas Kraemer / Graham Vick University of Maryland Opera Theatre, Nicholas McGegan / Leon Major

Halle, Landestheater

Hamburg, Aula der Werkkunstschule Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre Batignano, Chiostro San Croce (open air) College Park, Tawes Recital Hall

1963, 24 Nov.

1968, 27 June

1987, 11 Apr.

1973, 8 Sept. 1980, 25 July

Fritz Lehmann / Joachim Poley

Wupperthal, Theater der Stadt

1940, 4 July

in Italian

5

9 4

5

28

5

4

TOLOMEO Fritz Lehmann / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard

Göttingen, Stadttheater

Lehmann, tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio Lehmann, tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio Waldtraut Lewin and Rückert W. Brückner-Rüggeberg and G. Schmidt-Bohländer tr. Kitching in Italian

8

5 17 4

3

in Italian

Meyer Waldtraut Lewin in Italian

3

in Italian

SIROE Rolf Meyer / Hanns Schulz-Dornburg Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert London Handel Society, Denys Darlow, Michael Rosewell / Richard Gregson Andrea Marcon / Jorge Lavelli

3 2

3

2

No. of perfs.

tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio Winton

tr. A. Jacobs

in Italian

Les Talents Lyriques, Christophe Rousset / Nathalie van Parys

Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater

1999, 12 June

RICCARDO PRIMO Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Douglas Craig Günther Weissenborn / Heinrich Koch Colchester Baroque Ensemble, David Winton / Mary King English Bach Festival, Marc Minkowski / Tom Hawkes Nicholas McGegan / Kate Brown

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

also Maryland Handel Festival

also London (Drapers Hall) 1974

revived 1965

also New York Brooklyn Academy 2004

revived 1963

also London (Covent Garden)

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 514

06/10/2006 14:53:11

PARTENOPE Fritz Lehmann / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard Frances and Alan Kitching Audrey Langford / Michael Geliot Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Tom Hawkes Christian Kluttig / Andreas Baumann Richard Westernburg / Stephen Wadsworth

Göttingen, Stadttheater

Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre

Ledlanet, Kinross-shire London, Sadler’s Wells

Halle

Omaha, Joslyn Art Museum

Ealing (open air) Milwaukee, Skylight Opera Theatre Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall Cooperstown, NY

1999, 23 Mar.

1935, 23 June

1961, 4 May

1964, 30 Sept. 1981, 4 Nov.

1985, 15 Feb.

1988, 15 July

1990, 30 Aug. 1995, 25 Jan.

1998, 28 July

1995, 3 May

1999, 20 Jan.

Henley-on-Thames, Kenton Theatre New York, Manhattan School of Music London, Britten Theatre

1975, 3 Sept.

Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson Glimmerglass Opera, Harry Bicket, George Manahan / Francisco Negrin

Midsummer Opera, David Roblou / Alan Privett Scott Rednour / Chas Rader-Shieber

London Handel Society, Denys Darlow, Paul Nicholson / Robert Chevara

Will Crutchfield (semi-staged)

LOTARIO Unicorn Opera, Nicholas Kraemer / Alan Kitching

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Horsham, Christ’s Hospital

1998, 28 May 1998, 21 July

4 24

in Italian

6 12

5

13

4 8

5

5?

3

6

4 6

9 11

No. of perfs.

Jones

tr. Karin Zauft (arias in Italian) tr. Wadsworth and Carol Palca tr. Rosemary Barnes tr. Wadsworth

Lehmann, tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio tr. Kitching and Giovanna Ballinger Kitching Kitching

in Italian

tr. Kitching

in Italian in Italian

in Italian

Howard Arman / Anthony Pilavachi Muziektheater Transparent, Paul Dombrecht / Lindy Hume Nicholas McGegan / Drew Minter Broomhill Opera, Nicholas Kraemer / Charles Sturridge

Halle, Opernhaus Bruges, Stadsschouwburg

1996, 6 June 1998, 13 Feb.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

also NY City Opera, revived Chicago Lyric Opera 2003

rev. 1995 (Lyric, Hammersmith)

revived 1983

revived 1936

also London (Goldsmiths Hall) 1976

also Dessau 1997 also 8 other Belgian & Dutch towns

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 515

06/10/2006 14:53:11

1926, 30 June

1985, 9 May 1988, 15 Oct. 1994, 15 May 1998, 7 June 1998, 1 Oct.

1966, 29 Oct. 1968, 21 Jan. 1968, 20 Sept. 1972, 26 Mar. 1975, 2 Feb. 1981, 30 Apr. 1982, 19 June 1982, 20 June

Göttingen, Stadttheater

Rückert Rückert tr. Kitching and Giovanna Ballinger Rückert Rückert Rückert Rückert, tr. Vera Strelcová Rückert tr. Karin Zauft tr. Eva Bezdeková Farncombe, Rückert

Günter Blumhagen / Karl Hübenthal Frank Morgenstern / Joachim Beese Frances and Alan Kitching

1961, 18 Feb. 1966, 30 Apr. 1966, 11 Sept.

Rudolf Schultz-Dornburg / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard

EZIO

Ivor Keys / Jocelyn Powell Horst Busch / Christian Schmidt Gilbert Bezzina / Eric Vigié Paul Goodwin / Mike Ashman Antahkarana, Ian Page / Peter Shayne

Franz Notholt

Nov. 1731 version, tr. Powell Zauft in Italian Nov. 1731 version in Italian

tr. Eva Bezdeková

Josef Bartel / Bohumil Zoul

Ustí-nad-Labem, Czechoslovakia Chemnitz, Städtische Theater Cottbus, Staatstheater Bagnor, near Newbury, Watermill Theatre Dresden, Landesoper Potsdam Halberstadt Brno, Janácek Akademie Neustrelitz Halle, Landestheater Liberec Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Birmingham, Barber Institute Dresden, Landesbühnen Nice, Théâtre de Nice Halle, Opernhaus London, St Bartholomew Smithfield

1959, 7 Oct.

Ernst Herrmann / Dietrich H. Litt Peter Gülke / Wilfried Serauky Hans Auenmüller / Helmut von Senden František Sonek / Martin Dubovíc Hartmut Kretzchmann / Sieglinde Wiegand Christian Kluttig / Andreas Baumann Boris Jone / Oldrich Mrnák Charles Farncombe / Uwe Kreyssig

Hans Dütschke Rückert, Konrad Sasse

PORO Ludwig Leschetizky / Max Haas Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert

Brunswick Halle, Landestheater

1928, 21 Apr. 1956, 17 June

also Buxton

Remarks

13

2 5+ 9 8+ 3

17 10 8 13

51 15 1

38 12 6

also Münster and Düsseldorf

also Toulouse revived 1999

also Jablonec revived 1983 and 1984

also Abingdon and Claydon

8 also Copenhagen c. 50 also Hamburg, Göttingen and Nuremberg 9

4

in Italian

2001, 31 May

6

tr. Wadsworth & Palca

Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Netia Jones Nicholas McGegan / Igor Folwill

2001, 23 May

in Italian

Howard Arman, Barbara Wild / Nigel Lowery

Innsbruck, Tiroler Landestheater London, Linbury Studio Theatre Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

2000, 5 Feb.

No. of perfs.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 516

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Frankfurt / Oder Dessau, Landestheater Nordhausen London, Sadler’s Wells Halle, Theater des Friedens Dresden, Landesoper Annaberg

Hamburg, Hochschule für Musik und Theater

1959, 12 Sept. 1959, 4 Oct. 1959, 24 Oct. 1961, 2 July 1962, 26 Jan. 1964, 11 Apr. 1966, 2 Oct. 1967, 1 July 1968, 21 Apr. 1970, 18 Sept. 1972, 21 Apr.

1973, 18 Feb. 1976, 11 June 1976, 28 Nov. 1977, 4 Nov. 1979, 20 May 1981, 24 Oct. 1983, 18 Mar.

1992, 6 Nov.

Ernst Albrecht Reinhard / Werner Schindler Kurt Piede / Günther Imbiel Joseph Trauneck / Friedrich Radtke Helmut Koch / Heinz Rückert Olaf Koch / Rüdiger Flohr Walter König / Walter Blankenstein Klaus Tennstedt / Reinhard Schau Rolf Stadler / Otto Mahrholz Rolf Schellenberg / Peter Gogler Ernst Albrecht Reinhard / Eva Hein Helmut Gerber, Herwig Saffert / Walter Blankenstein Wolfgang Bothe / Eva Hein Wolfram Rinker / Rüdiger Flohr Kurt Schäfer / Tilo Grosse Charles Farncombe / Tom Hawkes Max Pommer, Christian Kluttig / Martin Schneider Helmut Gerber / Jürgen Maschwitz Wolfram Rinker, Branimir Kardjiew / Jochen Hellwig Arne Willimczik / Barbara Giese

10 30 25 16 30 29 11 17 22 6 19 9 8 16 10 20 27 12 5

Lewin–Rückert Koch–Rückert Koch–Rückert tr. Tom Hammond Koch–Rückert Lewin–Rückert Lewin–Rückert Koch–Rückert; tr. Anja Rosa Thöming

19 4 8 6 31

9

3 4 13

No. of perfs.

Koch–Rückert Koch–Rückert Koch–Rückert Rückert; tr. W. Lewin Schneider-Rückert Koch–Rückert Lewin–Rückert Koch–Rückert Lewin–Rückert Koch–Rückert Lewin–Rückert

tr. Saffir Koch–Rückert-Beese

Koch–Rückert & Beese Koch–Rückert

25 Jan. 18 Mar. 30 Apr. 11 May 17 May

Hermann Josef Nellessen / Joachim Beese Paul Sixt / Helmut von Senden Otto Söllner, Johannes Sartorius / Rudolf Hesse Actors Opera, Kurt Saffir / Naomi Ornest Günther Herbig, Gerhard Pflüger / Hans Wächther

1959, 1959, 1959, 1959, 1959,

Gelsenkirchen, Theater im Revier Cottbus Detmold, Landestheater Trier, Theater der Stadt New York, Gate Theater Weimar, Deutsches Nationaltheater Gera Köthen, Stadttheater Erfurt, Städtische Bühnen Berlin, Staatsoper Meiningen Plauen Schwerin Rudolstadt Altenburg Greifswald Görlitz (Zittau)

1958, 9 Nov.

Ljubomir Romansky / Rudolf Schenkl

Notholt Notholt Max Schneider; tr. Herbert Koch and Rückert Koch–Rückert

Robert F. Denzler / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard Johannes Schüler / Fritz Wiek Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert

Berlin, Städtische Oper Oldenburg Halle, Landestheater

1928, 31 Jan. 1929, 6 Sept. 1954, 8 May

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

revived 1980, also Göttingen 1978 revived 1980, also Magdeburg

also Halle 1977

revived 1961

also Nuremberg

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 517

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Berlin, Hebbeltheater

Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées San Francisco

1993, 25 July

1995, 18 Feb.

Warsaw, Fryderyka Chopin Academy of Music Mnichovo Castle, Czech Republic London, Britten Theatre

Lisbon, T. Nacional São Carlos

Halle Krefeld Drottningholm, Court Theatre Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre

1970, 8 Sept. 1973, 23 June 1979, 24 May 1982, 26 Sept.

2000, 17 May

2004, 25 Mar.

2005, 18 Feb.

1922, 1934, 1950, 1959,

1959, 4 June

28 May 9 June 1 Sept. 6 May

Florence, Pergola Theatre

Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Birmingham, Barber Institute Gdan´sk, Wielki Mlyn

2005, 15 Mar.

2003, 23 May

Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater London, Britten Theatre

1998, 4 June

1997, 26 Apr.

1995, 9 June

Place

Date

4 3

in Italian in Italian

Bruno Rigacci / Mario Ferrero

ORLANDO Oskar Braun / August Rösler Otto Söllner / Hans Dinghaus Lamberto Gardelli / Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius Frances and Alan Kitching

Cappella Accademica Praha, Ondrej Macek / Zuzana Vrbová London Handel Festival, Laurence Cummings / William Relton Alan Curtis/Jakob Peters-Messer

SOSARME Antony le Fleming / Alan Kitching Günther Weissenborn / Heinrich Koch Ivor Keys / Jocelyn Powell Opera Baltycka, Wojciech Rajski / Hanna Chojnacka Pawel Kos-Noricki / Hanna Chojnacka

London Handel Festival, Laurence Cummings / William Relton

2

4 4 36 4

16

as Fernando re di Castiglia, arr. Curtis

Hans-Joachim Moser Hans-Joachim Moser tr. Hylten-Cavallius tr. Kitching and Giovanna Ballinger

4

7

2

6 4 2

tr. S. Butteriss

tr. Kitching tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio

4

4

in Italian

Robert King / Stephen Medcalf

in Italian

8

in Italian

San Francisco Opera Center, Susan Webb / Max Charruyer Howard Arman / Pet Halmen

6

Koch–Rückert

Berlin Kammeroper, Brynmor Llewelyn Jones, Sebastian Gottschick / Henry Akina Roy Goodman / Georges Delnon

No. of perfs.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

revived 1954, 1958

also St Gallen and Spoleto

also Karlsruhe and Göttingen (semistaged) 2004

revived 1996

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 518

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Halle, Landestheater Birmingham, Barber Institute Drottningholm, Court Theatre

Hovingham Hall Sydney, University of NSW Science Theatre Helsinki, crypt of Lutheran Cathedral Scheveningen, Circus Theatre

Southsea, St John’s College Manchester, Royal Northern College of Music Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

Wexford, Theatre Royal Lübeck, Bühnen der Hansestadt Cambridge, Mass., Loeb Drama Center Lund, Stadsteater

St Louis, Washington University, Edison Theater Orléans, Carré St Vincent

New York, Carnegie Hall The Hague

Venice, La Fenice Glasgow, Theatre Royal San Francisco, Opera House

1961, 29 Mar. 1966, 12 May 1968, 21 May

1976, 30 June 1976, 20 Nov.

1978, 19 May 1978, 4 Dec.

1980, 23 Oct. 1980, 6 Dec.

1983, 25 Feb.

1983, 25 Nov.

1984, 25 Nov. 1985, 31 Jan.

1985, 11 Apr. 1985, 8 May 1985, 21 Sept.

1982, 29 Jan.

1981, 16 Dec.

1980, 21 June

1979, 10 July

1978, 5 May

1977, 4 Feb.

Place

Date

Diego Masson, Ton Koopman / Christian Gangneron Charles Mackerras / Andrew Porter Netherlands Opera, Nicholas Kraemer / Filippo Sanjust Charles Mackerras / Virginio Puecher Scottish Opera, Richard Hickox / Christopher Fettes Charles Mackerras / John Copley

Nicholas McGegan (cond. & prod.)

American Repertory Theatre, Craig Smith / Peter Sellars Elzbieta Lejczak / Agneta von Hofsten

Cannon Hill Music Theatre Co., Paul Herbert / John Ginman Günther Weissenborn, Gerhard Schneider / Veit W. Jerger James Judd / Wilfred Judd Gerhard Schneider / Veit W. Jerger

Finnish National Opera, Eero Erkkilä / Hanns Heikinheimo Netherlands Opera, Kazimierz Kord / Filippo Sanjust Opera 70, Damian Cranmer / Michael Waite Richard Vardigans / Brian Trowell

Mackerras and Julian Smith tr. Kitching

semi-staged in Italian

tr. Hylten-Cavallius and Henrikssen

in Italian

6 10 13

1 10

c.20

5

17

c.40

4 9

2

tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio

tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio

4

13 6

13

3 4

19 4 5

No. of perfs.

tr. Ginman

tr. Trowell

Waldtraut Lewin tr. Trowell tr. Hylten-Cavallius & Alf Henrikson tr. Stephen Oliver tr. Covell

Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert Anthony Lewis / Brian Trowell Charles Farncombe / Bengt Peterson York Festival Opera, Peter Seymour / Julian Hope Roger Covell / Bernd Benthaak

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

also 5 other cities also Chicago 1986

also 5 other Dutch cities

all over France

also Malmö

incl. 6 other towns also Grenoble and Bath 1979

incl. 8 other cities, incl. Prague

revived 1962 Buna Chemical Works also London (Sadler’s Wells) revived 1969

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 519

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Berlin, studio of Renaissance Theatre London, Royal Albert Hall Munich, Sophiensaal

Herrenhausen, Galeriegebäude Batignano, Chiostro San Croce Halle, Opernhaus Aix-en-Provence, Théâtre de l’Archevêché Oxford, New College garden

1988, 21 Nov.

1991, 11 July 1992, 2 Aug. 1993, 4 June 1993, 16 July

Visby (Gotland), St Lars ruin

Melbourne

Stockholm, Royal Theatre

Oxford, New College antechapel Zwingenberg [Max-WilhelmsHöhe Mudau] Perth

1997, 10 Aug.

1999, 21 July

1999, 17 Oct.

2000, 25 Mar

2000, 15 June

2000, 30 Aug.

2000, 13 Aug.

1997, 21 Nov. 1998, 4 Sept.

Antwerp New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music Altenburg, Festsaal des Schlosses Potsdam, Schlosstheater London, Queen Elizabeth Hall

1995, 9 June 1996, 2 Feb.

1994, 22 July

1989, 30 July 1990, 18 July

Charles Farncombe / Uwe Wand

Karlsruhe, Staatstheater

1986, 21 June

Andreas Spering / Paul Stern Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Sarah Alexander Omega Alfa company, Jonas Lundahl / Carl-Henrik Fridén Melbourne Festival, Oz Opera, Graham Abbott / Lindy Hume Raymond Leppard, B. Tommy Andersson / AnnMargret Petterson New Chamber Opera, Matthew Halls / Michael Burden Schlossfestspiele Zwingenberg, Maria Fitzgerald / Detlef Sölter West Australian Opera, Graham Abbott / Lindy Hume

Berliner Kammeroper, Brynmor Llewelyn Jones / Henry Akina Christopher Hogwood / Kate Brown Carissimi Collegium, Alexander Weimann / Dominik Wilgenbus Otto-Georg Moosdorf / Uwe Wand Musica del Chiostro, Timothy Lole / Ian Spink Howard Arman / Roland Velte William Christie / Robert Carsen, Jean Philippe Delavault New Chamber Opera, Gary Cooper / Michael Burden Flanders Opera, Paul Dombrecht / Robert Carsen Les Arts Florissants, William Christie / Robert Carsen Herbert Handt / Handt and Gundula Novak

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

in Italian

reduced to 2 acts

in Italian in Italian, semi-staged

in Italian

in Italian

Röhlig Italian Italian Italian

incl. 4 at Ghent Aix production

9 4

3

3

15

9 1

incl. 1 at Jena

incl. 1 in 1995

4

2

also Brühl and Bad Kissingen also Paris and 6 other cities to 1997

revived 1992

revived 1987

Remarks

7 4 14 28

1 2

semi-staged in Italian tr. in in in

10

8

No. of perfs.

tr. Eginhard Röhlig and Wand tr. Röhlig

Editor/Translator

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 520

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Hans Hoffmann / Hermann Schaffner Kurt Striegler / Erhard Fischer Carl Gorvin / Karl-Heinrich Kreith Walter Knör / Günter Amberger Nicholas Kraemer / Alan Kitching Warsaw Chamber Opera, Jürgen Jürgens / Jitka Stokalska Peter Wishart / Brian Trowell Vittorio Negri / Heinz Balthes

Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall Antwerp Marseille

Cooperstown, NY

Dartington

Nuremberg London, Covent Garden Ravenna, Teatro Comunale Alighieri Antibes, Chantier Naval Opéra

Melbourne, Assembly Hall Essen, Aalto Musiktheater

Göttingen, Stadttheater

Bielefeld, Städtische Bühnen

Dresden, Staatsoper Kaiserslautern, Pfalztheater Mannheim, Nationaltheater Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre Warsaw, Grand Theatre

Reading University Great Hall Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

2001, 2 May

2002, 11 June 2003, 1 Mar

2003, 19 July

2003, 7 Aug.

2003, 25 Sept. 2003, 6 Oct. 2004, 20 Feb.

2005, 6 May 2005, 15 Oct.

1946, 30 June

1946, 1 Nov.

1953, 14 May 1959, 24 Nov. 1963, 10 July 1974, 6 Sept. 1977, 3 June

1979, 11 May 1991, 23 Feb.

