Handel’s Ariodante – An Introduction

The following is a draft entry for The Literary Encyclopedia Online (the entry was published online in July, 2012)

In Handel’s time as well as our own, the sensational success of John Gay’s parody of Italian opera, The Beggar’s Opera of 1728 has been allowed, by writers and critics, a greater impact on the musical life of London than it deserves. Alexander Pope, in a footnote to his 1729 Variorum edition of the Dunciad, celebrated the success of his friend’s play, claiming: ‘it drove out of England the Italian Opera, which had carry’d all before it for ten years’ (Pope, 190). By 1735, when Handel’s Italian opera Ariodante was first produced, Pope had had to change his annotation to read: ‘it drove out of England for that season the Italian Opera’ (Pope, 190). The myth that Handel rather turned away from Italian opera after 1728, still has some currency. Yvonne Noble, for instance, argues that The Beggar’s Opera ‘changed the course of music, by helping turn Handel away from operas to oratorios’ (Noble, 1). The fact is that Handel would go on to produce over twenty more Italian operas after 1728, including several masterpieces, of which Ariodante is perhaps the greatest. Our own age has appreciated this opera more than its contemporaries and in the last fifty years it has been one of the most performed of all Handel’s forty or so Italian operas, with ‘more than fifty productions in fourteen countries’ (Dean, 304). Various reasons have been suggested for its recent success – including the idea that modern audiences can relate to an Italian opera better if it is set in Great Britain, or that the inclusion of dances is a welcome relief from the normal pattern of arias and recitative. But these are trivial circumstances. The opera has been successful because it has some of the greatest opera music Handel ever wrote, to a libretto which has a cohesive, coherent and unified plot.

The main story derives more or less intact from Ludovico Ariosto’s sixteenth-century epic poem Orlando Furioso, though Handel’s direct source was a version of the original by the librettist Antonio Salvi. Lovers of Shakespeare will immediately recognize the plot, as it is the basis for the Hero-Claudio story in Much Ado About Nothing (and other Shakespeare scenes, see Cairncross in Further Reading). There, Hero has the role of Ariosto’s (and Handel’s) Ginevra, and Ariodante is the original for Claudio.

The opera is set in the environs of Edinburgh Castle. It opens in the royal palace, where Ginevra, the King of Scotland’s daughter tells her lady-in-waiting Dalinda of her love for Ariodante. Her father approves of her choice. The evil Duke of Albany, Polinesso, declares his love to Ginevra, and she immediately expresses her contempt and disgust at his advances. Left alone, Dalinda, who is infatuated with him, tells Polinesso of Ginevra’s match with Ariodante. He resolves to use cunning, and the devotion of Dalinda to achieve his dynastic ends. Ginevra and Ariodante, alone together, express their love for each other, and the King joins them in their celebrations, happily offering Ariodante his daughter and the crown. Arrangements are made for the marriage festivities, and Ariodante reflects, alone on his great good fortune. Meanwhile Polinesso hatches his plot. He manipulates Dalinda into changing into Ginevra’s clothes when her mistress is asleep, changing her hair to match, and imitating her manner. She will then let Polinesso into the royal garden by a secret door, where she will meet him as Ginevra. Polinesso promises to be hers should she perform this role. Meanwhile, Lurcanio, Ariodante’s brother, tells Dalinda of his love, but Dalinda, alone, swears her constancy to Polinesso. In a delightful valley Ariiodante meets Ginevra, and they both look forward to their nuptials. Act I ends with dances and happy choruses. Act II opens at night at a spot in view of the royal garden. Polinesso greets Ariodante and Lurcanio. Ariodante speaks of his love for Ginevra. Polinesso wonders at this, claiming that Ginevra gives him her favours. Ariodante is ready to fight him, but Polinesso claims he can prove his point, and executes his plan, meeting with Dalinda in the guise of Ginevra within their view. Ariodante is only restrained from suicide by his brother, who swears revenge against Ginevra. Ariiodante, alone, sings of infidelity and betrayal and welcomes death (in the magnificent aria ‘Scherza Infida’). Polinesso celebrates his ploy with Dalinda, making her promises of love, and then, alone, congratulates himself. In the next scene, just as the King is announcing Ariodante as his heir, his captain Odoardo tells him the dreadful news that Ariodante has thrown himself into the sea to drown. For no known reason. Sadly, the King tells the distraught Ginevra of her lover’s death. Lurcanio comes to court and demands justice of the King against his own daughter; he seeks a defender of Ginevra who he will fight to the death. Ginevra comes to her father who immediately insults her. Ginevra is beside herself with horror and confusion, and Dalinda tries to comfort her (without confessing the truth). Ginevra’s nightmare is represented by a ballet dream sequence. Act III opens with Ariodante, alive, in a forest where Dalinda is pursued by two assassins. He chases them off, and Dalinda explains her part in Polinesso’s plot. Alone, Dalinda realizes her folly; clearly Polinesso is behind the attempt to kill her. In the royal garden Polinesso offers himself as Ginevra’s protector, to fight Lurcanio out of ‘duty, justice and love’. The King and his daughter are reconciled in a moving scene – Ginevra, by law, will have to die if her defender is unsuccessful. She rejects Polinesso’s protection; she doesn’t regret the loss of her life, but still hopes for her honour to be restored. In the ensuing duel Lurcanio kills Polinesso, and is ready to take on any other defender. The King says he will take the role, but is interrupted by Ariodante (in a visor). Lifting his helmet all recognize the hero, and soon all is explained. Dalinda is pardoned for her part, and, alone, Ariodante celebrates the end of night (in the aria ‘Dopo notte’). Dalinda now sees the generosity and merit of Lurcanio’s renewed expression of love. Just as Ginevra has lost all hope, the King enters to announce her innocence and freedom, and she is re-united with Ariodante. The opera ends in general rejoicing.

