Handel’s Fairest Dalila

By Miranda Houghton

“In practice, however, the rich theatrical contextualisation tends to shift the focus away from her singing. From a performer’s point-of-view, a summary of her repertoire, and perhaps a separate chapter on her vocal characteristics regarding range, tessitura and their eventual changes, would have been useful, with more musical examples.” So wrote Judit Zsovár in Handel News in 2019. Adverse reviews usually put me off a product, but in this case I decided to purchase and read Berta Joncus’ book, Kitty Clive or the Fair Songster (Boydell Press 2019) as I have read other publications by Berta Joncus and found them not only well-researched but inspiring.

One of my own areas of interest is the “stylistic” process Handel went through in the dying years of Italian opera’s pre-eminence on the London stage. By the time of his death he had established as much of a reputation as a composer of oratorio as he had enjoyed as a foremost composer of opera seria. Very much tied up in that period was John Beard, introduced as a tenor in Handel’s later operas but more significantly the tenor primo uomo in virtually all of Handel’s oratorios. Were Handel’s oratorios a natural progression from dramas set for the stage in the Italian style, or did he (as I believe) invent his own version of “devotional” works, choosing to use his unique ability to express intense emotion through word painting to set biblical dramas? I would particularly like to know if the character of ornamentation in Handel’s oratorios became progressively muted as his company of Italian singers became interspersed with talented British singers of the day, less conversant with the florid excesses of Italian high Baroque, but also because decoration for the aggrandisement of individual singers was considered out of keeping with the biblical subject matter.

One clue is in the sort of voices and the technical ability we imagine singers such as John Beard had. Was he the equivalent of a Lieder singer today, acting purely with the voice, or was he as much of a dramatic singing actors as Kitty Clive clearly was? What Joncus’ book proves is that Kitty Clive was capable of singing in the bel canto style along with the best of the Italians, such was her versatility as a performer. We should not forget that John Beard sang in public entertainment alongside Kitty Clive. Yes, the role of Dalila in Samson was written for Kitty Clive with her arch-rival, Susanna Cibber as seconda donna, yet these two sopranos were also the leading ladies in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera – in which John Beard also sang. Why is it then that history remembers John Beard as the greatest English tenor of the era, able to move seamlessly between masques, ballad operas and six of Handel’s opera 32 serie to Handel’s dramatic oratorios without any loss of reputation whereas Clive is relegated by posterity to a mere purveyor of bawdy low art? Why is Beard described as a singer whereas Clive is a “songster”?

One is forced to conclude this is due to the fact she was an intelligent and powerful woman who refused to be manipulated by men. She was in later years criticised for her looks, yet in portraits of her as a young woman, she is no less agreeable than Cuzzoni, Faustina and indeed Strada Del Po, Handel’s great Italian leading ladies. Clive was a star for a long time, suggesting her charisma and comedic talent transcended the requirement to look young and pretty on stage. As contemporary reviews show us, she also won the right to be judged as a singer, known for her sparkling delivery of music by Handel, Purcell, Arne, Bononcini and her ability to parody the day’s leading Italian opera singers. My point is she would have risen above criticism when being judged purely for her exceptional talent as a singer.

Contrary to Ms Zsár’s contention that Berta Joncus tells us little about the quality of Clive’s vocal prowess, her fach and her musicianship, the detailed research into the wide variety of vehicles which the most famous actormanagers created for her offer a clear indication of Clive’s star quality. After all, to be renowned for her brilliant mimicry of the Italian singers of the day is no mean feat.

Contemporary sources tell us that Clive was able to enliven an otherwise dull performance with singing which was fresh and direct. In one of London’s most popular ballad operas, Damon and Phillida, Clive was given an Italian da capo aria from one of London’ s most celebrated operas, Camilla by Bononcini. To sing this and other arias from the Italian high Baroque, she will have relied on bel canto technique like the finest Italian singers in The Royal Academy. Her musical director, Carey wrote a cantata for her which captures the fashionable Neapolitan writing of the day with its suave melodies and demanding melismas. We suspect it was Carey who trained her in her famous exaggerated parodies of Italian singers with extravagant gestures and elaborate coloratura on prepositions. In interludes in ballad operas and masques, Clive performed Handel operatic arias as well as Cuzzoni or Strada Del Po. Fielding drew on her versatility when he burlesqued Handel’s oratorio Deborah. Drury Lane’s Opera of Operas gave Clive her first chance to extravagantly burlesque Italian opera, flexing her vocal muscle with runs up to high B.

As Professor Wendy Heller wrote in her review of Joncus’ book in Early Music America, “For Clive, as Joncus shows, it all began with an extraordinary singing voice that allowed her to “straddle” high and low rhetorical registers. Clive could compete with (or even mock) the best Italian sopranos; she could use the lower part of her voice to excel in popular songs and raunchy ballad operas on one night and employ her secure vocal technique the next day to become a goddess in a lofty masque…. Kitty Clive, or the Fair Songster opens up entirely new ways of thinking about how a singer might wield her voice. Joncus does not so much invoke the abstract concept of “Voice,” but rather helps the reader imagine the specific grain of a very specific instrument with which Clive was identified throughout her long career. What is particularly fascinating is the extent to which Clive’s musicianship and ability as a singer became the catalyst for all that followed. Joncus persuasively shows how her musical skill helped her excel in the spoken theater, pointing out the extent to which control of tempo, rhythm, and melody are essential for stage speech, a point that musicians and actors rarely acknowledge today.”

Kitty Clive or The Fair Songster by Berta Joncus (Boydell Press 2019) is available from all good bookshops.

The progress from Keyboard virtuoso to Opera composer of Genius 

By Mark Windisch

One must delve into biographies of Handel to trace where his interest in stage works first became evident. Mainwaring writes of a visit to Berlin in 1698 where Handel was supposed to have met Ariosti and Bononcini. (There appear to be some inaccuracies in Mainwaring’s statements as the reports of Handel’s meeting these composers do not tally with his stated age at the time.) However, it may be assumed that the young Handel could have made more than one visit to the Ducal Palace in view of the position (barber/surgeon) both Handel’s
brother and his father had in the Duke’s household.


It is certainly true that a well-known composer, Johann Philipp Krieger was active in the Ducal palace at that time. It is recorded that he produced 18 German operas there. We don’t know how many of these the young Handel heard, but in Handel’s 1698 theme book there are pieces of music by J P Krieger or his younger brother J Krieger, which implies he had access to the scores. Handel used music by J P Krieger in several of his compositions. The Weissenfels palace had a flourishing artistic programme and was supported by Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739). In addition, nearby Leipzig had a flourishing opera company directed by N A Strungk (1640-1700), who was music director there from 1693-96 and was succeeded later in this post by G P Telemann (1681-1767) from 1702 to 1705. Probably these performances in Weissenfels were not the more modern Opera Seria style, but were certainly performed with beautiful scenery and costumes which would probably have appealed to a young man with a strong imagination, if he was permitted to attend.

The Ducal palace at Weissenfels might have been one place where Handel’s interest was aroused. The question I ask myself is whether Duke Johann Adolf I, who clearly spotted Handel’s talent early and persuaded Handel’s father that he should encourage Handel to study music, carried his interest in the boy further. Might he not have allowed young Handel to attend performances in the castle?

Duke Johann Adolf I

Handel’s training with Zachow was mostly with keyboard music and his paid employment was as church organist at the Cathedral in Halle so probably his professional exposure to theatrical music would have been quite limited. However,
the interest must have been there, even if latent, because he had a lifelong interest in composing music in this genre later.


Music at Weissenfels Castle
Neu-Augustusberg castle is a fine building
erected by the father and grandfather of
Duke Johann Adolf I who spotted Handel’s talent early. The Duke Johann Adolph I had a recorded interest in all the arts and was clearly a man of taste and discernment, choosing many musicians to write music for performance in his castle. Johann Philipp Krieger and his younger brother were both accomplished musicians. Johann Philipp was born in 1648 in Nuremberg, had a spell as Chief Kapellmeister in Bayreuth and held several important positions in Halle. Handel borrowed a number of themes from Krieger’s compositions.

Johann Philipp wanted to study the Italian style and to this end he took himself to Venice to study with Johann Rosenmüller, an exiled German. Krieger is known to have composed “singspiele” which were published in Nuremberg in 1690. Chrysander gives the titles of some operas written for BrunswickWolfenbüttel in 1693, some of which were also performed in Hamburg. (These operas are referred to by Rev J R Milne in my copy of Groves Dictionary from 1928, who significantly states “one may unhesitatingly class them with similar works by Handel.”).

J.S. Bach also travelled to Weissenfels in 1714, where his first secular cantata was performed. Entitled Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd (‘The lively hunt is all my heart’s desire’, BWV 208), it was written to celebrate the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. A few years later, Bach gave a number of recitals at the royal court in Weissenfels, which enjoyed an excellent reputation far and wide for the high quality of its
musical performances. In 1729, Bach was appointed Royal Kapellmeister of Saxe-Weissenfels by the Duke – a position he was entitled to exercise without having to relocate. These facts give some insights into music life in Weissenfels. As a footnote Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), probably the most famous German musician of the seventeenth century was born and died in this town which had quite a history of musical figures.

Leipzig
The Oper am Brühl was the first opera house in Leipzig and existed from 1693 to 1720. It was initiated by Nicolaus Adam Strungk who saw an opportunity to bring in an audience during the trade fairs (for which Leipzig is still famous). An application was made to the Saxon Elector, Johann Georg IV and was granted for a period of ten years. An architect with Italian experience, Girolamo Sartorio who had built the Hamburg opera house was chosen and put up the building in only four months. The building was a three storey wooden house with a gable roof, 47 metres long, 15 meters wide and 10 metres high. It had a semi-circular auditorium with fifty boxes.

The first opera performed there was Alceste by Strungk on 8 May 1693. The architect, Sartorio built elaborate scenery with a forest, a royal palace, and a
fire-breathing dragon. In 1696 Christian Ludwig Boxberg joined as composer and librettist and his scores are preserved as the oldest surviving Germanlanguage opera from Central Germany. The Opera House flourished when Telemann took over direction in 1703. Even when Telemann left Leipzig for Sorau (now Zary in modern day Poland, then under Saxon rule,) he continued to compose for the Leipzig Opera.


Handel is not mentioned in the history of this opera house although, as a close friend of Telemann, it is likely that he would have attended at least one major work by Telemann. With his legendary energy, Telemann founded the opera orchestra (mostly with amateur musicians), played the keyboard, and even performed as a singer in some productions. In 1704, his opera Germanicus with text by Christine Dorothea Lachs (Strungk’s daughter) was first performed there. Handel moved to Hamburg in 1703 but I cannot imagine that he would not have made the effort to see Germanicus performed in Leipzig.


In total there were 104 productions in the 27 years of the opera house’s existence. Unfortunately, the Leipzig opera house was deemed to be in a dangerous state in 1719 and was demolished in 1729. The company then moved to Opernhaus vorm Salztor in nearby Naumburg.

Hamburg
The Opera in the Gänsemarkt in Hamburg was an altogether more professional arrangement. It was started in 1678 and ran through up to 1738. It was the first theatre in a German-speaking country to have a continuous cast. It was run as a public body without (unusually for the time) any financial support from the nobility or religious establishments. It was founded by a cultured alderman, Gerhard Schott who had travelled widely and encountered opera in Italy. He was supported by Johann Adam Reincken, organist and Kapellmeister of Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

Despite some opposition from certain elements of the religious community Girolamo Sartorio (brother of the composer) was engaged to design the theatre and its opening took place on 2 January 1678 with a sacred opera Adam and Eva by Johann Theile. Soon other opera composers submitted works for performance, amongst them Antonio Sartorio, a leading Venetian Opera composer and Kapellmeister to the Catholic Duke Johann Friedrich, Nicolo Minato, Johann Wolfgang Franck, Agostino Steffani, and many others.

