These two interludes were prepared for a
BBC Radio 3 production of the opera, and broadcast as ‘Handel's Ezio and the Second Period of the Royal
Academy’, produced by Kate Boulton, for BBC Radio 3, 6/12/95.
Interlude 1
"In January Ezio,
a New Opera: Clothes and all the Scenes New. But did not draw much
company."
Francis Colman's opera register for February 1732 in
its brevity and sense of anti-climax confirms the contemporary obscurity of
Handel's twenty-ninth opera. Despite the fact that the King attended four
performances, the opera closed after only five. It was not always thus with
Handel's operas in London. The devotees who attended Ezio in January 1732 might well have recalled, ruefully, the
hysterical response which greeted the beginning of Handel's Royal Academy opera
venture twelve years earlier, as Handel's first biographer, Mainwaring,
recorded later in the century:
"In the year 1720, he
obtained leave to perform his Opera of RADAMISTO. If persons who are now living,
and who were present at that performance may be credited, the applause it
received was almost as extravagant as his AGRIPPINA had excited: the crowds and
tumults of the house at Venice were hardly equal to those at LONDON. In so
splendid and fashionable an assembly of ladies (to the excellence of their
taste we must impute it) there was no shadow of form, or ceremony, scarce
indeed any appearance of order or regularity, politeness or decency. Many, who
had forc'd their way into the house with an impetuosity but ill suited to their
rank and sex, actually fainted through the excessive heat and closeness of it.
Several gentlemen were turned back, who had offered forty shillings for a seat
in the gallery, after having despaired of getting any in the pit or boxes."
Radamisto certainly pleased
its sensation seeking audience. But, though not in the class of Radamisto, there is nothing obvious
either musically or dramatically which should have consigned Ezio to a footnote in the history of
Handel's opera career. As a piece of drama the libretto, derived from the
celebrated poet Pietro Metastasio, actually has more coherence than many of the
operas of Handel's first Academy period. The motivations of the main characters
in Ezio usually have a clear logic.
So, for example, though the figure of
the tyrant in Handel's operas can often be criticised for sudden and
unconvincing repentance, there is no such inconsistency about Valentiniano. His
rivalry with Ezio is established in the first scene where Ezio's glorious triumph
as the conquering hero offers the full motive for mistrust and jealousy in an
Emperor who values his own unassailable power. His first aria 'Se tu la reggi a
volo' serves not only as public praise for Ezio, but also as a double-edged
reminder that whatever Ezio achieves will be to the increase of his own Godlike
dominion. That this should become sexual rivalry, as in the next scene news
arrives that Valentiniano will have Fulvia, Ezio's bride-to-be, reinforces the
sense that psychologically Valentiniano fears his manhood at risk. That he
should try and arrange for Ezio to marry his sister Onoria confirms that he
needs to retain political control of the situation. When Ezio refuses to comply
he is asserting his independence of the Emperor's wishes, and so confirming
Valentiniano's fears of his uncontrollable nature. His aria therefore warns
Ezio to be more prudent. Logically, since now we have a test of wills, Act I
Scene x announces Valentiniano's determination that Fulvia will marry him. When an attempt on his life fails it might be
argued that he should know Ezio better than to assume the author of the treason
to be him, but, of course, it serves his aims perfectly to have Ezio so
discredited. When Fulvia dissembles affection for Valentiniano in order to
preserve Ezio from execution it is perfectly in character that the Emperor
should gloat over Ezio with Fulvia beside him. Most of all, by now,
Valentiniano needs Ezio to make a confession about his part in the attempted
murder (whether he believes it or not) because Ezio has popular appeal and
there must be a public justification for mistreating him. So he agrees to his
sister's plan to unite Fulvia with Ezio as the most persuasive means of getting
the confession. Without this clear political motivation this change of policy
would indeed seem implausible, but actually the scene confirms the sense that
Fulvia is not the object of a genuine desire, but rather the pawn in a
political game. Further, in the very next scene, Valentiniano orders Varo to
kill Ezio should the full confession not be granted. So we know that his
comment when he sees Ezio's unrelenting honesty - he says he is "convinced
at last" that Ezio was guiltless - is hypocrisy, not reconciliation. Ezio
is reported dead, and his resurrection at the end of the opera is greeted by
Valentiniano with genuine relief. But this too is plausible, because a public
revelation of Ezio's innocence in the murder attempt has been made, and
Valentiniano's action in having Ezio supposedly killed now places him in an
extremely dangerous political situation. Hence his previous aria 'Per tutto il
timore' with its sense that 'danger is all around'. Of course, it can easily be
argued that eighteenth-century audiences did not require this degree of
plausible correlation between character and action in opera. But the point is
that Ezio does not fail on dramatic grounds. Actually its plot is extremely
similar in structure to the preceding Handel opera, also based on a Metastasian
libretto - Poro. Ellen Harris points out some of the correspondences: in Poro, as in Ezio the hero's love of a woman is challenged by professions of
love from the hero's military superior; In both operas there is an unknown
traitor to the ruler; both Poro and Ezio are falsely reported to be dead; the
denouement reveals the true source of the treachery; and both operas
magnanimously forgive the traitor, and unite the real lovers. Handel obviously
felt he was following a successful formula in Ezio. Poro had been
extremely well received a year earlier in 1731. So, too, in the score are the
kind of set pieces that Handel had every right to believe the public wanted.
