Tag: Publication Year: 2020

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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.

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The Triumph of Virtue (or Trust me, I am a composer)

Mark Windisch

Between June 1994 and June 2015 Mr Clifford Bartlett published an Early Music magazine entitled “Early Music Review.” Mr Bartlett who had been a librarian and later a publisher of music under the name King’s Music was a greatly respected figure within the Early Music field.

Early Music Review was suffused with the highly personal, very learnèd if slightly eccentric nature of the editor. The format was always the same. The front page had an editorial. The following pages were filled with reviews of musical publications, books, (sometimes books only obliquely connected with music) and articles from learned sources, following the latest performance trends. There followed several pages of reviews of CDs and often there was a piece of music, sometimes a piece that was not widely available, arranged by Mr Bartlett or his colleague Mr Brian Clark. Every issue contained a very witty and appropriate cartoon by Mr David Hill. Occasionally there was a seasonal recipe. Finally, there were letters from correspondents, often complaining about a review which was perhaps considered to be unfair. Handel often featured in the magazine and articles were often provided by well-known scholarly people.

Sadly, Mr Bartlett died in 2019 after a spell of mental and physical decline. As both he and the relevant contributor are now deceased, I thought readers might be intrigued by this account – a disagreement between a reviewer and a conductor about a CD of Handel’s music. The conductor was Mr Joachim Carlos Martini (1931-2015) and the reviewer, a name familiar to all Handelians, was Mr Tony Hicks (1943-2010).

The piece in question was a Naxos recording promoted as the premiere recording of Handel’s only Italian choral oratorio, entitled Il Trionfo di Tempo e della Verita. Handel devotees will know that this is one of Handel’s first oratorios and is in the Roman style with conversations between characters representing ideas rather than people. In this particular one, Beauty has to decide between Pleasure and Duty before finally reaching enlightenment. Handel returned to the theme several times as described below.

Mr Bartlett clearly thought that this was an important issue, both stimulating and contentious and gave Mr Hicks sufficient space in the magazine to write a detailed review of the recording, far more than was normally allocated for CD reviews. The recording had been taken from a live performance using Die Junge Kantorei, an amateur choir that Mr Martini had founded and it was subsequently marketed under the Naxos label. Mr Martini had already issued a large number of works by Handel in this way.

Mr Hicks’ first point is that in some of the other recordings prior to Il Trionfo Mr Martini had inserted movements from other works by Handel which Handel had never used in that context. In other words, Mr Martini was rather prone to alter Handel’s compositions without any clear justification. In this case Mr Hicks, who had not long since produced a score for this work for performance at the London Handel Festival, thought that Martini had overstepped the mark and said so.

Readers will no doubt know that this work was first produced by Handel in Rome in 1707 under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) HWV46a. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili produced the libretto. 30 years later (1737&1739) Handel revised and expanded it twice into three sections under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita (The Triumph of Time and Truth) HWV 46b. After a further 20 years (when the composer was blind and towards the end of his life,) the oratorio was further expanded and revised with a libretto in English by Thomas Morell, (probably with John Christopher Smith assembling the score with Handel’s knowledge) as The Triumph of Time and Truth HWV 71.

Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili produced the original libretto of Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.
Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili
Thomas Morrell wrote the libretto in English for the final version of Readers will no doubt know that this work was first produced by Handel in Rome in 1707 under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) HWV46a. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili produced the libretto. 30 years later (1737&1739) Handel revised and expanded it twice into three sections under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita (The Triumph of Time and Truth) HWV 46b. After a further 20 years (when the composer was blind and towards the end of his life,) the oratorio was further expanded and revised with a libretto in English by Thomas Morell, (probably with John Christopher Smith assembling the score with Handel’s knowledge) as The Triumph of Time and Truth HWV 71.
Thomas Morrell
John Christopher Smith probably assembled the score.
John Christopher Smith

It seems that, in the Martini recording, the 1737 version was enhanced by 49 minutes of additional music from the 1707 version and whole pieces from the 1739 version. Mr Hicks’ opinion was that Handel had removed the 1707 extracts in 1737 because they were not appropriate for the mood and context of the 1737 performance. In other words, as the composer, he had his reasons. Mr Martini’s additions from the 1739 version were anachronistic. To make matters worse, the CD notes were no help in explaining how Mr Martini arrived at his decision to create a Frankenstein version of the oratorio.