1999, 28 May

Nicholas McGegan / Catherine Turocy

ARIANNA IN CRETA Fritz Lehmann / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard

Musique au Coeur, Michael Bahmann / Françoise Chatôt Lyric Opera, Patrick Miller / Scott Dunsdon Alessandro De Marchi / Tilman Knabe

Musikwerkstatt Wien, Huw Rhys James / John Lloyd Davies Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson Flemish Opera, Paul Goodwin / Robert Carsen Compagnie Deus ex Machina, Jean-Marc Aymes / Françoise Chatôt Glimmerglass Opera, Bernard Labardie / Chas Rader-Shieber Dartington Summer School, Stephen Devine / Pete Harris Pocket Opera, Franz Killer / Peter B. Wyrsch Royal Opera, Harry Bicket / Francisco Negrin Ottavio Dantone / Robert Carsen

Vienna, Odeon Theater

2001, 20 Feb.

2004, 11 July

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

in Italian

in Italian; Reinhold Kubik

tr. Dahnk-Baroffio tr. Kitching in Italian

Lehmann; tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio Lehmann; tr. Dahnk-Baroffio Lehmann

in Italian

in Italian

tr. Jones

Editor/Translator

3

2 4

26 7 29 8

9

7

9

4 6 4+

also Göttingen and other towns 1980-81

also Halle

also Reggio Emilia

revived New York City Opera, cond. Antony Walker, 20 Mar. 2005

16 3

also Ghent

Remarks

11

4

5

No. of perfs.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 521

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Stuttgart Berlin, Staatsoper

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Bremen, Theater der Freien Hansestadt Herrenhausen, Niedersächsische Landesbühne Birmingham, Barber Institute Drottningholm, Court Theatre Cluj, Romania, Conservatorium Gheorge Dima Berne Cambridge, Senate House

Halle, Landestheater

Washington, Kennedy Center

London, Sadler’s Wells

Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre Milan, Piccola Scala

1926, 28 Sept. 1959, 13 Apr.

1959, 27 June 1959, 29 Aug.

1971, 30 May

1971, 14 Sept.

1974, 29 Oct.

1977, 24 Nov.

1981, 24 Mar.

1967, 11 June 1970, 27 Nov.

1964, 7 May 1964, 18 Aug. 1966, 24 Apr.

1963, 23 July

11

Alan Curtis / Pier Luigi Pizzi

7

2

24

7 2

2 7 2

revived 1982; also Reggio Emilia, Piacenza

revived 1976

revived 1972; also Wiesbaden

revived 1964

9

3

Waldtraut Lewin and Kersten

in Romanian; tr. Ion Husti

tr. Trowell

also Hameln

also Halle and Prague

also Beeskow in 9 Dutch towns

Remarks

4 22

8 27

2

in Italian

Anton Rudolph Rückert and Waldtraut Lewin tr. E. Dahnk-Baroffio tr. Dahnk-Baroffio

13 10 4

No. of perfs.

tr. Dahnk-Baroffio

Editor/Translator

New York City Opera, Julius Rudel / Tito Capobianco Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / David Thompson Paul Herbert / John Ginman

Ewald Körner / Edgar Kelling Cambridge University Opera Society, Stephen Cleobury / David Piper Thomas Sanderling / Wolfgang Kersten

Anthony Lewis / Brian Trowell Lars af Malmborg / Lars Runstén Anton Ronai / Anghel I. Arbore

Ljubomir Romansky / Heinz Arnold

Heinz Wallberg / Albert Lippert Alfred Eichmann, Heinz Wallberg / Albert Lippert

ARIODANTE Carl Leonhardt / Otto Erhardt Horst-Tanu Margraf, Helmut Koch / Heinz Rückert

Oper Oder-Spree, Dian Tschobanov / Tilo Grosse Nationale Reisopera, Jed Wentz / Stephen Langridge Gotham Chamber Opera, Neal Goren / Christopher Alden George Petrou / Niketi Kontouri

Neuzelle, cloister (open air) Kampen, Stadsgehoorzaal New York, Harry de Jur Playhouse Ancient Corinth, Temple of Octavia

2001, 9 Aug. 2003, 16 Oct. 2005, 10 Feb.

2005, 15 July

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 522

06/10/2006 14:53:12

London, Coliseum

Cardiff, New Theatre

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Saarbrücken, Schlosskirche

London, St Clement Danes Church New York, Merkin Concert Hall Dallas, Fair Park Music Hall Canberra, Commonwealth Park (open air) New York, City Opera

1993, 28 Apr.

1994, 24 Feb.

1995, 1 June 1995, 14 June

1997, 28 May

1999, 26 Sept.

1998, 20 Nov. 1999, 10 Mar.

1998, 26 Jan.

1991, 27 Nov. 1992, 13 Apr.

Jane Glover / John Copley

2

semi-staged

Dallas production

3

tr. Amanda Holden

7

5

4 4

5

26+

18 4

4 7 4 6

9

4

5

1 11

2

No. of perfs.

in Italian tr. Dahnk-Baroffio

ENO production in Italian

tr. Amanda Holden

tr. Dahnk-Baroffio in Italian

Milan production

Charleston, S. Carolina, Dock Street Theater Wexford, Theatre Royal Geneva, Grand Théâtre Buxton, Opera House Santa Fe Philadelphia, Academy of Music Kaiserslautern, Pfalztheater San Francisco, Artaud Theater

1985, 27 May Alan Curtis / Guus Mostart Nicholas Kraemer / Pier Luigi Pizzi Anthony Hose / Ian Judge Nicholas McGegan / John Copley Opera Company of Philadelphia, Michael Korn / Gray Veredon Uwe Sandner, Eduard Meier / Ulrich Peters San Francisco Opera Center, Patrick Summers / Christopher Hahn English National Opera, Nicholas McGegan, Ivor Bolton, Harry Bicket / David Alden Welsh National Opera, Marc Minkowski / David Alden Nicholas McGegan / Drew Minter Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Klaus Rohra / Thomas Max Meyer Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Sarah Alexander Manhattan School of Music, Will Crutchfield / Steven Thorp Dallas Opera, Graeme Jenkins / John Copley Stopera, Graham Abbott / David Branson

University of Washington Schools of Music and Drama, Robert Feist / Vincent Liotta Spoleto Festival, James Richman / Catherine Turocy

Seattle, Meany Theater

1985, 16 May

1985, 24 Oct. 1986, 5 Feb. 1986, 31 July 1987, 18 July 1990, 20 Feb.

Strohbach and Rüdiger; tr. Dahnk- Baroffio

Siegfried Strohbach / Reinhold Rüdiger

1984, 13 July

Herrenhausen

1982, 10 Sept. 1983, 7 Oct.

Alan Curtis / Shirley Wynne

Editor/Translator

Milan production, Curtis Milan production, Curtis

Innsbruck, Tiroler Landestheater Edinburgh, King’s Theatre Nancy, Grand Théâtre

1982, 26 Aug.

Company, Conductor, Producer

Roger Norrington / Pier Luigi Pizzi Cyril Diederich, Jean-Claude Malgoire / Pizzi

Place

Date

also Birmingham, Southampton, Bristol

revived 1996, 2002

also St Gallen 1992

revived Hunter College, NY 1986

also Paris, Orléans, Lausanne (to 1985)

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 523

06/10/2006 14:53:12

Paris, Opéra National San Diego Freiburg / Breisgau Boston, Mass.

Utrecht, Stadsschouwburg

Houston, Wortham Theater

Odense

Dublin, Helix Theatre

Ghent Iford Manor, Glos.

Linz

Richmond, Surrey

Frankfurt / Main

Leipzig Karlsruhe Hanover, Opernhaus Halle, Landestheater London, St Pancras Assembly Rooms Stockholm, Royal Opera

2001, 17 Apr. 2002, 9 Feb. 2002, 13 Apr. 2002, 19 Apr.

2002, 20 Apr.

2002, 11 Nov.

2002, 21 Nov.

2003, 8 Feb.

2003, 23 Mar. 2003, 24 June

2003, 21 Aug.

2003, 15 Oct.

2004, 28 Mar.

1928, 14 June 1930, 27 May 1935, 9 May 1952, 12 July 1957, 19 Mar.

1959, 14 Apr.

Bayerische Staatsoper, Ivor Bolton, Harry Bicket / David Alden Marc Minkowski / Jorge Lavelli Kenneth Montgomery / John Copley Reinhard Goebel / Gerd Heinz Handel and Haydn Society, Christopher Hogwood / William Gustavson Nationale Reisopera, Michael Hofstetter / Tobias Hoheisel, Imogen Kogge Houston Grand Opera, Christopher Hogwood / David Alden, Ian Rutherford Den Fynske Opera, Lars Ole Mathiasen / Bent Norgaard Opera Theatre Company, David Adams / James Conway Flemish Opera, Christopher Poppen / David Alden Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Netia Jones Opera da Camera Linz, William Mason / Henry Mason English Touring Opera, Laurence Cummings / James Conway Andrea Marcon / Achim Freyer and Friederike Rinne-Wolf

Munich, National Theatre

2000, 17 Jan.

ALCINA Oskar Braun / Walther Brügmann Josef Krips / Hans Esdras Mutzenbecher Rudolf Krasselt / Hans Winkelmann Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Anthony Besch Lars af Malmborg, Silvio Varviso / Bengt Peterson

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

Roth, af Malmborg, R. Engländer tr. Bertil Carlberg

Herman Roth Roth tr. T. W. Werner Herbert Koch; tr. Roth tr. Farncombe

in Italian

ENO production

ENO production

semi-staged

ENO production

Editor/Translator

48

2 2 5 2 2

15+

11 4

11

6

11

10 4

25+

No. of perfs.

often revived; also Covent Garden 1960, Hamburg 1965

in nine cities; also Buxton 2005

inc. Antwerp

in nine cities

in ten cities

often revived

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 524

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Wuppertal, Wuppertale Bühne New York, City Opera Palermo, Teatro Politeama Garibaldi Berlin, Staatsoper Milan, Scala Birmingham, School of Music London, Christchurch Spitalfields Tallinn Cincinnati, Patricia Corbett Theatre Wuppertal

14 Feb. 17 Apr. 4 July 15 July

1986, 1 June

1985, 24 Aug. 1986, 13 Feb.

1985, 1985, 1985, 1985,

tr. E. Schmidt

in Estonian, tr. Uno Kreen Holliday

in Italian

Keith Darlington / Michael Kennerly The Opera Stage, Richard Hickox / Frank Corsaro Estonian Music Theatre, Paul Mägi / Arne Mikk College-Conservatory of Music, Teri Murai / Thomas Holliday Lothar Knepper / Friedrich Meyer-Oertel

tr. E. Schmidt

tr. E. Schmidt in Italian

tr. E. Schmidt Strohbach and Rüdiger in Italian

Peter Schreier / Christian Pöppelreiter

Kaspar de Roo / Tom Hawkes Wolfgang Rot / Harry Kupfer Siegfried Strohbach / Reinhold Rüdiger Australian Opera, Richard Bonynge / Robert Helpmann, Christopher Brown, Elke Neidhardt, Garth Scott-Annetts Hanns-Martin Schneidt / Friedrich Meyer-Oertel Raymond Leppard / Andrei Serban Arthur Fagen / Jorge Lavelli

Raymond Leppard / Jorge Lavelli

in Italian

1981, 3 Oct. 1983, 29 Sept. 1985, 8 Jan.

1979, 16 Nov. 1980, 22 Mar. 1980, 14 June 1981, 26 June

1978, 15 July

Ewald Körner / Walter Oberer Roderick Brydon, Frithjof Haas / Hans Hartleb

6

tr. Farncombe original text largely restored tr. Farncombe Pscherer, tr. Eberhard Schmidt Oberer and Rückert E. Schmidt and Hartleb

Milnathort, Kinross-shire Stockholm, Royal Opera London, Sadler’s Wells Munich, Theater am Gärtnerplatz Berne Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Aix-en-Provence, Théâtre de l’Archevêché Brussels, Monnaie Graz Herrenhausen, Landesbühnen Sydney

1969, 25 Sept. 1971, 20 Feb. 1975, 22 Oct. 1977, 20 Oct.

1977, 27 Nov. 1978, 3 June

9 21 5

Rückert tr. Eberhard Schmidt

Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert Hans-Peter Frank / Harry Kupfer Gulbenkian Festival, Gianfranco Rivoli / Gianfranco de Bosio, Marta Egri Ledlanet Nights, Peter Gellhorn / George Mully Charles Farncombe / Bengt Peterson Charles Farncombe / David Thompson Helmut Imig / Kurt Pscherer

Halle, Landestheater Weimar, Nationaltheater Oporto

1966, 29 May 1968, 3 June 1969, 16 May

15

5

4 9

10

28 4 8

11 31

5

5

11 17

4 19

9

in Italian

Nicola Rescigno, Bryan Balkwill / Franco Zeffirelli

Venice, La Fenice

No. of perfs.

1960, 19 Feb.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

also Halle and Berlin (3 in English, 2 in Italian)

also Bath also Cheltenham and Los Angeles

also Dresden

also Göttingen; revived 1981 revived 1983, 1987, 1992

revived 1979 and 1980

also Dallas and Covent Garden (1962) revived 1967 also Paris 1969, Halle 1970 also Lisbon and Paris

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 525

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Melbourne, Victorian Arts Centre St Louis, Loretto-Hilton Theater Düsseldorf, Zeughaus in Neuss

1987, 24 Apr.

Vancouver, Queen Elizabeth Theatre Rastatt, Badner Halle Heidelberg, Theater der Stadt Münster, Städtische Bühnen Brisbane, Basil Jones Theatre

1990, 3 July

1990, 27 Oct.

29 Nov. 9 Dec. 18 Dec. 5 Feb. 13 Mar.

1996, 24 Apr.

1996, 14 Feb.

1995, 31 Mar.

1992, 1992, 1992, 1994, 1995,

1992, 13 June

1990, 3 Nov. 1991, 20 Feb. 1992, 22 Feb. 1992, 28 May

Melbourne, Victorian Arts Centre

Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater Detmold, Landestheater Philadelphia, Curtis Institute London, Covent Garden Zürich, Opernhaus Munich, Sankt Wolfgang Theater St Paul, Minnesota, Pearson Theater Perth, Octagon Theatre

Kibbutz Ha’Ogen, Israel

1989, 10 Mar.

1990, 10 May

Gelsenkirchen, Theater im Revier Manchester, Royal Northern College of Music Geneva, Grand Théâtre

1989, 18 Feb.

1987, 13 Oct.

1987, 28 May

Place

Date

in Italian in Italian

Richard Vardigans / Jamie Hayes William Christie, Jos van Immerseel / Philippe Berling, Jean-Marie Villégier Emek Hefer Chamber Opera Group, Margaret Yekutiel / Ari Ran Vancouver Opera Association, Kenneth Montgomery / Guus Mostart Spectakulum, Lorenzo Girodo / Markus Kiesel Bodo Reinke / Ernst A. Klusen Herbert Görtz, Walter Heinrich / Brigitta Trommler Griffith University Opera School, Lynn Williams / Anna Sweeny Howard Arman / Paul Stern Steffen Leissner / Igor Folwill David Hayes / Chas Rader-Shieber John Fisher / Stephen Wadsworth Nikolaus Harnoncourt / Jürgen Flimm Junges Musiktheater München, Markus Elsner / Oliver Simon Concordia College, Myles Hernandez / James Middleton West Australian Opera, Graham Abbott / Lindy Hume Australian Opera, Jane Glover / Louis Napier

tr. E. Schmidt

5 14

in Italian

4

18 4 7 17 2

recits. English, arias Italian

E. Schmidt Wadsworth Italian Italian Italian, shortened

7

in Italian tr. tr. in in in

11 7 3

4

Anne Rose Katz in Italian

in Italian

in Italian

17

4

17

5

tr. Wadsworth composite German tr.

19+

in Italian

Australian Opera, Richard Divall / Robert Helpmann and others Opera Theater of St Louis, John Nelson / Stephen Wadsworth Antica Opera Consort, Gabor Antalffy / Albin Hänseroth Jonathan Seers / Friedo Solter

No. of perfs.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

also Sydney

revived 1997, also Vienna

also 5 other cities

also Potsdam and Innsbruck

also Paris and Antwerp

also 3 other cities

also Sydney, revived 1992

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 526

06/10/2006 14:53:13

New York, Merkin Concert Hall Cologne, Aula der Universität Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall Darmstadt, Staatstheater

1997, 24 Jan.

1997, 3 Apr.

Paris, Palais Garnier

Chicago, Lyric Opera

Duisburg, Theater der Stadt

London, Coliseum

1999, 26 Mar.

1999, 7 June

1999, 30 Oct.

1999, 25 Nov.

1999, 1 Dec.

1999, 10 Mar.

Osnabrück, Kuppeltheater Vienna, Theater an der Wien Riga, Latvian National Opera Stuttgart, Staatsoper Nancy, Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine Barcelona, Gran Teatro del Liceu Potsdam, Schlosstheater

1997, 16 May 1997, 9 June 1998, 3 Apr. 1998, 16 May 1998, 3 Nov.

1997, 10 May

1997, 5 Apr. 1997, 30 Apr.

Koblenz, Theater der Stadt

1996, 21 Dec.

tr. Amanda Holden

21+

17

Opéra National, William Christie, John Nelson / Robert Carsen John Nelson / Robert Carsen Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Jonathan Darlington, Roland Böer / Herbert Wernicke English National Opera, Charles Mackerras, Noel Davies, Richard Hickox / David McVicar

37+

Andreas Spering / Paul Stern

Paris Opéra production; in Italian

6

in Italian

25+

tr. P. Brenner, recits. German, arias Italian tr. P. Brenner in Italian in Italian in Italian

7 3 5+ 17+ 5

3 4

in Italian tr. Jones

Rinaldo Alessandrini / Herbert Wernicke

Christian Kluttig, Frank Kersting / Anouk Niklisch Nikolaus Harnoncourt / Jürgen Flimm Andris Veismanis / Kristina Wuss Alan Hacker / Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito Hervé Niquet / Carlos Bárcena

2

12

23+

7 16

15

No. of perfs.

semi-staged

in Italian

in Italian

Michael Hofstetter / Herbert Wernicke

Giessen, Stadttheater Hildesheim, Th. am Lerchenkamp Basel, Theater Basel

1996, 5 Oct. 1996, 16 Nov.

Christian Kluttig / Georges Delnon and Anouk Niklisch Manhattan School of Music, Will Crutchfield / Steven Thorp Michael Buschmann / Andreas Thot Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson Ian Watson, Julia Jones / Friedrich Meyer-Oertel

in German, tr. anon. 1868 tr. Peter Brenner

Nationale Reisopera, Jan Willem de Vriend / Andrea Raabe Ian Watson / Jakob Peters-Messer Christopher Weik / Matthias Schönfeldt

Utrecht, Stadsschouwburg

1996, 29 Aug.

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

revived 2003

also Bad Lauchstädt and Bad Kissingen revived 2004

Zürich production often revived; also Moscow 2003 also Edinburgh 2000

also Wiesbaden

also Wiesbaden, Duisburg, Düsseldorf

and nine other cities

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 527

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Neuburg, Schlosstheater

Oldenburg, Staatstheater Krako´w Hamburg, Allee Theater (Altona) Hamburg, Universität

Hamburg, Staatsoper Regensburg, Theater am Bismarckplatz Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Iford, Glos.

Perth

Toronto

San Francisco Bilbao, Palacio Euskalduna

Montpellier

Llantilio Crossenny, St Teilo’s Church Drottningholm, Court Theatre New York, City Opera Boston, Mass.

Perm, Theatre of Opera and Ballet Berlin, Komische Oper Trieste, T. Verdi

2000, 17 June

2000, 23 June 2000, 2 July 2000, 1 Nov.

2002, 4 Feb. 2002, 28 Apr.

2002, 16 May 2002, 25 June

2002, 8 Nov.

2002, 13 Nov.

2002, 19 Nov. 2003, 15 Feb.

2003, 6 Apr.

2003, 14 May

2004, 5 Mar.

2004, 6 Mar. 2004, 17 Apr.

2003, 26 July 2003, 9 Sept. 2003, 17 Oct.