The opera opens in due pomp and ceremony with Ezio "preceded by martial
Instruments, Slaves, and Ensigns of the Vanquished". The subject invites
the typical simile arias of the period ("sailors may know their hazardous
routes, but still have to trust to fate"; "if the water level of a
river is kept low then there is no risk of flooding") and call on Handel's
great powers of musical imitation (from musically "smoothing breezes"
to the "Ocean's rage", for instance). There are vengeful arias,
rueful arias, arias of passion and love, heroic arias and even a prison aria.
There is a trial scene and a battle scene. The opera has all the elements that
usually allow the full range of Handel's expressive power. So there's nothing
here to explain why the opera should fail.
Neither would failures in the casting account for the
lack of interest. Admittedly, in 1732 it seemed difficult to find the right combination
of beauty of voice and appearance in the leading ladies. Anna Strada, who
played Fulvia, was said by Handel's most devoted opera follower, Mrs Pendarves,
to have a "voice ... without exception fine" and a "perfect
manner", but, unfortunately, her "person" was "very bad and
she makes frightful mouths" If this seems harsh, it is rather generous
compared with the comments of those who nicknamed her "the pig". But
if the audience of Ezio, though they
may have been charmed by her voice, could not tolerate her features they could
always have concentrated their gaze on Francesca Bertolli, who played Onoria,
as she was, we are told, "a perfect beauty, quite a Cleopatra", who
Mrs Pendarves suspected of practising in front of a mirror "for she has
never any distortion in her face". Sadly she is also said to have had
"neither voice, ear, nor manner to recommend her". But also present
on stage was the great castrato of Handel's Academy years - Senesino, whose
first role for Handel had been Radamisto and who was now cast, of course, as
Ezio. And even if his star was dwindling, there was a sensational new bass to
capture the imagination. The role of Varo was written for Antonio Montagnana, a
bass with a remarkable range of at least two octaves, who had arrived in London
in 1731. Burney's claim that Handel's
scoring for Montagnana in Ezio "was manifestly intended to exhibit the
peculiar power of the singer" is perfectly supported by the Act II aria 'Nasce
al bosco' . The aria's subject is the suddenness with which the lowliest
shepherd can rise to become the greatest of rulers whilst the loftiest of the
nobility can as rapidly be plunged into peasant obscurity. In Montagnana Handel
had a base who would allow the fullest
expression of his imitative skills. The aria rises and falls as suddenly as its
human subjects. Its andante allegro scales and leaps require astonishing
security and versatility, and the aria calls on the full range of Montagnana's
two octaves from high to low F's, both notes in the space of only two bars in
the A section's closing cadence. Handel also gives him the last aria in the
opera - 'Già risonar' - which has the full bravura treatment with
trumpet accompaniment, and demands great vocal agility in its rapid coloratura
passagework and noble trills and melismas.
Despite such brilliance, as we have seen, the opera was a
failure. Indeed Sir John Hawkins, in his General
History of the Science and Practice of Music, published in 1776, places Ezio in a whole period of mediocrity:
"Whereas of his earlier operas [writes Hawkins],
that is to say, those composed by him between the years 1710 and 1728, the
merits are so great, that few are able to say which is to be preferred; those
composed after that period have so little to recommend them, that few would
take them for the work of the same author. In the former class are Radamistus,
Otho, Tamerlane, Rodelinda, Alexander, and Admetus, in either of which scarcely
an indifferent air occurs; whereas in Parthenope, Porus, Sosarmes, Orlando,
Aetius, Ariadne, and the rest down to 1736, it is a matter of some difficulty
to find a good one."