It is not surprising that Handel should take particular care with the score for Ariodante, and compose one of his finest operas. Far from Italian opera in London dying out it had just reached a new pitch of fervor and competition. Handel had been instrumental in the establishment of the Royal Academy at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in 1719 explicitly for the production of Italian operas. Though the First Academy period did come to an end in 1728, Handel had been granted a further King’s Theatre license for five years until 1734. After the expiry of this period (sometimes known as the Second Academy), Handel needed a new theatre, and secured an agreement with John Rich (ironically enough the producer of Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera which was supposed to have ended Handel’s opera career) for the use of the new theatre at Covent Garden (built in 1732). Ariodante was to be the first opera production for this completely new venture. Handel also needed new singers. A rival Italian opera company, known as the Opera of the Nobility, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, Frederick (whose father, King George II, supported Handel). This company had taken over The King’s Theatre, Haymarket, and Handel’s best singers, the Italian superstars Senesino (a castrato) and Cuzzoni. And for the 1734-35 season they also brought the castrato sensation Farinelli to their London stage. Handel had never had such competition, and Ariodante was his first major artistic response.

And what a response! The range of emotions, from complete delight to absolute horror and despair, in the roles of Ginevra and Ariodante show Handel’s absolute musical mastery of human emotion. There is no weak role, with even the minor characters having some fine arias. And in Polinesso we have Handel’s greatest villain: ‘Handel wrote the part for a woman [a normal convention when castrati were in short supply] and emphasized the slyness and slipperiness of the character, consumed by ambition and lust for power. All […] his arias […] reveal a profoundly cynical outlook and a contempt for those who live by conventional values’ (Dean, 295). Selection from such an opera is difficult, but two of the longest arias in the opera, expressing the extremes of Ariodante’s mood, have rightly become famous: ‘Scherza infida’, a magnificent, tragic, expression of loss and betrayal (when Ariodante thinks Ginevra unfaithful); and ‘Dopo notte’ when the denouement brings the light of day to the darkest of hours (‘[e]lectric cross-rhythms, huge bounds over two octaves by two-thirds of the violins in unison, and long vocal lines flowing  in exuberant coloratura, generate immense energy as Ariodante’s pent-up tension is released’ (Dean, 292)).

Handel would eventually, in 1740, give up writing Italian operas (and turn to the writing of his greatest English oratorios Messiah, Samson, Solomon, Theodora and Jephtha). But in 1734-5 he was still composing some of his best ever music for his first love, Italian opera seria.

Works Cited

Dean, Winton. Handel’s Operas: 1726-1741. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2006

Gay, John. The Beggar's Opera, ed. Vivian Jones and David Lindley. London: Methuen.

2010.