To his credit, Mr Hicks softens the blow by paying tribute to Mr Martini’s musicianship and praises his attempt to produce as much of Handel’s fine music as possible. However he didn’t hide his disappointment at the lost opportunity to release a recording of a version with integrity at a reasonable price, courtesy of Naxos. Mr Hicks likes the soloists, but the chorus is another matter and comes in for severe criticism.

When it comes to detailed analysis (in which Mr Hicks as a trained mathematician excelled) of the score which Mr Martini had constructed, Mr Hicks highlights a whole raft of solecisms. One is the strange justification given of having consulted another Handel scholar Mr Bernd Baselt about the use of the carillon. It seems that Mr Martini, having found out that Handel used the carillon to replace a solo violin at one point, ignored the fact that the carillon is a transposing instrument and inserted a part for it in the wrong key, thus failing to link properly to Belezza’s aria.

Handel omitted the Sarabande, ‘Lascia la spina’ which opens the 1707 version, but Mr Martini put it back in and follows it with an elaborate harpsichord arrangement taken from Almira and then puts in the aria. Later he adds a section from Acis and Galatea under the title Interludium. There are several more insertions which Mr Hicks considered inappropriate.

Mr Hicks refers to his own work on preparing the 1737 score for the performance at the London Handel Festival with Paul Nicholson conducting. His review of Mr Martini makes it patently clear he considers that to present a work which departs so much from Handel’s intention is an offence to both performers and audience. At this point he reveals his own agenda: he fears any record companies would be reluctant to bring the properly-produced version to the marketplace on the basis that Mr Martini’s version has already captured the market.

The London Handel Festival performed the 1707 version in 1997. On 30th April 1998 they performed Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita in the 1737 version in St George’s with Emma Kirby as Belezza, Jeni Bern as Piacere, Catherine Denley as Disinganno and Robin Blaze as Tempo. The following year on 17th April they performed the 1757 Triumph of Time and Truth in the English version complete with Emma Kirkby as Beauty, Joanne Lunn as Deceit, Catherine Denley as Counsel, Ian Partridge as Pleasure and James Rutherford as Time. Paul Nicholson conducted the piece. The 1757 version, The Triumph of Time and Truth was recorded by Hyperion on CDA66071/2 at St Jude-on-the-Hill Hampstead London featuring Gillian Fisher as Beauty, Emma Kirkby as Deceit, Counsel or Truth by Charles Brett, Pleasure by Ian Partridge, and Time by Stephen Varcoe conducted by Denys Darlow. 

Mr Martini wrote to Early Music Review in response to Mr Hicks’ article, pleading artistic licence to follow what he calls traditional ways of performing Handel’s oratorios and mentioning discussions with several Handel luminaries. In his rather rambling reply, he offers little evidence but only mentions the names of several people he had conversations with. In reply Mr Hicks outlined at some length the scholarly approach that he himself applied in providing performing scores for these three works. The notes in the London Handel Festival Programmes in 1997, 1998 and 1999 are models of clarity, describing the research Mr Hicks carried out to produce the performing scores for the Festival. The only relevant further contribution from Mr Hicks concerns Mr Martini’s insistence that Handel used amateur choirs in his oratorios. This is patently incorrect. Handel only used professional singers in his choirs.

The question for lovers of Handel’s music is whether we prefer to hear a work as we believe Handel intended or whether an artistic director has the right to create an anachronistic compilation edition at will. The choice is between Mr Hicks’ precise scholarship versus Mr Martini’s cavalier pursuit of his own musical instincts. I have no doubt which path I prefer.