The Gänsemarkt opera house became embroiled in several arguments between the pietists who hated the idea of the provision of public entertainment and the standard version of Protestantism which tolerated and even encouraged it. Reinhard Keiser directed
the Opera House between 1703 and 1707, when he employed Handel as violinist
and cembalist. It was during the performance of Mattheson’s opera, Cleopatra where the famous duel between Handel and Mattheson took place. There seemed to be some intense rivalry between the two of them concerning who might take over from Keiser and it might well have spilt over to trigger this duel. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries and their differences were settled amicably. During his time in Hamburg Handel worked on Almira, Nero and Daphne by way of learning how to compose operas. In 1722 Telemann took over management of the opera house, but by this time Handel had been in England for ten years. Handel and Telemann remained lifelong friends and often Telemann would adapt an opera Handel composed for his London theatres. Telemann did not have Handel’s access to expensive prima donnas so he had to rewrite arias, often in German, making a dual language hybrid.

After a short time while working in Hamburg, Handel met Gian Gastone de Medici who invited him to Italy to hear the Italian singers, who Gian Gastone praised very hugely. Handel might well have started his stay in Italy in Florence with Gian Gastone, but it was not long before he visited the music making centres of Venice, Rome, and Naples. The only date we know for certain was 14 January 1707 where Handel’s appearance is noted in the diary
of Francesco Valesio, recording that he had played the organ excellently in St John Lateran in Rome.

Opera was banned in Rome after the papal edict of 1698 but Handel exercised his considerable talents for vocal writing with some splendid cantatas and some major works like Il trionfo del Tempo and the brilliant Dixit Dominus. These all helped him to write music which suited the rhythm and metre of opera sung in Italian. He became kappelmeister of the Hanoverian court in 1710.

On securing an initial twelve month leave of absence from the Hanoverian court, he managed to make his way to London to start his 48-year career as a composer of operas, oratorios and more. In 1711 his opening opera in London, Rinaldo was a great success and launched his operatic career. Following Rinaldo Handel’s career took off in a series of amazing operas and oratorios, the like of which has not been equalled to this day.

Which of Handel’s overtures had the ‘x’ factor?

Comparing two editions of the collection of Handel’s Keyboard Overtures annotated by Charles Burney

By Graham Pont

In April 2011 I purchased from Colin Coleman a copy of Handel’s Celebrated Overtures Complete from his Oratorios and Operas Arranged by the Author for the Organ or Piano Forte (London: Preston, c.1811). The volume was rebound in London and, on arriving in Sydney, it soon disappeared into a large and badly organised collection of Handel publications. During a recent move of that collection into retirement accommodation, my eye was caught by the early hand-written label on the front.

The original handwritten label of Burney's second collection of Handel's Overtures
The original handwritten label of Burney’s second collection of Handel’s Overtures

I immediately recognised it as the handwriting of Charles Burney.

The British Library holds a similar collection of Handel’s Celebrated Overtures in an earlier printing of Preston’s edition on paper, water-marked 1807 (K. 5.c.2). This volume has extensive manuscript annotations attributed to Charles Burney, Samuel Butler and Henry Festing-Jones. In both volumes Burney has added comments on individual overtures, many of them copied or adapted from his General History of the Science and Practice of Music, Volume the Fourth (London, 1789). The annotations are less extensive in the later Preston edition: what prompted Burney to produce this second version of his notes on the keyboard overtures is not at all obvious.

Following the title page, the later Preston edition has a separate Index to Handel’s Overtures to which Burney has added in ink, or occasionally pencil, what he takes to be the dates of the first productions of many but not all the works listed. There is no comment on No. I, the Overture in Parthenope which Burney described in his earlier volume as “less captivating than any of Handel.” He also omits his earlier comments on the Overtures to Lotharius, Ptolomy and Siroe (wrongly dated in pencil 1713).

In the later Preston edition, Burney judges the Overture in Richard the Ist to be “one of [Handel’s]finest introductory movements – Heroic music.” The second movement, an Allegro, he further notes is ‘Firm and spirited’. In view of these opinions, it is odd to find that Burney has no comments on this overture in his earlier copy of Preston’s collection.

In the earlier Preston edition, Burney has detailed comments on the Overture in Admetus –“the fugue, though spirited and masterly, has been more injured by time than most of his productions of that kind.” On the Second Overture in Admetus, in the later edition, he notes that the fugal subject of the second movement has its ‘answer inverted’.

Burney has no notes on the later Preston edition of the Overture in Alexander which he describes as “excellent” in his earlier copy. This also has warm praise for the Overture in Scipio as “spirited and pleasing” with the fugue ‘upon two pleasing and marked subjects’ and the final minuet “of an agreeable and uncommon cast.” In the later Preston edition the first movement is simply described as “Firm, spirited” and the minuet as “Agreeable, uncommon.” On the last page of this overture there appears for the first time in this volume Burney’s pencilled ‘x’ which appears to be his mark indicating special interest or quality. In a collection of Corelli from Burney’s library (also in the possession of the present writer) movements are marked with one, two or three ‘x’s in what appears to be a Michelin-style star-rating of quality.

In his earlier Preston edition, Burney notes that the Overture in Rodelinda “long remained in favour” that was “considerably lengthened by the natural and pleasing minuet.”. In his later Preston edition, Burney describes the fast movement of the overture as “Very pleasing” and the minuet as “very beautiful.”

In the later Preston edition Burney has no comment on the Overture in Tamerlane which is described in the earlier collection as “Remarkably majestic.” He also passes over the Second Overture in Amadis and the Overtures in Julius Caesar, Flavius and Acis and Galatea without comment.

The Overture in Radamistus was a particular favourite of Burney’s. In his earlier Preston edition he describes the first movement as “grand and Majestic” and the fugue as “Superior to any that can be found in the overtures of other composers.” In the later edition he hails Radamistus as “One of the most remarkable Operas Handel ever produced.” This remark appears in double quotation marks, which suggest that Burney was citing some publication, but his praise of Radamistus in the General History (Vol. IV, pp. 259-262) does not include those words.

In his later edition, Burney describes the Overture in the Water Musick (No. XVIII) as “Spirited, jubilant.” There are no comments on the following overtures until Rinaldo (No. XXIV): this is described as Handel’s “first Work for the London stage” and its overture as “Majestic.” In Burney’s General History the first movement is declared to be “grand and majestic” (Vol. 4, p.233.)

In the later edition of the overtures, the next is the Overture in Ariadne, noted as “a great favourite.” The third movement, an untitled minuet, is marked with an ‘x’ and a recollection added that this was “Played in the streets in Handel’s time.”

The next movement annotated in Burney’s later edition is the Overture in Sosarmes, with all three movements marked with an ‘x’. So also is the first movement of the Overtures in Etius and Esther. The latter is headed with a note: “See my copy arr. by Greatorex, given to me by Rev’d E. Young, Clifton.” The last movement of this admired overture is marked with an ‘x’.

In Burney’s later edition, the Overture in Justin is pronounced “Dignified and spirited,” with the observation that the fast movement is in “3 pt. Counterpoint.” The fast movement in the overture to Arminius is noted as “One of the severest Fugues in Handel’s Overtures.” The Overture in Atalanta is marked with an ‘x’ and the second movementnoted as exhibiting an “unusual mixture of Rhythms.” Burney’s ‘x’ also appears over the Musette in the Overture to Alcina and the first two movements of the 2d Overture in Pastor Fido. The concluding A tempo di Bouree is noted as a “Masterpiece of
brilliancy and delicacy.”

The Overture in Xerxes in Burney’s later collection is headed “Handel’s only comic Opera.” The concluding Gigue is noted for its “Liveliness, humour” and the “imitation
between highest and lowest part(s).”

The first two movements of the Overture in Alexander’s Feast receive a not -unexpected ‘x’ in Burney’s second collection, with a note that the work was “composed in 20 days, Opera completed.” All three movements of the Overture in Faramondo receive an ‘x’. The Overture in Berenice is noted as “Majestic,” echoing the description “peculiarly majestic and masterly” in the General History (Vol. IV, p.408). The fugue is praised for its “almost continuous stretto, masterly” and the concluding Andante Larghetto for its “Exquisite beauty and purity.” After the Gigue Burney notes that “This opera marks the failure of [Handel’s] Opera ventures. He became bankrupt” (a popular misconception for which there is no firm evidence.)

The opening of the Overture in Alexander Severus (the pasticcio HWV A15) is noted in Burney’s later edition as “Impressive and solid;” the following Allegro is adjudged “One of his most powerful orchestral Fugues” and the final movement “Highly dramatic.”

Burney’s ‘x’ of quality or particular interest is awarded in his second collection to both movements of the Overture in Athalia and the first two movements of the Overture in Samson but none to the Overture in Messiah. The first and last movements of the Overture in Saul also receive an ‘x’.

The Overture in Hymen is correctly dated in Burney’s second collection as having been “First performed in 1740” and the fugue is noted as being “Unusually florid.” The Overture in Parnasso in Festa receives an ‘x’ and its concluding Allegro noted as “Graceful.” All four movements of the Overture to the Occasional Oratorio receive an ‘x’. Several overtures are now passed over without comment until the 2nd Overture in Saul, both movements of which receive an ‘x’. So do the first movements of the Overtures in Solomon and Joshua and the 2nd Overture in Solomon.

Burney’s annotations to his second collection of Handel’s keyboard overtures end, appropriately, with the Overture in Jephtha which he notes was the composer’s “last great Work’.” Reviewing these second annotations as a whole, it is difficult to think of any reason to explain why Burney should have undertaken the task of compiling a much-abbreviated version of his notes on Handel’s keyboard overtures. There is no evidence of any substantial change from the opinions and observations recorded in his earlier copy of the Preston edition. All we can confidently conclude is that Burney’s second set of notes and comments leaves no doubt that, near the end of his life, the great historian remained firm in his judgement of Handel’s keyboard overtures. That judgement, which was informed by a personal acquaintance with the composer and a prolonged consideration of his achievements, has unquestionably stood the test of time: modern critical opinion would not significantly differ from Burney on the overtures he actually discusses and evaluates.

Italian Poets of the Renaissance as inspiration for Baroque Opera Composers

By Mark Windisch

Handel composed about 40 operas covering a very wide range of topics, using librettists for the text from a variety of backgrounds to help him. Some operas like Il Pastor Fido and Atalanta are pastoral subjects, some deal with historical characters with which we are familiar, like Riccardo Primo, Giulio Cesare, Xerxes, Tamerlano and Alexander. In this article I should like to take a closer look at the “magic” operas which usually rely on exceptional poets who lived in Italy during the Renaissance. In particular we owe a debt to Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso.


Handel, newly arrived in London in late 1710 was offered an opportunity to stage an opera by Aaron Hill, a dramatist who had recently been appointed to run the King’s Theatre Haymarket. Hill saw opera as the means to further his ambition to make a success of the theatre. He came up with the idea of using the story of Rinaldo and Armida and chose Giacomo Rossi (fl 1710-31) to compose the libretto. The plot laid out by Hill took Torquato Tasso’s famous poem Gerusalemme Liberata but added the love interest between Argante and Armida and inserted the additional character of Almirena. The ending in which the Muslims converted to Christianity was not part of the original.


For Handel it was a wonderful opportunity. He had brought with him to England a collection of pieces already composed for other occasions. Sometimes they were not in any way apt to the plot, but their spectacular impact, delivered mostly by the famous castrato Nicolini (Nicola Grimaldi) and other top singers accompanied by some interesting orchestral effects, ensured that Rinaldo was an instant success. It ran for 33 performances and was revived several times. The novelty of Italian opera presented in London no doubt contributed to the opera’s appeal, but its success was ensured by Hill’s intervention as producer. His choice of Handel to choose the music around which Hill and Rossi then fitted the plot was one masterstroke, but also the extraordinary stage effects which included fire-breathing dragons, live birds, moving mountains and waterfalls, must have been a revelation to London audiences.


Although the music might not always have been appropriate to the subject it illustrated, Handel produced some stunning pieces. The character of Armida has the best arias with “Furie Terribile” and “Vo far Guerra”. Rinaldo has eight arias including “Cara sposa” and the spectacular “Venti turbini”.