Nobel, Yvonne (ed.). Twentieth-Century Interpretations of The Beggar’s Opera: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. 1975.

Pope, Alexander, The Dunciad, ed. James Sutherland. London: Methuen. 1965.

Further Reading

Burrows, Donald, Handel (Oxford: OUP, 1994) — the best general study of Handel’s life and music in context, with exhaustive Appendices.

Burrows, Donald, ‘Perhaps Handel was right after all: some thoughts on editing Ariodante’. The Musical Times, Vol. 148, No. 1898 (Spring, 2007), pp.35-48 — gives a fascinating account of working on an edition of the opera for the Hallische Hädel-Ausgabe, which follows the process of revision and re-writing as Handel prepared the opera for production.

Cairncross, Andrew S., ‘Shakespeare and Ariosto: Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear and Othello’. Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1976), pp.178-82  — for those interested in Shakespeare’s use of the plot from Ariosto (the original source for the libretto of Ariodante) this gives an account

Dean, Winton, Handel’s Operas 1726-1741 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006) — the continuation and completion of Dean and Knapp’s survey of the earlier operas; an indispensable guide, with a full account of the history, sources and music of Ariodante (pp.285-311).

Deutsch, Otto Erich, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955) — the most comprehensive of all records of Handel’s life and times, as recorded, chronologically, in all kinds of documentary evidence; the most important source for all those interested in the cultural context of Handel’s work.

 

 

 

 

Nothing New Under the Sun: The History of a Handel Aria

The first performance of a Handel opera in London, the production of Rinaldo in 1711, was a sensational success (despite the mockery of the literary establishment in the pages of The Spectator). Both in terms of stage effects and musical brilliance the role of the sorceress Armida was the source of greatest entertainment. Her entrance, in Act I, Scene v, is suitably spectacular: ‘Armida in the Air, in a Chariot drawn by two huge Dragons, out of whose Mouths issue Fire and Smoke’.¹  She sings, as she descends, the aria ‘Furie terribili’ invoking her dread allies. Commentators agree she has the best music in the opera: ‘she towers above all the other characters […] All her music has passion and energy’.² After her furious opening, she sings an aria of hubristic pride, expressing her highest desires and hopes; with her great powers she must surely subdue the world and save Jerusalem from the conquering armies (which include the hero Rinaldo):

Molto voglio, molto spero
Nulla devo dubitar.
Di mia Forza all’alto impero
Saprò il Mondo assoggetar.³







It’s a perfect aria for her and for the leading soprano: ‘one phrase is even launched from the diving-board of a top C. A singer who can hit this cleanly is sure of making a mark’.⁴ The London stage had never experienced anything like her. But other stages had experienced ‘Molto voglio’ in other forms. The same air had introduced another of Handel’s leading women to the Venice opera stage in 1709. Here, the cunning Empress of Rome, Agrippina, has been putting all her plotting prowess to the task of having her son Nero declared Emperor. In her version of the same tune, the aria ‘L’alma mia frà le tempeste’, she boasts of her bravery and confidence. There is an obvious connection: Handel uses the same musical material for two powerful women boasting of taking on the world.


The first operas of Venice and London launched Handel’s Italian opera career in no uncertain terms. Handel’s first biographer, Mainwaring, could have hardly been more effusive about the reception of Agrippina:

The audience was so enchanted with this performance, that a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they had all been distracted. The theatre, at almost every pause, resounded with shouts and acclamations of viva il caro Sassone! And other expressions of approbation too extravagant to be mentioned.⁵

It is understandable, then, that when faced much later with an artificial challenge to his supremacy as composer of Italian operas, Handel should recall music from these earlier successes. Handel had been the crucial figure in the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music in 1719. His first production for the new company was the heroic masterpiece Radamisto. His second was the collaboration Muzio Scevola. For this odd opera Flippo Amadei (a minor talent) provided the first act, Giovanni Bononcini (a much more formidable rival) the second, and Handel the third. There was no contest, musically. A foreign visitor, who attended the first performance, noted that Handel ‘easily triumphed over the others’⁶.And he chose to end the piece with the final celebratory chorus ‘Si sara più dolce amore’ using the same material as for ‘Molto voglio’ and ‘L’alma mia frà le tempeste’. Even this was not the end of the tune’s participation in Handel’s operas, as it made a final Italian renaissance eleven years later for a ‘Sinfonia’ in Ezio.

