Tag: Handel News 71 – January 2018

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Reichardt’s Review of Handel Concerts in London

Beverly Jerold

If we could travel back to the age of Bach and Handel to hear how music was performed, we would often be disappointed. Technology is unnecessary for music composition, but can greatly enhance performance. For example, early sources reveal that many musicians are not born with the ability to sing or play pleasingly in tune. In contrast, the music we hear every day provides automatic ear training and many other benefits. Since we cannot imagine a world that had never experienced our concepts of refined tone quality, consistently good intonation, and rhythmic accuracy, our reading of early sources may be coloured by modern assumptions. Some of these are called into question by the Berlin court Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s report of two Handel concerts he heard in London in 1785.(1)

The first was Samson at the Drury Lane Theatre, whose entrance was in a dirty alley and down some steps, as in a beer hall. In the foremost loge, almost on the stage of this small, plain theatre, were King George III and the Queen. Some disorderly young chaps settled themselves very close to the king’s loge, making an unruly disturbance during the performance – mostly mockery of the singers – such as Reichardt had never heard at the worst German theatre. One of them took loud delight in the stiff enunciation of the singers, who made a point of thrusting out each syllable extremely firmly and distinctly. Particularly in the recitatives, Mr Reinhold attacked the difficult words with such pedantic preparation, executing each single consonant so elaborately that one would often have had time to look up the word in a dictionary.

‘But what I wouldn’t have given for a better musical performance’, declares Reichardt. ‘The singing was often downright poor. In comparison, the instrumental music was much better, at least the string instruments. The blown instruments were often intolerably out of tune.’ As first violinist, Mr Richards led the orchestra just passably. Because of the many participants, the choruses made more effect than they usually do in Germany, but were nevertheless disappointing: ‘Often the choral singing was filled with screaming from the most wretched voices. Miss George and Miss Philips, the principal female soloists, were very mediocre indeed, frequently singing heartily out of tune, while Messrs Quest, Norris and Reinhold were deplorable, and often bellowed like lions.’ Reichardt’s observations are confirmed by Charles Burney’s letter of 1771 to Montagu North in which he complains that English ‘singing must be so barbarous as to ruin the best Compositions of our own or of any Country on the Globe’ until they have music schools and better salaries.(2)

After the first part of Samson, a little girl played a modish concerto on the fortepiano. Reichardt’s footnote quoting The Morning Post for 12 March suggests that the composer often took the blame for a wretched performance:

‘At the Oratorio yesterday evening Miss Parke… performed a concerto on the Piano Forte… her execution was such that a veteran in the profession might not be ashamed to imitate. This… was a sufficient compensation for three tedious Acts of Handel’s worst Composition.’

Standards varied dramatically between this programme for the general public, even though it included royalty, and one exclusively for the upper class. On 12 March, Reichardt heard the Concert of Ancient Music, limited to music more than 25 years old, and sponsored by a society of 300 subscribers from the court and highest nobility. Since even the most respected musician could not be admitted, the famed German soprano Gertrud Elisabeth Mara had to use all her influence to enable Reichardt to hear some of Handel’s music that was completely to his liking.

This concert’s hall, an oblong of more pleasing form and appropriate height than the Drury Lane Theatre, was just large enough to accommodate an orchestra of very considerable size and the subscribers. Seating on the floor began in the middle of the hall, leaving a substantial space between the first row and the orchestra, leading the frequent-traveller Reichardt to comment about conventional orchestral volume level:

‘I very much like having the instruments at a distance, for when they are close, particularly the string instruments whose every separate, strong stroke is always a powerful shock, it makes an extremely adverse, and often painful, long-lasting impression on my nerves.’ (3)

Mara and Samuel Harrison were the principal soloists; Wilhelm Cramer, the concertmaster; and Mr Bath, the organist. The orchestra was large and the chorus adequately strong. In the chorus from Handel’s Saul, ‘How excellent thy Name, O Lord!’, Reichardt found more good voices than in the programme the day before, particularly since several Royal Chapel choirboys, some with very beautiful voices, participated. But for the most part, the lower voices were the same, and again just as harsh and screaming.

Reichardt was pleased that Handel’s second Concerto Grosso, which is so different from their present instrumental music, was performed well and strongly, with its own character. In his youth, this work’s simple, harmonically compact music had made a strong impression. Today, he therefore expected nothing more than what it really is, so he readily found it pleasurable. But it will be a disappointment to those who think that the title ‘Concerto’ promises a display of the principal player’s skill with difficult passages. The principal parts do not have as many difficult passages to execute as each part in the easiest new Haydn symphony: ‘We can regard them as a document showing the character of instrumental music at that time. From this we can judge the great progress instrumental music has made in the last thirty years.’ Yet this type of instrumental music presents its own very great difficulty for execution:

‘something that… should be the foundation of everything else. Good intonation and larger tone. Music affects the listener only when it is completely in tune and strong. When performed with correct intonation and large tone from all the instruments, this concerto’s melodic clarity and rich harmony has to make a far stronger effect on the listener than the greatest technical difficulties… Whoever knows the enormous difficulty of achieving this will not be surprised that I found both of these qualities today only with Mr Cramer, who played the principal part. Yet no single measure offered him the opportunity to show his superior skills that are so admired in Germany.’ (4)

Since Reichardt’s 1776 manual for professional ripienists (Ueber die Pflichten…) prescribes exercises that are mastered today by young children, string technique, even at that time, was extremely low by our standards.