Tasso’s poem was very successful in its own right and went on to be the inspiration to many people besides Handel. Operas and cantatas were written by others such as Albinoni, Jommelli, Salieri, Gluck, Myslivecek, Sacchini, Haydn, Sarti, Rossini, Donizetti, Brahms, Dvorak and even Judith Weir (2005). Plays and paintings were also inspired by this poem.
Handel clearly used this opportunity as a learning experience. It not only brought his talents to a wide audience but also put his music in print for the first time. (Walsh is said to have cleared £1500 by printing songs from Rinaldo.) He also got to meet J J Heidegger who introduced him to several influential people which greatly helped his career in London.
Moving forward more than 20 years, Handel’s next venture into a magic opera came in January 1733 with Orlando. Once again, there might have been some link with Aaron Hill and Heidegger for the choice of subject.


Ludovico Ariosto published his vast narrative poem Orlando Furioso (Raging Orlando) in 1532 although a partially complete version appeared 1516. Ariosto followed an earlier poet, Matteo Maria Boiardo who published a romance Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in love), and that in turn was inspired by Chanson de Roland, published in France in the 11th century.
Ariosto’s book is published in translation in two large paperbacks by Penguin, which gives an idea of its scale. The background is the war between Charlemagne’s Christian paladins against Saracen armies under Agramante, which are threatening to overthrow the Christian Empire. In the story, Orlando, a Christian knight is obsessed with the pagan princess, Angelica. A sub plot is the love between Bradamante, a Christian warrior and the Saracen, Ruggiero. Medoro, a wounded Saracen knight is healed and saved by Angelica and elopes with her.


The unhinged Orlando is assisted by another knight and they fly up to the moon (where all things lost are supposed to be stored) on a flying horse where they find Orlando’s lost wits which are then restored to him.


Handelians will recognise some of the characters and situations in Handel’s Orlando. The knight is central to the story, but we also have Angelica and Medoro. Handel introduced two more characters, Zoroastro and Dorinda. He uses the characters to build a story of power, love, and jealousy. He concentrates on the mania from which Orlando suffers, rendering him unable to reconcile his instincts as a warrior with his obsession with Angelica. The character of Zoroastro is a sort of primitive psychiatrist-cum-magician which offers an opportunity for introducing spectacular stage effects. Dorinda is the only solidly grounded character, offering an interesting contrast.


In the opera Handel breathes life into the characters by giving them music appropriate to their thoughts as opposed to their actions. He produces some astonishing arias for Zoroastro, far more convincing in my opinion than that written by Mozart for a similar character in The Magic Flute. Orlando is a deeply damaged character. He first is portrayed as a staunchly heroic character; at the sight of Angelica he is overcome by passion. By Act II overwhelming jealousy is invoked when he realises that Angelica is in love with Medoro. His is aria reflects the resultant disintegration of his mental state. In Act III the confused state of his mind comes through clearly in the music Handel has written for him to sing, especially in his duet with Angelica. Dorinda the shepherdess has several remarkable arias including her reflective soliloquy after the quite frightening encounter with Orlando at his most deranged.


This extended poem by Ariosto became very influential and had many followers including Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queen, Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, Lope de Vega, Cervantes in Don Quixote, Borges and even Salman Rushdie in The Enchantress of Florence.


As to musical compositions, besides forming the storyline of Handel’s Orlando, Ariosto was mined by Caccini, Agostino Steffani, Vivaldi, Lully, Rameau, Hasse and many others. Many artists including Delacroix also drew inspiration from Ariosto with his painting, Marphise.
In 1735 Handel was moved to use Ariosto’s poem again for Alcina. This was another instance of Handel and his producer needing a magic opera to display special effects. The libretto came to Handel via Riccardo Broschi, brother of the singer Farinelli and a composer himself. The characters are from the Ariosto but Broschi changed a few things. He added Oronte, retained Melissa but changed her into Melisso (a bass) and developed Bradamante and Morgana from their relatively minor roles in the poem.


Handel’s genius again was to imbue the characters with human feelings and reactions as opposed to Ariosto’s concentration on just producing a narrative. Alcina, for all her magic powers, is a mature woman needing to love and be loved. Finally, when she cannot find this love, her character disintegrates and her powers are lost. The child, Oberto shows considerable feeling for his father who has been transformed into a lion by Alcina. Ruggiero starts as a puppet figure controlled by his passion for Alcina, but as he realises that Ricciardo is really his beloved Bradamante in disguise, he rejects Alcina. His status as a warrior and hero is then reflected in his music.


I wonder what the famous authors of the poems which inspired Handel and his librettists would have thought of the way their creations came to life in the Baroque opera form. Even the earliest operas, which were little more that recitals with music, did not take place until 1597. Monteverdi, who can be said perhaps to be the first composer to produce an opera approximating to a modern format, only produced his first opera Orfeo in 1607.
Handel was very versatile and flexible in his approach and magic operas form only a very small part of his huge output of Italian opera. All were well received and allowed him to produce some of his most memorable music.

Handel’s man in Italy

By Miranda Houghton

It is just possible that Mr Swiny was the only honest man in the theatrical business at
the beginning of the 18th century. Christopher Rich was banned from presenting plays at the Theatre Royal when he appropriated a third of the actors’ revenues from benefit performances. Subsequently Swiny, courtesy of the Lord Chamberlain, was made responsible for the opera performances (two a week) at the Queen’s Theatre whilst a consortium of actors presented plays. These actor-managers stole from Swiny whilst he was in Dublin, but he received reparation. Subsequently the Queen’s Theatre was rendered virtually bankrupt when the MP, William Collier, to whom Swiny had sublet the theatrical licence, tried to oust the current manager and strip the theatre of all its assets.

Swiny resumed management of the Queen’s Theatre after this coup, but by 1713, during the production of Handel Teseo, “Mr Swiney brakes and runs away and leaves ye singers unpaid, ye Scenes and Habits also unpaid for.” It was at this point that Mr Swiny fled to the continent, some say to The Netherlands, others to Paris, but eventually located himself in Venice.
He established himself as the Italian agent for The Royal Academy, negotiating contracts before importing Italian singers such as Faustina, the wife of Johann Adolf Hasse. He also sourced the latest “drammas” set to music in Venice and northern Italy in the preceding Carnival season and sent them by horse and ship to Handel in London. This was a time when the latest operas heard by nobles on the Grand Tour were being introduced to English audiences, either by the Royal Academy or its rival, The Opera of the Nobility. We know that two of the pasticcio operas created by Handel and his team, given their modern premieres at recent London Handel Festival performances, were Swiny’s choice. What we don’t know is how much this canny Irish scholar contributed to the finished versions of Ormisda and Elpidia. The original libretti were significantly tampered with in an attempt to make them appealing to an English audience. Recitative was cut, reworked and often freshly set to music. Singers substituted their favourite arias which also involved some rewriting, often part way through a production. Swiny was paid – eventually. What is not quite clear was whether he was merely charging a finder’s fee or did he participate in the creation of these “must see” musical events?
To put Swiny’s early career in context, he worked alongside the famous Colley Cibber, an actor-manager who preceded David Garrick. Colley Cibber wrote 25 plays for his company at the Theatre Royal and amazed the establishment by becoming Poet Laureate in 1730, more as a result of his political affiliations than of his ability as a poet. He was known as a comic, but also bowdlerized the classics, including Shakespeare, in order to adapt “high art” into the vernacular. A 19th century theatrical historian described his Richard III as: “a hodge-podge concocted by Colley Cibber, who cut and transposed the original version, and added to it speeches from four or five other of Shakespeare’s plays, and several really fine speeches of his own.” Even though Cibber takes fewer than 800 lines from Shakespeare, he stays for the most part with the original design, mainly adapting the plot to make it more suitable for the stage, as well as performable in less than two hours. If this sounds familiar to those cognizant with Handel’s operas and pasticcio operas, it is because the plays and operas which would be heard serially on the same stage, suffered similar reworkings.

It is into this world of presumptuous adaptation with little or no respect for the droit d’auteur which would seem shocking today that young Mr Swiny immersed himself. He had presented Italian operas to the London audience before his association with Handel and the Royal Academy began. In 1706 the opera Camilla was presented at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, initially translated into English by Owen Swiny himself before being turned into poetic verse by a Mr Northman and then set to music, adapted from existing music of Bononcini, by one Mr Nicola Haym, better known as “Handel’s librettist” between 1713-28. What is intriguing about this is firstly that Mr Swiny’s Italian was good enough to render a decent English translation from an Italian libretto and secondly that Haym was credited as being the composer of Camilla when in fact he was patently Bononcini’s arranger. In 1708 Haym was once again commissioned to arrange music from an existing opera – this time by Scarlatti – to produce the opera, Pirro e Demetrio. (It also included 18 of his own arias.) For this Haym was paid £300. He was also credited with Dorinda (1712) and Creso (1714) as “set on ye stage by Mr Haym” and for Lucio Vero (1715) at the King’s (formerly Queen’s) Theatre “Ye Musick was managed by Nic Haym.”

In 1712 Haym and two fellow musicians and concert promoters were accused of blocking the performance of Italian opera in London. They wrote a letter to the Spectator, protesting that, “The Songs of different Authors injudiciously put together and a foreign Tone and Manner which are expected in every Thing now performed amongst us, has put Musick itself to a stand; insomuch as the Ears of the People cannot be entertained by any Thing but what has an impertinent Gayety, without any just Spirit; or a Languishment of Notes without any Passion or common Sense.” So Nicola Haym, (who, despite his Italian forenames, was of German extraction,) was instrumental in ensuring opera seria in the Italian style was presented with some modicum of integrity, rather than being bowdlerized in the manner of Cibber’s Richard III.

By 1706 the Queen’s Theatre was leased to Swiny by Sir John Vanbrugh for
£5 “in the acting day.” By 1708 his opera season (part of the theatre’s programme) was sufficiently established to generate subscribers. One of Vanbrugh’s letters to the Earl of Manchester states, “He has a good deal of money in his pocket that he got before by the acting company and is willing to venture it upon the singers.” He brought the famous castrato, Niccolini over to star in Pirro e Demetrio. Despite Niccolini’s bitter complaints about the terms of his contract – drafted and negotiated by Swiny – Niccolini was paid the extortionate sum of 800 guineas per annum. Because the intention was to honour the crowned heards of Europe, Italian opera seria was intended to be a magnificent spectacle, employing the finest singers, players, sets, stage conceits and even full armies and fleets (in the case of some Hasse opera performances.) As the costs escalated, interest in the art form began slowly to wane. Perhaps it is not surprising that by 1713 Swiny was forced to flee his creditors. It was not until 1735 that he was allowed to return the UK (presumably as a discharged bankrupt) and had changed his name to MacSwiney.

Swiny resumed his association from his base in Venice with Italian opera in London by 1724, in which season the libretto of Ariosti’s Artaserse was dedicated to him. Much of his correspondence with the Duke of Richmond, who was elected Deputy Governor of the Royal Academy in 1726, survives. Swiny appears to have undertaken a dual role in Italy as an agent for Venetian painters as well as for the finest Italian singers of the day. In 1724 Haym was deputised to write to Swiny in Venice to ask him to report on the greatest operatic productions in the Italian theatres of the day. Swiny’s response was to snub Haym and send his own vision of the Italian opera in London directly to the Duke of Richmond. It appears he understood his role to be the recommendation of libretti and Italian singers to grace the stage of the Royal Academy. Firstly he had to contend with the composer, Bononcini and castrato, Berenstadt who tried to ensure only their friends obtained the privilege of singing on the London stage.

Both Richmond and Swiny were very keen to import Faustina to the Academy, but were opposed by other directors of the Academy as well as singers already based in London. It took two years of negotiation before Faustina eventually appeared in Alessandro. After that the Academy tried to remove Cuzzoni, the existing prima donna, by offering her less money than Faustina. However the feisty soprano maintained her connection with the Academy beyond the term of its first incarnation, which closed after the 1727-8 season.

In 1725 Swiny was asked to approach both Gizzi and Carestini, possibly because Senesino was proving an unreliable employee, often feigning ill health. He failed to secure their services and in 1728 suggested Farinelli would be more of a draw. Sadly for the Academy, Swiny reported that the singer wished to continue his studies “in the Lombard manner” and could not be persuaded. Subsequently Farinelli was briefly heard in the rival establishment, The Opera of the Nobility.