But towards the end of Handel’s career, as he was forced by circumstances to move away from Italian opera to English choral texts and oratorios, the same musical theme has two further reincarnations. It becomes the final tenor aria and then chorus for Part Two of Jennens’ adaptation of Milton – L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato – first performed in 1740: ‘These delights if thou canst give, / Mirth, with thee I mean to live’. And its last appearance is in the oratorio Joshua, first performed at Covent Garden in 1748, in the aria ‘Heroes when with glory burning’.

Handel knew when he was on to a good thing. In fact, he had been on to this particular good thing before any of these compositions. The formative period, for this as for so many of his other favourite tunes, had been his visit to Italy from 1706-1710. The aria in Agrippina is therefore the culmination of Handel’s first interest in the theme. He had first used it in the Sinfonia for an Italian cantata, orchestrated with oboes, strings and continuo, ‘Ah! Crudel, nel piante mio’, in 1707, and for the Italian ‘oratorio’ La Resurrezione (or Oratorio per la Risurrezione di Nostro Segnor Giesù Cristo), first performed in Rome in 1708. We might wonder why Italy inspired this obsession. The answer must be because Handel ‘borrowed’ the music from Alessandro Scarlatti’s aria ‘Cara, cara e dolce’. Handel had met both Alessandro and his son, Domenico, on his visit to Italy. Mainwaring gives a famous anecdote, though it’s not certain which of the Scarlattis he is referring to:

When he came first into Italy, the masters in greatest esteem were ALLESSANDRO SCARLATTI, GASPARINI and LOTTI. The first of these he became acquainted with at Cardinal OTTOBONI’s. Here also he became known to DOMINICO SCARLATTI, now living in Spain, and author of the celebrated lessons. As he was an exquisite player on the harpsichord, the Cardinal was resolved to bring him and HANDEL together for a trial of skill.⁷

(Apparently, Scarlatti won on the harpsichord and Handel on the organ.) But we need not be too indebted to Alessandro for one of Handel’s favourite airs. He himself had ‘borrowed’ not only the music but even the lyrics (the whole song, in other words) from Pietro Marc'Antonio Cesti.

This recycling of music, from composer to composer, and in self-quotation, was typical of the baroque period. It makes it perhaps slightly easier to understand how Handel could produce over forty operas and over twenty oratorios along with hundreds of other compositions. But the remarkable adventures of this one tune need not compromise our sense of Handel’s originality. Our idea of original composition is a recent one. Handel’s period did not seek orginality for its own sake. As Alexander Pope put it in 1711, in the same year as Handel’s first London production:

True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest,
What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest,
Something, whose Truth convinc’d at Sight we find,
That gives us back the Image of our Mind⁸

The subtle musical variations in each incarnation of the song, and the diversity of operatic and dramatic contexts to which it is applied, all give Handel’s treatment recurrent delight.

Note: for those who want to follow the genesis of this song for themselves, though the original hint was given by Chrysander, there are three important modern sources: Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas 1704-1726 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) [particularly p.120]; Winton Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) [p.501 and Appendix E, p.646]; and Siegfried Flesch and Bernd Baselt, Händel-Handbuch, Band 1: Lebens- und Schaffensdaten / Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis: Bühnenwerke (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag, 1978), p.109. Between them, these sources identify a further use in Handel, in an Air for Harpsichord (HWV 468), and another composer’s use of the same theme before Handel, in 1700 (in Reinhard Keiser’s La forza della virtù).



Notes

¹ Rinaldo, an Opera (London: Thomas Howlatt, 1711)

² Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas 1704-1726 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p.174

 ³ Rinaldo, p.12

⁴ Dean and Knapp, p.174

⁵ John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1760), pp.52-53

⁶ Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), p.126

⁷ Mainwaring, pp.59-60

⁸The Poems of Alexander Pope, Vol. I, ed. E. Audra and Aubrey Williams (London: Methuen, 1961, pp.272-73

Handel – Select Bibliography

In my many years of researching and writing on Handel, the following books have proved invaluable. I have added some notes for those interested in the details:

Burrows, Donald, Handel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) – despite my own ungenerous, misguided, review on Radio 3, this has proved its value, year after year, as the best of all guides to Handel’s life and music, with detailed background and astute musical analysis.

