Introduction
This paper gives, I hope, a full sense of my research interests in
Handel, eighteenth-century opera, and the musical adaptation of literary source
material. There are three main aspects of this research:
- Research into
the history of opera – particularly Italian opera – in its period of
greatest influence on British cultural life, from 1700-1750.
- The critical
analysis and appraisal of the creative process of adapting literary texts
to music in the (English) oratorios and (Italian) operas of the period
(mainly with reference to the works of Handel).
- Research into
the creation of the libretti for the operas and oratorios of Handel, with
investigative research into the source material and a consideration of the
process of collaboration between composer and librettist.
A Research Paper
Handel is one of
the greatest of all musical illustrators. Whether he is setting the scene -
with storms, streams or birdsong (and he can do a whole parliament of birds,
including cuckoos, nightingales and doves); or evoking textual details, so that
(to recall examples from The Messiah)
‘the crooked’ is made ‘straight’ the
‘rough places’ become plain, and the
trumpet does indeed sound its glorious resurrection –he has absolute mastery of
Alexander Pope’s rule that ‘the sound must seem an echo to the sense’.
Indispensable
though this skill is, more important is Handel’s ability to respond to the dramatic potential of his texts, to
represent musically the moments of action and emotion, passion and revelation
that make his operas and oratorios so powerful.
I want to
illustrate this point by showing his flexible and imaginative approach to
conventional baroque forms, taking as the example his use of ternary form in
the da capo aria, in both Italian (here I will elaborate on the context for the
performing of Italian opera in England) and in English.
Moving on from
single arias, I then want to look at his creation of whole dramatic episodes,
and consider his collaboration with librettists. Finally, taking the text for
his last great oratorio – Jephtha – I
want to show that the contribution of some of these librettists has been
significantly underestimated.
As a preliminary
note to the discussion, I ought to start by stressing that Handel, until about
twenty-five years ago famed almost exclusively for his English oratorios, was
first and foremost a composer of Italian operas, and rather unwillingly turned
to oratorios after a series of setbacks, failures and rivalries in the opera
houses. Handel wrote at least 38 Italian operas, all but two of which were
composed for the London stages: it’s in the secular Italian operas that Handel
developed all the skills that would prove so successful in the biblical English
oratorios.
The two main units of composition in opera seria
(literally 'serious' opera) are the aria and the recitative. Broadly speaking,
recitative (or ‘recitativo’) is sung speech conveying the main actions and
developments of plot through soliloquy or exchanges between characters. It can
be supported merely by a line of
'continuo' (a simple bass line usually played alone on the harpsichord),
known as secco ('dry') recitative, or
by more elaborate orchestration known as accompagnato
('accompanied') recitative. The recitative links together the arias ('airs' or
'songs') whose form is equally standardised. In an aria the first section of
singing (the 'A' section), is introduced by an orchestral ritornello (so called because it keeps ‘returning’), and followed
by a contrasting or complementary development (the 'B' section), which returns da capo (we would say ‘from the top’) to
the beginning and repeats the 'A' section (where the singer can show off
tastefully by improvised variation). I’ve illustrated the structure for you diagrammatically
in Figure 1, and I’ve taken as a musical example the aria ‘Molto voglio, molto
spero’ from Handel’s 1711 opera Rinaldo
. (Here, the dangerous sorceress Armida is joyously confident of her ‘great
hopes’ and ‘great desires’ as ‘with her power’ (‘Di mia forza’ introducing the
‘B’ section) she can ‘subdue the world’).
[PLAY MOLTO VOGLIO; RINALDO,
DISK 1, INDEX 17 – and draw attention to the features of the structure as they
occur (2 minutes, 44 seconds)]
It’s worth pausing here, for a moment, to consider the importance of the
opera which includes this aria. Rinaldo was
Handel’s first Italian opera for the English stage. As such it is of enormous
importance, and was to shape the rest of Handel’s career. But it also
contributed to a literary controversy which had already been running for many
years.