Hearing Mara (for the first time since she left Berlin) in a scene from Giulio Cesare, Reichardt found that grandeur and fullness of tone had been added to her qualities of strength, clarity, intonation and flexibility. ‘How she sang the great, noble scene from Handel! It was evident that Handel’s heroic style had influenced the spirit and even the voice of this exemplary artist.’ And in Handel’s ‘Affani del pensier un sol momento’ from Ottone, he was profoundly moved, for she conveyed the text as from the soul. After an intermission, Mr Harrison sang ‘Parmi che giunta in porto’ from Radamisto:

‘With a tenor voice that is not strong but nevertheless very pleasing, he sang this Cantabile completely in accord with the old style in which it is composed: that is, without any additions of his own, thereby giving the audience and me great pleasure. Mr Harrison performed even the very simple figures… exactly as they appear in Handel’s work, and sought to give the piece its due only through fine tone quality and precise, clear execution. And that is very praiseworthy. Melodies and finished compositions like Handel’s arias tolerate no alterations anywhere. His melodies have such a finely chosen meaningful, expressive succession of notes that almost anything put between them is certainly unsuitable or at least weakening for the word being sung. The construction of his basses and harmonic accompaniment is such that no singer can easily change three notes without creating a harmonic error. All of Handel’s melodies… can produce the desired effect on the present listener only when we want their effect to be the one heard. All new trimmings remove from the listener the impression that the venerable old style gives him and in which alone he can enjoy such music.’ (5)

Then Reichardt describes the contrasting style of composition heard in Mara’s performance of Johann Adolf Hasse’s ‘Padre perdona oh pene!’:

‘Hasse’s style presumes an inventive singer, and whole sections, intentionally sketched out only in outline, are expected to be embellished by the singer. At that time in Italy, the new, more opulent singing style arose hand in hand with the luxuriant dramatic style in composition. Hasse availed himself of this all the more since his wife, Signora Faustina Bordoni, was one of the principal female singers in the new lavish style. Just as the old bachelor Handel worked only for his art and himself, so did Hasse work for his wife and similar singers.’

Nevertheless, Hasse did not approve of extravagant additions, as seen in his letter to Giammaria Ortes (6) (a sample of Faustina’s own embellishment is modest). While most major composers followed Handel’s practice of leaving little, if anything, to the singer’s discretion, secondary, mostly Italian composers catered to Italian singers’ desire for a skeletal melodic line to decorate.

To close the concert, Mara sang a recitative and aria from Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, followed by a full chorus from the same. According to Reichardt’s text, this concert’s success was owed to the soloists Mara and Harrison, a much better physical space, and Cramer’s orchestral leadership. Cramer was clearly exceptional – with no metronome training available, many leaders were afflicted with the same rhythmic instability as their players.

How did Handel view singers’ additions? Consider John Hawkins: ‘In his comparison of the merits of a composer and those of a singer, he estimated the latter at a very low rate.’ (7) Handel would not have tolerated the harmonic errors that characterised most singers’ own embellishment. But where did they add the embellishment that Burney mentions in his General History of Music? The answer lies in his account of Handel’s ‘Rival ti sono’ from Faramondo, written for the castrato Caffarelli: ‘In the course of the song, he is left ad libitum several times, a compliment which Handel never paid to an ordinary singer.’ Here, and in other Burney citations, Handel did not permit routine alteration, but restricted it to places left bare for this purpose, such as very brief Adagios or the close of a section. Perhaps this kept peace with Italian singers while protecting his work. Compare any of his conventional arias with a truly skeletal Larghetto he wrote for Caffarelli in Faramondo. According to Burney, ‘Si tornerò’ is ‘a fine out-line for a great singer’(8). Here, the singer is expected to add notes, but nearly all of Handel’s other arias are fully embellished, except for occasional measures. Our belief that a da capo should have additional embellishment derives solely from Pier Francesco Tosi, a castrato who wrote when skeletal composition was fashionable in Italy. There is no reason to apply his advice to arias that the composer embellished adequately.

In sum, Reichardt’s account reveals standards and aesthetic values different from our own. If we had never known such things as recording technology, the metronome, period instruments that play up to modern standards, and high-level conservatory/general education, there would be no musicians with today’s advanced technique. From Reichardt’s text and his definition of Handel’s style as ‘heroic’, it is apparent that tempi and embellishment were restrained, and that full-bodied tone was desirable.

Notes

(1) Johann Friedrich Reichardt], ‘Briefe aus London,’ Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde, ed. F.A. Kunzen and J.F. Reichardt (Berlin, 1792/93), Musikalisches Wochenblatt (MW) portion, 130ff., 137ff., 147f., 171f. According to Walter Salmen, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (Freiburg and Zürich: Atlantis, 1963), 57ff., Reichardt attended these London concerts in 1785.
(2) Ribeiro, A. (ed.) (1991). The Letters of Dr Charles Burney, 1:96. Oxford: Clarendon.
(3) Reichardt, MW, 137: ‘Diese Entfernung der Instrumente that für mich eine sehr angenehme Wirkung: denn ihre Nähe, besonders die der Saiteninstrumente, deren jeder einzelner starker Strich immer eine gewaltsame Erschütterung ist, macht auf meine Nerven einen höchst widrigen oft schmerzhaften und lange fortdauernden Eindruck.’
(4) Reichardt, MW, 138f.
(5) Reichardt, MW, 171: ‘Solche Melodieen und ganze Zusammensetzungen, wie Händels Arien sind, vertragen durchaus keine Änderungen.’
(6) See Jerold, B. (2008). ‘How composers viewed performers’ additions’. Early Music, 36/1, February: 95-109.
(7) Hawkins, J. (1853). A General History of the Science and Practice of Music. London; rpt. New York [1963]), 870.
(8) Burney, C. (1789). A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. Ed. Frank Mercer. New York: Harcourt, Brace [1935]), 2:819-820.