Burrows, Donald (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Handel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) – an excellent collection of essays, under the headings ‘Background’, ‘The music’ and ‘The music in performance’, from some of the best Handel scholars of the age.

Dean Winton, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) – the standard reference work for Handel’s choral compositions and oratorios.

Dean, Winton, and John Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704-1726, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) – a brilliant, authoritative, commentary on Handel’s opera career from his earliest German opera to the end of the first period of the Royal Academy; the book gives all the historical information you could ever need, with the best musical analysis available.

Dean, Winton, Handel’s Operas, 1726-1741 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006) – the completion of a life’s work, concluding the survey of Handel’s operas until the end of his career; a tour de force and labour of love.

Deutsch, Otto Erich, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London: Charles Black, 1955) – the most important source of sources for Handel scholars; a comprehensive compilation of reviews, letters, journal articles, newspaper features, advertisements and other published material from the period.

Flesch, Siegfried and Berndt Baselt (eds), Händel-Handbuch, Band I –Lebens- und Schaffensdaten / Thematisch-systematisches  Verzeichnis: Bühenweke (Leipzig: Veb Deutscher Verlag Für Musik, 1978) – a complete, systematic,  catalogue, with musical illustrations of the musical motifs, themes and borrowings for all of Handel’s operas; even for  readers without German, easy to follow, and the best means of tracing Handel’s self-sourcing of arias.

Harris, Ellen T. (ed.) The Librettos of Handel's Operas, edited by Ellen T.Harris, 13 vols (Garland Publishing Inc., New    York and London, 1989) - this collected edition gives facsimiles of the original publications of the Italian librettos and their translations; sometimes the translation is rather loose, and sometimes arias are not translated in full, but they offer a fascinating opportunity to read the material available to the contemporary audience.

Harris, Ellen, Handel and the Pastoral Tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1980) – a revelatory study of the pastoral tradition in European music and its influence on Handel’s music.

Heriot, Angus, The Castrati in Opera (London: Secker and Warburg, 1956) – a compelling record of the history of the castrati.

Hogwood, Christopher, Handel (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988) – an account of Handel’s life and work for the general reader, from one of the leading musicologists and performers of baroque period music.

Keates, Jonathan, Handel: The Man and His Music (London: Victor Gollanz, 1985) – one of the best guides of Handel’s life and music for the general reader.

Mainwaring, John, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (R. and J. Dodsley: London, 1760) – the most important eighteenth-century biographical source; a wonderful account, full of fascinating and compelling anecdotes.

Marx, Hans Joachim (ed.), An International Handel Bibliography / Internationale Händel-Bibliographie: 1959-2009 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2009) – the best modern bibliography of critical works on Handel.

Sadie, Stanley and Anthony Hicks (eds), Handel: Tercentenary Collection (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987) – a collection of essays by leading critics to commemorate the tercentenary of Handel’s birth.

Smith, Ruth, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) – the best guide to the political and ideological context for Handel’s English texts.

Steven LaRue, C., Handel and His Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720-1728 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) – a fascinating account of the first Royal Academy period, showing how Handel tailored individual opera productions for the voices at his disposal.

Rinaldo [24th February, 1711, London, Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket]

Highlights:

[The recording referred to below is the following:

Bernarda Fink; Cecilia Bartoli; David Daniels; Daniel Taylor; Gerald Finley; Luba Orgonasova; Bejun Mehta; Ana-María Rincón; Catherine Bott; Mark Padmore;

The Academy of Ancient Music: Christopher Hogwood

Decca 467 087-2]

[The system of asterisks reflects the author’s entirely subjective appreciation of the arias, etc –  * = noteworthy; ** = excellent; *** = outstanding; **** = a masterpiece.]

References in these notes to ‘D&K’ are to Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp’s masterful account of the operas, Handel's Operas 1704 - 1726 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987).

Act I

‘Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto’ [Disk 1; track 10] (**)

‘Furie terribili’ [Disk 1; track 15] (**)

‘Molto voglio’ [Disk 1; track 12] (***)

‘Augelletti che cantate’ [Disk 1; track 15] (**) – one of Handel’s typical bird arias, and the inspiration for the famous ‘sparrows for the opera (see Comments below).

‘Scherzando/Ridono sul tuo’ [Disk 1; track 20] (***) – taken directly from ‘Cor fedele’ [‘Clori, Tirsi e Fileno’], as are so many excellent arias of the early operas.