When it comes to a choice of vehicle with which to present Faustina to the British public, Swiny credits himself with the choice of Venceslao as a libretto. He vetoed Partenope on the basis the opera only worked in Italy because of the “depravity” of the audience. After the premiere in Venice of Porpora Siface he claimed this drama would never work because the protagonists were all vicious and would not elicit compassion from a more refined English audience. When he heard that the Haym-Handel partnership had in fact launched her with Alessandro, he asked to receive a score: his response was predictable. This was the worst book he had ever read and the weakest score Handel had so far written. Swiny tried too to be a precursor of Giovanni Ricordi and put himself in charge of costumes and scenery as well as the music, but the Academy, lurching towards its first demise, was reluctant to import his preferred Italian designers at significant cost.

Despite Swiny’s hopes for Venceslao, because of delays in the postal service it was another libretto handpicked by Swiny and sent on horseback from Venice – Elpidia -which became Handel’s first pasticcio for the Royal Academy. This marks the first time the operatic music of Leonardo Vinci had been heard outside Italy. In the manuscript in the British Library, the published score is misattributed as “Opera de Leonardo Vinci a Londra 11 Mai 1725.” Swiny’s correspondence regarding Elpidia makes it clear that the majority of arias which feature in the pasticcio are taken from Vinci’s Rosmira, Ifigenia and Orlandini Berenice, all three of which were premiered in Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo at Carnival 1725. As to why Swiny chose this particular libretto by Apostolo Zeno, one can only presume he came across it being reincarnated by Vignatti (a Milanese court composer) for performance in Venice at Ascension in 1726. In a letter dated January 23rd 1726 Swiny refers to a payment of £50 for “the opera of Elpidia.” Of this sum, £40 went “for copying the score, and Vinci’s regalo.” According to Markstrom, if Swiny chose the libretto and the best arias of the 1725 Venetian season, “Handel’s role would have been limited to composing the recitative and rehearsing and conducting the new opera.”Elpidia

John H Roberts has postulated that, because of this reference to £40 and the fact that the extant scores appear not to feature the hand of either Handel or his known copyists, plus the attribution of the manuscript in the British Library to Vinci rather than Handel, the score of Elpidia might have been composed or prepared by Vinci himself in Venice. This might explain why the published libretto is only in Italian without the usual verbatim (as opposed to performing) translation into English.

However one has to ask why Vinci would put together an opera which he was never to hear, wasn’t going to rehearse and conduct and, perhaps more to the point, why would he cobble something together for a mere £40 including copying when Haym in London was paid £300 for his arrangement of Scarlatti? I prefer to think that Vinci was rightly paid for providing half the arias included in Elpidia and that the score includes a variety of hands because singers brought in their own favourite arias in many cases. (Certainly the bass arias from Lotti Teofane are written in a completely different hand and their words are also absent from the printed libretto.)

I think it’s likely that whoever edited the Elpidia libretto was also responsible for making the cuts in Leo’s Catone in Utica to create the first Handel pasticcio Opera Settecento premiered at the London Handel Festival. The removal of whole scenes in Elpidia as well as one character (love-interest and all) is very similar to the treatment of Catone; in both cases the original Italian book is virtually unrecognisable. This is presumably what Handel and/or Haym thought worked for a London audience. Having recently heard uncut operas by Hasse, Broschi and Porpora, it is clear that the London audience for Handel’s Italianate operas was not willing to tolerate long stretches of recitative in Italian, much preferring to leap from one engaging aria to the next.

When The Royal Academy dies a second death, we hear no more of Swiny as opera impresario or agent. Swiny turned to his second string as an art dealer. We have all heard of Canaletto, but may not know that it was Swiny in the 1720s who first proposed to the artist that, if he were to create small, topographical views of Venice, his paintings would find a market in the UK. The other Venetian painter who became an international success in her day, due in no small part to the offices of Mr Swiny, was the pastellist, Rosalba Carriera.
The first illustration which follows is her allegorical portrait of Faustina which hangs in the Die Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, the city which was later to become the epicentre of her husband’s highly successful career. It was not unusual for a portraitist at the time to depict his/her subject as a mythical figure or concept, such as Spring. Dating from some six years later, the portrait of Faustina Bordoni Hasse which hangs in the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, is more modest and, I think a more realistic record of the singer’s character.

Another of Rosalba’s sitters was Lord Boyne. He embarked on his Grand Tour with Edward Walpole, second son of the prime minister and Horace’s brother; they arrived in Venice in time for the carnival of 1730 at which Hasse Artaserse was performed. From there they travelled to Padua, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Florence, meeting on the way none other than Owen Swiny. They returned to Venice in early 1731 and it is thought Rosalba painted Lord Boyne on that occasion. This portrait currently hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One version of this portrait was listed as being in the possession of Owen Swiny at his death. Not only did he enhance the careers of Venetian artists but he also amassed his own collection of their works, including many works by Canaletto which found their way into the Royal Collection.

An interview with Dame Sarah Connolly

By Faye Courtney

Indisputedly one of the finest mezzo-sopranos Britain has ever produced, Dame Sarah Connolly has everything you could wish for in an opera singer: a vocal timbre of richest velvet combined with sensitive, intelligent musicality, a dazzling technique and a commanding stage presence that never ceases to impress, no matter what acting challenges are thrown her way. Though equally at home with Wagner and contemporary opera, Handel has always been very close to her heart, as well as an integral part of her career and she was happy to talk to Handel News about her experiences performing the music of the man she describes as “the ultimate dramatist”.

Do you have a favourite Handel role? “Whichever one I’m singing at the time, I cannot be disloyal to the others” – although she has particularly fond memories of the John Copley production of Semele in San Francisco (2000) where she unusually sang the roles of both Juno and Ino, requiring a somewhat frantic 50 second costume change at one point. Although Dame Sarah has sung in three different productions of Semele, she felt Copley’s 1982 Royal Opera House production was absolutely superb, particularly in the handling of the comic scenes and loved the acting challenges of playing two such contrasting parts. “One minute she comes off stage as a sort of frightening Mrs Thatcher person and then 50 seconds later she goes back on as the meek little sister, and I found that ‘schizophrenic’ side of the character very funny.” She felt somewhat “cheated” that she only got to sing one role (Ino) in the Robert Carsen production for ENO but admits it wouldn’t have been practical to do both, due to the complicated nature of the costumes involved.

The title role of Ariodante is also very special, although naturally does not provide her with the same opportunities for comedy. Though there are usually no laughs in that opera, she notes that the character of Polinesso does have the possibility to get the audience on side (particularly when played by a natural stage animal like Christophe Dumaux), and Sir David McVicar’s 2018 Vienna production absolutely understood the comedy potential of Polinesso trapping somebody as gullible and easy prey as Ariodante. Yet the Richard Jones production she performed (in Aix-en-Provence and Amsterdam) had no comic elements whatsoever and was a “deeply nasty” affair, with Polinesso depicted as a violent sexual predator. It is this ability of different directors to portray Handel’s characters in such different ways that she finds so fascinating. In terms of technical challenges, she finds the role of Ariodante the hardest, followed by Xerxes – particularly as you need a very ‘gymnastic’ voice with a big, flexible range to sing arias like “Se bramate” and “Crude furie”. In comparison, the role of Giulio Cesare is not about range but does require coloratura, whereas Semele’s Juno is more about the character than vocal challenges.

Concerning da capo ornamentation, Dame Sarah always makes a point of starting fresh and usually writes her own, and in the past she has collaborated with her singing teacher Gerald Martin Moore, who is also an expert harpsichordist. While rehearsing Xerxes and Alcina at ENO, she found herself at odds with Sir Charles Mackerras, who expected the entire cast to use the same decorations he had written for completely different singers in past productions. Although he eventually, grudgingly allowed her to use her own ornaments at ENO, the two artists later came to a complete impasse in a San Francisco Semele, when he asked her to sing ornaments he had written for Felicity Palmer, including a “comedy bottom G sharp” which Dame Sarah barely had in her voice back in 2000. She politely pointed out that her voice was totally different to Felicity’s and requested to sing a top G sharp instead but Sir Charles took umbrage at this and literally stopped speaking to her for an entire week! On opening night she baked home-made biscuits as presents for her castmates and left some for Sir Charles with a note saying “I’m sorry if you think I’ve been difficult, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I have to tailor make my decorations to suit my voice. Being given something that isn’t suitable for my voice just won’t work and I’m very sorry if you’ve found this a problem – blame the Irish in me!”. Just before curtain up, he popped his head around her door and said “Thanks for the biccies – I’m half Scottish, you know….Mackerras!” and grinned at her. From that point onwards he couldn’t have been nicer and actually went out of his way to publicly praise her musicianship at a Handel convention in San Francisco, where she was replacing a pregnant Patricia Bardon. Very interestingly, after this incident Sir Charles Mackerras stopped insisting that singers used his decorations.

Dame Sarah has sung Handel with both modern and period instruments but has a definite preference for the latter. She notes the enormous difference it makes, particularly for a high-lying role like Agrippina, where the tessitura feels much more comfortable at the lower baroque pitch. “Because the violins play largely without vibrato, you find yourself as a singer automatically trying to pair the vocal line, expression and phrasing with that of the obbligato solo instrument or just general string sound”. She credits the ten years she spent working with Philippe Herreweghe with influencing the way she sings baroque music; eschewing anything remotely resembling a 19th century sound.

Renowned for her trouser roles, Dame Sarah’s incarnations of male characters are so convincing that one frequently sees confused audience members flicking through their programmes for clarification. While aware of the conceit that she’s a woman playing a man, her approach always starts with the psychology of a character; who he was in history and who Handel intended him to be, and she reads as much as she can about any real-life characters she portrays. Though she feels Julius Caesar definitely had ‘sex appeal’, the main ingredient which makes him attractive is a combination of fear and power, as is still the case today with other men in high office. On the first day of Giulio Cesare rehearsals at Glyndebourne, director David McVicar asked her to improvise the opening scene, which prompted her to naturally sit down on a chair in the centre of the stage – an idea McVicar loved. “That’s something I’ve noticed about all heads of state, including Donald Trump” she remarks, “Trump has learned many things about power, and he’s learned that the person who is seated is the most powerful person in the room”. For that reason (but not because of Donald Trump!) she sings most of the aria “Empio, dirò, tu sei” in a seated position, even though it wasn’t easy and she had to contend with the discomfort of the breast plate on her costume constantly riding up towards her neck.

Why does she think the major international houses programme Handel so infrequently? She feels this lies squarely on the shoulders of the programme planners but also mentions the practical difficulties of either getting in a specialist period orchestra (at considerable extra expense) or using a house orchestra whose musicians are usually not experts in performing baroque music – with the noted exception of the ENO orchestra, who Mackerras trained brilliantly for so many years. “One could easily sell Handel if it’s well directed and well sung. It’s a crime to make Tamerlano boring, an absolute crime. I just think some directors have no business going anywhere near Handel, to be honest, or any opera for that matter. By all means do Handel, but make sure you hire a director who loves it – and who gets it. If you don’t get it, go away!”. She firmly believes that Handel operas don’t need enormous budgets or lavish 18th century brocade costumes to be successful and that with the right singers and a director who really understands what’s going on, a piece like Tamerlano could still be great if set in a simple black box.

On her Handelian wish list, she’d love to sing Dejanira in Hercules and feels she’s the right age to sing it. She would also love to do staged versions of Jephtha, Solomon and Theodora, noting how successfully staged oratorios can work if handled sensitively, such as Peter Sellars did at Glyndebourne. Although recordings are currently off the table in this present Covid world, she does hope to record some more Handel oratorios in the future.

Dame Sarah was widely praised for being so open and honest about her breast cancer diagnosis last summer, an attitude which many found inspiring. She recalled how she Googled ‘opera singers with cancer’ but could only find information about those who had sadly died of the disease, such as Lorraine Hunt and Tatiana Troyanos. She thought “What about the ones who survived it? Where are they?” and had to ask her colleagues who else had experienced cancer, so they could help with her questions about the effects chemotherapy has on the voice. Thankfully she has now finished both chemotherapy and radiotherapy but found the treatments horrendously gruelling; “My vocal cords dried up, my whole throat got swollen and my body was in such pain I couldn’t use the support muscles in my ribcage or my abdominals – everything hurt”. She found herself thinking “Why sing right now? Why bother?” and instead chose to use the time to listen to plays and audio books, as listening to music was too upsetting.