Paul McCreesh / David Alden Filippo Maria Bressan / Marco Arturo Marelli

Christophe Rousset / Pierre Audi Daniel Beckwith / Francesca Zambello Boston Baroque, Martin Pearlman / Jennifer Griesbach David Heusel / George Isaakyan

Nicholas McGegan / Catherine Turocy Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Netia Jones Australian Opera Studio, Michael Schouten / Gregory Yurisich University of Toronto Faculty of Music, Jeanne Lamon, Stephen Ralls / Maer Powell Roy Goodman / Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito Asociación Bilbaína de Amigos de la Opera, Christophe Rousset / David McVicar Opéra de Montpellier, Christophe Rousset / Marco Arturo Marelli Charles Farncombe / Christopher Tudor

Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Wolfgang Schmid / Christian Pöppelreiter Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Marioara Trifan / Roland Velte Raoul Grüneis / Johannes Schütz Akademia Muzyczna Krako´w Hamburger Kammeroper, Malte Kroidl, Michael Petermann / Tjaard Kirsch Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Philipp Vogler, Kolja Hosemann / Alexander Kieser Ivor Bolton, Michael Hofstetter / Christof Loy Christoph Spering / Rebecca Rosenthal

Graz, Theater im Palais

2000, 30 Mar.

2001, 3 Mar.

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

Stuttgart production

Powell

in Italian

Andreas Franz and Kroidl

tr. P. Brenner

Editor/Translator

8+ 5

8 6

5

7 4

4

4

8+ 13

6

6

7

No. of perfs.

revived 2005

revived 2005

revived 2004

also Munich and Bayreuth

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 528

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Athens, Olympic Th.

London, Highgate, The Gatehouse Philadelphia, Curtis Institute Hanover, Niedersächsische Staatsoper Munich, Prinzregententheater

Oviedo, T. Campoamor

London, Hackney Empire Th.

Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg

Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk London, Sadler’s Wells

Ealing (open air) New York

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

Leipzig (as Hermann und Thusnelda) Oldenburg, Staatstheater

2005, 30 Jan.

2005, 14 Apr.

2005, 21 Apr. 2005, 25 June

2005, 21 Sept.

2005, 14 Oct.

2005, 22 Oct.

1970, 17 July 1973, 6 Nov.

1987, 4 Sept. 1997, 2 Feb.

2005, 14 May

1935, 23 Feb.

1963, 4 Sept.

2005, 17 July

Karl Randolf / Heinz Hofer

Paul Schmitz / Hans Schüler

ARMINIO

ATALANTA Kent Opera, Roger Norrington / Norman Platt Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / David Ritch Midsummer Opera, David Roblou / Alan Privett Manhattan School of Music, Will Crutchfield / Drew Minter Nicholas McGegan / Catherine Turocy

Wolfgang Katschner / Paul Stern Jaroslav Kyzlink, Pavol Selecky´ / Zuzana Lacková-Gilhaus Michael Schneider, Carolyn Nordmeyor / Gregor Horres Greek National Opera, Miltos Logadis / Panagis Pagoulatos Hampstead Garden Opera, Michael Newton / Katrine Reimers Sarah Hatsuko Hicks / Chas Rader-Shieber Enrique Mazzola / Herbert Wernicke, Udo van Ooyen Bayerische Staatsoper, Ivor Bolton, Christopher Moulds / Christof Loy Opera de Oviedo, Giovanni Antonini / David McVicar English Touring Opera, Gary Cooper / James Conway Netherlands Opera, Christophe Rousset / Pierre Audi

Cape Town, Artscape Theatre Bratislava, Slovak National Theatre Bielefeld

2004, 22 May 2004, 4 June

2005, 28 Jan.

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

H. J. Moser and Max Seiffert Albert Grünes; tr. Wolfgang Herda

in Italian semi-staged

tr. Laura Sarti and Platt

10

4

4

5 2

3

revived 1936

also San Francisco (semi-staged)

revived 1997 London and Halle

also 3 Kent towns to 1971

Drottningholm production

in 11 centres

16 8

ENO production

5

in Italian

Basel production 21/12/96

Remarks

3

4

8

5

9

No. of perfs.

in Italian in Italian

tr. Amanda Holden

Editor/Translator

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 529

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Abingdon, Abbey Hall London, Sadler’s Wells

Berlin, Komische Oper

San Francisco, Herbst Theater

Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater

Keele University, Walter Moberley Hall Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater

Halle, Theater des Friedens Reading, University Great Hall

Göttingen Dresden Bremerhaven Königsberg, Komische Oper Oberhausen

1967, 21 Apr. 1983, 2 Nov.

1984, 4 Dec.

1989, 27 June

1994, 10 June 2003, 21 Feb.

1985, 26 Apr.

1976, 5 Mar. 1981, 8 May

1924, 5 July 1924, 11 Oct. 1925, 19 Mar. 1925, 24 Mar. 1925, 18 Apr.

2001, 24 Feb.

1993, 29 Apr.

Nicholas Kraemer / Alan Kitching London Handel Festival, Denys Darlow, Michael Rosewell / Olivia Fuchs

Abingdon, Unicorn Theatre London, Britten Theatre

1972, 12 Sept. 1996, 26 Mar.

Waldtraut Lewin tr. Carolyn Lyle

Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen

FARAMONDO Thomas Sanderling / Ulf Reiher and Heinz Runge Peter Wishart / Andrew Shore SERSE Oskar Hagen / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard Hermann Kutzschbach / Alfred Reucker Josef Kellner / Gustav Burchard Paul Hölzer / [Dumont du Voitel Kurt Budde / Willy Grunwald

5 24 5 4 12

12 2

7

in Italian, recits. German

3 3

tr. Kitching

3 7

3

100+

3 4

7 4

No. of perfs.

tr. Jones

BERENICE

in Italian

in Italian

tr . Eberhard Schmidt

tr. Kitching tr. Kitching

tr. Kitching in Italian

Editor/Translator

Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson Andreas Spering / Ulrich Peters

George Pratt / Frank Doherty

San Francisco Opera Circle, Nicholas McGegan / Albert Takazauckas Nicholas McGegan / Drew Minter Michael Hofsetter / Peer Boysen

GIUSTINO Unicorn Opera Group, Frances and Alan Kitching Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Christopher Renshaw Hartmut Haenchen et al. / Harry Kupfer

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

also Hamborn and Gladbeck

revived several times

revived 1977

revived 2002

revived 2004

also Amsterdam, Vienna and many other cities

also Claydon House

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 530

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Vienna, Schönbrunn Schlosstheater Weimar, Nationaltheater Rostock Cottbus Mainz Hanover Görlitz Lübeck Gera Coburg Budapest, Court Theatre Northampton, Mass.

1925, 30 May

Karlsruhe Stuttgart Mannheim Nuremberg Munich, Nationaltheater Kassel Coburg, Schlosshof der Ehrenburg (open air) Münster Breslau, Städtische Bühnen Lübeck

1935, 7 July 1935, 16 July 1935, 15 Sept. 1935, 11 Dec. 1936, 14 Apr. 1936, 13 Sept. 1937, 6 June

1937, 19 Sept. 1939, 8 Nov. 1939, 30 Nov.

1935, 22 Feb. 1935, 15 June

Erfurt Saarbrücken New York, Juilliard School Arnstadt Ulm Chicago University, Mandel Hall Kiel Loughton, Essex

1929, 19 Jan. 1932, 18 Sept. 1932, 15 Dec. 1933, 28 Mar. 1934, 15 Nov. 1935, 16 Feb.

1925, 5 July 1925, 18 Sept. 1925, 15 Dec. 1925, 25 Dec. 1926, 5 Mar. 1926, 25 May 1926, 19 Oct. 1926, 30 Oct. 1926, 5 Dec. 1928, 12 May 1928, 13 May

Place

Date

Hagen and Junkers Hagen Hagen

Fritz Volkmann / Herbert Junkers Philipp Wüst / Heinz Rückert Heinz Dressel / Robert Ludwig

11 5 8

4 2 9 6 6 8 4

Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen

9 11 4 2 7 2

8 6 3 7 6 4 7 5 5 8 1

4 6

Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen (freely adapted) Hagen Hagen; tr. Palma Ottlick Hagen; tr. Bayard Quincy Morgan Hagen Hagen Hagen; tr. T. N. Wilder Hagen Hagen Hagen; tr. Wilder

Ernst Latzko / Maximilian Moris Karl Reise / Paul Koch Paul Prill / Carl Samwald Heinz Berthold / Paul Weissleder Rudolf Krasselt / Hans Winkelmann Hans Zimmermann / Curt Eberhardt Rudolf Boruvka / Karl Eggert Rolf Meyer / Hanns Schulz-Dornburg Albert Bing / Gottfried Mahling Nándor Rékay / Arpad Szemere Smith College Academy of Music, Werner Josten / Lizbeth Laughton Franz Jung / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard Felix Lederer / Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard Albert Stoessel / Alfredo Valenti Otto Friedrich / Ludwig Hansen Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg / Felix Klee Cecil Michener Smith / Thornton Niven Wilder

8

Hagen

Hagen

Ernst Kunwald / Rainer Simons

No. of perfs.

Hans Gahlenbeck / Hans Siegle Pollards Opera Festival, Iris Lemare / Geoffrey Dunn Joseph Keilberth / Erik Wildhagen Carl Leonhardt / Günther Pahlmann Philipp Wüst / Heinrich Köhler-Hellfrich Matthäus Pitteroff / André von Diehl Bayerische Staatsoper, Ferdinand Drost / Kurt Barré Peter Schmitz / Fritz Wiek Walter B. Tuebben / Erwin Dieterich

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

also London, Royal Academy of Music

also Eisenach also Strasbourg

also Worms

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 531

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Schwerin, Staatstheater

Magdeburg Halle, Thalia Theater Brunswick, Staatstheater New York, Hunter College Playhouse Münster, Städtische Bühnen Bremerhaven, Stadttheater Kiel, Bühnen der Landeshauptstadt Linz Basel, Stadttheater Stuttgart, Württembergische Staatsoper Birmingham, Barber Institute Dessau Helsinki

1944, 16 Feb.

1947, 6 Dec. 1948, 23 Feb. 1948, 12 Apr. 1953, 10 Mar.

1959, 1959, 1959, 1959, 1959,

21 July 27 Aug. 18 Sept. 25 Sept. 6 Dec.

1959, 18 July

1959, 23 June

1959, 21 May

1959, 4 Mar. 1959, 4 Apr. 1959, 14 Apr.

1958, 4 May 1958, 21 Dec. 1959, 1 Mar.

Duisburg, Deutsche Oper am Rhein Freiburg / Breisgau, Städtische Bühnen Quedlinburg, Bergtheater Thale Herrenhausen, Galeriegebäude Eisenach Innsbruck Darmstadt, Landestheater Zwickau

Klagenfurt München-Gladbach Darmstadt Hamburg, Musikhalle

1942, 15 Sept. 1942, 20 Nov. 1943, 10 July 1944, 16 Jan.

1953, 27 Sept. 1954, 16 Apr. 1954, 12 Sept.

Place

Date

tr. Geoffrey Dunn Steglich and Bodenstein tr. Tauno Pylkkänen Steglich Hagen Steglich Steglich Steglich

Anthony Lewis / Brian Trowell Heinz Röttger / Willy Bodenstein Finnish National Opera, Ulf Söderblom / Jennie von Thillot Georg Ludwig Jochum / Walter Eichner Günther Wich, Heinrich Kelm / Peter Steinbach Kurt Nichterlein / Walter Segler Aug.ust Wenzinger / Ernst Poettgen Hans Gahlenbeck / Karl-Heinz Kaiser Siegfried Nessler / Eugen Schürer Helmut Franz / Harro Dicks Hans Storck / Renate Oeser

Steglich and Oeser

Hagen Hagen modified Rudolf Steglich

Hagen Hagen

Hagen based on Hagen Hagen tr. Sylvia Nesson

Hagen

Hagen Hagen Hagen Hagen

Editor/Translator

Leopold Mayer / Bruno Vages Paul Zelter / Georg Philipp Harald von Goertz / Kurt Puhlmann

Otto Bild / Willy Meyer-Fürst Theodor Wünschmann / Max Bührmann Fritz Mechlenburg / Reinhard Lehmann Albert Bittner, Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg / Alfred Noller Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle, Hans Gahlenbeck / Hans Brandt Walter Müller / Richard Hein Walter Schartner / Sigurd Baller Albert Bittner / Felix Klee Hunter College Opera Association, Siegfried Landau / Josef Turnau Robert Wagner / Kurt Reinhold Hans Kindler / Hans Wenzel Georg C. Winkler / Alfred Noller

Company, Conductor, Producer

13 27 11 18 25

26

10

33

15

8 8

15 10 14

16 13 9 5

4 7 2 47

No. of perfs.

revived 1960

also Düsseldorf

revived 1945-46

also Rheydt

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 532

06/10/2006 14:53:13

Milan, Piccola Scala Pretoria, Kleinteater

Birmingham, Barber Institute Brno, Janácek Akademie Aachen, Stadtheater Stuttgart, Württembergische Staatsoper Munich, Cuvilliés-Theater

1962, 16 Jan. 1963, 1 Mar.

1963, 1963, 1963, 1964,

1970, 15 Feb.

1969, 10 July

1969, 8 Jan.

1968, 19 Mar. 1968, 26 Mar.

1966, 4 Dec.

1966, 20 Nov.

1966, 27 Sept.

1965, 7 Dec. 1966, 15 May

1965, 6 Nov.

1965, 14 Mar.

Annaberg

Sofia, State Conservatory Opera Studio Bielefeld, Städtische Bühnen Manchester, University Theatre Bratislava, Slovak National Theatre London, Sadler’s Wells

Saarbrücken, Saarlandisches Staatstheater Kaiserslauten, Pfalztheater Frankfurt / Oder, Kleist Theater Brasov, Romania, Teatrul Muzical New York, Carnegie Hall

Dortmund, Städtische Bühnen Tokyo, Beethoven Hall

1959, 17 Dec. 1961, 16 Nov.

tr. Alexandra Brakatorisová

Steglich

Handel Opera Society, Richard Fisher / David William Werner Uhlemann / Paul Rabold

Steglich tr. Dunn

tr. Lubomir Pipkov

New York Handel Society, Brian Priestman / Ralph Alswang Michail Lefterov / Dragan Kardijev, Stefanka Atanassova Wolfgang Drees / Hans Wolfgang Hirschland Royal Northern College of Music, David Jordan / Sheila Walker Gerhardt Auer / Julius Gyermek

14

2

9 3

2

tr. C. Caciula

Norbert Petri / Stela Fericeanu

semi-staged

9 22

Steglich and Könemann Steglich and Hübenthal

Carl Gorvin / Günter Könemann Wolf-Dieter Hauschild / Kurt Hübenthal

22

18 5

6

5

14 2

2

No. of perfs.

14

Hagen

Haffter; tr. Gertrud Klipp and Richard Harvey tr. Geoffrey Dunn tr. Václav Renc Steglich Steglich

Steglich and Könemann

tr. Zytowski

Editor/Translator

Steglich

Meinhard von Zallinger, Robert Heger / Heinz Arnold Hans Dieter Freyer / Johannes Trefny

Anthony Lewis / Brian Trowell Richard Týnský / Miloš Wasserbauer Jacob Franck / Werner Wiekenberg Klaus Nagora / Reinhard Mieke

University of California Opera Theatre, Ernö Daniel / Carl Zytowski Hans Herbert Jöris / Günter Könemann Musashino Music School, Paul Cadow / Hiromitsu Naganuma Piero Bellugi / Franco Enriquez Bruno Peyer / Peter Haffter

Santa Barbara, Calif.

1959, 11 Dec.

16 May 16 June 16 Oct. 17 Sept.

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

also Bucharest

shortened

also Luxembourg and Esch

also Bayreuth; revived to 1969

also London, Sadler’s Wells

much shortened; revived 1960

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 533

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Buenos Aires, Teatro Colón Rudolstadt Sydney, Cell Block Theatre Sofia, State Conservatory Opera School Wiesbaden, Hessisches Staatstheater Wittenberg Leipzig

1971, 30 May

1981, 30 July

1981, 15 Feb.

1980, 27 Jan. 1980, 31 Jan.

1979, 29 June 1979, 28 Sept.

1978, 12 July

1978, 26 Mar.

Colorado Springs, Armstrong Hall Drottningholm, Court Theatre Villedomer, Grange de la Besnardière Regensburg, Städtische Bühne Sheffield, University Dance Studios Gelsenkirchen, Musiktheater im Revier Barga, Teatro dei Differenti

Dunedin, Otago University, Allen Hall Theatre Salzburg, Landestheater

1977, 28 June

1976, 10 Feb. 1976, 2 Sept. 1977, 3 Apr.

Halle, Theater des Friedens Herrenhausen, Gartentheater Philadelphia, Walnut Street Theater Heidelberg, Theater der Stadt Meiningen Warsaw, Teatr Wielki

1973, 2 June 1973, 26 July 1975, 17 May

1972, 22 Oct. 1972, 10 Dec.

1972, 1 July

1971, 12 Sept. 1972, 18 Mar. 1972, 12 May 1972, 29 May

Place

Date

4 12 3

Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig tr. Lillian Bueno McCue

Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig tr. Drummond Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig

Christian Pyrrh / Klaus Froboese Martin Hindmarsh / William Royston Ulrich Weder, Theodore Ganger / Peter Kupke Piero Bellugi / Sergio Ciulli

in Swedish

Charles Farncombe / Leif Söderstrom Charles Farncombe / Leif Söderstrom

Leopold Hager, Jeanpierre Faber, Josef Wallnig / Klaus Gmeiner Donald P. Jenkins / Patrick T. Backman

Jack Speirs / John Drummond

Manfred Mayrhofer / Siegfried Schoenbohm Werner Storch / Rainer Friedemann Mieczyslaw Nowakowski / Wlodzimierz Golobow

Thomas Sanderling / Heinz Runge Siegfried Strohbach / Reinhold Rüdiger Curtis Institute, David Effron / Dino Yannopoulos

Steglich Herz, Gurgel and Eginhard Röhlig tr. Waldtraut Lewin Steglich Hagen and Lys Bert Symonette Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig tr. J. Kondracki and M. Lebkowski tr. Drummond

Manfred Rüdiger / Otto-Ernst Tickardt Horst Gurgel / Joachim Herz

4

19

13 3

8 2

16 14 17

26 14 2

15 88

14

Steglich

Ludwig Kaufmann / Dieter Bülter-Marell

8 3

14

No. of perfs.

Steglich Divall; tr. Dunn and Bell tr. Lubomir Pipkov

Editor/Translator

Karl Richter / Ernst Poettgen Helmut Bodenstein / Heidemarie Stahl Young Opera, Richard Divall / Brian Bell Michail Lefterov / Stefanka Atanassova

Arthur Grüber / Wolfgang Blum

Company, Conductor, Producer

also Fiesole

revived 1982

also Winterthur 1980, Krákow 1981

revived 1974 revived 1974, also Geneva

toured all round Europe to 1980

also other Bulgarian cities and Brussels 1974

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 534

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Dresden, Staatsoper Gera Tourcoing, Opéra du Nord London, Sadler’s Wells

Kaiserslautern, Pfalztheater Senftenberg Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Berlin, open air

Hagen, Städtische Bühnen London, Coliseum

Stockholm, Rotundan Probensaal Gdynia, Teatr Muzyczny

Neustrelitz New York, Juilliard School Greifswald Münster, Städtische Bühnen Aachen, Stadttheater Assisi Cape Town, Baxter Theatre

1981, 25 Oct. 1982, 10 June 1982, 1 Oct. 1982, 3 Nov.

1982, 26 Nov. 1983, 29 Apr. 1983, 2 July

1984, 15 Sept. 1985, 23 Feb.

1985, 23 Feb.

1985, 16 Mar.

1985, 1985, 1985, 1985, 1985, 1985, 1985,

Weikersheim, Schloss (open air) Milwaukee, Skylight Theater

Prague, Klicpera Theatre Berne, Stadttheater Zürich, Studiobühne Passau, Salvator church

1985, 28 July 1985, 9 Oct.

1985, 11 Oct. 1985, 17 Nov. 1987, 28 Mar. 1990, 28 Apr.