The 'stage' 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 were 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'. And the English, of
all people, should least appreciate such entertainments:
What must those Strangers say, when they behold Englishmen applaud an
Italian for Singing, or a Frenchman for Dancing, and the very Moment afterwards
explode an Englishman for the very same things? What must they say, unless they
have Candour enough to interpret it this way, that an Englishman is deservedly
scorned by Englishmen, when he descends so far beneath himself, as to Sing or to
Dance in publick, because by doing so he practises Arts which Nature has
bestow'd upon effeminate Nations, but denied to him, as below the Dignity of
his Country, and the Majesty of the British Genius.
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, much more
formidable literary enemies than John Dennis. There may, though, 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 being
dropped after a dismal three performances.
The Spectator's pillory was
certainly a concerted attempt to discredit the Italian operas. Five 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, 1711. 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. Previous operas had been
‘pasticcios’ (literally ‘pasties’ [with any old meat in them], metaphorically a
‘mess’) gathered together from a range of Italian sources 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'.
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), audiences could enjoy Italian
opera without the absurdity of different languages, and with state of the art
special effects, both in the music and in the production. 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. As
Christopher Hogwood notes, Rinaldo
'can be said to have settled the course of Handel's career and the future of
opera in England'. 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. Handel, after the famous opera successes of Rodrigo (1707) and Agrippina (1710)
in Italy, visited a London already predisposed to the success of Rinaldo.
Back, though, to the conventional form of the da capo aria ...
I want to show that Handel’s treatment of this ubiquitous standardised
form can be anything but conventional, when it suits the dramatic situation of
the text to vary the normal musical structures.
Look, for instance, how Handel motivates the standard element of
repetition in an aria from Rodelinda
(1725). (See Figure 2.)
Here, Handel wants to illustrate the situation of
Bertarido, the opera’s hero – supposed dead, deprived of his kingdom, wrongly
believing his wife unfaithful, taking melancholy solace from the beauty of a pastoral
landscape. The hero sings ‘Con rauco mormorio’, a perfect aria of sublime mood
and atmosphere, as the libretto’s landscape, the murmurings of its streams and
springs sigh, in pathetic fallacy, with the hero, the now instrumental caves
and hills ‘echoing’ his plaintive voice. Dean and Knapp called the piece ‘a
magical exercise in nature-painting’. Here, then, are all those skills of the
inspired illustrator (where even the echoes echo the sense). But the aria also contributes to the drama of the situation. Bertarido’s
sister, Eduige, is nearby, and his singing draws her. As the singer brings the
‘B’ section of the aria to a close, the music is interrupted – instead of the
typical ritornello, we have a recitative interruption, as Eduige recognises the
voice. Surely, she says, this cannot be the voice of her late brother; surely
she is deluded. Handel can now motivate dramatically the traditional form of
the aria: Bertarido has to repeat his first melody; he does so immediately and
his identification is confirmed. What is merely a requirement of convention –
the repeat of the ‘A’ section of an aria – becomes a full part of the action.
In Handel’s best writing for the stage he doesn’t just make old things new; he
completely integrates form and content, so that the words motivate the musical structures or demand their variation or
fracture.
A similar, though expanded, device is used in Giulio Cesare. 'V'adoro pupille' is perhaps the greatest seduction
aria in musical history (See Figure 3.). It has the equivalent force of
Enobarbus's famous speech in Antony and
Cleopatra:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description [...]
Shakespeare, here, follows his source, North's Plutarch very closely. But Plutarch
gives an additional detail: 'her voyce and words were marvelous pleasant: for
her tongue was an instrument of musicke to divers sports and pastimes'.
Shakespeare also economises on the music that attends her. His 'tune of flutes'
is based on Plutarch's 'sounde of the musicke of flutes, howboyes,
citherns, violls, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge'.
