Tag: London

Posted on

Handel Fernando 6th April 2022 at The London Handel Festival

By Miranda Houghton

The Hallische Händel Ausgabe is a collection of Handel editions held in Halle, the city of Handel’s birth. A new edition of Fernando, re di Castiglia, the product of extensive scholarly research by Michael Pacholke and subsequently published by Bärenreiter will be performed by Opera Settecento at both the London and Halle Festivals in 2022. This edition is based on a comprehensive study of all the surviving sources. It represents both published research and functions as a performing edition. At the request of the Director of the Halle Händel Festival, Clemens Birnbaum, Opera Settecento under the baton of Leo Duarte, oboist and musicologist were preparing to perform the premiere of Fernando in 2020 before the pandemic struck. We live in hope that both the London and Halle Festivals will return with their usual magnificence in 2022.

Anyone was able to attend the Alan Curtis-devised staged production in 2005 or has acquired a copy of the CD might well ask on what grounds the Halle Handel edition can claim the April performance as a premiere. The critical edition editor explains that the Curtis version of Fernando is in fact a significantly-shortened version of the 1732 (First) version of Sosarme, but with the Iberian setting and the character names derived from the libretto of Fernando. In terms of the proportion of music which appears only in Fernando and not in Sosarme, the recording includes only 2 bars. Not one of the over 130 bars of recitative which were deleted when Fernando became Sosarme was reinstated by Curtis.

In December 1731 after Ezio was completed, Handel began to compose his second new opera for the 1731/32 season. He chose as his text Dionisio, Re di Portogallo by Antonio Salvi (1664-1724,) first set to music by Giacomo Antonio Perti in Florence in 1707. The following appeared in the original published version of the libretto:

“Most honoured reader, Dionision, King of Portugal, had with Queen Isabella of Aragon his first-born son who succeeded him on the throne. He also had a daughter who was married to Fernando, King of Castile. He had in addition several illegitimate children, amongst whom was Alfonso Sancio who, because he was loved above all others by his father, aroused such jealousy in Prince Alfonso that, fearing that the succession to the crown might fall to Sancio, after many manifestations of ill will and anger towards his father, eventually declared against him with a shameless rebellion. Dionisio was compelled to gather together the forces of the kingdom and attack Colimbra (ancient spelling) in order to restore his son and the rebels to their duty and to punish them. The resistance was so obstinate, as was the siege, and the anger of the father and the son went so far that, among historians there are those who assert that they finally challenged each other to end their conflict with a duel; but because of the great danger of parricide, Queen Isabella hastened there, settled their differences and reconciled the minds of her husband and son.

All this is true, taken from the History of Portugal written in French by Monsieur Lequien de la Neufville. The rest is a poetic fiction, based upon probability.”

In his creation of a new opera, Handel as usual changed the title to reflect one of the other key characters, calling his new work Fernando, re di Castiglia. At the end of the 13th century, King Dionysius I of Portugal signed the peace treaty of Alcañices between Portugal and Castile. Ferdinand IV of Castile was at the time twelve years old. The treaty was sealed with two marriages, the more important of which was that of Ferdinand IV of Castile and Constança de Portugal, (called Elvida in Fernando,) King Dionysius’ daughter. They were betrothed in 1291 when Ferdinand was six and Constança not even two years old and married when they were respectively 17 and 12. King Dionysius did indeed face a rebellion from his eldest son, Alfonso who feared he would lose his right to the succession in favour to Alfonso Sanchez, his father’s favourite. In fact Ferdinand and Constança had died about a decade before the rebellion occurred, so Ferdinand’s embodied involvement in the plot is poetic licence. What is document is the fact that Elizabeth or Isabel de Aragão did stand between the rival armies of her husband and her son, preventing battle on that occasion and contributing to her canonisation after death.

Scholars are not sure who reworked Salvi’s text into the “book” Handel set. However some anomalies which have been described as “poetic awkwardness” and a poor command of grammar have led to the suggestion the librettist was Giacomo Rossi. We know he prepared the libretti of Rinaldo and Il pastor fido and he is also credited as librettist of Silla which was later recycled as Amadigi di Gaula. Rossi’s limitations with the Italian language were apparently well-known amongst the Italian chattering classes in London who already objected to the way Handel stripped fine Italian poetry down to a bare minimum to appease his inadequately polyglot London audience. In 1729 Paulo Antonio Rolli mockingly wrote to Giuseppe Riva, “Now I must inform you that Signor Rossi, that famous Italian poet (not ed.), is Handel’s librettist.

The action of Fernando takes place in Coimbra, currently Portugal’s 4th largest city. The city is under siege which dates the plot to between 1280-1320. This makes Fernando the second most “modern” of Handel’s operas, after Tamerlano. There are no documents explaining why Handel changed the locus of the drama two thirds of the way through its composition. It could be because the setting was within living memory rather than set in Ancient Rome or a mythical middle-Eastern country. From 1727-1729 there had been war between England and Spain, so the portrayal of the eponymous magnanimous hero as a Spanish king might have offended some at a time when Spaniards were demonised as the enemy. By contrast Portugal had for centuries been a traditional ally of England.