Beverly Jerold’s recent books are: The Complexities of Early Instrumentation: Winds and Brass (Brepols, 2015); and Music Performance Issues: 1600-1900 (Pendragon, 2016).

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Staging Handel – Now… and Then

Brian Robins

When we enter the theatre today to attend an opera by Handel, the curtain may rise to reveal an austere, angular, darkly-lit stage. Tubular frames will likely feature somewhere on a set that will serve for all three acts, possibly varied by a few props. At some points in the proceedings, back-projections may be brought into play. The cast is in modern dress and interacts with one another the way people do in a 21st-century soap opera, while any soldiers and guards involved will be carrying not swords or lances but AK 47s. Sound familiar? It should, because it is a fair generic description of the way Baroque opera is frequently staged today.

It goes without saying that such performance practice is aesthetically diametrically opposed to the way in which Handel’s operas were staged in London in his own day, or indeed in which Baroque opera was mounted throughout Europe. Should we care? There are those who say no. Handel’s operas, they claim, are great works perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, and anyway imaginative new productions shed new light on them for contemporary audiences. It is an argument to which I would be happier to subscribe were such productions experimental. But they are not. They are the norm, the default for Handel production in the 21st century. Rather it is staging that lays some claim to historical veracity – often sneeringly referred to as ‘traditional’ – that is now considered outré. As a consequence we are in danger of producing an entire generation of opera-goers that has no conception or understanding of what a Handel opera looked like in his day.

So what did happen at a Handel opera staged under his direction in the 1720s or 1730s? Let’s again enter our theatre, this time a venue lit by a myriad candles. It is the King’s Theatre, London’s home of Italian opera, or, perhaps during the mid-1730s, Covent Garden. When the orchestra makes it appearance, its size might surprise us. In 1720, the year of the first performance of Radamisto, the orchestra of the King’s Theatre had no fewer than 24 strings on its books: 16 violins, 2 violas, 4 cellos and 2 double basses (1), a substantially larger number than we often encounter today, even if not every musician was available for all performances.

The curtain would rise to reveal a deep stage, an illusion of grandeur and even greater depth created by the sense of perspective gained from a series of receding flats (or wings) painted to represent buildings or outdoor scenes on either side of the stage. It was one of the principal feats of theatrical engineering that the these flats were usually fixed on wheels sitting in grooves that could effect a change of scene very quickly by replacing one with another. The printed text of Radamisto, for instance, suggests that at least six different scenes were required, three internal and three external (2). It is worth adding that once the curtain had risen, it did not drop again until the performance had concluded, a convention that can doubtless be explained at least in part by the speed of scene-change that could be efficiently effected in front of the audience.

The spaces between the flats were used for all entries. Hierarchical convention determined that high-born characters entered from the right, lower mortals and villains from the left, although Metastasio, ever the practical man of the theatre in addition to being the most influential librettist of the 18th century, considered that dramatic needs should take precedence over such rigidity. We find elements of both convention and the flexibility advocated by Metastasio in the Radamisto prompt-book. At the start of Act 1, Polissena, the heroine and the wife of King Tiridate and daughter of King Farasmane, is seated at a table, stage-right, as befits her royal status. The first entrance is made stage-left by Tigrane, who is not only a mere prince but the henchman of Tiridate, the ‘baddie’ of the piece, who in Scene 2 enters stage-right, as would be expected of a king. Polissena is dismissed by her husband, exiting not right, as we might expect, but left, possibly because she leaves reluctantly and crossing the stage gives greater opportunity to display her hesitancy. Farasmane, a captive of Tiridate, enters stage-right with his guards, but his departure after hearing being subjected to the threats of Tiridate is stage-left, maybe an indication that he is not master of his own destiny. This covers only Scenes 1-3, but provides a brief indication of how stagecraft was ordered in Handel’s day.

Before leaving the Radamisto prompt-book, it is worth noting that it also gives valuable insight into the supernumeraries involved on stage, details that may surprise present-day Handelians. For instance, when the curtain rises on Polissena, we are told that she is accompanied by no fewer than ten women. Farasmane is escorted on to the stage by four guards. Later the prompt-book – but significantly not the stage directions – suggests that some eight to ten soldiers are involved charging across the stage when Tiridate takes Farasmane’s unnamed ‘capital city’. We can thus assume that at least 20 supernumeraries were involved in the first version of Radamisto. When on stage but not in action – during arias, for example – these extras would have been asymmetrically grouped in poses akin to a tableau. 18th-century theorists such as Algarotti time and again compare stage images with paintings, the latter as an exemplar of the beauty, elegance and sense of proportion that should be followed in staging.