Late twentieth-century music criticism would not agree
with Hawkins assessment. Donald Burrows, who quotes this passage in his recent
book on Handel, rightly notes that "it might reasonably be claimed ...
that Hawkins ended his list in an unfortunate place, for, with Orlando and Arianna Handel's creative powers were rising towards a new
peak". Those two works are indeed masterpieces of musical drama, but Partenope is a brilliant and original
exercise in the mock-heroic, and Sosarme,
Poro, and Ezio itself are full of music which shows that Handel's creativity
was not flagging as Hawkins had implied.
Handel's opera career is regularly punctuated in the
press and private correspondence of the period with premature funeral rites. If
Ezio seemed to mark a low point in
reception, then Viscount Percival thought the following opera, Sosarme "one of the best" he
had ever heard and noted that it justly "takes the town". A
comparison of the publication history of the two operas shows the difference in
reception. Though a version of the score of Ezio
was pirated in an unauthorised version on 7th February, 1732, and though
Handel's usual publisher Walsh entered the lists immediately with an
advertisement claiming: "There is publish'd a spurious Copy of those
call'd the Favourite Songs in Ætius,
with many Faults; This is to give Notice that all who would have the Favourite
Songs in Ætius, may have the
Originals, finely printed and correct, where the whole Opera is sold" -
neither venture was successful. The readiness of the opera industry could not
support an interest that wasn't there. Contrastingly Walsh's first publication
of the "favourite Songs from Sosarme"
on March the 11th was followed by "A Second Collection of the most
Favourite Songs" from the same opera one month later. By May Walsh was
advertising Sosarme "for German
Flute and Bass and also for Single Flute".
Ezio failed not because
of any weakness of music,structure, plot, or cast. It failed because the opera
going public in the 1730's was more fickle than it had been throughout the
1720's. The fashion for Italian opera was less predictable, and others were
about to take advantage of this by using Handel's own music to challenge his
opera writing career.
What, though, we might well ask, explains Hawkins's
retrospective critical judgement of the operas of the 1730's? The answer must
partly lie in the hindsight that can see these Second Academy revival operas as
belonging to an ultimately doomed attempt by Handel to assert the continuing
priority of opera in his musical output. Ezio
stands at a point in the history of Handel's career where the pressures to move
from opera to oratorio were about to gather an increasingly irresistible
momentum.
Interlude 2
Ezio was followed in the 1731-2 season by an unsuccessful
revival of Giulio Cesare, and by the
new opera Sosarme, which the Opera
Register tells us was "for many nights much crowded", and which we
have seen Viscount Percival praising. But Percival, like many other followers
of Handel's music, was soon to be admiring a rather different musical
entertainment.Within a month of the first production of Ezio, he noted in his diary:
"From dinner I went to the Music Club, where the
King's Chapel boys acted the History of Hester, writ by Pope, and composed by
Hendel. This oratoria or religious opera is exceeding fine, and the company
were highly pleased, some of the parts being well performed."
This performance of Handel's Esther (originally composed as a 'masque') was not authorised by
the composer, though it is believed he attended. Handel's celebrations that day
(the first performance was on February 23rd, 1732, his forty-seventh birthday)
must have left him with mixed feelings. Here, in an unauthorised version of one
of his own pieces was an English language success to rival his Italian operas.
There were three performances in all directed by Bernard Gates "Master of
the Children of the Chapel Royal, together with a number of voices from the
Choirs of the Chapel Royal and Westminster, join'd in Chorus's after the manner
of the Ancients, being placed between the stage and the Orchestra". The
production was the talk of the town and soon more unauthorised performances
were being announced in the press. Handel, urged by the ever faithful Princess
Anne, had to respond. For all his unquestionable commitment to Italian opera he
could hardly allow his own productions to be compromised by the pull of his own
music in the control of rival performers. The
Daily Journal, for April 19th, advertised his response:
"By His Majesty's Command.
At the King's Theatre in the Hay-market, on Tuesday the
2nd Day of May, will be performed, The Sacred Story of Esther: an Oratorio in
English. Formerly composed by Mr. Handel, and now revised by him, with several
Additions, and to be performed by a great Number of the best Voices and
Instruments."