Perhaps, instead it was the focus on a conflict between father and son which was felt to be insensitive. George II, one of Handel’s staunchest supporters and his son, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales were estranged at the time of Fernando’s composition. When Queen Anne died, Frederick’s parents left Hanover for England. Their eldest son was 7 and was not reunited with his parents until he was 14. When his father ascended the throne in 1727, Frederick was called upon to give up his role as Head of the House of Hanover and take his place at his parents’ side as Prince of Wales. Sadly the separation irreparably damaged his relationship with his parents. In England he surrounded himself with dissenting politicians and supported The Opera of the Nobility, the rival opera company to Handel’s because his father attended and financially supported the latter. Frederick Lewis also played the cello and was a discerning collector of paintings as well as composers. His country seat was at Cliveden where the masque, Alfred (including Rule Britannia,) written by Arne was premiered by a cast including Kitty Clive. Would a depiction of a warlike rebellion in the 13th century of a son against his father be viewed as too resonant with England in 1732 and therefore disloyal to Handel’s greatest moral and financial supporter? Frederick, Prince of Wales married Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. The wedding was celebrated by a production of Atalanta at the King’s Haymarket and Porpora’s serenata, La festa d’Imeneo at The Opera of Nobility. As far as we know, the conflict was not resolved; Frederick Lewis predeceased his father at the age of 44.

Whatever the reason for realising the plot’s insensitivity, its locus was shifted to Lydia in a mythical period. The names of 6 out of 7 characters were changed. The editor of this edition posits that the only remaining connection to the Iberian peninsula is the use of a Sarabande in the opening movement of the overture – something unique amongst Handel’s operas. The reworking of Fernando (which Handel dropped within sight of the end of Act Two) involved significant cuts in the first accompagnato and in about half of the recitatives. Much has been written about the London audience struggling with long stretches of Italian recitative, even though for the most part a published translation was made available for premieres. It could be in part due to the fact that the preceding opera, Ezio which contained extensive recitative was not successful.

So Fernando became Sosarme and was premiered to great acclaim on 15th February 1732. At least two members of the Royal Family attended each of the initial 11 performances. The first cast featured Senesino, Anna Maria Strada del Po, Francesca Bertolli and the great bass, Montagnana. It also included an Italian tenor called Pinacci. When viewing Baroque opera from a 21st century perspective, we must suspend notions of copyright in the sense of droit d’auteur (rather than publishing copyright which was already in its infancy.) Operas at this time were events, the best possible combination of libretto, stage machinery, star singers, fine players and of course the music. Because of the success of Sosarme, Handel recycled five arias from the opera in the pasticcio, Oreste which he put together himself. He also reused a duet from Sosarme in Imeneo. Sosarme was reviewed by Handel in 1734. He made yet more cuts in recitative, reducing 505 lines of text to 365.

The differences between Sosarme 1732 and Sosarme 1734 largely came about because 6 of the 7 vocal parts were allocated to new singers. In taking over from Senesino, Giovanni Carestini retained none of Sosarme’s arias without alteration from the 1732 version of the opera. Two of the arias he sang were rearranged from Riccardo Primo. Two further arias were transposed upwards to reflect the higher fach of Carestini’s voice. The two duets were rearranged so that the lower part didn’t go too low for Carestini (who we think was a dramatic soprano rather than a contralto.) Otto Erich Deutsch, the 20th century Austrian musicologist, presumed Durastanti performed Haliate (which had been sung by a tenor in 1732) as trouser role. There are marks in the score which suggest the role was largely transposed up an octave, but then the second and third arias were subsequently removed. The performance materials have not survived from the 1734 performances so we cannot verify if this role was allocated to Durastanti. Two of Erenice’s arias were excised from the 1734 version and it appears the remaining arias were raised in pitch by a tone. The role of Argone was given to Scalzi, a soprano castrato. He was allocated two more rearranged arias from Riccardo Primo and a rearranged aria sung by Sosarme in the 1732 version. Whoever sang Melo’s role in 1734 lost one aria and the remaining arias were reworked for a singer with a more restricted range than Bertolli in 1732. With the loss of Montagnana, the first of Altomaro’s 1732 arias was cut (music which was lifted by the composer from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo) and also the second so that the baddie was left with only one aria to sing.

In conclusion, there is no such thing as a definitive Baroque opera in the sense that each busy composer would reuse/recycle/reinvent existing arias or adapt popular arias favoured by a new cast member to fit the context. The dramma, or section of epic poetry if you will, was at the heart of each opera and the arias had emotional themes which made them eminently adaptable to being recycled in a similar context. Two thirds of Sosarme started life as Fernando. It could be argued that there is a greater overlap between Fernando and Sosarme 1732 than there is between the two versions of what we now consider to be Handel’s opera, Sosarme.

Fernando, re di Castiglia: A Handel Premiere, Wednesday 06 April 2022, 19:00 at St George’s, Hanover Square – Opera Settecento conducted by Leo Duarte.

Posted on

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).