We still know too little about who did what when it comes to the relatively small amount of production required. Certainly librettists were frequently involved with the staging of new productions, and we know from his own writings that Metastasio was very much ‘hands-on’ in Vienna (3). Composers, too, might well be involved for a first run and there is circumstantial evidence that Handel took a practical interest in staging. In an important article on the staging of Handel’s operas, Andrew Jones notes several examples of the composer’s annotations in his manuscript scores that clearly indicate concern with what happened on stage (4). Jones notes as particularly striking an example from Rodelinda, where Rodelinda – believing her husband Bertarido to be dead – addresses her son as ‘orfano’. Handel here added immeasurably to the dramatic poignancy of the moment by inserting the words ‘s’inginocchia e abbraccia il figlio’ (‘she kneels down and embraces her son’).

Despite the depth of stage, the action took place largely in a small area down stage or on an apron extending beyond the proscenium arch. Interaction between the characters on stage was restricted to recitative or during the orchestral ritornellos that punctuated arias. The most important aspects of acting were the deportment and carriage of the character, established and maintained as long as they were visible to the audience, and above all gesture, which incorporated the face, arms and especially hands. All gesture had the prime purpose of directly signalling the sense of the text to come and was performed with a rounded elegance that eschewed jerky movement, coming from the expression of inner emotion rather than being imposed. What was critical was the sense of naturalness and spontaneity that avoided any hint of the absurd synchronised movement we sometimes see in attempts at gesture from the supernumeraries. Then as now, the acting ability of singers varied enormously. We know, for example, from a number of contemporary accounts, that the castrato Nicolini, the creator of the title-roles in Handel’s Rinaldo and Amadigi, was an exceptionally fine actor, while the acting of Senesino, creator of so many of Handel’s major roles, was rated by Quantz as ‘natural and noble’.

The most extensive use of gesture was reserved for recitative: it seems likely that it was more restrained during the singing of arias. With the arrival of an aria, the singer moved to the front of the stage to address it directly to the audience, not to others who might be on stage, with whom interaction was reserved for ritornellos. The audience responded often audibly with sighs of appreciation or more vociferous reactions of approbation or disapproval. This symbiosis between singer and audience is a feature of 18th-century operatic performance that has frequently been overlooked, and while it would hardly be desirable to import its more extravert aspects into today’s opera houses, it should certainly be given more study and thought. The mutual interaction between singer and audience reached a peak in the da capo repeat, where many of the finest singers not only added ornamentation but extemporised it. This in effect meant that in such cases one might hear a different performance every time during an opera’s run, thus refuting the oft-heard argument that opera seria was a stilted, moribund form.

It will be obvious that only the essence of a complex subject have been addressed here. Nonetheless, I hope that by showing that the staging of Handel’s operas in his own day bears little relationship to what we so often see today, we can start to understand that, to paraphrase Jones, it is only by seeing them as a totality unifying sets, costumes, gesture and expressiveness that we can truly understand the nobility of this great corpus of works on its own terms. This fundamental truth cannot be restated too frequently.

Notes
(1) Spitzer, J. & Zaslaw, N. (2004). The Birth of the Orchestra, 279. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(2) The discovery of a prompt copy of the libretto of the first version of Radamisto (April 1720) in 1985 provided an invaluable source for scholars. See Milhous, J. & Hume, R.D. (1986). A prompt copy of Handel’s ‘Radamisto’. The Musical Times, 127 (1719), June, 316-319 + 321.
(3) See Robins, B. (2016). Origin of the species: Metastasio’s directorial legacy. Opera, 67(6), 689-694.
(4) Jones, A.V. (2006). Staging a Handel opera. Early Music, 34(2), May, 277-287.

Brian Robins is a music historian, critic and broadcaster.

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Rare Copy of Handel’s Suite in G Minor Turns Up in Sydney – Twice!

Graham Pont

Handel’s last royal pupil was the Princess Louisa (1724-51). For her studies at the harpsichord Handel composed his last two substantial works for the instrument, the Suites in D minor and G minor, HWV 447 and 452. Like her older sisters, Louisa became a regular supporter of her teacher: her presence at performances of Atalanta and Poro (1736) and Saul (1739) are recorded – there were doubtless many others – and she subscribed to the editions of Alexander’s Feast (1738) and the Twelve Grand Concertos (1740). In 1743 Louise married Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway and became Queen when in 1746 her husband was crowned King. She was popular with the Danish court and admired for her accomplishments: ‘She finds pleasure in reading and music, she plays the clavichord well and teaches her daughters to sing’ (1). In 1748 she arranged for an Italian opera company to perform at the court theatre: the company included Gluck and Sarti. Louisa died from complications of childbirth in December 1751.

When Handel composed the two Suites for Louisa is not known: the Händel Handbuch suggests 1739; Otto Erich Deutsch dates them to 1736. The composer’s autographs of both Suites have survived, as well as several authorised copies, but neither work was published during Handel’s lifetime: perhaps they were considered royal property. The first edition of the Suite in G minor appeared in a rare volume entitled A Favorite Lesson for the Harpsichord Composed for Young Practitioners by George Fred: Handel Never before Printed (London: C. and S. Thompson, n.d.) (2). This edition is usually dated c.1770 but the British Library, which holds one of the only two recorded copies, gives the date as 1772. The only other known copy, in the collection of the present writer, enjoys the rare distinction of having been transported twice around the globe to Sydney.