Another result of going public was the enormous outpouring of support she received from friends, colleagues and fans alike, something for which she feels incredibly grateful. Her visibility also meant that she was able to provide vital moral support and be “like a sister” to several other musicians with cancer, who didn’t know who else to talk to during their treatment because nobody in the music profession in general discusses this subject. As well as this desire to break down the ‘taboo’ of cancer not being spoken about in the music world, she didn’t want to become the subject of rumour and speculation that perhaps she was cancelling because she couldn’t sing any more. “These ghastly, gossipy people in the opera world, they’re going to start creating fantasy stories. And anyway, I couldn’t find anything online about women singers with cancer who’d survived and I thought ‘I’m going to flipping well do it, I’m going to say I’ve got breast cancer, there’s no shame’. And if people don’t want to give me work as a result of that then shame on them!”

For the future, Dame Sarah particularly looks forward to singing new music specifically written for her voice, including eight songs Mark-Anthony Turnage has recently composed for her. She would also love to sing in operas about contemporary issues which are relevant to everyone today. An opera about Brexit, perhaps? “Why not? It’s the biggest upheaval in our times and Handel certainly wrote about issues of the day via his music”. Perhaps one day someone will compose that Brexit opera and cast Dame Sarah as Angela Merkel……

Too Much Blood? Music and Mysticism in Handel’s Brockes Passion

Thelma Lovell

‘… the experience of the Holy: terror, bliss, and recognition of an absolute authority … the most thrilling and impressive combination of these elements occurs in sacrificial ritual: the shock of the deadly blow and flowing blood, the bodily and spiritual rapture of festive eating’ (Walter Burkert: Homo Necans)

Baroque is something of a catch-all term but if, as Willi Apel puts it, ecstasy and exuberance are two of its defining characteristics, then the Brockes Passion is a paradigm example of that cultural era. Yet while Handelians feast on the music (as they did during the Academy of Ancient Music’s recent superlative performance at the Barbican on Good Friday 2019) can the text be considered equally palatable to a modern sensibility? Does its undisguised fervour veer into melodrama, too crudely graphic to conform to our ideas of the spiritual?

We are so much more familiar with the deep ocean swell of Bach’s great structures in the St Matthew Passion as the ne plus ultra of sacred music. The comparison, however, is not between better or worse, but of which route to take to the heart of the religious mystery. Roughly speaking, Bach awes us from within to make us receptive to the Passion story. For Handel it is a more empirical process, from the concrete to the abstract; it is through insight into human agency and motivation that the deeper meaning filters through. Hence the Brockes re-telling was the ideal vehicle for such a natural dramatist – and it is worth remembering, as Ruth Smith observed in her fine article ‘Handel’s Brockes Passion: a Unique Composition’ in Handel News No.74 (January 2019), that the composer adhered closely to the instructions of his librettist.

If we flinch at parts of the Brockes Passion, then that is as it should be. Like it or not, we are willing voyeurs of, and thus in a sense participants in, a primeval sacrificial ritual that strengthens social bonds. An anthropologist – Durkheim comes to mind – would instantly recognise the choreographed interplay of tensions whose release can only come with the shedding of blood. This is the essence of the sacred, the mystery of mysteries that ensures divine protection for the community. The opening reference to disease that can only be cured by such means is a familiar theological trope, as for instance in Bach’s cantata 25 (Es ist nicht Gesundes an meinem Leibe), with its catalogue of suppurating horrors (at least Brockes is content with a boil or two). And then we are plunged straight into the Eucharist: the symbolic (or, for a Catholic, the actual) consuming of the victim’s flesh and blood.

This, in a nutshell, comprises the entire programme of the work. But its necessary expansion gives writer and composer much to do. For instance, there is the interplay of three layers of audience; we are watching the Daughter of Zion and the Believing Soul as they themselves watch and comment on the central events. The complex story is propelled onward with Baroque energy in a succession of distinct scenes and, most importantly, through Handel’s variety of mood and characterisation. Conflict, the motor of all drama, is everywhere. Peter’s battles with himself are a case in point: how better could we understand repentance and shame than through his three highly personal arias with their transition from militant bravado to vocal nakedness as he stands unarmed, and that final howl at the admission of defeat? There are powers beyond his control: the force majeure of the angry mob and, most painfully, his own inner limitations as he accepts that his courage has failed.

The panoply of arias for the Daughter of Zion and the Believing Soul – not especially long, but all full of concentrated emotional expression – present an ideal vehicle for Handel as painter of feeling. They embody the Christian collective torn by its own conflicted vision of the Passion: anger, disgust, pity and anguish are on display, but also a kind of horrified desire. The rite has to be fulfilled; in spite of the animal barbarity, the ending of the whole work is one of joy and relief. In the final aria all tears can – indeed must – be wiped away, for this one death brings salvation to all.

But what about the victim himself? He too is drawn into the irresistible nexus of sacrifice, though as a man he wishes desperately to avoid the physical agony. Here, Brockes and Handel jointly stage a scene thick with apprehension. We hear Christ’s juddering heartbeat as he begs his Father to spare him the fated ordeal. There is a particularly eloquent harmonic colouring (the deadness of the flattened supertonic) as he at last yields to the divine will; only thus will he too accede to divinity. The Daughter of Zion then interposes a commentary identifying the source of pollution that corrupts the community and can only be expunged by the death of Christ: it is the monster (Scheusal) of human sin.

Fast forward to the most psychologically difficult part of the Brockes Passion: the prolonged allusion to torture in music of sublime beauty – notably Dem Himmel gleicht and Die Rosen krönen. As Brockes emphasises the physical vulnerability of Christ, the mangling of the flesh, the blood, sweat and tears that brutality exacts, we may well wonder what all this has to do with spirituality. But that is precisely the point: the mystery of the sacred is heightened, not lessened, by the contrast between flesh and spirit. Belief in their reconciliation demands a correspondingly enormous investment of faith which, having once been made, is all the securer for the effort involved. But how is this to be achieved? The answer here is surely music as surrogate and enabler of the synaptic leap between logic and faith – a glimpse of aural heaven amidst the gore. In true Baroque fashion, Affekt is all-conquering, subjecting the evidence of reason to a different sort of power. Perhaps it is music itself that is sacred – benign or dangerous, depending on its uses, but undeniably a mystery.

Spreading the Love

Tatty Theo

As Handel News readers may remember, in the January 2015 issue (No.62) I wrote about The Brook Street Band’s commitment to its education programme, bringing live music and that of Handel (in particular) into schools and educational settings. The National Plan for Music Education states that ‘great music education is a partnership between classroom teachers, specialist teachers, professional performers and a host of other organisations’. Over the past few years, The Brook Street Band has considerably expanded its education programme, working with increasing numbers of children at primary and secondary level, in schools and for music hubs.

The Band feels hugely privileged to be able to share its passion for baroque music with young people. Aside from its concert performances and CD recordings, its education programme has formed a large and growing part of the Band’s work, all the more compelling and more urgently needed since arts provision often falls by the wayside in many schools’ curricula. Increasingly, studies correctly identity the need for music-making in our lives, giving young people a set of skills for life, based not just on musical ability, but also friendship, communication, commitment, working as a team and problem-solving, amongst other things. Handel’s music and life story provides the perfect vehicle to inspire a younger generation, bridging the gap between the 18th and 21st centuries. The many parallels between Handel’s time and modern life are brought vividly to life by the Band’s passion for sharing stories and insights about Handel and his music. Handel is such a colourful character: the huge variety in the types of music he composed – music for domestic settings, opera houses, Royalty, church and state occasions – ensure that it has universal appeal.

The Brook Street Band’s work in 2019 builds on its delivery of education projects over the past seven years, but especially its 2017 education programme, which saw a huge leap in the numbers of students the Band was able to reach, particularly through its inaugural ‘love: Handel’ festival and associated education projects in Norwich. The Band continues this important and highly rewarding work this autumn, again linked to its festival (to be held in Norwich on 4-6 October 2019), bringing live performances of 18th-century music on period instruments into Norfolk and Norwich schools, and reaching up to 2,700 students with whole-school assemblies, workshops, and specialised work with string and woodwind players in the county. The Band has secured funding from various sources (including Arts Council England, The Atkin Foundation, The Charles Peel Charitable Trust, The Chivers Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, The John Jarrold Trust and The RK Charitable Trust Ltd) to work in nine primary and secondary schools in the autumn term, providing some of these with several visits, working at greater depth to produce concerts for students’ peers and their parents and carers.

This is linked to work the Band has been delivering for Cambridgeshire Music as part of the #Roots project: a multi-partnered project, taking place over several years in conjunction with Cambridge Early Music, Cambridge University, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridgeshire Music and VOCES8. The Band is delivering the instrumental strand of the project, working with young people across Cambridgeshire to form a county-wide baroque orchestra, complete with access to baroque bows, and specialist tuition from members of The Brook Street Band. The founding members of the #Roots baroque orchestra will join the Band on-stage for one of the concerts in the ‘love: Handel’ festival, firmly placing the Band’s work with young people, and its commitment to providing them with access to high-quality baroque music, centre-stage.

As part of the festival, the Band is also working in partnership with Haringey Young Musicians in London, running a three-day ‘Handel in Haringey’ event on 21-23 October 2019. Here, talented young string and woodwind players across the borough will take part in masterclasses, chamber music and orchestra sessions, baroque dance sessions and generally time-travelling back to 1730s London. There will be plenty of opportunities for the young musicians to perform, as well as a professional concert given by The Brook Street Band itself.

So we look forward to working with a new generation of young people this autumn in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and London, inspiring them with our passion for Handel, and starting them on their own journeys to loving this music. For more information on the Band’s education work and its concert programme, please visit www.brookstreetband.co.uk

Playing in Tongues

Joseph Crouch

At pre-concert talks and post-concert Q&A sessions, period instrumentalists are often asked to explain the differences between a baroque and modern instrument. Answers normally focus on our relatively soft dynamic range, our darker resonance, the various challenges faced in playing instruments that lack later technological ‘advances’. While these observed variations are certainly true, they do not sound to me like compelling reasons to use our ‘period’ instruments, so I prefer to celebrate our clear advantages. First among these, for a string player, is that the combination of gut strings and a convex-curved bow gives us access to consonant sounds that steel strings and a modern bow find almost impossible to replicate. The modern bow is custom-designed to produce long, arcing, unbroken lines; it is the perfect tool for ‘painting’ sound, but it cannot match the eloquence of its baroque ancestor. So when – at a recent pre-performance discussion of Handel’s setting of the Brockes Passion – I was asked what impression the text made on me as an instrumentalist, it presented a rare opportunity. This is a slightly fuller version of my answer that day.

The question was posed in the context of a discussion about the text’s emotional content: highly wrought, often startlingly gory and deliberately disturbing. What is different about playing Brockes’s text in Handel’s setting compared to, say, an operatic story of royal intrigues, of heroism, love, lust and treachery? In terms of the emotional content of the texts the answer is, surprisingly, not much. In the end, although we might argue about the relative weight and significance of the stories, the emotions we are representing and evoking are rather similar; whether the librettist is Barthold Brockes or Nicola Haym, whether the story is religious or secular, the full range of human emotion is presented.

Furthermore, while instrumentalists as well as singers try to respond to Handel’s use of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic rhetorical devices, these devices are, in truth, often strikingly similar even when being used to depict very different characters and stories. Handel’s well-known penchant for recycling material – evident here in Sind meiner Seelen tiefe Wunden, re-used a few years later in Giulio Cesare as Cara Speme – means that the rhetorical tools used in the Tochter Zion aria immediately before the death of Christ are the same as those Handel employs to depict Sesto’s hope and anticipation of revenge. It is not easy for the cellist’s bow to delineate the differences between the hope for revenge and the hope for salvation! But that is not to say that we play the continuo lines for the two arias the same way; if the finer meanings of the text are difficult to explicate with the bow, then the linguistic sounds themselves are not. For an instrumentalist the difference between Cara Speme and Sind meine Seelen is not so much one of semantics but rather one of phonetics; the reason that the Passion is so different from Giulio Cesare is not only because of Barthold Brockes’s gospel paraphrases and highly poetic arias but simply because Brockes writes in German.