7 Apr. 24 Apr. 17 May 24 May 4 June 11 July 20 July

1984, 6 July

Place

Date

Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig Steglich; tr. Fuller Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig Steglich Steglich and Hartleb tr. Hytner

Hartmut Kretzschmann / Sieglinde Wiegand Albert Fuller / Norman Ayrton Wilfried Koball / Jürgen Hinz Werner Morihart / Ernst A. Klusen Hans Suter / Hans Hartleb University of Cape Town Opera School, Brian Priestman / Angela Gobbato Jeunesses Musicales, Erich Wächter / Kathrin Prick Skylight Comic Opera, Michael Pisani / Stephen Wadsworth František Vajnar, Pavel Pokorny / Jiri Glogar Ewald Körner / Klaus Froboese Opernstudio, Thomas Blum / Ulrich Peter Südostbayerisches Städtetheater, Herbert Morasch / Klaus Schlette

in Italian Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig Herz, Gurgel, Röhlig and Schlette

Steglich tr. Wadsworth

in Polish

Steglich tr. Hytner

in German

Fritz Oeser Steglich Herz et al., modifed

Steglich Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig

Editor/Translator

Ewa Michnik, Hanna Chojnacka

Hoftheater Dahlem, Werner Zeilbeck (cond. and prod.) Martin Fischer-Dieskau / Peter Osolnik English National Opera, Charles Mackerras, Noel Davies, Ivor Bolton, Harry Bicket / Nicholas Hytner, Julia Hollander Royal Opera, Lars af Malmborg / Klas Liljefors

Christian Kluttig, Peter Gülke / Christine Mielitz Michael Stolle / Franz Olschowsky Jean-Claude Malgoire / Jacky Lautem Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Tom Hawkes Paul Laudenberger / Wolfgang Blum Siegfried Zetzsche / Leonore Haberkorn Charles Farncombe, Frithjof Haas / Uwe Wand

Company, Conductor, Producer

31 11 10

4 12

4

10 3 13 7 6

6+

14 61+

3

11 11 33

35 26 9 4

No. of perfs.

also Landshut

revived 1986

also Krákow, Messina and other cities

often revived to 2005, also Kiev and Moscow

and many other cities, revived to 1988

and other cities

also Metz 1983

revived to 1985

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 535

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Ghent, Tongeren Casino

Linz, Landestheater Philadelphia, St Joseph University, Bluett Theater Warsaw, Teatr Wielki Pforzheim, Stadttheater Innsbruck, Tiroler Landestheater Rostock, Barocksaal

1990, 28 Aug.

1991, 13 Jan. 1991, 3 May

São Paolo, Teatro Municipal

Koblenz, Theater der Stadt Stuttgart, Wilhelma Theater

Santa Fe, open air auditorium

Wellington, Botham Hall

Carmel, Sunset Center Theater Los Angeles, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Hamburg, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Bologna, Teatro Comunale Wiesbaden, Hessisches Staatstheater Amsterdam, Vondelpark

1992, 7 July

1993, 29 Apr. 1993, 3 June

1993, 17 July

1993, 12 Nov.

1994, 22 July

1995, 12 Apr.

1995, 8 Jan. 1995, 25 Feb.

1994, 1 Nov.

1994, 29 Oct.

Halberstadt Berlin, Hochschule der Künste

1992, 22 May 1992, 12 June

1992, 4 Apr.

1991, 5 May 1991, 25 May 1991, 27 Aug.

Place

Date

15 2

Steglich Mackerras and Davies; tr. Hytner in Italian Steglich in Italian

4 5 7 7 8 4

semi-staged in Italian tr. Wadsworth and Palca Dissmeier Mackerras and Davies in Italian in Italian

Bruno Weil / Nicholas Hytner, Julia Hollander Michael Hofstetter / Peer Boysen Sweelinck Conservatorium, Jean-Marc Andrieu / Wolfgang Kirsten

6

Wellington Conservatorium, Michael Vinten / Flora Edwards Carmel Bach Festival, Bruno Weil / Albert Takazauckas LA Music Center, Roderick Brydon / Stephen Wadsworth Lutz Rademacher / Michael Dissmeier

7

14 12

5

8 7

Steglich Steglich tr. Hytner

20

Steglich

5 7 3

2

No. of perfs.

Mackerras and Davies

Editor/Translator

Steglich Steglich, Prick and Klaus Nagora Steglich, tr. Wadsworth and Carol Borah Palca tr. Hytner

Volkstheater Rostock, Sebastian Lang / Jasmin Solfaghari Christian Hammer / Jürgen König Ludwig de Ridder, Steffen Schubert / Thomas Günther ENO production, Ivor Bolton / Nicholas Hytner, Julia Hollander Christian Kluttig / Andreas Baumann Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Künst, Christoph Adt / Kathrin Prick Kenneth Montgomery / Stephen Wadsworth

Bogdan Oledzki / Günter Könemann Jeremy Hulin / Saskia Kuhlmann Howard Arman / Dominique Mentha

Europees Centrum voor Opera en Vocale Kunst, Mark Shanahan / Francesca Zambello Christian Kluttig / Andreas Baumann Curtis Institute, Michael Korn / Chas Rader-Shieber

Company, Conductor, Producer

ENO production also Marpurg

recits. German, arias Italian

Santa Fe production

also Bad Lauchstädt

also Szczecin and Bad Lauchstädt

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 536

06/10/2006 14:53:14

30 May 5 June 1 Nov. 9 Nov.

20 Feb. 28 Mar. 23 Apr. 15 July

1997, 1997, 1997, 1997,

1998, 1998, 1998, 1998,

1997, 22 May

1997, 20 Feb. 1997, 3 May

in Italian in Italian tr. Wadsworth Herz, Gurgel and Röhlig in Estonian, tr. Erich Kolar in Italian in Italian in Italian

Nicholas McGegan / Drew Minter Hans-Martin Linde / Ulrich Peters George Manahan / Stephen Wadsworth Lauri Sirp / Joachim Herz Jukka Rautasalo / Courtney Selan Reinhard Goebel / Pier Paolo Pacini Roderick Brydon / Vincent Vittoz New Chamber Opera, Gary Cooper / Michael Burden

Steglich

tr. Wadsworth and Palca in Italian

Daniel Beckwith / Stephen Wadsworth Catherine Mackintosh / Nigel Warrington

Ulrich Wagner / Ludger Engels

in Italian in Italian

Copenhagen, Royal Theatre San José, Ca., Montgomery Theater Seattle, Center Opera House Glasgow, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Mönchengladbach, Theater Studio Göttingen, Deutsches Theater Halle, Opernhaus New York, City Opera Tartu (Dorpat), Vanemuine Theatre Helsinki, Valkoinen Hall Sankt Gallen, Stadttheater Geneva, Salle Turrettini Oxford, New College garden

1996, 12 Sept. 1996, 14 Sept.

7

in Italian

Melbourne

3

in Italian

Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn / Sarah Alexander Victoria State Opera, Richard Divall / Nicholas Hytner, Julia Hollander Reinhard Goebel / Sebastian Baumgarten Barbara Day Turner, Jerome Lenk / Daniel Helfgot

1996, 27 July

1996, 18 July

2 12 10 8

3 8 12

12

7 7

4 11

28 8

in Italian Steglich

Graeme Jenkins, William Lacey / Michael Hampe Markus Henn / Gert Pfafferodt

1996, 11 May 1996, 23 May

6

tr. Wadsworth and Palca

Boston, Emerson Majestic Theater Cologne, Bühnen der Stadt Hamburg, Studio der Staatsoper London, Steiner Theatre

1996, 6 Mar.

37+

1996, 26 Feb.

9 10

in Italian

Munich, National Theater

1995, 22 Sept. 1995, 21 Dec.

tr. Hytner in Italian

tr. Dunn

Charles Farncombe / Emma Jenkins

Llantilio Crossenny, St Teilo’s Church Chicago, Lyric Opera Antwerp

1995, 27 May

No. of perfs.

John Nelson / Malcolm Hunter after N. Hytner Flanders Opera, Jos van Immerseel / Nicholas Hytner and Julia Hollander Bayerische Staatsoper, Ivor Bolton, Noel Davies et al. / Martin Duncan Lyric Opera, Craig Smith / Stephen Wadsworth

Editor/Translator

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

Santa Fe production, revived 2004

also Krefeld

Santa Fe production

ENO production

(1 at Mackerye End Festival)

revived 2004 recits. German, arias Italian

Santa Fe production

often revived

ENO production ENO production, also Ghent

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 537

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Montpellier Ludwigshafen, Theater im Pfalzbau London, Queen Elizabeth Hall Brandenburg Flensburg, SchleswigHolsteinisches Landestheater Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater Athens, Olympic Theatre

Aug.sburg Vienna, Va., Wolf Trap Opera Itzehoe, Stadtteater

Aachen Cambridge, West Road Concert Hall Cheltenham, Town Hall

Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées Schwerin, Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle New York, City Opera Gdan´sk, St John’s Centre

Budapest, State Opera House

2000, 10 May 2000, 26 May

2002, 20 Apr. 2002, 19 July 2002, 8 Dec.

2003, 22 Feb. 2003, 30 Apr.

2003, 12 Nov.

2004, 20 Mar. 2005, 24 June

2005, 17 Dec.

2003, 14 Nov.

2003, 12 July

2002, 19 Jan.

2001, 11 May

2000, 6 Oct. 2001, 31 Mar.

tr. Wadsworth

Gary Thor Wedow / Stephen Wadsworth Gdan´sk Academy of Music, Przemislaw Stanislawski / Dariusz Paradowski ? / Balász Kovalik

6

7

4 Steglich

Matthias Foremny / Igor Folwill

4

4

4+

3

16

6

semi-staged

tr. Jones

in Italian

Wieg in German, shortened

tr. Steglich

3 4

in Italian in Italian 3

6

No. of perfs.

tr. Wadsworth and Palca

Editor/Translator

Jeremy Hulin / Bernhard Moscado Cambridge Handel Opera Group, Andrew Jones / Richard Gregson Guildhall School of Music, Christian Curnyn (cond. and prod.) William Christie / Gilbert Deflo

Martin-Luther-Universtät Institut, Volker Thäle / Hugo Wieg Greek National Opera, Vassilis Christopoulos / Robert Carsen Wolfgang Weber / Ulrich Peters Gary Thor Wedow / Paula Williams Prague Chamber Opera, Norbert Baxa / Paval Baxa, Rudolf Krecmer / Martin Otava

Canadian Opera Company, Noel Davies / Stephen Wadsworth Christophe Rousset / Michael Hampe Samuel Bächli, Christophe Rousset / Michael Hampe British Youth Opera, Jonathan Tilbrook / Sarah Alexander Michael Helmrath / Thomas Höft Per Borin / Jan-Richard Kehl

Toronto, Hummingbird Centre

1999, 26 Jan.

2000, 2 Sept.

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

recits. German, arias Italian

also Ústi nad Labem, Prague (2003), Bad Lauchstädt 2004 (2) and elsewhere

revived 2003

in 6 centres

also Dresden

Santa Fe production

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 538

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Halle, Landestheater Birmingham, Barber Institute

Princeton University, McCarter Theater London, Royal Academy of Music Weimar, Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater Boston, Massachusetts College of Art Huddersfield Arts Centre Long Island City, La Guardia Theater London, Sadler’s Wells

1960, 13 Mar. 1961, 23 Mar.

1965, 3 May

Los Angeles, Jan Popper Theater Moscow, Chamber Music Theatre Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Chautauqua

1985, 22 Nov.

1991, 24 July

1989, 23 Feb.

1988, 20 Mar.

1985, 20 Nov.

1985, 19 July

Valparaiso, Ind., Benjamin Franklin Junior High School Auditorium Carmel, Sunset Center Theater Wellington

1985, 29 Mar.

1984, 31 Oct.

1975, 14 May 1984, 10 Aug.

1975, 8 Mar.

1974, 1 June

1973, 15 May

1972, 8 June

Place

Date

Chautauqua Institute (piano accomp.) / Chas Rader-Shieber

tr. Josef Heinzelmann

Charles Farncombe / Wolfgang Quetes

revived to 1992 recits. English, arias Italian

2

also many other cities

semi-staged

1740 version

woodwind accomp. (strings on strike)

revived 1975-6

revived 1961

Remarks

9

40+

3

Lewis; tr. Trowell and Fortune tr. Trowell and Fortune in Italian

4

2

4

tr. Trowell and Fortune

Carmel Bach Festival, Sandor Salgo / Albert Takazauckas Victoria University Music Society, Peter Walls / Fiona Farrell-Poole UCLA Opera Workshop, Samuel Krachmalnick / John Hall Lev Ossovsky / B. A. Pokrovsky

Lewis; tr. Trowell and Fortune

tr. Farncombe

3 3

tr. Trowell and Fortune in Italian

Handel Opera Society, Charles Farncombe / Michael Rennison Valparaiso University, Robert Bergt / Joseph McCall

2

in English

New England Chamber Opera, Philip Morehead / Rafael de Acha Pennine Opera, Patrick Forbes / Sally Robertshaw David Pasquale / Talmage R. Fauntleroy

22

4

3

1

29 2

No. of perfs.

Lewin

W. Lewin and Hübenthal Lewis; tr. Trowell and N. Fortune Lewis; tr. Trowell and Fortune Lewis; tr. Trowell and Fortune Lewin and Hübenthal

Editor/Translator

Thomas Sanderling / Heinz Runge

Werner Rosenberg / Kurt Hübenthal

Anthony Lewis/ Geoffrey Connor

J. Merrill Knapp / Mark D. Healy

IMENEO Horst-Tanu Margraf / Kurt Hübenthal Anthony Lewis / Brian Trowell

Company, Conductor, Producer

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 539

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Halle, Opernhaus Birmingham, Barber Institute

Cooperstown, NY

Dublin, Gaiety Theatre

Halle, Landestheater Hamburg, Staatsoper

Kassel, Staatstheater im Blauen Saal London, St Pancras Assembly Rooms Munich, Prinzregententheater

Elmwood, Conn., Talcott Auditorium Zürich, Stadttheater Herrenhausen

2003, 6 June 2004, 12 June

2004, 17 July

2005, 20 Nov

1953, 31 May 1954, 8 Apr.

1954, 17 Oct.

1959, 25 Feb.

1969, 5 Jan.

1968, 3 July

1964, 10 Nov. 1968, 8 June

1964, 23 May

1959, 15 Apr. 1962, 31 July

1959, 18 Feb.

Dresden, Staatsoper

Lübeck, Bühnen der Hansestadt Darmstadt, Staatstheater Bad Lauchstädt, Goethe Theater London, Sadler’s Wells

Clermont-Ferrand

1999, 26 Feb.

1955, 3 June

Ondrej Macek (cond. and prod.) Warsaw Chamber Opera, Wladyslaw Klosiewicz / Ryszard Peryt Centre Lyrique d’Auvergne, Philippe Hui / Pierre Thirion-Vallet, Antoine Juliens Uwe Grodd / Michael McCaffery Summer Festival Opera, Mark Russ / Madeleine Francis

Prague, Vladislav Hall Warsaw

1998, 17 May 1998, 16 Nov.

Handel Opera Society, Richard Fisher / David Thompson Wolfgang Bothe, Christian Kluttig / Hanns Matz

Bayerische Staatsoper, Meinhard von Zallinger / Heinz Arnold University of Hartford College of Music, Moshe Paranov / Elemer Nagy Erich Widl / Karl Heinz Krahl Aug.ust Wenzinger / Georg Reinhardt (as Achill unter den Mädchen) Frank Egermann / Günter Ballhausen (as Achill unter den Mädchen) Wolfgang Scheringer / Walter Jockisch Thomas Sanderling / Wolfgang Kersten

DEIDAMIA Horst-Tanu Margraf / Heinz Rückert Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg / Wolf Völker (as Achill unter den Mädchen) Willy Krauss / Hans Hartleb (as Achill unter den Mädchen) Charles Farncombe / Owen Rayfield

Glimmerglass Festival, William Lacey / Christopher Alden Opera Ireland, Laurent Wagner / David Bolger

Company, Conductor, Producer

Place

Date

Lewin and Kersten

Steglich Waldtraut Lewin and Kersten

Steglich

Steglich Steglich, abridged

tr. Dent

23

2

9 57

6

9 10

3

26

1

tr. Edward Dent Steglich

6

9 31

4

11

3 3

1 4+

No. of perfs.

Rudolf Steglich Steglich and Brückner-Rüggeberg Steglich

1742 version

semi-staged in Italian in Italian

Editor/Translator

often revived; also Köthen, Helsinki and Veszprém

revived 1963

revived 1954/55 revived 1956

revived 2004

revived 2001, 2004

Remarks

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 540

06/10/2006 14:53:14

Berlin, Komische Oper Bloomington, Indiana

Heidelberg, Theater der Stadt

Duisburg

Stuttgart, Württembergisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater Kiev, P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory Kiel, Bühnen des Landeshauptstaat Bratislava, Music Conservatory Liberec, F-X-Salda Theater Philadelphia, Helen Corning Warden Theater Amsterdam, Thomaskerk

1969, 21 Sept. 1969, 11 Oct.

1970, 31 Jan.

1971, 21 Apr.

1977, 10 June

New York, Borden Auditorium

Hamburg (Altona), Allee Theater Hagen, Theater Hagen New York, Tribeca Performing Arts Center Halle, Opernhaus Katonah, NY Göttingen, Deutsches Theater

1995, 3 Apr.

1998, 18 Feb.

2002, 8 June 2002, 20 July 2003, 29 May

1998, 28 Mar. 1998, 1 Apr.

Heidelberg, Theater der Stadt London, Britten Theatre

1993, 2 Mar. 1995, 28 Mar.

1990, 19 June

1983, 6 May. 1985, 12 Jan. 1985, 13 Dec.

1982, 4 Dec.

1980, 19 Dec.