Cleopatra's legendary power is one naturally expressed by the metonym and
metaphor of music. In Handel's score it is her song that seduces Caesar. And Handel overtrumps Plutarch with his
instruments, as Winton Dean notes:
Handel deploys a double orchestra: a group of nine instruments played by
the nine Muses on stage or behind the scenes, including harp, theorbo and viola
da gamba, is contrasted and combined with the main body in the pit, the violins
of both orchestras being muted. The senses of the audience must have been as
ravished as Caesar's.
But it’s the structural variation that helps create the drama of the
scene. Instead of the normal ritornello introduction, Handel gives two
miniature symphonies, which are interrupted by Caesar and Nireno, who are
astonished at the heavenly beauty of the sound and wonder what its source can
be. Cue Cleopatra who moves straight into the aria based on the symphonic
melody. Caesar again cannot resist interrupting the aria after the ‘B’ section
– ‘not even in heaven could there be such a beautiful song’ ... and to confirm
that, Cleopatra sings it again!
[PLAY ‘V’ADORO PUPILLE’; GIULIO CESARE
, DISK 2, INDEXES 5-6 (9 minutes, 45
seconds)]
There are many other variations that involve the embellishment or
omission of some part of the normal structure for dramatic effect. In Handel’s
first Royal Academy opera, Radamisto,
the characterization of Polissena is partly shaped by omission. (See Figure
4.) This loving and duteous wife of a tyrannical and unfaithful husband is more than once shocked out
of conventional form by his sudden barbarity. At the beginning of the opera,
whilst pleading for mercy for her brother and father, she is abruptly
dismissed, prompting a poignant aria of lament: 'Tu vuoi ch'io parta'' (You
wish me to go, I go'). Here the urgency of the situation and the plight of Polissena leave no room for
the embellishment of an opening ritornello: Polissena sings directly,
spontaneously, and with humility from the heart (she will go as ordered, but
‘senza core’). The ritornello is effectively displaced and redefined: it can’t
initially ‘return’ but acts as a coda of sad reflection.
To take a different, but related, example from the English oratorios,
the scene in the Cave of Somnus, the God of Sleep (from Semele) is a dramatic tour de force. (See Figure 5.) An opening
symphony - larghetto e piano per tutto
– has a ponderous bassoon line perfectly suggestive of the steady breathing of
slumber. It is rudely followed by the allegro
e forte introduction of Juno and Iris: “Somnus, awake”. The God of Sleep’s
response is the inspired “Leave me loathsome light” with its dramatic failure
of da capo form - Somnus can just about make it through the first section of
the air, and he even manages the B Section, but the A Section reprise is beyond
him. True to his name, he nods off, showing a shocking disrespect for the proprieties
of conventional composition! Juno manages to wake him with the enticing
prospect of Pasithea, at which point he comes (literally) to his senses with
“More sweet is that name/ Than a soft purling stream”. And this perfect
mini-drama directly relates to the urgency of plot. Somnus must be woken if
Juno’s plans for Semele’s undoing are to succeed.
This is another key factor in Handel’s skill with his texts – the
creating of sustained passages of drama. The typical pattern of recitative /
aria / recitative might not seem to lend itself to through composition, but it
often does in Handel.
Those who wrote best for Handel - such as the oratorio librettist
Charles Jennens - absolutely understood this essentially dramatic quality of his way with words. Handel was clearly
inspired, for instance, by Jennens’ brilliant libretto for Saul. Winton Dean, whose seminal works on the operas and oratorios
give his judgements a special place in Handel criticism, notes that Jennens:
understood the nature of Handel’s genius a great deal better than his
critics [...] giving him not a prize poem or a devotional cantata, still less a
liturgical text, but a fully organised drama conceived in terms of the visual
theatre [...]’ To look at what Handel did with the libretto is to find a
composer who completely understands, and can completely realise in musical
terms, the power of a great dramatic text.