‘Cara sposa’ [Disk 1; track 23] (****) – for a full analysis, see D&K, p.177

one of Handel’s typical bird arias – derived from Rodrigo and used again in Giulio Cesare [‘‘L’alma mia’, whose catchy melody (not his own) was a favourite with Handel at all periods of his life’, D&K, p.120].

‘Venti, turbini, prestate’ [Disk 1; track 29] (***)

 

Act II

‘Siam prossimi al porto’ [Disk 2; track 1] (**) – another aria from that compendium‘Cor fedele’ [‘Clori, Tirsi e Fileno’].

‘Il vostro maggio’ [Disk 2; track 4] (***) – an unusual aria, sung by two Sirens (setting Handel an obvious problem – their music has to seduce).

‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ [Disk 2; track 12] (****) [‘it would be impossible to guess that the melody began as a dance for Asiatics in Almira. As in its distant relative ‘Verdi prati’, Handel obtains an intensely emotional effect from a simple tune and accompaniment in a major key with a minimum of accidentals. This perfection is scarcely susceptible of analysis’ D&K, p.178.]

‘Basta che sol tu chieda’ [Disk 2; track 14] (**) – taken from Agrippina.

‘Fermati/No crudel’ [Disk 2; track 17] (**) - ‘Cor fedele’ [‘Clori, Tirsi e Fileno’ again.]

‘Abbrucio, avvampo’ [Disk 2; track 19] (**)

‘Ah! crudel’ [Disk 2; track 21] (***) [‘The situation resembles that at the corresponding point in Alcina. ‘Ah! crudel’ is scarcely less profound than ‘Ah! mio cor’ as a revelation of the anguish in the sorceress’s heart, torn between involuntary love and anger [...] D&K, p.174.]

‘Vo’ far guerra’ [Disk 2; track 24] (***) [‘Although the material, based on an unpublished aria in Rodrigo, does not look memorable, the impact in the theatre is electrifying, thanks partly to the rhythms (with sudden bursts of triplet figuration) and partly [...] to the scoring’, D&K, p.176.]

 

Act III

‘Sorge nel petto’ [Disk 3; track 8] (***)

‘E’un incendio fra due venti’ [Disk 3; track 10] (***) – interesting sources, here: the vocal line from the well-used Italian cantata ‘Sorgi il dì’ [‘Aci, Galatea e Polifemo’] (July, 1708), the ritornello from the ‘Amarilli vezzosa’ (again 1708); the ritornello was also used in Rodrigo (‘Il dolce foco mio’) and Agrippina (‘Col peso del tuo amor’) (making four outings in three years) and would be used to its best effect later in Flavio (‘Ricordati, mio ben’).

‘Al trionfo del nostro furore’ [Disk 3; track 15] (**)

‘Bel piacere’ [Disk 3; track 17] (***) – taken directly from Agrippina (see notes).

‘Or la tromba’ [Disk 3; track 22] (***) [‘another unfailingly effective piece, thanks to the brilliant orchestration, with four trumpets and drums as well as strings and oboes. It is the only aria Handel wrote for this combination, and it illustrates his marvellous sense of texture’ D&K, p.178.]

Comments

From Derek Alsop, ‘Strains of New Beauty’: Handel and the Pleasures of Italian Opera, 1711-28, in Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) pp. 133-163

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'.1  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'.2 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'.3 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'.4 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.5

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'6). 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 of Arsinoe, Thomas Clayton, and staged in 1707. Only two years after Arsinoe London opera audiences had learnt to expect more, and the production was 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.7

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'.8 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.9

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'.10 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.11

'An unknown tongue'! Even allowing for satiric exaggeration this is a ridiculous claim. It is right to suppose that the majority of the audiences could not speak Italian, but this comment puts it in the same category as an Asian or African language. Anyway, for the Italian productions of Handel's period the audience was supplied with word books, giving fuller translations than are usually available to a modern opera audience. And the singers the audiences wanted to hear (like the great castrato Nicolini, whom even Addison admires) were Italians, so the impropriety of having them sing in English operas would have been considerable. There is an odd contradiction in a literary culture which expects the educated to have at least some Classical Latin, but then assumes that none (despite the increasing popularity of European tours) has any modern Italian. The parochialism of the Spectator has often been echoed since. When Roger Fiske, writing in 1986, acknowledges that the 'appeal of Italian Opera to intellectuals was fully justified', adding that 'Handel's music was of superb quality', his comments act as an unsuccessful apology for the following:

As in more recent years, it affected only a coterie of society people and intellectuals; the middle and lower class theatregoer inevitably preferred the playhouses where he could understand the words. But opera in a foreign tongue has always had a strong snob appeal for those who wish to be thought cleverer than they are.12

This is a helpful comment, because we, if we enjoy Wagner or Puccini, but do not wish to fall into the category of those 'intellectuals', can feel some of the insult that our fellow music lovers might have experienced reading Addison. Moreover, the assumption behind the linguistic criticisms is a false one: they imply that if we hear opera in our own tongue we immediately have a true understanding. Actually the opera lover who enjoys, for instance, Peter Grimes cannot fully follow the text or its plot as sung. We must either know the opera beforehand, or study the libretto whilst listening. Handel's audiences had at least the advantage that the material for many of the operas is derived from well-known sources, and often forms the subject for a number of operas in the period (hence the contemporary comment already quoted praising Ottone refers to another production of the same material). The stories of Amadigi, Ottone, Rinaldo, Caesar, Tamburlaine, and most of the other heroes and heroines of this period of Italian opera are already broadly familiar, so the problem of comprehension is less than might be imagined. The English critical reaction to Italian opera misses the point in yearning, as it sometimes does, for an English national opera in the early eighteenth century. The Italians (Nicolini was followed by the sensational success of Senesino; and we have already touched on the popularity of Cuzzoni and Faustina) and their language were exotic, sensuous, and glamorous: they did not inhibit the pleasures of the music - they made them possible. Even if one admits that for some there is a delusive sense of social  elevation in the enjoyment of things foreign, one has to ask whether this is not attractive in comparison with the stultifying xenophobic nationalism of Dennis, or the inverse snobbery of English anti-intellectualism.

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 had great fun with the famous lion that appeared on stage in productions of Francesco Mancini's opera Idaspe (generally known as Hydaspes) from May 1710. The hero, played by Nicolini, was supposed to grapple with this costume lion, and Addison plays charmingly with the dramatic postures of the different wearers of the costume.  But Addison understands, at least, that his wit is pointless - the lion was a great success; there are even comments about the propriety of its performance:

In the evening we went to the opera 'Hidaspis'. ... The opera was very lovely in all respects, in composition, music and representation. ... In especial the representation of the lion with which Hidaspes has to fight was incomparably fine. The fellow who played him was not only wrapped in a lion-skin, but, moreover, nothing could be seen of his feet.13

Really, then, the Spectator is 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.14

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'.15 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'.16 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. In Italy Cardinal Pamphili, patron of music and the arts, had written a cantata in praise of Handel (originally in Italian):

Sing all and raise each voice

To strains of new beauty,

And let your fingers play

To this new Orpheus' tune.17

So now London repeated the legendary phrase: Addison noted that the preface to Rinaldo referred to 'Minheer Hendel ' as 'the Orpheus of our Age'.18 Handel did not disappoint, despite Addison's idea that this is merely florid Italian overstatement. Typical of the 'strains of new beauty' was the sublime aria 'Lascia ch'io pianga' where 'Handel obtains an intensely emotional effect from a simple tune and accompaniment in a major key'.19 Dean and Knapp, notable for their close reading of the scores, go on simply to comment  'this perfection is scarcely susceptible of analysis'.20

Notes:

1. 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 (London: John Nutt, 1706), Preface, p.4.

2. Dennis, Preface, p.2.

3. Dennis, Preface, p.7.

4. Dennis, Preface, p.6.

5. Dennis, main text, p.13.

6. Dennis, main text, p.14.

7. Donald F. Bond (ed.) The Spectator, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), I, 81

8. Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp, Handel's Operas 1704 - 1726 (Oxford:

     Clarendon Press, 1987) p.146.

9. The Spectator, I, 80.

10. The Spectator, I, 80.

11. The Spectator, I, 81.

12. Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: OUP,

1986), p.66.

13. Quoted by H. C. Robbins Landon, Handel and His World (London:

            Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1984), p.75.