1979, 23 June

Place

Date

Lewin and Kersten tr. Ljuba Makovická tr. Antonin Kucera

Stefan Klieme / Wolfgang Kersten Gerhardt Auer / Jozef Revallo Jan Snitil / Oldrich Mrnák Ava Opera Theater, Christofer Macatsoris / Dino Yannopoulis Sweelinck Conservatorium, Jan Slothouwer / Wolfgang Kersten Bodo Reinke / Hermann Kleinselbeck London Handel Society, Denys Darlow, Michael Rosewell / Mike Ashman Manhattan School of Music, Will Crutchfield (cond. and prod.) Hamburger Kammeroper, Malte Kroidl / Andreas Franz Norbert Biermann / Angela Brandt Will Crutchfield / Claudia Zahn Alessandro de Marchi / Nicholas Broadhurst Caramoor Festival, Will Crutchfield (cond. and prod.) Michael Schneider / Peer Boysen

in Italian

L. Gorbatenko, Karl-Heinz Zettl / Renate Oeser

15 7

tr. Biermann and Brandt tr. Crutchfield

4

76

3

12 4

4

11 4

16

8+

19

revived 2003 semi-staged

also Katonah

semi-staged

2 acts only

also Leipzig, Bad Lauchstädt and elsewhere

revivals 1980/81, also Luxembourg

also Düsseldorf; revived 1973

28 16

also Schwetzingen

Remarks

10

36 3

No. of perfs.

tr. Barbara Hass

Steglich in Italian

Lewin and Kersten

Steglich and Hartleb

Brückner-Rüggeberg and Völker; tr. Steglich Brückner-Rüggeberg; tr. Steglich Steglich

Lewin and Kersten ed. and tr. Elemer Nagy

Editor/Translator

Adam Fischer, Frithjof Haas / Hans Hartleb

Deutchee Oper am Rhein, Peter Schneider / Ernst Poettgen (as Achill unter den Mädchen) Janos Kulka / Ernst Poettgen

Thomas Sanderling / Wolfgang Kersten Indiana University Opera Theater, Fiora Contino / Ross Allen Hans Blümer / Wolf Völker

Company, Conductor, Producer

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

This consists largely of documentary and source material. Sources reprinted by Deutsch and in HHB 4 (e.g. from Mattheson) are not usually included, nor are essays on individual operas. Further bibliographies (compiled by A. Hicks) can be found in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (ed. S. Sadie; London, 1980) and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London and New York, 1992). Avery, E. L. (ed.): The London Stage, Part 2: 1700–29, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill., 1960). Baselt, B.: Händel-Handbuch 1–3. Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis. 1: Bühnenwerke. 2: Oratorische Werke, Vokale Kammermusik, Kirchenmusik. 3: Instrumentalmusik (Leipzig, 1978, 1984, 1986). —— ‘Verzeichnis der Werke Georg Friedrich Händels (HWV)’, HJb 25 (1979), 10–139; also in paperback (Leipzig, 1986). Best, T. (ed.): G. F. Handel: Twenty Overtures in Authentic Keyboard Arrangements (London and Sevenoaks, 1985–6). —— (ed.), Handel Collections and their History (Oxford, 1993). Biographical Dictionary – see Highfill et al. Burney, C.: A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (London, 1776–89), ed. Frank Mercer, 2 vols (London, 1935; repr. 1957). —— An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey, and the Pantheon . . . in Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785; repr. 1964); including A Sketch of the Life of Handel. Burrows, D.: ‘Handel’s London Theatre Orchestra’, Early Music 13 (1985), 349–57. —— ‘The “Granville” and “Smith” Collections of Handel Manuscripts’, Sundry Sorts of Music Books. Essays on the British Library Collections. Presented to O. W. Neighbour on his 70th Birthday, ed. C. Banks, A. Searle and M. Turner (London, 1993), 231–47. —— Handel (Oxford, 1994). —— ‘Handel and the London Opera Companies in the 1730s: Venues, Programmes, Patronage and Performers’, GHB 10 (2004), 149–65. —— (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Handel (Cambridge, 1987). —— and Dunhill, R.: Music and Theatre in Handel’s World. The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780 (Oxford, 2002). —— and Ronish, M. J.: A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs (Oxford, 1994). Chrysander, F.: G. F. Händel (Leipzig, 1858–67; repr. 1966). Clausen, H. D.: Händels Direktionspartituren (‘Handexemplare’), Hamburger Beiträge zur Musik­ wissen­schaft, 7 (Hamburg, 1972). [Coke]: The Gerald Coke Handel Collection, catalogue of microfilm (Harvester Press, 1988). Colman Opera Register – see K. Sasse. Cummings, G.: ‘Reminiscence and Recall in Three Early Settings of Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie’, PRMA 109 (1982–83), 80–104. —— ‘The London Performances of Handel’s opera Poro’, Halle Konferenzbericht June 1981 (Halle, 1982), 63–81. —— ‘A Study of Handel’s Opera Poro and its History’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1991).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 541

06/10/2006 14:53:15

542

Bibliography

—— ‘Handel, Telemann and Metastasio, and the Hamburg Cleofide’, HJb 46 (2000), 335–73. Dahnk-Baroffio, E.: ‘Die Völkeranderungsoper und Händels Olibrio’, Göttinger Händel Festspiele 1969, programme, 29–43. Dean, W.: Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, 1959). —— Handel and the Opera Seria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969; repr. 1970; Japanese edition (revised) tr. Koko Fujie and Hiroko Kobayashi, 2005). —— ‘A French Traveller’s View of Handel’s Operas’, M & L 55 (1974), 172–8. —— ‘The Performance of Recitative in Late Baroque Opera’, M & L 58 (1977), 389–402. —— ‘Die Aufführung des Recitativs in den Opern der HändelZeit’, G. F. Händel und sein italienischen Zeitgenossen, ed. W. Siegmund-Schültze (Halle, 1979), 94–105. —— ‘Handel’s Early London Copyists’, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. P. Williams (Cambridge, 1985), 75–97. —— Essays on Opera (Oxford, 1990; paperback (corrected) 1993). —— ‘Handel’s Relations with the Librettists of his Operas’, Georg Friedrich Händel – ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934–1993), ed. K. Hortschansky and K. Musketa (Halle an der Saale, 1995), 99–111. —— ‘Production Style in Handel’s Operas’, The Cambridge Companion to Handel, ed. D. Burrows (Cambridge, 1997), 249–61. —— ‘Rossane: Pasticcio or Handel Opera?’, GHB 7 (1998), 143–55. —— ‘Handel’s Jupiter in Argos’, Gedenkschrift for Howard Serwer, forthcoming. —— and Knapp, J. M.: Handel’s Operas 1704–1726 (Oxford, 1987; paperback (revised) 1995). Delany, Mary (née Granville, later Pendarves): Autobiography and Correspondence, ed. Lady Llanover, series 1, 3 vols (London, 1861). Dent, E. J.: ‘The Operas’, Handel: A Symposium, ed. G. Abraham (London, 1954), 12–65. Deutsch, O. E.: Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955; repr. 1974). —— Händel Handbuch 4. Dokumente zu Leben und Schaffen (Leipzig, 1986; revised German edition). Eisenschmidt, J.: Die szenische Darstellung der Opern Georg Friedrich Händels auf der Londoner Bühne seiner Zeit, 2 vols (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin, 1940–41; repr. 1987). Floros, C., Marx, H. J., and Petersen, P. (eds.): Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, iii: Studien zur Barockoper (Hamburg, 1978). Fortune, N. (ed.): Music and Theatre. Essays in Honour of Winton Dean (Cambridge, 1987). Fuller Maitland, J. A., and Mann, A. H.: Catalogue of the Music in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (London, 1893). Gibson, E.: The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728): The Institution and its Directors (New York and London, 1989). Giuntini, F.: I drammi per musica di Antonio Salvi: Aspetti della ‘riforma’ del libretto nel primo Settecento (Reggio Emilia, 1994). Gronda, G.: La carriera di un librettista: Pietro Pariati da Reggio di Lombardia (Reggio Emilia, 1990). Handel Institute Newsletter (London, 1990–). Harris, E. T. (ed.): The Librettos of Handel’s Operas [in facsimile], 13 vols (New York and London, 1989). Hawkins, J.: A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776; repr. 1853; facs. 1963). Hervey, Lord: Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, ed. Romney Sedgwick, 3 vols (London, 1931).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 542

06/10/2006 14:53:15



Bibliography

543

Highfill, P. H., Burnim, K. A., and Langhans, E. A.: A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols (Carbondale, Ill., 1973–93). Hogwood, C.: Handel (London, 1984; repr. 1987). Hughes-Hughes, A.: Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum (London, 1906–9; repr. 1964–6). Hume, R. D.: ‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, M & L 67 (1986), 347–62. Kimbell, D.: ‘Handel’s Ariostan Heroines: With Particular Reference to Ginevra, Principessa di Scozia’, International Journal of Scottish Theatre 3 (2003), no. 1 [internet publication: <>]. King, R. G.: ‘The Composition and Reception of Handel’s Alessandro (1726)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1991). Knapp, J. M.: ‘The Autograph of Handel’s Riccardo Primo’, in R. L. Marshall (ed.), Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel (Kassel and Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 331–58. —— and Dahnk-Baroffio, E.: ‘Titus l’Empereur’, Göttinger Händel Festspiele 1970, programme (ed. W. Meyerhoff ), 23–31. Landgraf, A.: ‘Halle und die Hallische Händel-Ausgabe – Idee und Verwirklichung. Ein Exkurs in die Jahre 1940–1946’, Georg Friedrich Händel: ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934–1993), ed. K. Hortschansky and K. Musketa (Halle an der Saale, 1995), 315–42. Larsen, J. P.: Handel’s ‘Messiah’: Origins, Composition, Sources (London, 1957; repr. 1972). Leichtentritt, H.: Händel (Stuttgart, 1924). Libretti in deutschen Bibliotheken. Katalog der gedruckten Texte zu Opern, Oratorien, Kantaten, Schuldramen, Balletten, Gelegenheitskompositionen von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (edited by RISM Arbeitsgruppe Deutschland. Microfiche Edition. K. G. Saur Verlag. Munich, 1992). Lindgren, L.: ‘A Bibliographical Scrutiny of Dramatic Works set by Giovanni and his Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1972). —— ‘The Staging of Handel’s Operas in London’, Handel Tercentenary Collection, ed. S. Sadie and A. Hicks (London, 1987), 93–119. —— ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678– 1729)’, Studi Musicali 16 (1987), 246–389. —— ‘Musicians and Librettists in the Correspondence of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Rawlinson Letters 116–138)’, Research Chronicle of the Royal Musical Association 24 (1991). Loewenberg, A.: Annals of Opera, 1597–1940 (3rd edn, London, 1978). The London Stage – see E. L. Avery; A. H. Scouten. Lynch, R. D.: ‘Opera in Hamburg, 1718–1738: A Study of the Libretto and Musical Style’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1979). McCleave, S.: ‘Dance in Handel’s Italian Operas: The Collaboration with Marie Sallé’ (Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College, University of London, 1993). —— ‘Handel’s Unpublished Dance Music’, GHB 6 (1996), 127–42. —— ‘Dancing at the English Opera: Marie Sallé’s Letter to the Duchess of Richmond’, Dance Research 17 (1999), 22–46. McGeary, T.: ‘Handel, Prince Frederick, and the Opera of the Nobility Reconsidered’, GHB 7 (1998), 156–78.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 543

06/10/2006 14:53:15

544

Bibliography

[Mainwaring, J.]: Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760; repr. 1964, 1967, 1980). Marx, H. J., and Schröder, D.: Die Hamburger Gänsemarkt Oper. Katalog der Textbücher (1678–1748) (Laaber, 1995). Merbach, P. A.: ‘Das Repertoire der Hamburger Oper von 1718 bis 1750’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 6 (1924), 354–372. Metastasio, P.: Tutte le opere di Pietro Metastasio, ed. B. Brunelli (Milan and Verona, 1943–54). Meyerhoff, W. (ed.): 50 Jahre Göttinger Händel Festspiele, Festschrift (Kassel, 1970). Milhous, J.: ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674–1738’, JAMS 37 (1984), 567–92. —— ‘The Capacity of Vanbrugh’s Theatre in the Haymarket’, Theatre History Studies 4 (1984), 38–46. —— and Hume, R. D.: ‘Box Office Reports for Five Operas Mounted by Handel in London, 1732–34’, Harvard Library Bulletin 26 (1978), 245–66. —— ‘Handel’s Opera Finances in 1732–33’, MT 125 (1984), 86–9. —— ‘John Rich’s Covent Garden Account Books for 1735–36’, Theatre Survey 31 (1990), 200–41. —— ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, JAMS 46 (1993), 26–83. —— ‘J. F. Lampe and English Opera at the Little Haymarket in 1732–33’, M & L 78 (1997), 502–31. Newsletter of the American Handel Society (1986–). Parker, M. A.: G. F. Handel: A Guide to Research (2nd edn, New York and London, 2005). Powers, H. S.: ‘Il Serse trasformato’, MQ 47 (1961), 481–92; 48 (1962), 73–92. Roberts, J. H.: ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Telemann: An Inventory’, GHB 1 (1984), 147–71. —— ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Keiser’, GHB 2 (1986), 51–76. —— ‘Handel and Vinci’s Didone abbandonata: Revisions and Borrowings’, M & L 68 (1987), 141–50. —— ‘Handel and Charles Jennens’s Italian Opera Manuscripts’, Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. N. Fortune (Cambridge, 1987), 159–202. —— ‘The Story of Handel’s Imeneo’, HJb 47 (2001), 337–84. —— ‘Handel and Gasparini: The Ernelinda borrowings’, HJb 49 (2003), 285–305. —— ‘Handel and the Shepherds of Ansbach’, Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday, ed. D. Rosen and C. Brook (Hillsdale, NY, 2003), 230–55. —— (ed.): Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel’s Borrowing (9 vols, New York, 1986). [Royal Academy of Music]: The Music Collection of the Royal Academy of Music, London (Research Publications microfilm, 1988). Sadie, S., and Hicks, A. (eds.): Handel Tercentenary Collection (London, 1987). Saint, A.: ‘The Three Covent Gardens’, MT 123 (1982), 826–31. Sartori, C.: I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800, 7 vols (Cuneo, [c.1990–94]). Sasse, K.: ‘Opera Register from 1712 to 1734 (Colman-Register)’, HJb 5 (1959), 199–223. Schmidt, G. F.: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters am Herzoglichen Hofe zu Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (Munich, 1929). Schulze, W.: Die Quellen der Hamburger Oper (1678–1738) (Hamburg, 1938). Scouten, A. H.: The London Stage, Part 3: 1729–47, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill., 1961). Simon, J. (ed.): Handel: A Celebration of his Life and Times (1685–1759), Catalogue of Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery (London, 1985). Smith, W. C.: Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions (London, 1960; rev. 1970). Squire, W. B.: Catalogue of the King’s Music Library. I: The Handel Manuscripts (London, 1927). Stompor, S.: ‘Die deutsche Aufführungen von Opern Händels in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, HJb 24 (1978), 31–89.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 544

06/10/2006 14:53:15



Bibliography

545

Streatfeild, R. A.: Handel (London, 1909; rev. 1910; repr. 1964). Strohm, R.: ‘Händels Pasticci’, Analecta musicologica 14 (1974), 152–74. —— ‘Händel und seine italienischen Operntexte’, HJb 21/22 (1975–6), 101–59. —— Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730), 2 vols, Analecta musicologica 16 (1976). —— Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven, 1979). —— Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985). —— ‘Vivaldi’s and Handel’s Settings of Giustino’, Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. N. Fortune (Cambridge, 1987), 131–58. —— Dramma per Musica. Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New York and London, 1997). Taylor, C.: ‘Handel and Frederick, Prince of Wales’, MT 125 (1984), 89–92. —— ‘From Losses to Lawsuit: Patronage of the Italian Opera in London by Lord Middlesex, 1739–45’, M & L 68 (1987), 1–25. —— ‘Handel’s Disengagement from the Italian Opera’, Handel Tercentenary Collection, ed. S. Sadie and A. Hicks (London, 1987), 165–81. —— ‘Italian Operagoing in London, 1700–1745’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1991). Termini, O.: ‘From Ariodante to Ariodante’, introduction to facsimile of Pollarolo’s 1718 setting; Drammaturgia musicale veneta 13 (Milan, 1986). Timms, C.: ‘What did Handel Learn from Steffani’s Operas?’, GHB 9 (2002), 55–72. —— Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and his Music (New York, 2003). Trowell, B.: ‘Handel as a Man of the Theatre’, PRMA 88 (1961–2), 17–30. Walker, A. D.: George Frideric Handel: the Newman Flower Collection in the Henry Watson Music Library (Manchester, 1972). Wiel, T.: I teatri musicali Veneziani del settecento (Venice, 1897; repr. Leipzig, 1979). Willetts, P. J.: Handlist of Musical Manuscripts Acquired [by BL], 1908–67 (London, 1967). Williams, P. (ed.): Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays (Cambridge, 1985). [Wolfenbüttel:] Kataloge der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. Die neue Reihe. Bd. 14. Libretti. Verzeichnis der bis 1800 erschienenen Textbücher. Zusammengestellt von Eberhard Thiel unter Mitarbeit von Gisela Rohr (Frankfurt am Main, 1970). Wolff, H. C.: Die Barockoper in Hamburg (1678–1738), 2 vols (Wolfenbüttel, 1957). —— Die Händel-Oper auf der modernen Bühne (Leipzig, 1957).

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 545

06/10/2006 14:53:15

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 546

06/10/2006 14:53:15

INDEX OF HANDEL’S WORKS

Page numbers in bold type indicate the more important references. Aci, Galatea e Polifemo 131, 178, 222, 337, 342, 346 Acis and Galatea 41, 94, 130–1, 132, 135, 157, 183, 242n., 267, 278, 303, 307, 337, 345–6, 396, 397 Admeto 2–9 passim, 17, 27, 34, 53, 55n., 71, 79, 115, 128, 129, 212, 215, 257n., 276, 327, 328, 400, 409, 436, 440, 475n., 477, pl. 3a Agrippina 8, 22, 65, 154n., 155, 183, 199n., 242n., 277, 283n., 294n., 324, 337n., 354, 387, 388, 410, 420, 423, 427, 440, 474 Alceste 275n., 277n. Alcina xx, 8, 18, 71, 116, 161, 181, 206, 238, 250, 261, 267, 273, 277, 278n., 280, 281, 283n., 293, 294, 297, 304–7 passim, 312–34, 354, 426, 436, 450, 455, 463, 486, 488n., 490, pl. 11 Alessandro 1, 2, 5, 10–35, 39n., 51, 79, 84, 128, 141, 324, 400, pl. 2 Alessandro Severo (pasticcio) 101, 206, 252, 267, 270, 307, 345, 359, 360, 375, 378, 389, 391, 393, 396 Alexander Balus 357n., 451, 460 Alexander’s Feast xx, 59n., 131n., 186n., 278, 279, 281, 303, 424, 426 Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, L’ 157, 199, 225, 290, 398, 399, 459n., 465, 470, 477 Almira 94, 113, 224, 242n., 323, 373, 423, 487n. Amadigi 94, 115, 199n., 204, 238, 249, 326, 357n., 371, 451, 453 Arbace (pasticcio) 128, 135, 272 Arianna in Creta xx, 18, 27, 135, 147, 157, 238, 256–73, 277, 305, 326n., 328, 333, 339, 345, 454

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 547

Ariodante 18, 71, 128n., 157, 185, 187 and n., 192, 238, 239n., 261, 269 and n., 277, 280, 285–311, 317, 318, 325–33 passim, 339, 370, 424, 478, 490, pls. 10, 12, 14 Arminio xx, 59n., 186n., 282, 302n., 339, 349–61, 366, 374, 377, 406 Atalanta ix, 134, 135, 186n., 238, 269, 275, 280, 281, 302, 335–48, 410, 458 Athalia 221, 230, 277, 326, 442, 457 Belshazzar 128n., 200, 453 Berenice 206, 221, 282, 283, 284, 317n., 357n., 366, 374, 376n., 380–92, 406, 410, 426, 436 Brockes Passion 48, 428n. Caio Fabricio (pasticcio) 128 Cantatas ‘Amarilli vezzosa’ (HWV 82) 183 ‘Arresta il passo’ (HWV 83) 388 Apollo e Dafne, see ‘La terra è liberata’ ‘Care selve’ (HWV 88) 100 ‘Cecila, volgi un sguardo’ (HWV 89) 469n. ‘Clori mia bella Clori’ (HWV 92) 426 ‘Cor fedele’ (HWV 96) 277 ‘Crudel tiranno amor’ (HWV 97) 432n. ‘Dolce pur d’amor l’affanno’ (HWV 109) 319 ‘La terra è liberata’ [Apollo e Dafne] (HWV 122) 216n., 325 ‘Mentre il tutto’ (HWV 130) 294n., 321 ‘Mi palpita il core’ (HWV 132) 288 ‘O come chiare e belle’ (HWV 143) 18n., 316, 322, 324 ‘Qual ti riveggio’ (HWV 150) 199n. ‘Zeffiretto, arresta il volo’ (HWV 177) 97 Catone in Utica (pasticcio) 128, 132, 240

06/10/2006 14:53:15

548

Index of Handel’s Works

Chamber Duet ‘Che vai pensando’ (HWV 184) 469 Choice of Hercules, The 451 Comus 329 Concerti a due cori no. 1: 147 no. 3: 163 Concerti grossi (Op. 6) 398 no. 1: 463, 470 no. 2: 144 no. 4: 464, 470 no. 5: 463, 470 no. 6: 183n. no. 7: 438 no. 8: 470 no. 9: 463, 470 no. 10: 98 Coronation Anthems 5, 67 Daphne 276 Deborah 102, 118, 132, 136, 277, 297, 326n., 478 Deidamia 297, 337, 398–9, 458, 460, 463–8 passim, 470, 471–83, 489 Dettingen Anthem (HWV 265) 400 Dettingen Te Deum (HWV 283) 400 Didone abbandonata (pasticcio) 282, 284 Dionisio re di Portogallo, see Sosarme Elpidia (pasticcio) 17, 128, 129, 154n., 184n., 455 Esther xx, 59n., 130, 131, 132, 277, 278, 346, 460 Ezio 129, 130, 156, 194–209, 213, 225, 270, 315, 478, 489, pl. 7 Faramondo 173, 366, 393, 401–16, 424, 443, 460, 467, 469 Fernando re di Castiglia (Sosarme) 212–13, 228 Flavio xx, 100n., 116, 117, 128, 131, 136, 155, 159, 180, 199n., 274n., 340 Floridante 4, 39n., 50n., 51, 58n., 59n., 105, 118, 121, 128, 136, 199, 243, 252, 325n., 339, 354, 432n. Florindo 276 ‘From scourging rebellion’ (HWV 2289) 292 Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline (‘The ways of Zion do mourn’) 395, 411