To take perhaps the best example, there is the crucial episode in Act I
that culminates in Saul’s aria of jealous vengeance against David – ‘With rage
I shall burst’ (see Figure 6.). The aria
itself actually confirms the influence of opera material: it’s a borrowing from
Handel’s own Agrippina of 1709. But
whereas the original version is no more than a coda to an extended piece of
recitative narrative, the revised version for Saul is the culmination of a compelling and intense sequence of
textual and musical events. The sequence starts with a symphony for carillon, a
remarkable instrument that left Jennens somewhat dumbfounded:
Mr Handel’s head is more full of Maggots than ever: I found yesterday in
his room a very queer Instrument which He calls Carillon (Anglice a bell) &
says some call it a Tubalcain, I suppose because it is both in the make & tone
like a set of Hammers striking upon Anvils. ‘Tis play’d upon with Keys like a
Harpsichord, & with this Cyclopean Instrument he designs to make poor Saul
stark mad. (Quoted Burrows, p.202)
Despite the hint that Jennens thinks Handel himself quite mad, it’s
clear that even he imagines such an instrument of giant smithies might have the
desired effect. With the symphony comes the announcement of the daughters of
the land, playing music, dancing and singing in celebration of the victory over
the Philistines. Even this narrative introduction is, in the original
manuscript, accompanied by the carillon (its insistence, perhaps, already
beginning to get at Saul, who knows that David is more the subject of
celebration than himself). The chorus
welcomes the heroes, but, with unwise favouritism, names David first. In the
rise and fateful fall of an accompanied recitative, Saul interrupts the
celebrations: ‘[has he] then sunk so low/
To have this upstart boy preferred to [him]’. Back come the choir with more
ecstatic and elaborate carillon to praise David’s ‘ten thousand’ slain. Saul can restrain himself no more, and his
final interruption (‘To him ten thousands and to me but thousand’) announces
his aria of rage. The whole sequence is a masterpiece of sustained musical
drama. From celebration to the point of doom the music explains, with absolute
conviction, Saul’s descent. And the carillon has indeed helped drive him ‘stark
mad’.
[PLAY SAUL SEQUENCE , DISK 1, INDEXES 16 (c. 5 minutes)]
If Jennens had little say about the carillon, he had a significant say
about other aspects of the composition:
His third Maggot is a
Hallelujah which he has trump’d up at the end of his Oratorio [...] because he
thought the conclusion of the Oratorio not Grand enough; [...] but this
Hallelujah, Grand as it is, comes in very nonsensically, having no manner of
relation to what goes before. And this is the more extraordinary, because he
refus’d to set a Hallelujah at the end of the first Chorus of the Oratorio,
where I had plac’d one & where it was to be introduc’d with the utmost
propriety [...]
Handel got the point, and took Jennens’ advice, restoring the Hallelujah
to the first scene celebrations of victory over Goliath. An uneasy alliance
though it may have been, such a detail shows the work with Jennens to be a
genuinely collaborative affair. Though
Jennens expected further maggots to ‘breed in [Handel’s] Brain’, together they
overcame any differences to create a true masterpiece.
This relationship was perhaps unusual, but I think the degree of
collaboration between Handel and his librettists – particularly over textual
details - has often been underestimated.
Also underestimated have been the skills of some of these librettists.
We are fortunate that Handel was able to work with as talented a writer as
Jennens. But others deserve more acknowledgement. Take Thomas Morell’s libretto
for Jephtha. Morell has been seen
merely as an ‘anthologist’ for his assemblage, here, of quotations from an
impressive range of English poets (particularly Milton). But if Jephtha is a literary
anthology it is an extremely knowing one, with its passages and echoes chosen
to bring a thematic and artistic unity to the subject.
Handel was
certainly inspired by the text for his last major composition, as his
contemporaries noted. William Hayes, Professor of Music at Oxford, saw Jephtha as indisputable proof of the
continued mastery of Handel ‘who [...] with a broken Constitution’ had
‘produced such a Composition which no Man [...] is, or ever was [...] equal to,
in his highest Vigour’.