Singers work for years on clarity of diction, whether or not they are singing in their native tongue. In order to accompany them well, we instrumentalists should be prepared to do the same; playing parlante does not mean simply playing non-legato, but rather it involves creating musical phrases made up of words, syllables, vowels and consonants. The baroque string player’s right hand corresponds to the lips, teeth and tongue of the singer. The right arm, in turn, is analogous to the lungs and diaphragm. It follows that a string player’s inhalations are created by lifting the bow, which not only gives us a useful and visible way of physicalising the breath, but also reminds us that – just as the position and manner of intakes of breath are part of the singer’s rhetorical armoury – the lift of the bow should be just as carefully considered as its contact. Stopped consonants (d, b, t, k, etc.), glottals, and vocalised consonants (m, n, j, etc.) can all be concocted by the string player’s right hand; we can vary bow speed, bow angle, point of contact (distance from bridge), position and degree of exertion of fingers on the bow stick/hair, and the pronation of the wrist. A plosive ‘t’, for instance, is made with an angled wrist that allows the first finger to exert more force on the bow. The strength of the consonant depends partly on degree of pronation and exertion of the first finger and partly on the amount of time for which the air flow is restricted (i.e. the bow is still). The speed of bow at the point of release governs the strength of the plosive release; then, as the bow slows down and the right hand disengages, the syllable moves seamlessly from consonant to vowel. Because of the prevalence of plosive consonants in German (especially compared to Italian) it is easy to see the value for instrumentalists in learning to copy different vocal and linguistic articulations; by controlling the way the fingers of the right hand contact the bow stick and hair, and by treating speed of bow like the flow of air, we can make articulations of infinite variety that correspond not only to language generally but to specific languages.

Fricative consonants (the unvocalised sounds created by forcing air through a constricted channel) are an especially expressive feature of German: witness Judas’s onomatopoeically self-lacerating consonants in zerreißt mein Fleisch, zerquetscht die Knochen. These fricative sounds (z, sch, tsch, ch, zw, schw, etc.) are very hard to emulate with the bow, simply because – unlike the human voice – a string instrument cannot easily make long un-pitched, ‘a-musical’ sounds; our attempts in this area tend to mask or even obliterate the singers’ text rather than enhancing it. Here, it is much better that we match the length, colour and stress of the vowel sounds, leaving space for the singers to be clear and expressive with their consonants. The great challenge is to play in such a way as to leave space for the fricatives without allowing our own line to break, so that the instrumentalist’s syllables (i.e. bow strokes) can join together into words even though there might be silent space between them. For a singer, this is a question of making sure that the vowel is joined to the consonant sounds either side of it. For the bow, it is a question again of managing the bow speed (i.e. breath) and of keeping the bow on the string so as to articulate the sounds without breaking the line. In the Tochter Zion aria Sprichst du denn auf dies Verklagen, for example, the first word contains a short, bright vowel surrounded by two pairs of fricatives and plosives; the second word begins with a stop consonant connected to a long, dark and unstressed vowel; the third is dominated by a nasal consonant. Working out how to create these sounds with our bow is the constant game of playing in German. Of course it is also true of other languages, but the less percussive, more obviously linear musicality of the Italian language, and the predominance of the vowels as the carriers of expression, make the challenges and the techniques used rather different.

For singers the job of communicating text is overt, so the challenges faced in changing language are at least clear, if not easy. Baroque instrumentalists are, of course, well used to playing music in different languages too, but the lexicon we have traditionally used to describe our articulations (‘short’, ‘long’, ‘legato’, ‘staccato’, ‘accented’, ‘smooth’) are entirely insufficient to allow us to approach different languages in different ways. Once we accept the notion of replicating specific linguistic sounds, we can bring not only our accompaniments but also our purely instrumental music to life in a very different and more eloquent way. It was hearing Handel’s music – so familiar to me in Italian – with German texts that really brought this reality home, but the repercussions stretch beyond Handel, beyond operas and oratorios, and into concerti and dance suites and early symphonies too. In instrumental music we may lack the semantic specificity that spoken languages offer, but by employing the full variety of sounds borrowed from any and all languages we can play not only parlante, but sprechend, too.

Joseph Crouch is principal cellist of The English Concert and co-principal cellist of the Academy of Ancient Music. The new AAM recording of the Brockes Passion, the first to be based on all the available early sources, is to be published in October 2019.

Singing Handel, Then and Now

Richard Wistreich

If you attend a performance of a Handel opera or oratorio these days, the chances are it may still be billed, perhaps rather self-consciously, as being ‘historically-informed’ – though increasingly it is no longer considered necessary to draw attention to such exceptionality, because this has become the norm. Our ears (and eyes) are now fully acclimatised to the light and agile playing of gut-strung instruments with short, light bows; the pungent, stringy sounds of baroque oboes and bassoons; the almost reedy, piercing quality of narrow-bore, valveless trumpets and horns; and the dry crack of shallow, calf-skin headed timpani beaten with hardwood sticks. Even the harpsichord, that for a good half-century has been a standard member of the Handel orchestra, has now come into its own as a richly variegated binding agent in the overall sound-palette, rather than being just a dry, percussive clatter disturbing the seamless homogeneity of modern orchestral texture; and as often as not, it is reinforced in the continuo section by a theorbo or two. This lustrous, multi-coloured sound-tool of the ‘Baroque orchestra’, in the hands of skilled and committed players, steeped in the style and fully aware of role they play in the dramatic fabric of Handel’s music, is one of the most exciting developments of the past 30 or so years of the aural experience of this music we love. Indeed, for many people, hearing Handel’s music played on ‘modern instruments’, however well phrased and articulated – but with little differentiation from that of Mozart, Beethoven or Mendelssohn – feels like a distinct disappointment.

Meanwhile, however arresting the transformation in the sound of Handel’s orchestral textures, what can you expect to hear from the most important people to whom you are listening ? the singers? The human larynx may not have evolved over the past 300 years, but the almost infinite number of different sounds that it can produce means that there could be an equally wide range of possibilities for informed hypothesis and experimentation by ‘historically-informed’ singers (one only needs to listen to the huge variety of different singing styles currently in use across genres outside classical music to get a sense of what the singing voice is capable of). Surely, it would be a betrayal of the entire ‘historical performance’ project, and very likely to produce a strange distortion of the aural picture, if the vocal dimension of Handel’s music had not been subjected to the same kind of review and renovation as has happened to the orchestra.

You may well think that this is indeed just what has occurred over the past half-century. Thus, in general, you are probably less likely to hear voices and singing styles more appropriate to Verdi, Wagner or Puccini performing Handel than you might have been in earlier times, although the pace of this change sometimes seems to be painfully halting: a case of two steps forward, one – or sometimes two – steps back. Singers with lighter and more agile voices (particularly sopranos and some tenors) who spend much of their lives performing pre-1800 music are probably more often cast in major productions of Handel’s operas than they once were; although this rarely extends to the huge 19th-century metropolitan opera houses that, thanks rather ironically to the success of the Handel opera ‘revival’, increasingly schedule works that were written for much smaller spaces. Many managers seem to think they have to fill the stage not only with strangely distracting productions, but also to cast singers with vocal techniques designed and honed for the sheer power and decibels necessary to get across a big orchestra and up to the back row of the upper circle.

When it comes to musical style, professional Handel singers these days are more likely to add ornamentation – usually more or less appropriate – to the da capo sections of arias; although very few yet do as their 18th-century predecessors did and actually improvise – or, more accurately, compose – on the spot, new melodic material in the repeats. Indeed, once you have read just a fraction of the evidence about early 18th-century professional singing technique and style contained in contemporary teaching manuals, memoirs, and scientific literature, it quickly becomes clear that (for reasons which are too complex to interrogate in detail here) while there has been a consistent and pretty rigorous approach to recovering historical instrumental sounds and playing techniques over the course of many years, vocal sound has barely budged. It remains ‘the elephant in the room’ of historically informed Handel performance.

Why does any of this matter? First, because of the perplexing mismatch between the vocal and the instrumental components that make up the ‘new’ musical soundscape. The disconnect between the orchestral and singing sounds you will normally encounter in performances of Baroque music, even those whose musical directors are particularly associated with ‘historically informed’ performance, is perhaps even more bewildering than some aspects of contemporary stagings of Handel opera. Among the latter is the terror many theatrical directors apparently have of allowing singers simply to stand still while performing their arias, as they did in Handel’s time, enabling them and the audience to focus on the rhetorical power of the music’s vocality alone to express the emotions of an arrested moment in the drama, rather than trying to make movement and business do the interpretational work.

What, then, are the main differences between the sounds of ‘modern singing’ and the way that singers these days learn their craft and, based on what we can surmise from the evidence, they might have been like in Handel’s time? To begin with perhaps the most obvious, the pursuit of ‘historicism’ has not yet – thankfully – overcome the taboo against reinstating the castrati who were so essential to the whole effect of 18th-century opera seria. However, the typical ‘solution’ normally adopted for the casting of heroic male soprano roles over the past 30-40 years with male falsettists (rather anachronistically called ‘counter-tenors’) was largely a decision based on the priorities of theatrical realism (‘men must be played by men’), rather than the likelihood that the way that modern counter-tenors produce their voices actually most closely approximates to the sound of castrati – any more than that of modern female sopranos, now increasingly being cast to play such roles, dressed in male costumes. Indeed, when it comes to vocal production in general (and this includes all voice types, from soprano down to bass), notwithstanding the earnest commitment of some musical directors to enforcing ‘historically informed’ style (at least in the music, as they rarely have any say in the production style), all the ‘surface’ effects they demand of their singers – attention to ornamentation in particular, but also matters of phrasing, articulation and dynamics – are essentially ‘instrumental’ effects that sidestep the fundamental, but also potentially troubling, implications of attempting reconstruction of Baroque vocal production itself, and hence its sound.
Today’s professional Handel singers, especially in opera, are almost exclusively products of conservatoire vocal education, which has been progressively cemented into a fairly universal ‘method’. This found its most thorough manifestation back in the mid-19th century: Manuel García the younger’s Traité complet de l’art du chant, published in Paris in 1840 and subsequently reworked in English in 1847. García, trained in the master-apprentice system (initially taught by his father, Manuel the elder, a famous early 19th-century Mozart singer who also created roles for Rossini), exercised a commanding influence as a pedagogue, first in France and then in England, for more almost three-quarters of a century. He began teaching at the Paris Conservatoire in 1829, became professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1847, where he taught for over 50 years, and lived to the age of 102. The legacy of his method (still in use to this day) continues to dominate classical vocal training right across the world. The treatise effectively lays out the technical principles of modern classical singing: in particular, the process by which singers can consciously elongate the vocal tract by gently depressing the larynx and keeping it depressed as the voice ascends through its pitch register, at the same time lifting the soft palate and projecting the sound forwards to maximise the natural resonances of the facial cavities. With careful control, achieved through concentrated training, the effect of this is that the voice finds a particularly advantageous frequency band, known as ‘the singers’ formant’. This is what enables opera singers’ voices to carry over big orchestras and fill large auditoria without the need for artificial amplification, and for them to maintain equal power throughout the whole vocal range, from low to high.

This production is ‘mechanically’ highly efficient, and when done correctly, involves little or no vocal strain. However, the downsides include the necessity to modify vowel sounds, a result of maintaining the elongation of the vocal tract particularly as the voice reaches its upper range, in order to maintain a consistent ‘ring’; this is the reason why it is often difficult to hear differences between opera singers’ vowels (something particularly detrimental to the pure vowels of the Italian language of Handel’s operas). Another disadvantage is the relatively high sub-glottal breath pressure needed to maintain such vocal carrying power. This seriously mitigates against the natural flexibility of the larynx that is essential for achieving truly rapid coloratura, including trills and highly articulated runs – both key elements in the armoury of the vocal effects which characterised virtuoso and affective singing style from the Renaissance until at least the early 19th century. Nevertheless, even professional ‘early music singers’ (including, by the way, counter-tenors), employ this form of vocal production, essentially because it is the recognised ‘sound of classical singing’.