14. The Spectator, I, 23-24.

15. The Spectator, I, 24-25.

16. Christopher Hogwood, Handel (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), p.65.

17. Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Bibliography (London: Adam

            and Charles Black,1955), p.25.

18. The Spectator, I, 26.

19. Dean and Knapp, p.178.

20. Dean and Knapp, p.178.

 

 

Notes on Almira

Almira, Königin von Castilien [Der in Kronen erlangte Glücks-Wechsel, oder: Almira Königin von Castilien] [8th January, 1705, Hamburg, Theater am Gänsemarkt]

[References are to the following recording of the opera –
Ann Monoyios; Patricia Rozario; Linda Gerrard; David
Thomas; Douglas Nasrawi; Jamie MacDougall; Olaf Haye;
Christian Elsner; Fiori musicali; Andrew Lawrence-King
Radio Bremen CPO 999 275-2]

[The system of asterisks reflects the author’s appreciation of
the arias, etc – * = noteworthy; ** = excellent; *** = outstanding.]

[References to ‘D&K’ are to Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp’s Handel’s Operas 1704-1726 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).]


Highlights:

Act I
‘Almire regiere’ (**) [Disk 1; track 2] – an early variant of ‘Vanne in campo’ from Roderigo
Sarabande (***) [Disk 1; track 4] – an early instrumental anticipation of ‘Lascia ch'io pianga’ from Rinaldo
‘Schönste Rosen’ (**) [Disk 1; track 10]
‘Liebliche Wälder’ (**) [Disk 1; track 14]
‘Geloso tormento’ (***) [Disk 1; track 18] [‘The contrasted dynamics of the ritornello, a dialogue for solo oboe and strings with alternate piano and forte bars, establish a tension that is not permitted to relax’, D&K]

Act II
‘Chi sa, mia spema’ (**) [Disk 2; track 4] - later adapted as ‘Barbaro fato’ in Partenope
‘Mi da speranza al core’ (**) [Disk 2; track 13]
‘Move i passi a le ruine’ (***) [Disk 2; track 15] – adapted for Agrippina, but also used again in a range of works, including Radamisto, Orlando and Acis and Galatea
‘Sonera la piaga’ (**) [Disk 2; track 18]
‘Der Himmel wird strafen’ (**)[Disk 2; track 20]

Act III
‘Quilt, ihr überhäuften Zähren’ (**) [Disk 3; track 5]
‘Vedrai, s’a tuo dispetto’ (***) [Disk 3; track 12] [D&K refer to ‘the sudden pause on a diminished seventh on the word ‘crudele’ as an ‘effective use of cliché’]
‘Kachet ihr Adern’ (**) [Disk 3; track 14]
‘Werthe Schrift’ (**) [Disk 3; track 16]


Comments
Handel’s first opera is at times a kind of work-book for the later operas, with a number of arias and other material appearing (with variations) again in Rodrigo, Agrippina, Rinaldo, Radamisto, Giulio Cesare, Partenope, Orlando, and Giustino. The use of variations on the theme of ‘Lascia ch'io pianga’ (twice, as sarabandes in Acts I and II) is a typical example. It’s an odd opera – Hamburg obviously did not object to the macaronic combination of German and Italian. At times it’s more opera buffa than opera seria. The accompaniment often suggests a chamber opera (the bassoon featuring particularly to confirm the comic aspect), but the main element of farce is in the characterisation of the servant Tabarco [given as ‘Fabarco’ in Deutsch’s Documentary Biography, p.15]. He is clearly a type, deriving (according to D&K) from the Venetian tradition, but echoing and anticipating all such operatic comic types (including Mozart’s later equivalents): his speech is idiomatic; he provides a sardonic commentary on the main action; he runs about stage; falls over; pries into the secrets of his betters; complains about his ailments and his treatment; etc. It’s interesting to see the beginning of Handel’s use of standard forms. The ‘da capo’ aria is not fully established here: for instance, the ‘ritornello’ sometimes acts as an instrumental coda to a one-section ‘cavatina’ aria (as if it forms a ‘B’ section, without da capo). There is a striking early use of dramatic accompagnato, in three sections, most impressively as Almira expresses her love-anguish (‘Ich kann nicht mehr’) before her Italian complaint ‘Move i passi’ – oddly, the combination of German and Italian, here, is most effective. Only an imperfect copy of the original score survives, thanks probably to a later production by Telemann.