Though Handel’s
constitution wasn't exactly broken it was certainly breaking. He had had to
stop work on the piece in 1751, scribbling in the margin of the manuscript (in
German): ‘got as far as this on [...] 13th February 1751, unable to go on owing
to weakening of the sight of my left eye’. Handel's response to
illness was always proactive, but, despite dangerous and unpleasant surgery
(involving the piercing of the cornea with a needle) and visits to spa waters,
his sight was not fully to recover and he was to end his years in increasing
blindness. Handel's first biographer, John Mainwaring, suggested that this loss
of sight brought with it a natural depression: ‘This misfortune sunk him for a
time into the deepest despondency. He could not rest until he had undergone
some operations as fruitless as they were painful.’
In these
circumstances, the text of Jephtha
must have had a special private significance for Handel, surely understood by
his librettist. How apt that Handel's last great work, composed despite
intermittent bouts of blindness, should have darkness as one of its central
unifying motifs, in a system of images which finds its emotional climax in one
of Handel's greatest choruses – 'How dark, O Lord, are thy Decrees'. And it was
at this point in the manuscript that Handel wrote his note about his worsening
sight. How dark indeed.
The composer's
treatment of that great chorus gives a clear sense that Handel, touched perhaps
by the personal relevance of its message, and impressed by its sense of doom
and fatalism, conjured a profoundly moving and tragic utterance. The crucial
last line ‘Whatever is, is right’ is
from Pope's Essay on Man. Originally,
in fact, Morell had written ‘What God ordains is right’ but Handel preferred a
direct quotation and inserted his correction throughout the manuscript. Though Pope was vindicating ‘the ways of God
to Man’, Handel creates a dark and imposing expression of our helplessness
before fate. The thought that God might have a plan for us which includes the
sacrifice of our only child, makes right a matter of power not justice. Our
blindness leads us to anything but happy complacency. The message could hardly
be missed by Handel, trying to compose what would be his last great work,
marking his blindness in the margin of a manuscript whose subject is the
darkness of the Lord's decrees.
But Morell was
doing more than finding fine and apt lines for his text from the acknowledged
literary greats. He was also researching the subject of the biblical story -
the sacrifice of a child; the death of a daughter - in poetic and classical
analogues (a project perfectly suited to his combination of skills as
classicist, literary scholar, and biblical exegete). For some time it was
believed that the words for the air 'Open thy marble Jaws, O Tomb' had been
privately contributed. But the original source, which I unearthed, is much more
interesting. Here is Morell's passage:
Open
thy marble Jaws, O Tomb,
And
hide me, Earth, in thy dark Womb:
Ere I
the Name of Father stain,
And
deepest Woe from Conquest gain.
And here is the
direct source:
Open thy marble Jaws, O Tomb,
Thou Earth conceal me in thy Womb!
These lines are
found in William Broome's 1727 Poems on
Several Occasions. But the context is more interesting than the mere fact of the
borrowing. The poem that Morell went to in that volume was entitled
'Melancholy: An Ode, Occasion'd by the Death of a beloved Daughter, 1723'.
There is clearly a thematic method
behind the borrowings. Just as Morell was sustaining the symbolic theme of 'darkness' (‘hide me,
Earth, in thy dark Womb’), so he also looked for materials in keeping with the
concern of the biblical story - a story about the possible sacrifice of a
child, as lamented by the parent. It must have been this theme, with the added
aptness of the sense of parental responsibility, which sent him to the period's
favourite translation of Virgil's Aeneid.
Again the relevant passage from Morell was thought to have been provided
privately; here are Morell's words:
Some dire Event hangs o'er our Heads,
Some woful Song we have to sing
In Misery extreme. --- O, never, never
Was my foreboding Mind distress’d before
With such incessant Pangs. ---
And here’s what I
think is the probable source, from the tenth book of Virgil, translated by
Dryden:
Far off he heard their cries, far off
divined
The dire event with a foreboding mind.