By contrast, vocal training before the Romantic era was focused on a number of distinctly different priorities, which are in turn reflected in the various forms of written vocal music from the mid-16th until the mid-19th centuries, and are a particularly distinctive feature of opera and oratorio from the ‘long 18th century’. If there is a counterpart to Manual García for this era, it is probably the castrato and voice teacher Pier Francesco Tosi’s Opinioni de’ cantori antichi e moderni (1723), which effectively summarises the principal elements of vocal training going back to the mid-17th century, when Tosi learned his art. Thanks to subsequent translations and updatings of his book, these elements remained largely unchanged until well into the 19th century. Tosi describes the process of gradually and systematically developing the young singer’s natural voice into a flexible and expressive instrument (he recommends starting studies aged 12, 13 or 14, although many, especially girls, began much earlier). Instead of striving for unity of sound quality across the whole range, the aim was strong differentiation of the two registers, chest and falsetto, while making the transition between them seamless (tenors, for example, changed over into falsetto above a certain point, rather than pushing the chest voice up into the head as they do now). An exercise called messa di voce (literally ‘placing the voice’) focused on producing a perfect swelling of every note from very soft to loud and back again without deviation in pitch (wobble). This developed breath control and was also in itself an expressive device to be applied to all long notes in performance. Finally, the singer needed to develop disposizione (disposition, or skill) in order to produce trills and very fast passage-work. This requires the larynx to ‘float’ freely, the breath is kept at a very low pressure, and the coloratura is articulated in the throat (known in Italian as cantar di gorga); this, in turn, reduces the carrying power of the voice. Of all the technical aspects of early 18th-century singing technique, it is this latter which is perhaps most alien to almost all singers trained in the modern classical style.

So, just suppose we were to try to apply such a pedagogical programme – something that would, ironically, be particularly difficult for Handel singers already steeped in modern vocal production – how different might Handel’s vocal music actually sound? The short answer is that singers would have to undertake a lengthy process of experimentation, with completely open minds, just as players of Baroque orchestral instruments have been doing for a long time. The outcome could be a revelation.

Note
Suggestions for further reading:
Potter, J. (2012). Vocal performance in the ‘long eighteenth century’. In The Cambridge History of Musical Performance (eds. Lawson, C. & Stowell, R.), 506-526. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wistreich, R. (2000). Reconstructing pre-Romantic singing technique. In The Cambridge Companion to Singing (ed. Potter, J.), 178-191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Professor Richard Wistreich is Director of Research at the Royal College of Music.

Tragic Voices in Tamerlano

David Kimbell

Discussions of the music of Tamerlano commonly mention three features: (i) the ‘claustrophobic’ restraint of the orchestration, which is felt somehow to match the oppressive stage-sets, all prison-like interiors in the tyrant’s palace; (ii) the gloomy final chorus, in which neither Bajazet (who is dead) nor Asteria (who has gone out to mourn him) play any part; and (iii) the various ways in which Handel shows a more than common seriousness about the recitatives (some simple recitatives are extraordinarily long; there are unusually many accompanied recitatives; in Act III finally the opera comes to its dramatic climax in Bajazet’s great death-scene, it too chiefly composed in varieties of recitative). A sombre piece, then; and these oddities clearly have something to do with the fact that Tamerlano is, of all Handel’s Royal Academy operas, the only one for which the librettist, Nicola Haym, used the term ‘tragedy’.1

In what follows I essay a preliminary investigation of my hunch that this Tamerlano bleakness is inherent in many of the arias too. For all their expressive intensity and the poignancy of the human dilemmas they explore so vividly, one cannot but wonder, comparing them with those in the contemporary Giulio Cesare or Rodelinda, whether they have the same sheer overflowing of generous musical inventiveness that we can so commonly depend on in Handel, ‘the “plein air” composer with the most open of horizons, the inexhaustible and generous melodist’, as Alfred Brendel calls him.2 Has Handel, in Tamerlano, found a ‘tragic’ way of directing this musical inventiveness, beyond the relatively external matters of orchestral austerity and the strategic balancing of recitative and aria?

My starting-point is Handel’s use of coloratura which, far from being one of the frills, is actually one of the principal sources of his power as a composer. When Handel sets an aria text to music (let us envisage one of six lines, of which the first three (a b c) are used in the principal A section of the aria), he commonly begins by setting it in such a way that every syllable of the text of a b c is clearly audible. There may be a few ornamenting notes, there may be a limited amount of coloratura on some important word, one or two words may be repeated; but none of this is enough to break the close link between poetic metre and musical rhythm. Once that phase has been completed, the music’s continuation is likely to become freer and more florid, usually in connection with the modulation to the dominant key and the intermediate ritornello, and often that modulation is clinched with a cadence phrase in which at least part of the text is uttered clearly and emphatically. It is that free ‘continuation’ between the (quasi-)syllabic opening phrase and the vigorous cadence (also often quasi-syllabic) where Handel’s energy, his command of musical architecture and the sheer variousness of his musical imagination, as he heads for the ‘plein air’ and open horizons of Brendel’s metaphor, are best to be enjoyed.

Much of the music of Tamerlano shows exactly this pattern. To cite one example, Irene’s aria No.10, ‘Dal crudel che m’ha tradito’, shows it again and again: after the syllabic presentation of the text in bars 6-10, the complete standard pattern of syllabic opening, florid continuation, and vigorous cadence can be heard in 11-18, 19-26 and 27-32. The more substantial of Andronico’s arias show the same feature, and something of the variety of its possibilities: in Aria No.12, ‘Benché mi sprezzi’, for example, as in so many arias in triple time, broad hemiola cadence phrases – magnificently broad at 61-64 – replace merely emphatic ones. But when we turn to the characters who contribute most vitally to the opera’s tragic vein – Bajazet, Asteria, Tamerlano – the situation is rather different.

One cannot expect a tenor to sing coloratura with the same scintillating verve that a high voice, soprano or castrato, brings to it. Nevertheless, if one compares the coloratura in Bajazet’s role with that sung by Grimoaldo in Rodelinda, a part written for the same singer a few months later, it is clear that the slowness and weightiness of the coloratura in Tamerlano is a deliberately chosen element of style. Much of it might be loosely described as instrumental in character: in No.3, ‘Forte e lieto’, it is poignantly stretched out as he agonises over the dilemma his love for Asteria causes him; in No.8, ‘Ciel e terra armi di sdegno’, it punches the air with the force of a trumpet call; in No.19, ‘A suoi piedi’, after long stretches of syllabically-set music, a few phrases are drawn out with slow-moving, widely spaced coloratura in which every note can be given expressive weight, screwing home the sense of anguish. Rather different, because more rhetorical (by which I mean ‘speech-derived’ rather than ‘instrumental’), is the coloratura in No.35, ‘Empio, per farti guerra’. The idioms of accompanied recitative are much in evidence here: reiterated chords in the orchestra; broken declamatory phrases in the voice, punctuated by orchestral unisoni flourishes; and the style of the coloratura arises from that. It is slow-moving, like all Bajazet’s coloratura 3, but angular too, making extravagant gestures with the voice so-to-speak, as if he were conjuring up the ombra of which he sings.

In Asteria’s music one observes exceptional restraint in the coloratura. In her first aria, No.7, ‘S’ei non mi vuol amar’, there is none. And to give the music the expressive breadth it demands, the undecorated melody is borne on an unusually wide range of modulation. In the principal section of No.9, ‘Deh, lasciatemi’, any ornamental exuberance in the ‘continuation’ is largely due to a florid instrumental descant, which breaks in where we might expect the singer to break out (especially at 54-59). In No.27, ‘Cor di padre’, too, it is the relationship between voice and violins that is critical. During bars 7-12 the whole text of A is sung syllabically, in detached phrases punctuated by jagged instrumental figures, a dialogue of contrasting voices. When it comes to the broadening climax of this phase of the aria, the two voices (Asteria and the violins) entwine, their gently florid lines intensified in expression by the dissonant suspensions (12-14). As in aria No.9, at one point where climactic coloratura might be anticipated (27-28), it is the orchestra that supplies the animating detail while the voice sustains a long note.

As one might anticipate, several of these arias have concordances with other Handel works. The most thought-provoking of them is the first: the concordance between Bajazet’s aria No.3, ‘Forte e lieto’ and the German aria ‘Die ihr aus dunklen Grüften’. 4 In the texts there is an oblique poetic echo: Brockes’s poem contrasts the blindness of those who dig treasure out of dark mines and lock it up in boxes, with the good sense of those who step out into God’s fresh air and rejoice in the treasures he has scattered so generously in Nature. In the darker mood of Tamerlano, the man stepping into the light is only prepared to accept liberty at all – let alone take pleasure in it – because of the love of his daughter. Without that he would rather stride fearlessly to his death, and it is that fearless stride that transforms the incipit of the ritornello, launching into it with a determined, accented falling octave extra to the melodic idea in ‘Die ihr’, and going on to give a teeth-setting grittiness to the rest of the phrase by virtue of the dotted rhythm and tight trills. In the continuation of the ritornello, over a reiterated pedal note, the two arias diverge strikingly again: ‘Die ihr’ rocks easily between dominant and tonic harmonies; ‘Forte e lieto’ at the same juncture quivers with syncopations before plunging into sustained chromatic dissonance.

We see that coloratura in these arias is rarely employed as an expression of ‘purely musical’ energy. It is sometimes avoided altogether, sometimes delegated to the accompanying instruments, often slowed down, broadened out, twisted into unfamiliar shapes to become the principal vehicle of the arias’ expressiveness. Is that an aspect of Handel’s tragic vein?

Notes
1 ‘To the reader’, in the printed libretto (London, 1724). See Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, II, 15, Tamerlano (ed. Terence Best), p. XXXV. All references are to that edition.
2 Brendel, A. (2017). Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures, p.418. London.
3 The exception is No.23, ‘No, no, il tuo sdegno’, where the unexpected turn of events momentarily enables Bajazet to escape from his tragic obsession.
4 We do not know which preceded which. I have written this paragraph as if the Tamerlano aria ‘borrowed’ from the German aria, but the point of the comparision will not be lost if at some time the German aria should prove to be the later composition.

David Kimbell is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh.

Bringing Athalia Home: Handel and the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

Robin Darwall-Smith

In 2019 Oxford will celebrate the 350th anniversary of the inauguration of Christopher Wren’s early masterpiece, the Sheldonian Theatre. Although it was built primarily as a venue for university ceremonies, from the first it led a parallel life as a concert hall, and eminent musicians visiting Oxford, such as Joseph Haydn or Jenny Lind, have performed there – as did Handel.

Handel’s visit to Oxford on 5-12 July 1733 coincided with the University’s ‘Publick Act’. This was a grand festival in which benefactors to the university were commemorated, honorary degrees conferred, and grand Latin orations delivered. The Act had been in abeyance for some years, and special efforts were made to ensure that this would be a special occasion: Handel was invited to Oxford by the Vice-Chancellor of the University.

Handel offered Oxford a rich bill of fare. The ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum and Jubilate were heard in the University Church on 8 July, and Acis and Galatea in Christ Church Hall on the morning of 11 July; while in the Sheldonian Theatre, Handel performed two older oratorios, Esther (on 5 and 7 July), and Deborah (on 12 July), but also offered there on 10 and 11 July the first two performances of a new work, Athalia.

There is debate about whether Handel intended to take a Doctorate in Music at Oxford: some sources claimed that he was even an offered an honorary doctorate, which he declined. Even if that story is mere gossip, Handel never did take a doctorate from Oxford (or, indeed, Cambridge), although he would have had every opportunity to do so in 1733. It has even been suggested that Handel might have preferred to remain ‘Mr. Handel’, to stand apart from such musical doctors as Maurice Greene, whose works he considered inferior.

Handel’s visit to Oxford was rather a daring venture. Even in the 1730s the University of Oxford had a reputation as a haven of Jacobites, and Handel was not only a German, but also a German with close links to George II. The splendidly splenetic Oxford diarist Thomas Hearne, whose support for ‘James III’ had led to his dismissal from his university offices, certainly had no time for Handel. In his diary on 6 July he muttered about ‘Handel and (his lowsy Crew) a great number of forreign fidlers’. Others grumbled at the prices of tickets for Handel’s concerts: a satirical play from later in 1733, The Oxford Act, includes among its characters music-obsessed Fellows and undergraduates bankrupted by attending Handel’s concerts.