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 548

Genserico 5, 91, 92, 94, 97–102 passim, 104, 106, 116, 117, pl. 4 Giulio Cesare in Egitto 19, 40, 47, 51n., 58n., 71, 72, 113, 115, 118, 121, 128, 155, 190, 229, 264, 299, 318, 369, 409, 443, 444, 445, 478, 484–5, 485n., 487 and n., 488, 489, 490 Giustino ix, 27, 155, 186n., 282, 284, 358, 362–79, 406, 423, 490 Hercules 41, 45, 48, 49n., 74, 145, 242n., 373, 408 Hermann und Thusnelda (Arminio) 359 Hermann von Balcke (pasticcio) 393n. Hochmüthige Alexander, Der (Alessandro) 25, 31 Imeneo 226, 357n., 384, 385, 395–9 passim, 406, 412, 448–70, 474, 477, 479–82 passim Israel in Eg ypt 41, 217, 242, 326n., 395, 396, 459 Italian duets 399 Jephtha 73, 145, 216, 224, 292, 408, 477 Joseph and his Brethren 400 Joshua 78n., 297, 478 Judas Maccabaeus 163, 225 Jupiter in Argos (pasticcio) 118, 120, 187n., 206, 328, 345, 359, 360, 375, 396, 397–8, 412, 414, 461, 463n., 465, 467, 470, pl. 13 ‘Laudate pueri’ in D (HWV 237) 216 ‘Look down, harmonious Saint’ (HWV 124) 469n. Lotario 106, 113, 127, 129, 137–50, 156, 186, 200, 219, 239, 266, 352n., 354, pls. 3b, 6 Lucio Papirio Dittatore (pasticcio) 128, 129 March (HWV 346) 123 Messiah 41, 157, 159, 160, 339, 340, 376n., 395, 399, 455, 457, 467n., 470 Music for the Royal Fireworks 345, 388, 483 Muzio Scevola 4, 22, 52, 162, 334 Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne 359 Ode for St Cecilia’s Day 398

06/10/2006 14:53:15



Index of Handel’s Works

Oreste (pasticcio) 53, 80, 101, 147, 163, 227, 231, 267, 277, 305, 326n., 330, 396 Organ Concertos 199n., 281, 396, 460 Op. 4 no. 4: 116, 325 in F major (HWV 295) 463, 470 Orlando 8, 9, 71, 114, 129, 132, 156, 161, 205, 232, 235–55, 260, 270, 298, 313n., 317, 321, 331, 341, 366, 377, 442, 452, 479, pl. 9 Ormisda (pasticcio) 91n., 128, 129, 168 Ottone 4, 8, 71, 80, 128, 137, 144, 146, 147, 219, 265, 274n., 277, 337n., 432n., 487 Parnasso in festa 129, 135, 136, 325, 396, 397, 398 Partenope 75, 110, 128, 129, 141n., 151–68, 186, 191, 239, 384, 420, 427 Pastor fido, Il 80, 85, 128, 135, 147, 206, 267, 277, 337 Poro 26, 52, 92, 101, 128, 129, 130, 147, 150, 163, 169–93, 239, 251, 281, 302n., 307, 329, 463, 488 Radamisto viii, xx, 5, 19, 22, 73, 101, 117, 121, 129, 141, 159, 161, 186, 242n., 243, 266–7, 272, 276, 288, 325, 338, 339, 353, 391, 410, 428n., 478, 490 Resurrezione, La 14n., 99, 367n., 371, 457 Riccardo Primo 4, 5, 22, 23, 39n., 52, 55n., 62–87, 92, 98, 102, 118, 121, 129, 141, 147, 226–7, 232, 336, 444, 481n. Rinaldo viii, 53, 71, 98n., 99, 128–31 passim, 147, 150, 164, 241, 283n., 323 Rodelinda 26, 50, 71, 99, 112, 113, 117–21 passim, 128, 143, 147, 156, 216, 318, 338, 355, 388, 486, 487, 491 Rodrigo 53, 55, 159, 277, 288n., 453 Rossane (Alessandro) 26–7, 28, 31–5 passim, 53, 101, 400, pls. 15, 16 Samson 27, 116, 243, 261, 295, 297, 338, 340, 357, 387, 399, 477 Saul 74, 181, 278, 341, 395, 398, 410, 411, 442, 444, 454, 458, 459, 466n., 469–70, 474, 484 Scipione 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 33, 39n., 79,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 549

549

99, 118, 121, 123, 128, 130, 147, 148, 163, 164, 264, 454, 478 Semele 41, 81, 200, 328, 338, 359, 375, 384, 400 Semiramide riconosciuta (pasticcio) 128, 133, 136 Serse viii, ix, 19n., 27, 75, 155, 158, 283n., 297, 324, 340, 374n., 384, 386, 393, 406, 410, 417–47, 450, 451, 461, 474, 477, 483, 487, 490–1 Silla 147, 373n., 478 Siroe 5, 6, 9, 23, 27, 34, 69, 73, 79, 83, 84, 86, 88–107, 113, 117, 118, 186, 187, pls. 4, 5 Solomon 94, 183n., 216, 242, 367n., 388, 452 Sonata for recorder and continuo Op. 1 no. 7 (HWV 365) 205 Sonata for violin in D (HWV 371) 73, 224 Sonata for violin in G minor (HWV 364) 104 Sosarme 52n., 80, 85, 128, 130, 131, 206, 208, 210–34, 354, 384, 388n., 460, 467–8, pl. 8b Tamerlano 20, 48, 52, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, 113, 117, 118, 128, 154n., 161, 199, 216, 219, 220, 241, 243, 294, 318, 321, 357n., 424, 451, 452, 488n. Terpsicore 267, 276–7, 325 and n. Teseo 41, 55, 178n., 217, 245, 294, 341 Theodora 49n., 54, 94, 102, 118, 217, 219, 257n., 451 Titus l’Empereur 205–6, 207, 315, pl. 8a Tolomeo 5, 6, 9, 79, 91 and n., 100, 101, 104, 106, 108–24, 128, 188, 216, 250, 354 Trio Sonatas (Op. 5) 305 no. 1: 200, 269n. no. 6: 308n., 463 Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Il (1707) 249n., 282, 424 Trionfo del Tempo e della Verità, Il (1737) 282, 397, 424 Triumph of Time and Truth, The 147 Venceslao (pasticcio) 128, 129 Water Music 476, 483 Wedding Anthem (‘Sing unto God’) 343n.

06/10/2006 14:53:15

GENERAL INDEX

Page numbers in bold type indicate the more important references. Many passing references to Chrysander, Walsh, Cluer and Deutsch are omitted. Aberdeen Concert Hall 267 Abrams, Miss (singer) 118 Addison, Joseph 132 Albemarle, William Keppel, 2nd Earl of 6, 119 Albertini, Giuliano 259n. Albinoni, Tommaso 315n., 365 Albuzio, Ottavio 53 Alceste (Hanover opera) 50 Alessandro in Persia (pasticcio) 399 Alexander in India (pasticcio) 26, 27 Alexander the Great 10, 13–14, 172 Almahide (pasticcio) 212n. Amelia, Princess 4, 50, 126n., 127 American Handel Society viii Amiconi, Giacomo 396n. Andreoni, Giovanni Battista 398, 459, 461, 465, 468, 479, 480 Andrews, R. 228 Anna, Empress of Russia 397n. Anne, Princess Royal (later Princess of Orange) 125–6, 132, 134, 135, 186, 302, 394 Annibali, Domenico 140n., 162, 186–7, 190, 191, 280, 281, 282, 355–9 passim, 370, 374, 389 Antinori, Luigi 24, 56–7, 259n. Appian (Appianus) 380 Araia, Francesco 383n., 397, 398 Arbuthnot, John 5 Arcadian Academy 155, 238 Ariosti, Attilio 3, 4, 5, 128, 130 Ariosto, Ludovico 92, 244, 261, 317, 354, 406, 487n. Orlando furioso 238, 240 and n., 287, 289, 290, 296, 299, 312n., 315, 324

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 550

Aristides 387 Arman, Howard 119 Arminio (pasticcio) 352 Arne, Mrs, see Young, Cecilia Arne, Richard 226, 252 Arne, Susanna Maria (later Mrs Cibber) 28, 118, 130n., 131, 132, 226, 252, 267, 444, 460, 466 Arne, Thomas 130n. Arne, Thomas Augustine 130n., 131, 132 and n., 329, 473 Rosamond 132 ‘Rule, Britannia’ 369 Arnold, Samuel 230, 232, 233, 326n., 487n. Arrian (Flavius Arrianus) 172 Arrigoni, Carlo 131, 135 Arsace (pasticcio) 393 Augusta, Princess of Wales 162, 279, 280, 281, 328, 336, 343, 344, 358, 394n. Augustus II, King of Poland 133n. Auletta, Pietro 197 Aureli, Aurelio L’Antigona delusa da Alceste 38–9, 40n., 55 Avoglio, Cristina Maria 460 Aylesford Collection xviiin., 32, 33, 59, 121, 310, 333n., 360 Bacchus and Ariadne (pantomime) 135, 266 Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel 388 Bach, Johann Christian 185 Bach, Johann Sebastian 41, 200, 219, 220, 385, 445, 488 St. Matthew Passion 220 Bagnolesi, Anna Maria Antonia 51n., 52 and n., 57, 130, 132, 206, 225 Baker, Dame Janet 54, 304 Baldassari, Benedetto 339

06/10/2006 14:53:15



General Index

Baldi, Antonio 140n. in Handel’s operas Admeto 50 Alessandro 21, 24, 30 Riccardo Primo 79 Siroe 99, 101, 106 Tolomeo 117 Barbier, Jane 54, 102, 118, 185 Barrett Lennard, Henry xviii Lennard Collection xv, xviii, xix, 333 Bartsch, Christian 31, 55, 84, 105, 190, 269, 331, 377, 390 Baselt, Bernd xv, 253, 269, 274n., 311 Bassani, Giovanni Battista 288n. Bath 345 Bavarian Electoral Prince, see Karl Albrecht Beard, John 162, 187, 266, 267, 276, 412, 461, 465–6 in Handel’s operas Alcina 327 Ariodante 302 Arminio 358 Atalanta 343 Berenice 389, 392 Giustino 374 Bedford, John Russell, 4th Duke of 275 Beethoven, Ludwig van 180 Fidelio 355, 489 Beggar’s Opera, The, see Gay Belmira (pasticcio) 135 Belton House 110n. Bentivoglio, Ippolito 473 Beregan(i), Count Nicolò 91, 364 Berenstadt, Gaetano 197n., 404n. Berkeley (University of California) 351n. Berkshire Record Office, Reading 411n. Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz 59, 122, 310n. Bernacchi, Antonio Maria 52, 57, 117, 126, 127, 130, 140n., 149 in Handel’s operas Lotario 127, 142, 146, 147 Partenope 161, 162 Bernardi, Giovanni 3 Berry, Walter 488n. Berselli, Matteo 339 Bertolli, Francesca 21, 25, 117, 118, 126 rejoins Handel 187, 281, 328

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 551

551

sings for Opera of the Nobility 265, 276 in Handel’s operas Arminio 358 Berenice 389 Ezio 206 Giustino 374 Lotario 127, 128, 146, 147 Orlando 252 Partenope 161, 162 Poro 185, 186, 187, 191 Sosarme 225 Berton, Henri-Montan 289n. Bertoni, Ferdinando 288n. Best, Terence xv, 34n., 80, 87, 424, 446, 447, 483 Bibiena, Francesco 365 Bingley, Robert Benson, Baron 125 Birmingham University Barber Institute 485n., 488 Blake, William 453 Blathwayt, John 424n. Boccardi, Michelangelo 149 Bockelmann, Rudolf 488n. Bodleian Library, Oxford 466 Bolton, Ivor 304 Bombaciara, Anna 126, 450n. Bononcini, Giovanni 2, 4–5, 128, 131, 133, 258, 324, 326, 374 Astarto 135 Astianatte 2, 4, 50n., 79 Camilla 3, 6, 275 Griselda 132, 136, 252 La regina creduta re 299–300 Xerse 299, 300, 342, 358, 368, 385, 406, 410, 420–4 passim, 425–6, 427–32 passim, 434n., 435–42 passim, 444, 447, 479 Bonynge, Richard 329 Borcke, Caspar Wilhelm von (Prussian Minister) 136 Bordoni, Faustina 1–8 passim, 19, 23–4, 52, 91n., 125–8 passim, 140n., 147, 155, 156, 259n., 279, 299, 328, pl. 3a compared to Cuzzoni 1–2 compass 2 début in Alessandro 1, 18 illness 4, 6, 50, 51 in Handel’s operas Admeto 41, 42, 46, 48–60 passim

06/10/2006 14:53:16

552

General Index

Alessandro 13, 17–18, 24, 25, 30–4 passim Riccardo Primo 77, 79, 227 Siroe 92, 97, 99, 101 Tolomeo 112, 115, 117 Borosini, Antonio 154n. Borosini, Francesco 154n., 259n. Boschi, Giuseppe Maria 3, 57, 73, 145, 160, 204, 222, 297, 388 in Handel’s operas Admeto 48, 49, 50 Alessandro 22, 24 Riccardo Primo 74, 79 Siroe 92, 99, 101 Tolomeo 116, 117 Bowen, Thomas 136 Boyce, William 192, 254 Boyd, Malcolm 110n. Braccioli, Grazio 238n. Brecht, Bertolt 490 Brerewood, Thomas 193 Briani, Francesco 77 Isacio Tiranno 62, 65–73 passim, 75, 81n., 82, 83 British Library xviii, xix, xx, 12, 33, 59, 85, 130n., 148–9, 232, 310, 424n., 426n. Royal Music Library xx Royal Music Collection xviii, xix British Museum 129 Bristol, Elizabeth Hervey, Countess of 133 Brockes, Barthold Heinrich 238 Broschi, Riccardo 258, 276, 282 L’isola di Alcina 206, 315–17, 322n. Brown, Lady Margaret 394n. Brunswick 25, 31, 51n., 54, 55, 56, 80, 84, 102, 105, 106, 163, 165, 166, 187, 188, 190, 267, 269, 270, 328, 331, 345, 375, 377, 389, 390 Brunswick, Dowager Duchess of 163 Brussels Bibliothèque Royale: Fétis Collection 105 Conservatoire 306 Buckingham, Catherine, Duchess of 412 Buckworth, Sir John 134–5, 279, 281, 343–4 Buini, Giuseppe Maria 140 Bulgarelli, Marianna Benti 450n. Burges, Colonel E. 126n. Burlington, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of 279 Burney, Charles xvii, 2, 4, 7, 26, 50, 91n.,

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 552

125, 130n., 212, 265, 277, 283n., 344n., 358, 394, 395, 399, 486 on Handel’s operas Admeto 41, 48, 50 and n., 51, 53, 54 Alcina 317 Alessandro 18, 23 Arianna in Creta 263 Ariodante 292, 295, 303, 305 Arminio 353–4, 357 Atalanta 339, 340, 341 Berenice 383, 385, 388 Deidamia 479, 480 Ezio 201 Faramondo 410 Giustino 371, 373 Imeneo 450 Lotario 142 Orlando 242, 245, 247, 252 Partenope 157–61 passim Poro 180–3 passim Riccardo Primo 72, 74 Serse 420, 426, 427, 428, 430, 433, 435, 439, 444 Siroe 94, 97, 98, 100 Sosarme 215–16, 218, 222, 225, 226 Tolomeo 115 Burrows, Donald vii, viii, xv, 9n., 50n., 278n., 302n., 450, 458, 460n., 463n., 467, 469 Bury St Edmunds 345 Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano) 240, 259n., 284, 393, 394, 395, 461 in Handel’s operas Faramondo 407, 411 and n., 412, 413 Serse 442, 443 Caldara, Antonio 154 and n., 352, 473 Semiramis in Ascalon 206 Calloghan (Callaghan), Mr (singer) 460 Cambridge King’s College: Rowe Library 414 Camilla, see Bononcini Campioli (Antonio Gualandi) 52, 130, 132, 186, 214, 219, 225, 233 Campistron, Jean Galbert de 351 Cantemir, Prince Antioch Dmitrievich 282, 283n., 394, 396 and n., 397, 398 Capeci, Carlo Sigismondo 238–9, 473n. L’Orlando 238, 239, 240, 248, 250, 252–3

06/10/2006 14:53:16



General Index

Tolomeo et Alessandro 110, 111, 119–20 Caporale, Andrea 263, 281, 479, 482 Carestini, Giovanni 18, 126, 130, 133, 143, 157, 226, 276, 277, 282, 327, 344, 358, 397, 398, 455, 459, 461 in Handel’s operas Alcina 261, 323, 326 Arianna 261, 262n., 265, 266, 268, 270 Ariodante 185, 261, 290, 292, 302 Carey, Henry 3, 54, 375, 393 Carli, Antonio Francesco 65, 154n. Caroline, Princess of Wales (later Queen) 4, 5, 30, 101, 134, 176n., 186, 252, 275, 279n., 301, 302, 328, 343, 375, 393, 411 Caroline Elizabeth, Princess 302 Casarini, Domenica 27, 28, 54, 102, 185 Caselli, Maria Maddalena 27 Castle Society 118, 147, 329, 412 Castrucci, Pietro 8–9, 181, 205, 225, 247, 252, 281 Castrucci, Prospero 8, 205, 247, 252 Cavalli, Francesco Xerse 420, 421, 423, 427, 435, 438n., 442 Cesti, Antonio 91 Chambers, Mrs (singer) 118 Chariton of Aphrodisias 288n. Charles, Mr (musician) 345 Charles VI, Emperor 163 Charlton, David 277n. Chelleri, Fortunato 336, 337n. L’innocenza difusa (Judith) 147 Chetwynd, William Richard 279 Chichester Bishop Otter College 365n. Chimenti, Margherita (La Droghierina) 281, 411, 413, 443 Chrichley, J. 414, 445, 481 Christie, Agatha 93 Christie, William 253, 329, 444 Christoff, Boris 488n. Chrysander, Friedrich 35, 57, 60–1, 86, 87, 107, 123, 150, 157, 164,168, 170n., 193, 207 and n., 208, 209, 232, 233–4, 254, 255, 266, 273, 311, 324, 334, 379, 390, 391, 392, 393n., 414, 415–16, 426n., 446–7, 479, 483 Edition (HG) viii, xv, xviii, 485 Ciacchi, Guiseppe 27 Ciampi, Francesco 279

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 553

553

Cibber, Colley 283 Cibber, Susanna, see Arne Clark, Richard Auldon 119, 207 Clarke, Mr (singer) 54 Clausen, Hans Dieter xv, xvii, xix, 31, 39n., 166, 191, 208, 227, 230, 307, 331, 332, 344n. Clay, Charles 232, 255 Clayton, Charlotte 4, 50n. Clayton, Thomas 132 Clegg, John 281 Clerk, Sir John 8, 9, 252 Clive, Catherine (Kitty) 185, 398 Cluer, Elizabeth 193, 209 Cluer, John 34, 53, 60, 86, 107, 150, 193, 209, 348, 445 Cobb, Thomas 193, 209 Cocchi, Antonio 1–2, 24, 135n. Coke, Gerald xix Collection xv, xvii, xix, xx, 33, 34, 53, 59, 60n., 85, 101, 106, 122, 123, 168,192, 226n., 232, 254, 271, 310n., 347, 361, 446, 482 Colman, Francis xvii, 130, 273 Colman Opera Register (Colman Diary) xvii, 25, 50, 129, 130 and n., 147, 185, 206, 226, 252, 266 Colonna, Carlo, Cardinal 126 Commano, Giovanni Giuseppe 130, 162, 185, 239 Compton, Lady Elizabeth 276 Conolly, Anne 358n. Conradi, Johann Georg 91 Conti, Francesco Bartolomeo 258, 259, 266n. Issipile (pasticcio) 147, 206 Conti, Gioacchino 162, 163, 186, 187, 191, 280, 281, 282, 302–7 passim, 327, 334 in Handel’s operas Atalanta 339, 340, 343, 344 Arminio 356, 358 Berenice 387, 389 Giustino 374, 375 Cooke, Benjamin 34, 60 Coopersmith Collection, see Maryland copyists xix–xx Corelli, Arcangelo 263, 439 Corfe, Mr (singer) 327 Cori, Angelo 278, 399n.