At the top of the title page is a note in ink ‘Found in Pitt Street, Sydney, 1936’! Eighteenth-century editions of Handel are exceptionally rare in early Australian collections: how and when this volume first reached Sydney and where it lay before being thrown out on the street in 1936 is a complete mystery. There may be some hint as to its provenance in the illegible signature on the top-left corner of the title-page.

The man who found the volume and wrote the notes on the title-page was the Sydney medico Joseph Coen (1880-1955). In his second note he records that in May 1946 he presented the volume to ‘Gilbert Inglefield, for his library and in memory of many hours of Handel’. Sir Gilbert Inglefield (1909-91) was a British architect who became Lord Mayor of London in 1967-68. After Inglefield’s death his music collection was dispersed: books of his were included in sales by Christie, Manson & Woods on 11 July 1968 and 6 August 1975. I purchased this volume from Colin Coleman in 2010 and thus it returned for the second time to Sydney.

Notes
(1) See the interesting and well-illustrated article ‘Louise of Great Britain’ in Wikipedia.
(2) The Suite in G minor has been edited by Terence Best in Händel Klavierwerke III… Erste Folge (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970), pp.42-47. This version includes a final Gigue which Handel later added but which was omitted from the original edition.

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The Bubble Reputation: Virtue, Reason and Sexual Politics in Rodelinda

Thelma Lovell

Handel’s Rodelinda can be read on several levels: as a drama of conflicting passions; an advertisement for political stability; and a study in changing values from the warrior ideal of leadership to the heroism of devotion and self-sacrifice. Like all the best morality tales, it weaves its improving message into the texture of human interaction, in order to steer us towards the convergence of reason, power and virtue. The opera finds one form of closure in a triumphant vocal concerto (Mio caro bene) for the eponymous heroine who ends up with the winning hand in a game of high political stakes. But there is a further type of closure in the final chorus: a communal sigh of relief at the general rightness of things.

Haym’s libretto is based on Corneille’s Pertharite, which flopped spectacularly on its appearance in 1652. Pertharite is the uxorious hero who puts emotional attachment before worldly status; he is prepared to sacrifice his life so that his wife may marry the usurper Grimoald and hence keep the crown for herself. Rodélinde, on the other hand, is driven by the imperatives of birth, breeding, and the absolute necessity of distancing herself from the upstart regime. Initially unimpressed by the husband who returns as a distinctly unregal fugitive, she eventually accepts him – helped by the fact that Grimoald acknowledges the courage of Pertharite and his authentic moral claim to the throne: 

But the man who believes me a tyrant and nobly stands up to me,
However weak he may be does not have a slave’s heart; 
He displays a great soul that rises above calamity 
And makes up in courage what it lacks in fortune.

All suitably high-minded, not least on the part of Grimoald; Rodélinde apologises for misjudging him, and everything is restored to its proper place. Pertharite has the last word, proclaiming that ‘reputation (la gloire) is the sole prize of the noble virtues’ – yet the truism is evidently enlarged to include the integrity of the inner rather than solely the outer person. The mid-17th-century French public was perhaps not ready for this shift in conventional heroic values.

Let us consider the Handelian version, which again is far more interesting than the story of a long-suffering bereft female as the plaything of destiny. Two couples battle to maintain their own version of reality. Both of the men are kings yet (in different ways) not so. The usurper Grimoaldo fails to convince either himself or others of his new identity, while the deposed Bertarido is first imagined dead and then when he reappears simply fails to look or act with the expected dominance. His shabby demeanour attracts the scorn and disbelief of Grimoaldo, in whose scheme of things position must be signalled by outward show. The women are in a similar bind: Rodelinda was – and still feels herself to be – queen, though this is technically untrue; and Eduige is ambitious to step into Rodelinda’s shoes by marrying the actual, though inauthentic, ruler Grimoaldo. And though the female characters could not be overt political agents, they are able to operate the levers of power at one remove. Sexuality is part of the game for all four characters. 

Rodelinda’s opening cavatina strikes a pose of tragedy and rhetorical hauteur. It is a courtly lament for a queen conscious of her status, yet as she sings of her loneliness (e qui sola) the texture becomes closer and warmer; this is a suffering human being. Even so, reputation trumps all: the furious energy of her rejection of the crass Grimoaldo is fuelled by a mix of grief and an objection to becoming déclassée: gloria is not limited to chastity. Despite her iron will, Rodelinda exists in a context of other people and circumstances that she cannot entirely control but must try to read. Chief amongst these is of course Grimoaldo, whose weak point is his need to persuade himself and others of his newly-acquired authority. He begins badly, for what sort of hero is turned down by the woman he loves (or in this case, the trophy wife he thinks he deserves)? He does at least have the satisfaction of discarding his old love Eduige, who longs to share the throne with him. Staccato pomposity (Io già t’amai) proclaims that self-image is his driver. Similarly, he preens himself before Garibaldo in the jaunty Se per te: ‘I am king and with my protection you have nothing to fear, not even from my future wife’. 

It is a different story when he has been wrong-footed by Rodelinda’s terrifying condition of marriage, i.e. that he should murder her son. (In fact, Haym gives us a softer version than Corneille: in the original, Rodélinde offers to join in the murder of the boy.) Grimoaldo’s Prigionera ho l’alma in pena tells us through its repeated melodic phrases – as if rooted to the spot – that he is trapped. He cannot be the Darwinian lion who kills the cubs of his defeated rival, for (as Rodelinda points out) this would cause him to lose his gloria: a king’s standing rests on his moral reputation – his soft power – as much as compulsion. The contrary argument is made by Garibaldo, ostensibly henchman but actually Grimoaldo’s dark alter ego. Unlike the other characters, Grimoaldo never diverges from one version of reality: a crude realpolitik represented musically by great strides and uncompromising bare textures.