A note to the announcement added "There will be no
Action on the Stage, but the House will be fitted up in a decent Manner, for
the Audience. The Musick to be disposed after the Manner of the Coronation
Service". This qualification suggests a subtle response to the Bishop of
London's assumed injunction against the operatic representation of religious
material. For the performance Handel used his opera cast - the Senesino,
Strada, and Bertolli of Ezio singing
English on a stage without action. Montagnana now appeared in the role of Haman
with lines that require perfect articulation and enunciation in the most native
of English speakers: "Pluck root and branch from out the land". A
satirical letter of the period testifies to what must have been a rather
incongruous phenomenon:
"I left the Italian
Opera, the house was so thin, and cross'd over the way to the English one, which was so full I was
forc'd to crowd in upon the Stage ...
This alarm'd H[ande]l, and out he brings an Oratorio, or Religious Farce, for the duce take me if I can
make any other Construction of the Word, but he has made a very good Farce of it, and put near 4,000l. in his
Pocket ...
This being a new Thing set the whole World a Madding;
Han't you be at the Oratorio, says
one? Oh! If you don't see the Oratorio
you see nothing, says t'other; so away goes I to the Oratorio, where I saw indeed the finest Assembly of People I ever
beheld in my Life, but, to my great Surprize, found this Sacred Drama a mere Consort, no Scenary, Dress
or Action, so necessary to a Drama;
but H[ande]l was plac'd in Pulpit, (I suppose they call that their Oratory). by
him sate Senesino, Strada, Bertolli,
and Turner Robinson, in their own
Habits; before him stood sundry sweet Singers of this poor Israel, and Strada gave
us a Halleluiah of Half an Hour long; Senesino
and Bertolli made rare work with the English Tongue you would have sworn it had
been Welch; I would have wish'd it Italian, that they might have sung it
with more ease to themselves, since, but for the Name of English, it might as well have been Hebrew ...
We have likewise had two operas, Etius and Sosarmes, the
first most Masterly, the last most pleasing ... I like one good Opera better
than Twenty Oratorio's."
But our satirist's preference for Ezio over Esther shows
him self-confessedly out of joint with his time.
For all the problems of staging and pronunciation
Handel's version of Esther, the Opera
Register notes was "performed six times and very full"; "with
vast applause" boasts The London Magazine. Recalling the days of Radamisto too many tickets were sold for
the first performance, necessitating an advertisement inviting returns before
the opening. Handel's Esther,
variously described as an "oratory" and an "oratoria" had
become the first English oratorio to grace the stage. Within weeks the pirates
were at it again. The Daily Post for
May 2nd announced:
"We hear that the Proprietors of the English Opera
will very shortly perform a celebrated Pastoral Opera call'd Acis and Galatea,
compos'd by Mr. Handel, with all the Grand Chorus's and other
Decorations."
The directors of this 'English Opera' were Thomas Arne,
his son the composer, J. F. Lampe and Henry Carey - a veritable collection of
spokesmen for the cause of dramatic music in English, who were to promote the
cause as vigorously as possible. The rehearsals for Lampe's 1732 opera Britannia prompted a poem in The Daily Post, which, though showing
insincere deference to Handel, clearly boasted its patriotic agenda:
No more shall Italy its Warblers send
To charm our Ears with Handel's heav'nly Strains.
To the production of Acis
Handel again responded. There was a real sense, now, that he was no longer
leading the public's musical taste, but rather following it. He mounted his own
revised version of Acis and Galatea
at the King's Theatre: "There will be no Action on the Stage, but the
Scene will represent, in a Picturesque Manner, a rural Prospect, with Rocks,
Groves, Fountains and Grotto's; amongst which will be disposed a Chorus of
Nymphs and Shepherds". Bizarrely, the performance, again with the opera
cast, was given in a mixture of English and Italian, reviving the often mocked
tradition of macaronic performances earlier in the century.
Handel returned to Italian opera with a revival of Alessandro, but by only the second
performance the house was noted as being "thin" The aesthetic contest
between the lovers of Italian opera and the advocates of music set to English
words was reaching another of its climaxes. One development in particular
brought the ideological conflict into a neat full circle. In December Aaron
Hill wrote to Handel urging him to commit himself to the English language:
Ironically it had been Hill who twenty-one years earlier,
as producer of Handel's first London opera Rinaldo,
had helped to establish an unprecedented period of Italian opera in the
capitol. Prophetically, though, Hill had published a word-book for Rinaldo, whose Preface to Queen Anne had
envisaged no doubt in seeing "The English Opera more splendid than her
Mother, the Italian". Hill's comments, in the letter of 1732, about the
"Italian Bondage" were an attempt now to make English opera truly
English. They resurrected a debate which had surrounded the first period of
Handel's Italian operas as thoroughly as it now threatened those operas'
future.