06/10/2006 14:53:16

554

General Index

Corneille, Thomas 197 Corry, H. 279 Costa, Giovanni Maria 288n. Cotesworth, Robert 4n. Covent Garden Theatre 53, 54, 123, 135, 191, 227, 267, 274–84, 330–1, 343, 344, 395, frontispiece capacity 274n. chorus 276, 317, 341 Handel moves to 266, 274, 317 Handel’s operas at 162, 186, 192, 301, 358, 374, 389 inventory 303, 329, 375 opens 132 Cowper, Lady Sarah 24, 50n., 284 Creake, Bezaleel 34 Crotch, William 438n. Cummings, Graham 177n., 178n., 180n., 181, 183, 188 Curnyn, Christian 163 Curtis, Alan 54, 147, 228, 359, 480 Curtius Rufus, Quintus 172 Cuzzoni, Francesca 1, 2–8 passim, 18, 23n., 34, 46, 125, 127–8, 130, 132, 133, 155, 156, 279, 281, 299, 480 compared to Faustina 1–2 compass 2 illness 4, 50 sings for Opera of the Nobility 135, 265, 276, 302 threatened with defenestration 274 in Handel’s operas Admeto 42, 47–50 passim Alessandro 13, 17, 19, 21, 24 Riccardo Primo 74, 79, 82 Siroe 92, 96–101 passim Tolomeo 112, 113, 117 Dahnk-Baroffio, Emilie 80n., 91n., 273 Dampier, Thomas 399 dance 276, 294, 325–6 Dante Alighieri 240 Da Ponte, Lorenzo 423 Dart, Thurston 488 David, Domenico 172 Dean, Winton 4n., 9n., 26n., 99n., 130n., 161n., 400n. De Brosses, Charles 161n. Defoe, Daniel 3, 131

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 554

Delahaye, Thomas 274 Delaware, John West, 7th Baron 132–5 passim, 274, 279, 284 Delany, Mary, see Pendarves del Pò, Aurelio 131, 395 and n. Demofoonte (pasticcio) 265 Dent, Edward J. xvii, 93, 116, 141n., 155, 214–15, 219, 239, 241, 242, 247, 260, 304, 337, 353, 356, 405, 423, 442, 450, 455, 474, 475 and n., 480 Deutsch, Otto Erich vii, viii, xv, xvii, 1n., 55n., 190, 226, 301, 302, 344, 348n., 415n. Devonshire, William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) 399 Devoto, John 129, pls. 3b, 6, 7 Dido and Aeneas, see Purcell Donellan, Anne 394n., 459 Donizetti, Gaetano 290n. Dorris, George E. 132n. Dorset, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, 1st Duke of 134n. Dotti, Anna Vincenza 24, 30, 50, 51 Draghi, Antonio 473 Dragon of Wantley, The, see Lampe Dresden Sächsische Landesbibliothek 150 Drury Lane Theatre 28, 54, 102, 118, 185, 226, 267, 275, 281, 329, 344, 345, 375 closed 396 Dublin 449, 460, 467 Aungier Street Theatre 267, 345 Crow Street Music Hall 54, 185, 329 Fishamble Street Music Hall 345, 460 Music Room 226 Dubourg, Matthew 280–1, 344, 393n. Dumont, Gabriel: frontispiece Dunhill, Rosemary vii, xv Duni, Egidio Romoaldo 283 Dunn, Geoffrey 54 Duparc, Elisabeth (La Francesina) 28, 281, 396, 415 in Handel’s operas Deidamia 479, 480 Faramondo 406, 410, 411, 412, 413 Imeneo 459, 461 Serse 442, 443 Durastanti, Margherita 65, 133, 226, 227, 231–2, 264, 265–6, 276

06/10/2006 14:53:16



General Index

Durham Cathedral Library 233 Duval, Mr (doctor) 413 Edlin, Thomas 30 Edwards, Miss (singer) 398, 457, 459, 462, 466, 479, 480 Egmont, John Percival, 1st Earl of 25, 125, 225–6, 266, 277, 343n., 374, 399 Eisenschmidt, Joachim xvii, 93 Eisentraut, Madame (singer) 188 Ellinger, Georg 39n. Ellison, Henry 278 English Bach Society 80 English National Opera 289n., 435n., 443–4, 490–1 Ensorcelés ou Jeanott et Jeanette, Les (pasticcio) 329 Erard, Mr (singer) 303 Erhard (Erhardt), Herr, see Erard Essex, William Capel, 3rd Earl of 136, 274, 279 Euripides 38, 40, 42 Fabbri, Paolo 239n., 259n., 452n. Fabri, Annibale Pio 117, 126, 149, 150, 220, 404n., 450n. in Handel’s operas Lotario 127, 128, 143–8 passim Partenope 160, 162 Poro 182, 185 Falconi, F. 288n. Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) 72, 80, 125, 126, 133, 140, 276, 277, 280, 281, 283, 302, 315, 407, 412, 450n. Farncombe, Charles 488 Faustina, see Bordoni Fawcett, Richard 279–80 Feo, Francesco 258 Ferdinando di Medici, Prince 288n. Ferg, Master 345 Fiedler, Gottlieb 25 Fiorè, Stefano Andrea 265, 288n., 374 Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich 488n. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge xviii, xx, 81, 83, 192, 253, 308, 359, 376, 390, 413, 440, 481 Flesch, Siegfried viii, 255 Flower, Sir Newman xviii, 134n.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 555

555

Collection xv, xviii–xix, 32, 192, 232, 272, 278n., 310, 311, 333, 347, 361, 391, 415, 469 Förtsch, Johann Philipp 447 Fougeroux, Pierre Jacques 8, 9, 50, 161n. Fox, Henry 328 Fox, Stephen 5 Francesina, La, see Duparc Frasi, Giulia 27, 53, 329, 359 Fratesanti (singer) 27 Frederick, Prince of Wales 133, 134, 135, 162, 279, 281, 302 and n., 328, 336, 337n., 343–4, 358, 374, 394, 400, 458, 459 Frederick the Great 163 Freeman, Robert 154 and n. Freud, Sigmund 289n., 490 Fuller Maitland, John Alexander 412n. Fürth, Karl-Josef 311 Gainsborough, Baptist Noel, 4th Earl of 329 galant style 184, 373 Galli, Caterina 27, 28, 185 Galliard, John Ernest 2n., 131n., 274 Galuppi, Baldassare 352n., 399 Gasparini, Francesco 424 Amleto 357, 479 Faramondo 374, 403n., 404–5, 406, 413 Gastaldi, Giambattista 396 and n., 397, 398 Gates, Bernard 130 Gay, John 6 Achilles 473, 474 The Beggar’s Opera 6, 101, 132, 147, 275, 393 George I, King 4, 5, 50, 67, 79 George II, King (earlier Prince of Wales) 5, 9, 25, 58, 67, 72, 79, 83, 125, 126, 134, 136, 176n., 186, 214, 278. 279n., 281, 283, 301, 343, 375, 394, 398n., 400, 458, 459 George III, King 336n., 394n., 487n. Gerlach, Reinhard 78 Germain, Lady Betty 134 Giacomelli, Geminiano 128 Gibbon, Edward 364n. Gibson, Elizabeth vii, xv, 1n., 7, 129 Gismondi, Celeste 25, 117, 118, 132, 239–40, 252, 265 compass 240

06/10/2006 14:53:16

556

General Index

death 251 Giuntini, Francesco 140n., 352 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 28, 41, 45, 245, 247, 264, 454, 475 Issipile 265 Orfeo 341 Glyndebourne 491 ‘God Save the Queen’ 224 Goldsbrough, Arnold 488 Goodwin, Paul 147 Gordon, Alexander 274 Göttingen Handel Festival 78n., 91n., 163 Goupy, Joseph 55n., 79, 83, 344 Grafton, Charles Fitzroy, 2nd Duke of (Lord Chamberlain 1724–57) 134, 282–3, 399n. Granville, Ann (sister of Mary Pendarves) 3, 27, 49, 101, 127, 147, 327, 344, 358, 480 Granville, Bernard xviii Collection xv, xviii Graue (? Graun) (singer) 188 Graun, Carl Heinrich 374 Passion ‘Kommt her und schaut’ 342, 372, 376 Gray, Thomas 265, 344 Great Mr Handel, The (film) 444 Greene, Maurice 168, 192 Greven, Paul 273 Gronda, Giovanna 258, 259n. Grout, Donald Jay 486 Guarini, Giovanni Battista 337 Guernsey, Heneage Finch, Lord (later 3rd Earl of Aylesford) 272, 395, 469 Guicciardi, Francesco 353 Haddock, Admiral Nicholas 398 Hagan, Oskar 443, 447, 487–8 Halle Festival 188, 488, 489n. Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA) viii, xv, 483 Hamburg 276 Gänsemarkt opera 484 Handel’s operas staged at 25, 30, 51n., 54, 55–6, 80, 83–4, 163, 165, 187, 190 Opera 490 Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek xvii, xviii, xix, xx Hamilton, James Douglas-Hamilton, 5th

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 556

Duke of 140n. Hamilton, Newburgh 282, 358, 411–12 Hampshire Record Office, Winchester xviii Handel, Dorothea 126 Handel Institute (London) viii Handel Opera Society 80, 329, 475n., 480, 488 Handel’s opponents 133, 135, 274, 277, 278, 282 see also Opera of the Nobility Handel’s orchestra 281, 458, 479 see also King’s Theatre in the Haymarket Hanover Royal Library 188 Hare, Joseph 34, 60, 107, 150 Harrington, Sir John 285n. Harris, Ellen T. 39n., 155n., 165n., 346n. Harris, James 9n., 279–84 passim, 358n., 389n., 394 and n., 397, 443, 459, 460, 480 Harris, Thomas 344, 398, 459 Harrison, Samuel 227 Hasse, Johann Adolf 18, 98, 128, 157, 201, 240, 279, 282, 322n., 352, 398, 410, 426, 428 Artaserse 276, 277 Cleofide 172, 178, 184–5, 187, 190 Hassell, Robert 4n., 50 Hawkins, Sir John 1, 2, 7, 260, 275n., 395n. Haydn, Joseph 185n., 238n. Haym, Nicola Francesco 4, 6, 23n., 67, 91, 92, 93, 105, 239, 352 death 239 Admeto 39, 40 Tolomeo 110, 111, 119 Haymarket Theatre, see King’s Theatre Heidegger, John Jacob 7 and n., 129, 146, 274, 284, 393, 394–5, 399, 406, 459 in partnership with Handel 125, 128, 130, 133, 136, 241 Heinichen, Johann David 115n. Heller (singer) 188 Herbage, Julian 226n. Herodotus 417 Hervey, John, Lord 5, 125, 132, 134, 176n., 278–9, 328 Herz, Joachim 443 Hesse-Darmstadt, Philip, Prince of 396n. Hibberd, Sarah 277n.

06/10/2006 14:53:16



General Index

Hicks, Anthony 133n., 303n., 306n., 329n., 461 Hickox, Richard 329 Hill, Aaron 131, 241 Hill, Cecil 449n. Hill, Mrs (singer) 54 Hintlesham Hall 345 Hochzeit der Statira, Die (pasticcio) 345 Hogwood, Christopher 253, 488 Holdsworth, Edward vii, xvii, 276n., 278n., 280, 282, 358 Homer Odyssey 257n., 474 Hotter, Hans 488n. Howard, Samuel 327 Hübenthal, Kurt 461 Hughes, John 131, 393n. Hughes-Hughes, Augustus 122 Hume, Robert D. viii, 1n., 50n., 125, 130n., 131, 134n., 135–6, 274, 275n., 278, 283n. Humphreys, Samuel 189, 196n., 207, 210, 230, 253, 269 Hunter, David 411n., 415n. Huntington Library, California Larpent Collection 26 Hurlothrumbo, see Johnson Issipile (pasticcio), see Conti, F. Jennens, Charles vii, xvii, xviii, xix, 32, 33, 49, 56, 58, 85, 86, 121, 122, 133, 149, 168, 192, 208, 232, 254, 271, 272, 276n., 278, 280, 282, 302, 306, 308, 310, 332, 333 and n., 347, 358, 360, 395n., 399, 446, 459n., 468, 469, 482 Handel obtains scores from 406 Handel’s letters to 327, 399–400 on Imeneo 460 as librettist 395, 399, 458 on singers 280, 480 John V, King of Portugal 214 Johnson, Samuel Hurlothrumbo 147, 282 Johnson, Dr Samuel 393, 487 Jones, Miss (singer) 185, 252 Justinus 108 Juvarra, Filippo 129

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 557

557

Karl Albrecht, Bavarian Electoral Prince (later Elector) 140, 149 Kayser, Margaretha Susanna 188 Keats, John 486 Keiser, Reinhard 22, 163, 166, 298n., 326, 388 Circe (pasticcio) 147 Claudius 163n., 205, 217n., 295, 371, 424, 479 La forza della virtù 79, 326, 406 Nebucadnezar 342, 346 Octavia 243, 388 Kerll, Johann Kaspar 242, 264 Keys, Ivor 488 King, Richard G. 14, 15, 23n., 26n., 29 and n., 126n., 302n. King’s Theatre in the Haymarket 2, 4, 6, 24–8 passim, 53, 54, 79, 80, 101, 117, 131, 133, 134, 146, 147, 149, 156, 161, 168, 185, 206, 212n., 225, 226, 252, 265, 275, 278–84 passim, 329, 359, 375, 393, 394, 395, 399, 411, 412, 443, 487n. box-office receipts 136 dark 398 expiry of Handel’s tenure 135, 274, 301 Heidegger as lessee 133 let to Italian comedians 3 machinery 141 Opera of the Nobility at 125 orchestra 8–9, 252 Kitching, Alan 119, 188, 228, 253, 359, 375, 488 Kitching, Frances 188, 375, 488 Knapp, John Merrill vii, 80, 83 Knatchbull, Lady Katherine 394n. Knatchbull, Sir Wyndham 301, 358 König, Johann Ulrich 238 Krist (singer) 188 Kubik, Reinhold 268 Kuijken, Sigiswald 28, 163 Kytch, Jean Christian 28, 102, 118 La Calprenède, Gautier de Costes de 404 Lacy, Michael Rophino 289n. Lampe, John Frederick 130n., 131–2 The Dragon of Wantley 375, 393, 412 Lampugnani, Giovanni Battista 26, 27, 53 Landgraf, Annette viiin., 483n. Larsen, Jens Peter xix, 57n.

06/10/2006 14:53:16

558

General Index

Lauder, William 265 Leander, Mr (musician) 345 Le Coq, Jacques 5n. Lee, Nathaniel 3n. Leeds, Duchess of 133 Legh, Elizabeth xviii, 49, 56, 271 Legrenzi, Giovanni 364–5, 377, 473 Lehmann, Fritz 267, 273 Leichentritt, Hugo xvii, 74–5, 98, 180, 181, 206, 289n., 293, 304, 322, 353, 372, 450 Leipzig Opera 490 Leitner, Ferdinand 329 Lennard Collection, see Barrett Lennard Leo, Leonardo 126, 128, 258–9, 260n., 261n., 268, 306, 322n. Leplahn (? Leplat) (singer) 188 Leppard, Raymond 304 Leveridge, Richard 327 Lewin, Waldtraut 461 Lewis, Sir Anthony 54, 228, 449–50, 460, 461, 469, 488 Library of Congress, see Washington Licensing Act (1737) 282–3, 393 Liddell, Sir Henry 278 Limerick, James Hamilton, Viscount 279 Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre 3, 6, 28, 54, 101n., 102, 118, 129, 130n., 131, 185, 226, 265, 267, 274, 275, 398 Handel’s operas at 398, 459, 479, 480 Opera of the Nobility at 133, 134, 265 Lindgren, Lowell vii, xvi, 101n., 126n., 129 Little Haymarket Theatre 28, 54, 118, 130, 131, 185, 252, 267, 274, 393, 398, 399n., 461, 480 Llewelyn Jones, Brynmor 207 Lockman, John 292 Loewenthal, Ruth 282n., 358n., 394n. Loewenberg, Alfred 91n., 212, 258n., 328 London Academy, Chancery Lane 102, 118 Crown and Anchor Tavern 5, 130 Cuper’s Gardens 345 Foundling Museum xix Golden Square 5, 6 Goodman’s Fields 185 Great Room, Dean Street 28, 412 Great Room, Villars Street 130 Guildhall 8, 9

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 558

Haberdashers Hall 118, 147, 329, 412 Hickford’s Room 28, 78, 102, 118, 205 King’s Arms 118, 329 Royal Academy of Music xix, 140n., 291 Royal College of Music xix Vauxhall Gardens 394 London Handel Society 359 Lord Chamberlain, see Grafton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, see Devonshire Lotti, Antonio 65, 66, 131n., 352, 397 Lottini, Antonio 409, 411, 413, 440, 443, 445 Louis XIV, King 181 Lovel, Thomas Coke, Lord 279 Lucchini, Antonia Maria 397 Lucio Vero (pasticcio) 53, 80, 101, 147, 185, 443 Ludford, John 133n. Lully, Jean-Baptiste 238n. Atys 294 Luxborough, Henrietta Knight, Lady 440 Lynch, Robert D. 345n. McCleave, Sarah 275n., 277n., 294, 302n., 308 McGeary, Thomas 134 McGegan, Nicholas 163, 267, 304, 345, 375 Mackerras, Sir Charles 253 Mainwaring, John xvii, 7, 125, 126, 266, 275, 283, 393, 395n. Malmesbury Collection ix, xix, 59, 86, 106, 149, 168, 192, 232, 255 Manchester Henry Watson Music Library xviii Manchester Subscription Concerts 28, 54, 80, 147, 163, 267, 329, 345, 480 Mancia, Luigi 154 Mancini, Rosa 27 Mann, Arthur Henry 91n., 164, 412n. Mann, Horace 400 Marchesini, Maria Antonia (La Lucchesina) 281, 282, 395, 396, 410, 411, 413, 430, 443, 461 Marchi, Antonio 315n. Maria Casimira, Queen of Poland 110, 238 Marlborough, Henrietta Churchill, Duchess of 4, 131 Marlborough, John Churchill, 1st Duke of 65n. Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of 4

06/10/2006 14:53:16



General Index

Marriner, Neville 488 Mason, Rose M. 415n. Mason, William 265 Mattheson, Johann 91n., 238 Maryland, University of 33n., 58, 119, 149n., 167, 193n., 209, 232, 272, 310, 333, 415 Coopersmith Collection 33, 122, 232, 271, 347, 360, 378, 391, 446, 482 Mauro, Ostensio 12–14, 15, 25, 26, 29, 31, 39, 40 and n. Mayr, Simone 289n. Méhul, Étienne-Nicolas 289n. Mencaroni, Lucia 299 Merighi, Antonia Margherita 117, 119, 126, 127, 156, 259n., 281, 282, 450n. in Handel’s operas Faramondo 411, 413 Lotario 127, 128, 146, 147 Partenope 161 Poro 185 Serse 442, 443 Merode e Selinunte (pasticcio) 398 Metastasio, Pietro 91–2, 93, 107, 128, 155, 198, 258, 276, 278, 366, 407, 420, 422, 423, 473, 474 Alessandro nell’Indie (Poro) 26, 27, 35, 169–74, 177, 178, 181, 184, 186 Ezio 194–8, 199, 200, 207, 213 Siroe re di Persia 88–91, 92, 93, 94, 98–102 passim, 104, 105, 282 Middlesex, Charles Sackville, Earl of 26, 395, 397–400 passim, 409, 461, 465 Milhous, Judith viii, 1n., 130n., 131, 135–6, 278 Milton, John 127, 282 Comus 329 Minato, Nicolò Xerse 420–2, 423, 424, 441, 447 Minkowski, Mark 304 Moniglia, G. A. 140, Montagnana, Antonio 25, 32, 52, 56, 74, 117, 118, 130, 174, 186, 189, 190, 192 decline 442 ‘roars as usual’ 281 sings for Opera of the Nobility 265, 276, 281, 302 in Handel’s operas Ezio 204, 206 Faramondo 411, 413