The game-changer in the drama is the resurrected presence of Bertarido: he pauses at his supposed funeral monument to rail at its untruthfulness. He is very much alive, and through stately dotted rhythms Handel lets us know that he is genuine royalty. The musical shock is the transition to E major in Dove sei as if, like Bertarido, we are entering a strange new world with its centre of gravity altered from the C major of the overture. From this point onwards, Bertarido and Rodelinda seem to share a private tonal domain, full of pain and confusion – as for instance  in the B minor of Ombre, piante, the E major of Morrai, sì, and perhaps especially the F sharp minor of Io t’abbraccio. Furthermore, the lyrical simplicity of Dove sei tells us that this king is full of sensibility, without the pretension of Grimoaldo. His strength is that of the inner rather than the outer man. 

As the drama progresses, the musical and psychological trajectories of the rival kings intersect. Beginning as the would-be confident reigning monarch, Grimoaldo finds himself more and more out of his depth, ending in the weary defeat of Pastorello d’un povero armento – its E minor a wistful echo of Bertarido’s E major Dove sei. Bertarido himself, on the other hand, follows a tonal path that fluctuates with his personal fortunes but at last, with the restoration of his sword, brings him back to where he truly belongs. The triumphant C major of Se fiera belva is the bright light of power and the world that so far has existed only (as he ruefully declares to his sister Eduige) in his rimembranza.  

The irony is that Bertarido’s privileging of the private over the public was not in itself enough to restore his family or his kingdom. It was rather Eduige’s thwarted passion for Grimoaldo and the desire for vengeance that led her to help Bertarido gain his freedom; it was not virtue pure and simple that caused the virtuous outcome. Eduige’s emotions and actions are crucial to the plot; in her shifts of loyalties she is a foil to the intractable Rodelinda and all too believable. She too has her pride, which caused her to spurn Grimoaldo in his previous merely ducal rank. The weak point for this pair is the craving for a royal status they have never had. In this respect, Rodelinda is always in a stronger position. Her sense of self is rooted in knowing herself to be queen. Yet without Eduige’s help, she would never have emerged triumphant.

A further irony is that Bertarido must in the end use the very force that he has rejected in favour of love. It is the warrior’s joy that he expresses when he is given the means to fight; and it is the warrior’s virtue – the virtue of the sword – that enables the more inward virtues to flourish. His principles oblige him to kill Garibaldo, even though this act potentially places Bertarido’s own life in jeopardy. By this gesture he is taking a comparable risk to Rodelinda’s, when she put her son’s life in the balance. There could be no certainty that Grimoaldo would decide that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ rather than take the opportunity to remove his competitor. 

This is where drama becomes moral fable, and where we turn to the sixth character: Unulfo. He occupies a half-way house between the stereotypical portrayal of Garibaldo and the psychological complexity of the two couples. He is both participant and commentator – the bridge between stage and audience – and the sort of person upon whom all power structures rest: stability, continuity and prudence are his guiding principles. Here he confronts a dilemma, for he serves the current regime (namely Grimoaldo) yet his sympathies are with Bertarido, both personally and because Bertarido represents the legitimate order. For this reason, when Bertarido makes a physical gesture of affection, Unulfo draws back: kingship is a token of something beyond the human and particular. At the same time, the philosopher/counsellor acts as guide and mentor to his emotionally impulsive chief.

All three of Unulfo’s arias are situated musically close to the ambit of C major, i.e. the ‘real’ world from which the opera is launched and to which it eventually returns. In the first of these (Sono i colpi della sorte) Unulfo urges Bertarido to cultivate inner strength even as he is reeling from the thought that Rodelinda is giving way. A king must temper feeling with self-control. (He gives similar advice to Grimoaldo after the shock of Rodelinda’s bargain: deh richiama, Signor, la tua virtude. In this case, significantly, it falls on deaf ears: Non più. Le voci di virtù non cara amante cor, o pur non sente.) It is Unulfo who leads Garibaldo to expound his ruthless code, as if turning to the audience to ask: ‘Surely you can’t approve of this?’ Yet the circumspect Unulfo needs a nudge to translate his true loyalty from thought to deed. Trusted by Grimoaldo to keep Bertarido under lock and key, he requires impetus from the strong female character of Eduige to understand that principles too are subject to practicalities and hierarchies. His subsequent relief and joy (Un zeffiro spirò) is a musical parallel to Grimoaldo’s earlier confidence in Se per te giungo a godere. There is, too, symbolic meaning in Bertarido’s inadvertent wounding of Unulfo: prudent virtue sometimes has to be sacrificed for a higher good. There is a time for caution, and a time for action.

In the end, Rodelinda seems to fulfil the Enlightenment dream that virtue is also rational self-interest: good in itself, it also leads to the best outcome for all concerned. Neither Rodelinda nor Bertarido had any doubts about this (though they suffered along the way), while Grimoaldo and Eduige eventually came to the same conclusion. The only dissenter – Garibaldo – lay dead and unlamented. But there is realism as well as idealism in Handel: human agency can to some extent escape destiny’s shackles, but not without a little help from chance. 