The 'stage' for attacks
against Italian opera had been set as early as 1706 with John Dennis's
ludicrous and xenophobic attack against Italian opera: 'a Diversion of more pernicious consequence, than the most licentious
Play that ever has appear'd upon the Stage'. His arguments are absurd, but certainly
express a rich vein of anti-culture typical of the worst kind of provincial
Englishness. 'Pleasure of Sense,'
argues Dennis 'being too much indulged,
makes Reason cease to be a Pleasure, and by consequence is contrary both to
publick and private Duty'. The
pleasures of Italian opera are too great for Dennis, offering, particularly, a
threat to all young ladies, in its celebration of love and all its arts. French
music is less a danger as it is 'by no
means so meltingly moving as the Italian'.
It's ironically amusing that such a silly and vituperative polemic
should so manifestly reveal the intensity of the sensuous pleasures of Italian
opera. But Dennis's real grouse seems to be that Italian opera is effeminate and foreign: 'the Reigning Luxury
of Modern Italy, is that soft and
effeminate Musick which abounds in the Italian Opera'.
Actually, at least one of
Dennis's objections should have been met by Handel's arrival ('But yet this
must be allow'd, that tho' the Opera in Italy
is a Monster, 'tis a beautiful harmonious Monster, but here in England 'tis an ugly howling one'). But
Handel's enterprise, in 1711, had more formidable literary arguments to
overcome than from this raving nonsense. Rinaldo,
like the operas which immediately preceded it, was attacked in the influential Spectator by Richard Steele and Joseph
Addison. Alexander Pope, who named both Dennis and Addison as his satiric targets, could dispense with Dennis as a
mere dunce, but, in the very midst of attack had to acknowledge Addison's
literary skills. However, there may have been an element of hubris in the Spectator's attacks, especially in
Addison's emphasis on the absurdities of the Italian elements of the opera. Addison himself was the English librettist of the failed opera Rosamund, composed by the dire musician,
Thomas Clayton, and staged in 1707. The
production was dropped after a dismal three performances. It is another
indication of the revival of the English lobby that in 1733 Arne was prepared
to re-set Addison's Rosamund (rather more musically than Clayton).
The Spectator's pillory in 1711 was certainly a concerted attempt to
discredit the Italian operas. Five issues (numbers 5; 13; 14; 18; and 29) gave
over their space to the ridicule of the increasingly popular new form, over a
period of less than one month from March 6th to April 3rd. And though the
sophistication of the critique offered here is incomparable with Dennis's
clumsy, ill-conceived onslaught, there is still the condescending assumption
that the English should have higher pleasures than the mere continentals:
"If the Italians have a Genius for Musick above
the English, the English have a Genius for other Performances of a much higher
Nature, and capable of giving the Mind a much nobler Entertainment."
The criticism of the use of
Italian sources is interesting, as it reveals, aptly, the absurdities of the
period preceding Handel's Rinaldo. As
Dean and Knapp note: 'All the operas between Rosamund and Rinaldo were
pasticcios processed locally from Italian materials'. Some of these were sung in Italian but others
were productions in both languages. The Spectator ridicules the absurdities of
translation from the Italian which does not match the music:
"I have known the Word And pursu'd through the whole Gamut,
have been entertain'd with many a melodious The,
and have heard the most beautiful Graces, Quavers and Divisions bestow'd upon Then, For, and From; to the
eternal Honour of our English
Particles."
The macaronic use of both
languages in the same opera was a manifestly unsatisfactory compromise,
allowing Addison many further strokes of wit: 'The King or Hero of the Play
generally spoke in Italian, and his
Slaves answer'd him in English'. There are two possible answers to Addison's
critique of linguistic impropriety:
either operas should be sung wholly in Italian, or librettos conceived in English should be sung in
English. Despite the failure of the wholly English Rosamund (which also should have proved to Addison that the music
is more important than the words), the former possibility was (illogically)
seen to be an even greater
impropriety:
"At length the Audience
grew tir'd of understanding Half the Opera, and therefore to ease themselves
intirely of the Fatigue of Thinking, have so order'd it at Present that the
whole Opera is perform'd in an unknown Tongue."