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 559

559

Orlando 239, 242, 252 Sosarme 214, 222, 225 Serse 443 Montemiletto, Leonardo di Tocco, Prince of 450 Monteverdi, Claudio 38, 73, 423 L’incoronazione di Poppea 421 Monticelli, Angelo Maria 27, 28 Monza, Maria 398, 460, 477, 479–83 passim Mott, Master (singer) 185 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 97, 185, 199, 216, 217, 366, 371, 423, 451 and Handel 156, 337–8, 486 Clarinet Quintet 185n. Così fan tutte 338, 367, 491 Idomeneo 367 Le nozze di Figaro 423 Die Zauberflöte 240–1, 320 Mozeen, Thomas 459n. Muffat, Georg 199n. Müller-Blattau, Joseph 393n. Munich Opera 443 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio 1, 7, 91n. Musicians Fund 329, 359 Naples Conservatorio 121 National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh 396n., 445, 449, 467 ‘Neapolitan’ style 129, 156–7, 184, 339, 354, 355, 370 Negri, Maria Caterina 133, 162, 187, 190, 191, 226, 276, 301, 327 in Handel’s operas Alcina 327, 329 Arianna 263, 265, 266 Ariodante 302, 303 Arminio 358 Atalanta 343 Berenice 389 Giustino 374, 378 Negri, Maria Rosa 133, 226, 266, 276, 301, 303, 327, 328, 329 Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of 126n. New York City Opera 490 Nicolini (Nicolo Grimaldi) 154n., 259n. Noris, Matteo 212 Notholt, Frank 209

06/10/2006 14:53:16

560

General Index

Nowakowski, Mieczyslaw 28 octave transposition 128, 303, 487, 488, 489, 490 Offenbach, Jacques 239 Old Pretender, see Stuart Olimpia in Ebuda (pasticcio) 398 Orfeo (pasticcio) 279 Opera of the Nobility vii, 2, 80, 125, 131–5 passim, 136, 186, 187, 226, 260, 265, 274–84 passim, 301, 302, 327, 383, 393, 395, 399, 469 Handel’s singers defect to 260 negotiates with Handel 279, 284 Orange, Prince of, see Wilhelm IV Orlandini, Giuseppe Maria 128, 140, 141, 147, 258, 282, 352, 470n. Osborne (boy singer) 54 Ottoboni, Pietro, Cardinal 126, 424n. Oxenstierna Collection (Royal Musical Library, Stockholm) 80n. Pacchierotti, Gasparo 35 Pacholke, Michael 124, 150 Pacini, Andrea 259n. Paita, Giovanni 140n. Palmer, Rudolph 389, 480 Palmerini, Giovanni Battista 24, 32, 49, 50, 57, 79, 101 Panichi, Lucia (La Moscovita) 395, 396 Papillion (singer) 185 Pariati, Pietro 91n., 258–9, 261, 365 Paris Opéra 275 Partenio, Gian Domenico 91 Paskalis, Kostas 488n. Passerini, Christina 53 pasticcios 128–9, 133, 189 Pellegrini, Valeriano 339 Pembroke, Mary Howe, Countess of 4, 50n. Pendarves, Mary (later Delany, née Granville) 3, 6, 27, 49, 79, 101, 127, 129, 147, 226, 228, 278, 279, 281, 282, 344, 358, 459, 480 on Alcina 327 Pennington, Mr 282 Pepusch, John Christopher The Beggar’s Opera 6 Percival, Viscount, see Egmont

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 560

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista 76, 221, 356, 370 Perti, Giacomo Antonio 4, 212, 214, 288, 383 Pescetti, Giovanni Battista 283, 393, 398 Angelica e Medoro 395–6 Pfitzner, Hans 487 Philip V, King of Spain 283 Piccinni, Niccolò 238n. Pinacci, Giovanni Battista 52, 53, 54, 130, 132, 186, 206, 220, 225 Pirates of Penzance, The, see Sullivan Pirker, Marianna 27 Pirro e Demetrio, see Scarlatti, Alessandro Pisani, Barbara 281n. Pisendel, Johann Georg 150 Pistocchi, Francesco Antonio Massimiliano Narciso 218n., 342, 358, 369, 406 and n., 427 Plantanida (Piantanida), Giovanni 396 Plato 30 Plutarch 12, 14, 172 Poland, King of, see Augustus II Pollarolo, Carlo Francesco 212, 352, 353, 404 Ariodante 1, 288 and n., 293, 299–300 Pope, Alexander 282 Porpora, Nicola 91, 121, 128, 133, 135, 140, 141, 172, 186, 197n., 258, 259, 261, 276, 281, 404 Arianna in Nasso 134, 135, 265, 266, 272 Davide e Bersabea 135, 277 Enea nel Lazio 135 La festa d’Imeneo 281, 406, 469 Ifigenia in Aulide 277 Imeneo 450 and n., 465, 469 Mithridate 279 Polifemo 277, 278 Porporino (Giovanni Bindi) 133n. Porta, Giovanni 91 Numitore 99, 129, 243, 358 Postel, Christian Heinrich 91, 447 Posterla (Pusterli), Chiara 396–7, 459, 461, 462, 464 Posterla, Costanza 396–7, 459, 461 Potenza, Signor (singer) 185 Powell, Walter 85, 232 Powers, Harold S. 420, 422, 423, 424n., 427n., 432, 436n.

06/10/2006 14:53:16



General Index

Predieri, Luca Antonio 154, 172 Prévost d’Exiles, Antoine François 135, 327 Princess Royal, see Anne Princeton University James S. Hall Collection 27 Procopius 197 Prussian Minister, see Borcke Ptolemy VIII 108n. Puccini, Giacomo 435 Purcell, Henry 158, 217, 245, 293, 442, 478 Dido and Aeneas 181, 305 Quantz, Johann Joachim 2, 4, 8, 50 Racine, Jean 351 Alexandre le Grand 172, 181 Andromaque 4, 5 Bérénice 205 Britannicus 197 Radnor, John Robartes, 4th Earl of 394n., 398 Raftor, Miss, see Clive Ralph, James 101n. Rameau, Jean-Philippe 78, 294 Randall, William 35 Ranieri (singer) 53 Reading University 412 Reginelli, Nicolò 27 Reinecken, Catherine Elisabeth 188 Relapse, The, see Vanbrugh Reinhold, Henry Theodore (Thomas) 187, 190, 303, 327, 334, 343, 358, 374, 389, 395, 457, 459, 461, 480, 481 Rescigno, Nicola 329 Resse, Celeste (La Celestina), see Gismondi Ricciarelli, Signor (singer) 329 Rich, John 3, 6, 129, 130n., 274–5, 276, 301, 317, 393, 395 accounts 275 opens Covent Garden Theatre 132 in partnership with Handel 275 Richmond, Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of vii, 1n., 6, 126, 132–3, 156n., 274, 396n. Richmond, Lady Sarah Cadogan, Duchess of 275 Riemschneider, Johann Gottfried (senior) 126 and n., 127, 128, 130, 146, 162, 188, 239

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 561

561

Riemschneider, Gebhard Julius (junior) 188 Righini, Pietro 129 Ristori, Giovanni Alberto 187, 238n., 352 Riva, Giuseppe 1, 2, 7, 91n., 126–9 passim, 146n., 276 Roberts, John H. viii, xx, 57n., 79, 116, 205, 218n., 265, 291, 299, 300n., 326, 342, 357–8, 374, 397n., 405n., 406, 409n., 423, 424, 427, 450, 459n., 461, 465, 469, 470n., 479 Roberts, Mr (singer) 185 Roberts, Mrs (singer) 267 Robinson, Ann Turner 28, 54, 80, 102, 118, 329 Robinson, Elizabeth 394n., 459 Robinson, John 329 Robinson, Miss 329, 412 Robinson, Stanford 54 Rochetti, Philip 118, 185, 395 Rolli, Paolo Antonio 2, 7, 31, 39, 91n., 125–30 passim, 132, 135, 146–7, 213n., 239n., 265, 266, 276, 282, 398, 481 Opera of the Nobility’s poet 135 Alessandro 12–14, 22, 25, 30, 31, 213n. Deidamia 471–4, 475, 481 Riccardo Primo 63n., 65–70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 83, 213n., 481n. Ronish, Martha J. viii, xv Rossi, Giacomo 173, 140–1, 173, 205 ‘Handel’s poet’ 127 Rossi-Lemeni, Nicola 488n. Roth, Herman 488n. Roubiliac, Louis François 394 Rousset, Christophe 74, 80 Royal Academy of Music vii, viii, 1–7, 23, 51, 99, 100, 117, 119, 125–9 passim, 136, 155, 274, 279, 284, 424n., 442 in abeyance 133 Charter expires 399 ‘Second Academy’ 125–36, 220 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 325n. Rückert, Heinz 209 Ruggeri, Giovanni Maria 383 and n. ‘Rule Britannia’, see Arne Ruspoli, Francesco Maria, Marchese 424n. Sabrina (pasticcio) 282, 283 Saint, Andrew 275n.

06/10/2006 14:53:17

562

General Index

Sallé, Marie 135, 266, 275, 276–7, 301, 302, 325, 327, 328 Salvi, Antonio 4 Adelaide 140–1 Arminio 351–3 Berenice regina di Egitto 383, 387 Dionisio re di Portogallo 52n., 212–17 passim, 220, 224, 229, 230 Ginevra principessa di Scozia 286n., 287n., 288–9, 292, 294, 296, 297, 303 Salzthal 163, 165, 166 Sammartini, Giuseppe 281, 357, 374, 389, 391 Sandoni, Madam, see Cuzzoni Sandoni, Pietro Giuseppe 277 Sarro, Domenico Natale 91, 157, 288n., 342, 374 Partenope 154, 156n., 161n. Sasse, Konrad xvii Savage, William xx, 291, 326, 327, 374, 376, 391, 392, 411, 413, 459 and n., 480 Scalzi, Carlo 133, 197n., 227, 265, 276, 301, 339 Scarabelli, Diamante Maria 65, 154n., 337n. Scarlatti, Alessandro 112, 160, 183, 249, 263, 265, 374, 387, 442 Arminio 351, 352 Dafni 265, 342, 406 Griselda 406 Marco Attilio Regolo 405, 406, 409n., 410, 424 Pirro e Demetrio 52 Pompeo 205 Scarlatti, Domenico 110, 111, 115, 238, 239 473n. scenery 79, 129, 130, 146, 185, 206, 207, 280, 301–2, 303, 329, 343, 344, 375, 478, 484, 485, 488 Schiassi, Gaetano Maria 306 Schieferlein (singer) 188 Schneyder (singer) 188 Schoelcher, Victor 251n. Collection 269 Schreker, Franz 487 Schubert, Franz 182, 199, 249, 339, 433, 486 Schürmann, Georg Caspar 25, 26, 54, 102, 188, 206, 238, 267, 270, 328, 331, 375, 377, 389, 390 Scouten, Arthur H. 50n., 399n., 480n.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 562

Scribe, Eugène 93 ‘Second Academy’, see Royal Academy of Music See and Seem Blind (pamphlet) 131, 206, 226 Segatti, Maria 134, 135 Sellitto, Giuseppe 288n. semi-opera 275, 276 Senesino (Francesco Bernardi) 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 27, 34, 51, 59n., 91n., 126, 127, 130, 132, 133 and n., 135, 136, 140n., 147, 155–6, 162, 166, 167, 239n., 281, 282, 358, 488n., pl. 3a illness 2, 3, 24 sings for Opera of the Nobility 265, 276, 278, 302 in Handel’s operas Admeto 44, 49, 50, 52 Alessandro 14, 24, 25, 30 Ezio 199, 206 Orlando 242–3, 245, 251, 252 Poro 185, 186 Riccardo Primo 66, 72, 73, 79, 82, 226, 227 Siroe 99, 101, 106 Sosarme 215, 225 Tolomeo 113, 117 Serafini, Pietro 53 Servandoni, Giovanni Niccolò pl. 1 Servius 450 Shaftesbury 345 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 4th Earl of xviii, 9n., 86, 125, 126, 130, 132n., 136, 147n., 149, 192, 266, 275, 280, 281, 327, 328, 344, 347, 358–9, 375, 389, 394, 397–400 passim, 443 on Annibali 358 on Handel’s illness 283–4 on Serse 443 Shaftesbury Collection xviii, xix, 60 and n., 106, 333 Shakespeare, William 143, 155, 367 Hamlet 54, 452 Much Ado About Nothing 289 Othello 289, 294 Shenstone, William 440n. Sheward, Miss (singer) 28 Siepe, Cesare 488n. Simon, Jacob 133n., 252n. Simon, Stephen 253, 304

06/10/2006 14:53:17



General Index

Simonetti, C. E. 375 Smith, John Christopher (the elder) xix, 24, 28, 31–4 passim, 58, 59, 73, 78, 81–6 passim, 105, 106, 120–3 passim, 149, 166, 167, 191, 192, 205, 208, 229, 231, 254, 270, 271, 307, 310n., 316n., 329–33 passim, 346, 347, 360, 376, 378, 390, 393n., 414, 415, 446, 463n., 467 and n., 479, 481 bad habit xix, 308 errors 230, 445, 468 letter to Lord Shaftesbury 400 Smith circle xx, 59n. Smith, John Christopher (the younger) as composer 132 as copyist 32, 34, 59, 60, 85, 121, 122, 192, 254 as Handel’s assistant 53, 54, 101–2, 118, 284, 389 Smith, Martin 122, 232 Smith, William Charles xvi, 34, 53, 206n., 212, 414–15 Smollett, Tobias George 275n., 277n. Snow, Valentine 341 Solimano (pasticcio) 185 Somary, Johannes 228 Somis, Cristina Antonia 126 Somis, Giovanni Battista 126n. Sorosina, Benedetta 259n. Sotheby’s 133n., 233 Spain, King of, see Philip V Spering, Andreas 102, 461 Squire, William Barclay 57, 255, 271, 445, 449 Stage Licensing Act, see Licensing Act Stampiglia, Silvio 155, 156, 158n. Imeneo 450, 451, 454, 457, 459n., 462, 464, 465 Partenope 154, 155, 159, 160, 164 Xerse 420, 421–2, 426, 435, 445 Steffani, Agostino 238n., 352 La liberatà contenta 298n., 438n. La superbia d’Alessandro 12, 13, 15, 21, 25, 29, 31 Il zelo di Leonato 12 Steglich, Rudolf 423, 447, 483 Stephenson, Edward 122 Stoppelaer, Mr (singer) 297, 302, 303, 327, 330

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 563

563

Strada del Pò, Anna Maria 18, 25, 52, 117, 118, 126, 127, 130–4 passim, 149, 272, 276, 282, 334, 395n., 480 illness 186, 252 leaves London 394–5 refuses to sing for Bononcini 133 in Handel’s operas Alcina 321, 326, 327 Arianna 262, 265 Ariodante 280, 302 Arminio 358 Atalanta 343 Berenice 389 Ezio 206 Giustino 371, 374 Lotario 127–8, 142, 146, 147 Orlando 251, 252 Partenope 156, 161, 162 Poro 185, 186, 187 Sosarme 225, 226 and n., 227 Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of (2nd creation) 282n., 358n., 411–12 Strauss, Richard 487 Streatfeild, Richard Alexander 42, 99, 214–5, 222, 242, 260, 303–4, 337, 353, 366–7, 450 Strohm, Reinhard viii, xvi, 27n., 39n., 79, 91n., 125, 126n., 128, 133, 154n., 178n., 205, 212, 238, 239, 241, 245, 265, 300n., 365n., 367, 370, 373n., 374, 406 Stuart, Clementina 404n. Stuart, James Francis Edward (the Old Pretender) 6, 126, 172n., 404n. Sullivan, Sir Arthur The Pirates of Penzance 204 Princess Ida 409 Sumonte, Giovanni Antonio 151 Sutherland, Dame Joan 329 Swift, Jonathan 6, 278 Swiney, Owen vii, 2, 3, 7, 24, 126, 130, 396n. as agent for Royal Academy 1, 6, 23, 155–6 Tacitus 349 Taylor, Carole vii, xvi, 134n., 274n. Telemann, Georg Philipp 80, 83, 84 and n., 102, 147, 303n., 337n. Cleofida (Poro) 187–8, 189–90

06/10/2006 14:53:17

564

General Index

Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst 79, 116, 183 Musique de Table 342 Der Sieg der Schönheit 91 Tenducci, Giusto Ferdinando 118 Termini, Olga 288n., 289n. Theobald, Lewis 274 ‘Three Blind Mice’ 263, 266 Thumoth, Burk 54 Tillemans, Peter 79 Timms, Colin 12n., 165n, 298n., 438n. Tobacco Excise Bill (1733) 132 Tomson, Mr (singer) 327 Topham (dancer) 102 Torri, Pietro 140 Tosi, Pier Francesco 2 tragédie-lyrique 276, 294 Treigle, Norman 488n. Trento, Mattia 39 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 214n. Triulzi, Giovanni 27 Trowell, Brian 3n., 289n. Trumbull, William 411n. Uffenbach, Johann Friedrich Armand von 26 Upton, John 443 Valeriani, Belisario La caccia in Etolia 336–7 Vanbrugh, Sir John The Relapse 54 Vanneschi, Francesco 53 Venetian opera 38, 75, 421, 474 Venice 140 Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo 65 Teatro San Samuele 450n. Veracini, Francesco Maria 278–9, 283, 393 Verdi, Giuseppe 78, 318, 478 Don Carlos 74 Falstaff 489 Il Trovatore 401 Vickers, David 157n. Vico, Diana 156 Victor, Benjamin 280–1, 283, 344 Vienna Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek 311, 333, 347, 415 Vignati, Giuseppe 265 Vince, Stanley 275n.

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 564

Vincent, Jean 415 Vinci, Leonardo 18, 91, 128, 129, 143, 154, 157, 173, 201, 221, 290, 322n., 339, 356, 426, 428, 430, 455 Alessandro nell’Indie 170n., 172, 173, 178, 183n., 189 Artaserse 27 Flavio Anicio Olibrio 187 La Rosmira fedele 154n., 156n. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 73 Aeneid 12, 213n., 257n., 450 Visconti, Caterina 27, 53 Vivaldi, Antonio 91, 154, 238n., 258, 288n., 322n., 352 Giustino 365, 366 and n., 367, 370, 371 and n., 372, 374, 376 Rosmira (pasticcio) 206 Wagenseil, Georg Christoph 288n. Wagner, Richard 487 Lohengrin 289n. Wales, Prince of, see George, Frederick Wales, Princess of, see Augusta, Caroline Wallmoden, Amelia Sophia, Baroness von 394n. Walpole, Horace 2, 24, 344n., 398, 400 Walpole, Sir Robert 132 Walsh, John (the elder) xix, 34, 60, 86–7, 107, 123, 150, 168, 193, 209, 233, 255, 272, 302, 311, 333–4 Walsh, John (the younger) xviii, xix, 27, 34, 334, 348, 361, 378–9, 391–2, 415, 446, 460, 468, 482–3 Waltz, Gustavus 133, 226, 264, 265, 276, 297, 302, 327, 330, 343, 395, 461 ‘Waltzing Matilda’ 441 Warren, Miss (singer) 28, 54 War of the Spanish Succession 351 Washington Library of Congress 272 Weaver, Norma Wright 288n. Weaver, Robert Lamar 288n. Weber, Carl Maria von Euryanthe 289n. Wend(t), Christian Gottlieb 54, 56, 83, 84, 163, 166, 188, 190 Wentworth, Lady Anne 187 Wentworth, Lady Lucy 187, 282, 412 Wentworth, Lord Thomas 282n., 412

06/10/2006 14:53:17



General Index

West, Richard 398 Westenholz, Ernst Carl Ludwig 188 Wiener, Otto 488n. Wilhelm IV, Prince of Orange 135 Wolfenbüttel 163, 165, 166 Herzog August Bibliothek 106 Wolff, Hellmuth Christian 489 Wood, Mr (musician) 267 Wood, Thomas 31, 56, 120, 148, 164, 166, 189, 190, 207, 230, 253, 269, 306, 330, 331, 346, 360, 376, 390, 467 Woodfall, G. 56 Worman, Mr (master of fireworks) 344, 345

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 565

565

Wright, Daniel 168 Wright, David 34 Wright, Mrs (singer) 51, 54, 59, 118, 185, 226, 327 Young, Cecilia 102, 132, 226, 276, 301, 302, 303, 327, 329, 395, 460, 462 Zamboni, Giovanni Giacomo vii, 2, 5n., 126, 129n., 396, 397 Zeno, Apostolo 91n., 128, 155, 420 Faramondo 403n., 404, 405 and n., 414 Ziani, Marc’ Antonio 172 Ziani, Pietro Andrea 38, 39

06/10/2006 14:53:17

W_Dean, Handel's Operas.indd 566

06/10/2006 14:53:17