Nevertheless, Handel did choose a nicely ambiguous subject for his Oxford oratorio, for the plot of Athalia, about an apostate usurper being overthrown by the rightful (and orthodox) heir, could be read in two very different ways. Loyal Hanoverians could recall the overthrow of the Catholic James II, and the protection of the Protestant religion under the first two Georges; while Jacobites might yearn for the time when George II would be sent back to Germany, and James II’s son re-installed as Britain’s rightful monarch. But Handel had his own ambiguities: for all his close links to the House of Hanover, perhaps his greatest English librettist, Charles Jennens, was a non-juror, opposed to the Hanoverian succession.

Whatever controversies may have been aroused by Handel’s visit to Oxford, he left behind many admirers there. The most notable was the Professor of Music, William Hayes, who established a strong performing tradition of Handel. In 1749, to mark the opening of the Radcliffe Camera, Hayes arranged a Handel festival, giving performances of Esther and Samson, and also Messiah, which until then had never been heard outside Dublin or London.

The tale of Handel’s 1733 Oxford trip might seem now more than an interesting interlude in his life as a whole, were it not for an important accident of history. The Sheldonian Theatre is now arguably the only building standing – and standing in substantially the same condition – in which Handel premiered one of his oratorios.

On 8 June 2019 the Oxford Bach Choir will therefore make its own contribution to the 350th anniversary of the opening of the Sheldonian Theatre by performing Athalia there with its Principal Conductor Benjamin Nicholas, thus offering lovers of Handel’s music the very rare opportunity to hear one of his works performed in the very space in which it was first heard, under the composer’s direction, over 280 years ago.

Note
Further information on Handel’s visit to Oxford may be found in, among other places, Susan Wollenberg’s Music at Oxford in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2001), pp. 23-29.

Robin Darwall-Smith is Archivist of University and Jesus Colleges, Oxford

‘The first great English oratorio’: Handel’s Athalia

Kate Shaw

‘Athalia is the first great English oratorio’: thus begins Winton Dean’s chapter on Athalia in his seminal work on Handel’s oratorios (1). Dean makes little attempt to define the generic label ‘oratorio’ in the context of Handel’s Athalia (1733), instead making the work conform to the theme that runs through his book: that Handel’s oratorios have roots in Classical drama. He, for example, claims that the character of Athalia is ‘a Jewish Clytemnestra’, thereby bypassing the work’s Biblical source and instead anchoring it in the tradition of Greek tragedy.

Philip Brett & George Haggerty (2), the only other scholars hitherto to discuss the work at length, conversely identify Athalia as part of the contemporary British phenomenon of Sentimental drama, which they see as evidenced by ‘the musical enlargement of Josabeth’s role’. The roles of the two leading female characters, Josabeth and Athalia, are defined as Sentimental and Tragic respectively. But Handel’s Josabeth and Athalia are complex characters, for whom such labels swiftly become limiting.

By analysing both Josabeth and Athalia in scenes critical for their character, I seek to demonstrate that they display neither tragedy nor sentimental drama, but instead that the combination of the two genres in Athalia illuminates the complexity and distinctiveness of Handel’s dramatic concept expressed in this work.

Athalia
To understand Athalia as a tragic heroine is to limit her: the vulnerability, inaction and stasis through which Handel and his librettist Samuel Humphreys characterise her might be read as granting her more complexity. Whilst it is true that Humphreys has taken much of Athalia’s text verbatim (via translation) from the true tragic heroine that Jean Racine portrays in his play Athalie (well-known in Handel’s London), Humphreys and Handel together create a character with far more agency.

Humphreys imitates yet diminishes Racine’s technique of delaying Athalia’s entry, a key point that Dean overlooks. The audience has to wait around half an hour to meet the eponymous queen. This marks a departure from both Esther and Deborah, where the titular women are the first characters on stage.

The audience meets Athalia having awoken from a nightmare where she has been stabbed by a boy dressed as a Jewish priest, allowing Humphreys and Handel to create a more exposed character. Her first number, ‘What scenes of horrors round me rise’, is an accompanied recitative and not an aria, indicating her weakened mental state. Her unease is reflected in Handel’s choice of key, F minor, a common key of despair which he had previously used in the crises of both Esther and Acis and Galatea. She is accompanied by a plangent oboe melody and sinister strings, which highlight her anxiety, and undermine any sense of authority the audience might have expected.

Throughout the scene, her interaction with those around her shows a lack of leadership. Not only is she having an extreme nervous episode in front of Mathan, her adviser, but also present is a ‘Chorus of Sidonian Priests’: Athalia totally ignores their interjections (the chorus ‘The Gods who chosen blessings shed’) and Mathan ‘achieves’ an aria before she does (‘Gentle airs, melodious strains’). Indeed, at the end of the scene, the Sidonian Priests disappear to the Temple on Mathan’s, not Athalia’s, orders.

Athalia’s first and only aria in this scene, ‘Softest sounds’, betrays her pervading melancholia and distances her from the image of a tragic heroine. The sarabande metre is sombre and the sighing paired quaver figuration in the strings completes the image of wretchedness. She is shown to be still unsteady, as this aria is not in da capo form, but sounds more like the A section of a da capo aria that she is insufficiently gathered to complete.

Athalia’s first scene is a personal and intimate depiction of a disturbed woman, with agency that removes her from the Tragic archetype. She is distant from Dean’s analysis of her as a ‘Jewish Clytemnestra’, as she fails to retain the sureness of that truly tragic heroine.

Josabeth
Josabeth’s sentimentality is only one aspect of her characterisation, as she is shown by Humphreys and Handel to be an active force in the oratorio while fiercely protecting her family and the Temple community. Her part is much expanded, both in volume and dramatic depth, from Racine’s depiction. Humphreys is, for this reason, unable to involve Josabeth actively in the plot of the oratorio, as it has been designed without her significant input. However, this gives the librettist licence in fleshing out her character.

Josabeth spends much of the oratorio responding to surrounding events, but this does not make her ‘passive’, to use Brett & Haggerty’s term. Instead, it allows her to establish her role as the most human character in the work, through whom the audience become emotionally involved in the action. By enlarging Josabeth’s part, Humphreys and Handel ensure that the human drama in the oratorio is always more prevalent than questions of politics. Brett & Haggerty write: ‘It was not experience itself that was important to this audience but the way one responded to it. Response, of course, was an eighteenth-century obsession.’ This could explain the expansion of Josabeth’s role: with four arias and four ensemble numbers, she is the most musically active role in the work.

Josbeth’s characterisation is concluded in the duet ‘Joys in gentle trains appearing’, sung after the demise of Athalia. In this duet Josabeth and Joad affirm their love for each other and the sureness of their faith in God. As in their previous duet, ‘Cease thy anguish’, Joad presents the theme, befitting his role as High Priest and husband. Josabeth then mirrors his melody, but not in a way that suggests she is subordinate. The duet is in A major, which the listener fails to realise as Joad exposes the theme on the dominant, E. When Josabeth copies him in A major at bar 17, it then becomes clear that she is resolving the duet to its tonic. Dean’s assertion that this is merely practical, and that it fits the ‘natural compass of the voices’, seems to accord Handel insufficient dramatic awareness. It is as if, throughout the oratorio, Josabeth has been increasing in self-confidence and assuredness, relinquishing the passivity that Brett & Haggerty have assigned to her.

Conclusion
This musico-dramatic analysis of Handel’s characterisation of Josabeth and Athalia is enlightening when considering the complexities of genre in this early oratorio.

Josabeth is a deeply human character, frequently used by Handel and Humphreys to provide insight into emotional situations as they arise and evolve. But Handel and Humphreys have granted her more agency than would be possible were she entirely stooped in sentimental drama. Therefore any reference to this genre must remain only a reference, not a straight-jacket.

Athalia is likewise more complex than previous scholarship has recognised. Her portrayal by Humphreys and Handel is considerably weakened from the truly tragic heroine as depicted by Racine, and in the oratorio she fails to establish the dominance and awe required by tragedy. Indeed, Brett & Haggerty’s statement about Josabeth, that ‘she is an entirely passive creature, dominated either by events or by her husband’s will’, could be said of Athalia if ‘her husband’s will’ was replaced with ‘Mathan’s will’.

The subtleties of characterisation used by Handel and Humphreys create in Athalia two women that refuse to be limited as belonging to one particular musical or literary school or another. This indicates that the generic influences that, in combination, create the early English oratorio are drawn upon more subtly than previously recognised. Handel and Humphreys adopt characteristics of several theatrical and musical genres to form the first truly three-dimensional characters in Handel’s English theatre works. Dean’s designation of the work as ‘the first great English oratorio’ is even more deserved than critical commentary has hitherto suggested.

Notes
(1) Dean, W. (1959). Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, p.247. London: Oxford University Press.
(2) Brett, P. & Haggerty, G. (1987). Handel and the Sentimental: the case of ‘Athalia’. Music and Letters, 68(2), 112-127.

This article is based on an undergraduate dissertation prepared for examination at the University of Cambridge. Kate Shaw wishes to express her gratitude to her supervisor Dr Ruth Smith.

Richard Löwenherz: Telemann and Handel Compared

Mark Windisch

Telemann adapted three operas for the Hamburg theatre from those originally composed by Handel: Ottone, Poro and Riccardo Primo. The last of these, Handel’s version of which was performed on 11 November 1727 in The King’s Theatre, was performed in its adapted format by Telemann in Hamburg and Braunschweig in 1729. It is this version that was performed in the 2018 Telemann Festival in Magdeburg.

Handel’s libretto was written by Paolo Rolli from a text by Briani, and was used by German poet Gottlieb Wend for Telemann, to create a somewhat altered story for a very different audience and without the expensive stars that Handel was able to engage.

In Handel’s version, Richard (sung by Senesino, an alto castrato) had travelled to Cyprus on the way to join the third Crusade and to meet his prospective bride Costanza (soprano Francesca Cuzzoni). Shipwrecked in Cyprus, Richard had come up against the Cyprus Governor Isacio (bass Giuseppe Maria Boschi) and his daughter Pulcheria (soprano Faustina Bordoni). Two other characters featured: Oronte, prince of Syria (alto castrato Antonio Baldi) and Berardo (bass Giovanni Battista Palmerini).

In Telemann’s version as sung in Magdeburg in 2018, Richard was sung by a bass (the top castrati were unaffordable and might not have been culturally acceptable), changing the dynamic balance somewhat. Some of the other characters’ names were restored to the original ones in Briani, so that Costanza was listed as Berengera of Navarre, and a new character Philippus was introduced as her companion. Pulcheria, daughter of Isacio, came out as Formosa. The main change in characters was the introduction of two comic figures, Gelasius and Murmilla, both cross-dressers spending considerable time playing for laughs and scoring points off one another in spoken dialogue.

As to the music, Telemann largely used Handel’s arias sung in Italian; though in some cases, especially in arias for Richard himself, he composed new arias in German. All recitatives were in German (macaronic compositions were common in Hamburg – cf. Handel’s Almira composed during his earlier time there). The Isacio character, a tall imposing bearded figure in Magdeburg, was given some very florid arias which he found quite challenging. The interruptions to the flow of the story with the comic additions detracted somewhat from the performance. Other than that, I thought it hung together as a performance, with Telemann’s invention matching Handel’s well.

The story in Telemann’s version remained basically the same as in Handel’s. Richard and Berengera are madly in love despite never having met. Isacio tries to pass his daughter off as Berengera. This is so that he can marry the real Berengera and get Richard to marry his daughter for dynastic reasons. Oronte declares his love for Berengera but is overheard by Formosa, which leads to a lover’s tiff. Richard and Isacio face it off and for a while Isacio gets the upper hand, until Oronte rescues Richard and redeems himself. Good triumphs in the end: Richard and Pulcheria get married; Isacio is forgiven; Oronte and Formosa will rule Cyprus; and the cross-dressers are carted off in a wheelbarrow.

A New Early Manuscript Source For Acis And Galatea

In this Handel News article from September 2017 Dr Shuker describes the events which led to the uncovering of an earlier score of Handel’s ever popular pastorale “Acis and Galatea”, than has been available before. It is postulated that this fair copy score was made by William Babell. The reasons of coming to this conclusion is based on characteristic individual stylistic mannerisms in the copy. It is thought that this score dates from 1718, the year in which the piece was first performed in Cannons.

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