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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.

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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……

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Mr Handel, Gentleman Composer

by Jonathan Keates

During the autumn of 1738, the wit and socialite Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote to her friend, the Countess of Pomfret, then living in Paris, with the latest gossip from London. Harriet Herbert, daughter of Lord Powis, had ‘furnished the tea-tables here with fresh tattle for this last fortnight’ by seeking out a vicar ‘to marry her the next day to Beard, who sings in the farces at Drury Lane’. The intended husband was none other than the young tenor, John Beard who had sung for Handel during the 1734-7 Covent Garden seasons which included the premieres of Ariodante, Alcina and Atalanta. Whatever his gifts (later deployed so effectively in the composer’s English oratorios) Lady Mary was unimpressed. ’Since the lady was capable of such amours I did not doubt if this were broke off she would bestow her person and fortune on some hackney-coachman or chairman’. Only half joking, the writer suggested poisoning Lady Harriet’s tea ‘and offered to be at the expense of arsenic and even to administer it with my own hands’ so as ‘to save her from ruin and her family from dishonour’.

The marriage went ahead and Lord Powis’s family made life duly miserable for his erring daughter. Mary Wortley Montagu, herself never quite respectable enough, hence the keener to stand on her dignity as an earl’s daughter, was only articulating the standard prejudice of her social echelon. Musicians, for all their talents, were deemed unfit to wed scions of the aristocracy and the Beards’ union was an outrage, pure and simple. What Handel himself thought of the alliance – or misalliance – is so far unknown. Music, for much of the eighteenth century, was what would nowadays be termed a service industry, its product delivered within a context of deference and flattery which reduced the composer’s role to that of an artificer or functionary, like a pastry cook, a groom or a gamekeeper. In this respect, however, Handel’s status was exceptional for its period. While he relied, during his years in London, on royal favour, pensions and salaries, we can make too much of this dependent position and too little, correspondingly, of the altogether more nuanced role he designed for himself as a working musician with his own carefully crafted niche in London society.

Family background was significant. His mother Dorothea Trust was the daughter of a distinguished Lutheran pastor and his father Georg Handel, though a blacksmith’s son, had become eminent throughout Germany as a surgeon and consultant physician. Late in his career Dr Handel acquired a coat of arms, featuring a boy carrying a medical flask. The device figured on the composer’s signet ring and is visible, now somewhat faintly, on the ledger stone beneath his monument in Westminster Abbey. Thus armigerous (to use a term from his own era) Handel could reasonably claim to be acknowledged as a gentleman rather than an artisan.

This distinction played its part in his Italian journey between 1706 and 1710, several key aspects of which foreshadow his career in England. His singular gift for networking brought him into early contact with various of Italy’s most prominent cultural patrons, enabling useful links with composers, singers and instrumentalists. He was not tied, on the other hand, to specific employers or court establishments and his respective sojourns in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice were self-financed. Where the cantatas written for Marquis (later Prince) Francesco Maria Ruspoli are concerned, the word ‘service’ in relation to Handel needs to be used with caution. Their connexion was more obviously that between a discerning enthusiast and a talented visiting artist, whom he was happy to provide with every material comfort, than an orthodox affair of aristocratic condescension rewarding a servile artisan.