The second focus for the Spectator's attack was the spectacle of
the new operas; again an attack which ironically helps us to focus on the pleasures of such productions.
The Spectator
was essentially ridiculing the taste of opera audiences; its pleasures
are seen to be trivial and laughable. With Handel's Rinaldo, though, as with Teseo (1713) and Amadigi (1715), his other 'magic operas' (so called because they
both have a sorceress who conjures up all kinds of visions and monsters) the
opera audiences could enjoy state of the art special effects, both in the production and in the music. Rinaldo calls for two chariots, one drawn by white horses and
blackamoors, the other drawn by two dragons issuing fire and smoke; furies and
dreadful monsters (more fire and smoke); a delightful grove with singing birds
in the trees; singing and dancing mermaids; a dreadful mountain prospect; an
enchanted palace; a magician's cave; ugly enchanted spirits; and plentiful
supplies of thunder, lightning and 'amazing noises'. Not all this was possible
- Steele notes that the horses drawing
the chariot never appeared - but as much as was
possible was done. Addison ridiculed the whole enterprize in the issue of
March 6th. Especially ludicrous to him seemed the provision of real birds for
the delightful grove:
"As I was walking in
the Streets about a Fortnight ago, I saw an ordinary Fellow carrying a Cage
full of little Birds upon his Shoulder; and, as I was wondering with my self
what Use he would put them to, he was met very luckily by an Acquaintance, who
had the same Curiosity. Upon his asking him what he had upon his Shoulder, he
told him, that he had been buying Sparrows for the Opera. Sparrows for the
Opera, says his Friend, licking his Lips, what are they to be roasted? No, no,
says the other, they are to enter towards the end of the first Act, and to fly about the
Stage."
For all Addison's humour
here and elsewhere, his descriptions do
suggest the excitement of these productions: 'Rinaldo is filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and
Fireworks'. Some self-appointed proprietors of eighteenth-century taste may
have scorned such entertainments but the opera public loved them. Rinaldo was one of the greatest
successes of the period. The publication of its songs alone was reputed to have
made their publisher fifteen hundred pounds.
In a sense the number of issues devoted by the Spectator to the mockery of Italian opera is a testament to the futility of its arguments. The thirst
for Italian opera was already established before the Spectator's first issue, and its arguments were doomed. The
glamour, and royal patronage of the Italian opera and the imported Italian
singers were to withstand triumphantly the onslaught of such criticism, and the
establishment of the Royal Academy, as we have seen in the frenzied reception
of Radamisto was to herald the height
of Handel's opera career. But the old arguments had never been laid to rest and
it is an indication of the shift in public taste that they should resurface in
the Second Academy period. Of course operas on the Academy scale were always a risky
business proposal, and the financial difficulties which have familiarly always
been associated with opera were as relevant in 1732 as they are now. Ezio stands at a point in the history of
Handel's career when commercial necessities were combining with ideological
issues to make the future of Italian opera in London even more insecure than it
had been nefore. Within a year of the first production of Ezio Handel not only had to contend with the rival oratorios, but
also a fully fledged rival opera company, which came to be known as the Opera
of the Nobility. To add injury to insult the new company was able to boast
Farinelli, the new castrato sensation, and a host of Handel's previous singers,
including Cuzzoni and the new defectors Senesino and Montagnana. It was
difficult enough to sustain one opera company in London, let alone two. The
stage had been set for a period of musical and musico-political rivalry which
was within the rest of the decade increasingly to see Handel forced to accept
the sacrifice of his single greatest musical commitment - his practising belief
in the pre-eminence of Italian opera.
Works Cited
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator,
5 vols (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1965)
Donald Burrows, Handel
(Oxford: OUP, 1994)
John Dennis, An Essay on the Opera's After the Italian Manner,
Which are about to be
Establish'd
on the English Stage, With some Reflections on the Damage which
they
may bring to the Publick (John Nutt,
London, 1706), Preface, p.4.
Otto Erich Deutsche, Handel: A
Documentary Bibliography (Adam and
Charles
Black, London, 1955)
John Mainwaring, Memoirs of
the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (R. and J. Dodsley, London, 1760)