That this echo
should have occurred to Morell confirms our sense of his method. The context is
the death of a son – Lausus – who has sacrificed himself in battle with Aeneas
to save his stricken father. ‘His father (now no father)’ has reached the Tiber
for relief, only to have the corpse of his son brought to him, prompting the
lines that Morell echoes. The situation
has obvious and ironic correspondences with the story of Jephtha, where the warrior is preserved in battle only to find that
his oath must mean the doom of his daughter.
We can begin then,
in examining possible sources for Jephtha,
to construct the practice of its librettist - in the imaginative knitting
together of quotations from sources which thematically or symbolically have
some affinity.
The librettists of
the various works here considered, all brought their own particular skills to
bear on the creation of texts that interested and excited Handel, and we
mustn’t underplay their contribution. In the end, though, it’s Handel’s special
ability to actualise the words on the page that really matters. Whether in
masterful single arias and choruses or in compelling sequences of musical
action and reaction, it’s Handel’s ability to bring scenes and episodes to dramatic
life that make this two-hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of his death such an important occasion for lovers of
opera and oratorio.
Figure 1. Typical
structure (example ‘Molto voglio, molto spero’ (Rinaldo, 1711))
First Phase (‘A’
Section)
|
Second Phase
|
Third Phase (=
first phase ‘da capo’)
|
||||
ritornello1
|
vocal ‘A’ section1
|
ritornello2
|
‘B’ section
|
ritornello3
|
vocal ‘A’ section2
with improvisation
|
ritornello4
|
Figure 2. Structure of
‘Con rauco mormorio’ (Rodelinda,
1725)
First Phase (‘A’
Section)
|
Second Phase
|
recitative
interruption by Eduige
|
Third Phase
|
|||
ritornello1
|
vocal ‘A’ section1
(Bertarido)
|
ritornello2
|
‘B’ section
|
vocal ‘A’ section2
with improvisation
|
ritornello3
|
|
Figure 3. Structure of
‘V’adoro, pupille’ (Giulio Cesare,
1724)
First Phase
|
Second Phase
|
recitative
interruption
by Giulio Cesare
|
Third Phase
|
|||
2 symphonies, with
recitative interruptions
|
vocal ‘A’ section1
(Cleopatra)
|
ritornello1 (based
on the melodic line)
|
‘B’ section
|
vocal ‘A’ section2
with improvisation
|
ritornello2
|
|
Figure 4. Structure of
‘Tu vuoi ch’io parta’ (Radamisto,
1720)
First Phase (‘A’ Section)
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Second Phase
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Third Phase (= first phase ‘da capo’)
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vocal ‘A’ section1
(Polissena)
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‘ritornello’1
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‘B’ section
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vocal ‘A’ section2 with improvisation
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ritornello2
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First Phase (‘A’
Section)
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Second Phase
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Third Phase
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ritornello1
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vocal ‘A’ section1
Somnus
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(truncated)
ritornello2
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‘B’ section
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Somnus has fallen
asleep
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Figure 6. Structure of
Act I, Scenes ii- iii of Saul
Phase 1
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Phase 2
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Phase 3
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Phase 4
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Phase 5
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Phase 6
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Phase 7
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Symphony:
for
carillon.
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Recitative:
Michal – on
‘the daughters
of the land’,
who can be seen
in ‘joyful dance with instruments of music’.
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Chorus:
with
carillon - celebrating the ‘mighty king’ who slew ‘thousands’ and the
[mightier] David who slew ten thousand and deserves ‘ten thousand praises’.
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Recitative:
Saul –
‘What do I hear? Am I then sunk so low to have this upstart boy
preferred to me?’
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Chorus:
with carillon –
David who slew ten thousand deserves ten thousand praises (again).
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Recitative:
Saul –
‘To him ten thousands and to me but thousands! What can they give him
more, except my kingdom?’
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Aria:
Saul –
‘With rage I shall burst his praises to hear!’
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