Thelma Lovell is author of A Mirror to the Human Condition: Music, Language and Meaning in the Sacred Cantatas of J.S. Bach. She lives in Cambridge.

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Staging Handel’s Oratorios: Gain and Loss

Ruth Smith

An advertisement in Gramophone (June 2017) for a box of Handel DVDs from Glyndebourne states: ‘This set brings together three of Handel’s most compelling works for the stage’. It does not, as the three works are Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare, and Saul. Handel News 70 (September 2017) announced that at the Australian 2017 Helpmann Awards the Glyndebourne production of Saul gained six awards, including Best Direction of an Opera and Best Opera. When WNO’s Jephtha (directed Katie Mitchell) was staged at ENO (2005) it was billed as one of ‘four classic operas with love and passion’.

But Handel did not call Saul or Jephtha operas, and he did not stage them.

Like (some) film versions of great novels, (some) stagings of Handel’s English-language compositions for the theatre attract new audiences and appreciation. Many in the Glyndebourne audience who would never have gone to hear Theodora in a concert hall were deeply affected by Peter Sellars’s production (1996) and subsequently bought a recording. It inaugurated modern admiration for Theodora. At Milton Keynes the theatre seats 1,400 and was full for every night of Barrie Kosky’s Saul (2015). Having the largest orchestra and greatest number of soloists of any of Handel’s dramas, Saul is seldom performed, so we should be pleased if Glyndebourne’s success prompts more groups to attempt it, three trombones, a harp and a glockenspiel notwithstanding.

But I think that in staging the English music dramas we lose more than we gain, and, worse, we diminish Handel’s music and travesty his ability as a dramatist.

‘Stage directions’

The rationale of some modern performers and critics has been: Handel was an opera composer at heart. He gave up opera only because it had become a loss-maker. He had to ‘put up with’ unstaged oratorio because the Bishop of London prohibited the involvement of Chapel Royal choristers in a staged Esther. He wrote ‘stage directions’ into the scores of his English music dramas because he would have preferred them to be staged. By staging them we will reveal their ‘true nature’: what Handel really meant.

This was the influential view of Winton Dean (Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques), formed when he was an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge. He was a chorus member in a staged production of Saul, an experience he found so moving that at one point he was unable to sing.

But there is no evidence that Handel hankered for stagings of his English music dramas. Had he wanted them staged or hoped they would be staged in future, he would have written them differently. He knew how to write for the stage, and that is not how he wrote in the oratorios.

The ‘stage directions’ are in the score because Handel, with what may seem uncharacteristically punctilious subservience to his librettist, copied out what he found in the libretto. Some think he transcribed the ‘stage directions’ and scene descriptions to stimulate his own imagination. They were certainly intended to stimulate the audience’s imagination, like the Chorus in Henry V: ‘Think, when we speak of horses, that you see them.’ Handel’s audience, with no dimming of house lights, following the wordbook, could and can augment the sung text with prompts for their mental landscape.

The wordbook was an essential ingredient of the audience experience, and we lose meaning from some of the dramas if we do not have it in front of us. For example, in Belshazzar (Act 1 Scene 3) Daniel is teaching his pupils the scriptures. We read:

Daniel’s house. Daniel, with the Prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah open before him. Other Jews.
Daniel: O sacred oracles of truth, O living spring of purest joy!

Daniel does not specify whose oracles he is quoting, but the wordbook does. A marginal note gives exact sources: Jeremiah 29: 13-14, Isaiah 45: 1-6; 44: 28

That information is vital to our appreciation of the drama. At the climax of the action Daniel shows the Bible to the conquering Cyrus, to prove to him that his conquest is part of the divine plan, and to persuade him to implement what is foretold of him in the Bible; and again we have marginal notes directing us to the precise passage of scripture that the librettist is encapsulating, so that we see, hear and believe too. The librettist, Charles Jennens, meant to strengthen belief in Jesus as redeemer. Cyrus, an attested historical figure, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, reinforces the credibility of Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah. But without the wordbook in front of us, we do not know whose ‘oracles’ they are and will not make the connection.

Musical action

Handel is well known (as in his own day) for delighting in musical mimesis, and especially for imitating action in music. Unstaged oratorio gave him scope to substitute music for action.

For example, at Belshazzar’s feast, Belshazzar challenges the Jewish God to show his hand. The wordbook states: ‘As he is going to drink, a hand appears writing upon the wall over against him: he sees it, turns pale with fear, drops the bowl of wine, falls back in his seat, trembling from head to foot, and his knees knocking against each other.’ Belshazzar exclaims in horror: ‘Pointing to the hand upon the wall, which, while they gaze at it with astonishment, finishes the writing, and vanishes.’

With a single violin line, Handel depicts the hand writing, gradually forming the letters. We hear the line being traced. The combination of the wordbook and the music makes action redundant. Back-projection in time to the music would not just lessen the tension and the mystery: it would be tautologous.

Examples of musical mimesis are legion: for example, the sun stands still for Joshua; the giant Goliath strides past the frightened Israelites in Saul; Saul’s javelin whizzes through the air at David. All are startling moments musically, stretching musical convention and stimulating our imagination, and all are diminished by being shown. You know from the thud in the bass lines that you have to crane your neck to see Goliath’s head. He is more terrifying in music than he could be on stage. Did Wagner mean Fafner and Fasolt to seem merely silly? They often do. Goliath does not.
Oratorio gave Handel scope for new levels of musico-dramatic realism and complexity, precisely in not being staged. It freed him from a basic realism, the need for physical bodies to be given time and space to move.

This freedom allowed one of the glories of oratorio, the chorus. A physically acting chorus presents all sorts of problems: getting them to learn their parts by heart; getting them on and off stage; choreographing them; getting them changed out of their Israelite costumes in time to appear again as Philistines or, still more difficult unless one’s budget is limitless, organising them to be both at once, as is demanded in Deborah and Samson.

None of this needed to bother Handel, who therefore can write for a chorus that is both the army of the chosen people and a group of philosophers questioning the meaning of life, as in Jephtha; for a chorus of citizens that celebrates its monarch one moment and sits in judgement on him the next, as in Saul; for Philistines in Samson singing ‘at a distance’ while the Israelites (‘on stage’) sing in reaction to them; for a chorus that disperses in half a dozen hectic bars, as in Semele – without the inevitable log-jam at the side of the stage that distracted from the music and, worse, belied Handel’s stagecraft in Robert Carson’s 1999 production for ENO.

Multiple perspectives

Instead, Handel exploited oratorio to transcend physical space, even imagined physical space, and, moving between the exterior and interior worlds of his characters, gave us new dimensions of drama.

In Saul the women of Jerusalem come out to celebrate Saul’s and David’s victory. We first hear the women’s instruments, a long way off. The music gives us listeners a specific location amidst the imagined action: we are among Saul’s entourage, hearing the procession of women getting closer. When we and Saul can hear what they are singing, and Saul hears them giving more praise to David than to himself, he has an outburst of jealous rage, which we can hear, placed (as it were) near him, but which the approaching women, still distant, cannot, and so, disastrously, they go on with their tactless song. As they get nearer the men join in: they add volume, making the crowd sound even nearer. Saul rages again.

Saul’s son Jonathan upbraids the chorus: ‘Imprudent women’. But we heard the men’s voices joining in. Apparently Jonathan did not. Saul’s reaction to the chorus’ acclamation of David was: ‘what can they give him more, except the kingdom?’ – a fear which a crowd of silly women would not engender. Saul heard the men. So did we. But in the biblical account, which the libretto is following closely here, only women sing, as Jonathan’s words confirm. So Saul heard the whole nation acclaiming David only in his mind, on which we eavesdropped. To create the same impression in 18th-century opera, a composer had to resort to the convention of the ‘aside’. With oratorio, Handel enabled us to do what the bewildered people around Saul could not do, shift our standpoint, enter Saul’s mind and share his morbid fantasy. (I am grateful to David Vickers for discussion of this point.)

Multifarious meaning

Dramatic oratorio is often called ‘opera of the mind’. The mind can comprehend several states of being simultaneously. But it is impossible for a singer to manifest several conflicting emotions simultaneously. Yet Handel’s music often invites us to hear in it more than one possible emotional state. Staging unavoidably simplifies the effect of such music, negating Handel’s perhaps unparalleled ability to suggest complexity and ambiguity in music.
For instance, Theodora’s ‘O that I on wings could rise’ could be heard as aspirational and hopeful, or caged and desperate, and in concert performance you could feel that either is possible while it is being sung. But if we see someone doing something, that determines what we think the music is representing. Sellars took the decision for us. Theodora was desperate, pacing round and round: no aspiration, no hope.

Handel often suggests psychological and emotional complexity in the introduction to an aria. Staging usually gives us action to watch during aria introductions, action that is likely to overlay the subtlety of the music. At Glyndebourne, Theodora acted out her first aria from the start of its introduction, expressing a convinced renunciation of the world, according to the aria’s text: ‘Fond flatt’ring world, adieu’. But the introduction to the aria suggests a far more complex state, having the form of three answering phrases, so definitely demarcated as to suggest debate. Is that debate in Theodora’s soul? Among the congregation of the faithful that she is addressing? Between her present state and the outside world? A foreshadowing of the conflicts to come? All these can be suggested to us during the twenty bars of the introduction. But Sellars made her aria a sermon, not a soliloquy, and her action during the introduction overrode its music and suppressed its potential meanings.

In ENO’s staging of the Passion sequence of Messiah (Deborah Warner, 2009), during ‘And with his stripes we are healed’ we watched a defenceless man being beaten by two others. We saw the stripes, but not the healing; we saw the man of grief, but not the saviour by whose Passion mankind is redeemed. The mystery of the Passion (‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’) was nowhere.

Italian oratorio was born from the Counter-Reformation. Powerfully emotional, it was intended as edifying entertainment which would engage hearers in spiritual devotion, and prompt spiritual exercises; it was intended to make you reflect, meditate, think. However fine singers’ acting, staging inhibits our thinking. It turns what could be a meditation into a performance. And by occluding Handel’s music and musico-dramatic craftsmanship, it does him a disservice.

Soon after he started writing oratorios for his English public, Handel composed an ode on the power of music, setting Dryden’s greatest poem, Alexander’s Feast. It is a paradigm of the power of dramatic oratorio, of opera imagined. With his music Timotheus not only puts the conqueror through a series of contrasting emotions: he makes Alexander believe he is literally seeing things. In oratorio Handel shows that he has similar power, that the modern musician is equal to the artistic giants of antiquity, and that he needs no help from the arts of the stage. We diminish his achievement by staging it.