In Rome Handel stayed in Ruspoli’s residence, Palazzo Bonelli, and accompanied him, in due season, to his country villas at Vignanzello and Cerveteri, where they went stag-hunting together in the nearby forests. If proof were needed that both marquis and composer felt perfectly at ease with this arrangement, it lies in Alessandro Piazza’s painting of Ruspoli reviewing a regiment he had recently raised in the Pope’s service. Handel features here as a distinguished spectator wearing a gold-trimmed coat, with a smart tricorne hat tucked under his arm. This is emphatically not a servant’s livery but an elegant outfit of the kind he would wear forty years later for Thomas Hudson’s swagger likeness now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Arriving in London in 1710 Handel adopted the same lifestyle that had served him so well in Italy. He developed links with the court and the Chapel Royal and lived for a time in the Piccadilly palazzo of Lord Burlington, the age’s most illustrious patron of the arts. Networking skills were as useful as they had been in Rome, bringing Handel into contact with such choice spirits as Alexander Pope and John Gay, both of whom contributed to the libretto of Acis & Galatea, and, most importantly, with Dr John Arbuthnot, Queen Anne’s physician, a lover of music and dilettante composer. The point specifically made by Sir John Hawkins in the memoir of Handel included in his General History of Music is that he was not treated, while under Burlington’s roof, as a mere household musician but instead ‘left at liberty to follow the dictates of his genius and invention…at dinner he sat down with men of the first eminence for genius and abilities of any in the kingdom’. Hawkins was writing at least a decade after the composer’s death, but we have no reason to doubt this account. Handel had clearly begun as he meant to go on, nurturing a semi-detached relationship with those wielding power and influence while simultaneously maintaining a measure of professional mobility and independence.

Where he eventually chose to settle permanently in London was in itself a social signifier, implying that he had arrived in more senses than one. His working life during the 1720s revolved around the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, so he might have been expected to find a home in the neighbouring complex of streets stretching westwards to Saint Martin’s Lane and north to Soho Square. The area, favoured by musicians, painters and sculptors, was popular also with the town’s well-established Italian community, many of whom worked in different capacities at the theatre.

Instead Handel made what was clearly a calculated decision to live at several removes from this creative quarter. Taking a lease on a newly-built house in Brook Street, Mayfair, he joined a very different community, a select grouping of nobility, gentry and army officers which gave the area a social tone it has never since lost. Admittedly the house itself, whatever its handsome exterior, needed to function as something more than an elegant retreat from operatic stresses and contentions at the Haymarket. One of its parlours would become the composer’s work room. Space was doubtless needed for storing music and making copies for performance and a further area could be used for rehearsals.

Number 25 Brook Street doubled nevertheless as a gentleman’s residence, where Handel lived in relative affluence with a ‘family’ of servants, his art collection and a cellar of good wine to accompany those elaborate meals his erstwhile friend Joseph Goupy would deploy to such malicious effect as accessories in his satirical etching ‘The Charming Brute’. The house was one of a whole range of status indicators which set ’Mr Handel’ at a distance from other London musicians, bringing him closer, instead, to the world of that loyal echelon of genteel admirers, collaborators and commentators which included figures such as Mary Pendarves, Lord Shaftesbury and, most crucial of all, Charles Jennens.

The rhythms and protocols of Handel’s life in England blended easily with those followed by this circle. By no special irony his worsening state of health during the late 1730s coincided with a growing vogue in smart society for the different kinds of therapy offered by spas and thermal establishments. His 1737 visit to the curative springs at Aachen, reported by English newspapers and so engagingly evoked in John Mainwaring’s biography, was followed by trips to Bath, Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells. Journeys like these could well be extended to include a stay at a friend’s country house. The Italian villeggiatura at Marchese Ruspoli’s castle in Lazio was reproduced at, for example, Exton in Rutland, where in 1745 Handel, en route to drink the waters at Scarborough ( then more popular as a spa than a seaside resort) was welcomed by Lord Gainsborough and obliged his host with some musical numbers for a family performance of Milton’s Comus.

A letter from Gainsborough’s brother James Noel is our chief source for this occasion. ‘As Handel came to this place for Quiet and Retirement’ he writes, ‘we were very loath to lay any task of Composition upon him. Selfishness however prevailed; but we were determined at the same time to be very moderate in our requests. His readiness to oblige soon took off all our apprehensions upon that account. A hint of what we wanted was sufficient, and what should have been an act of Compliance he made a voluntary Deed’. Language and tone here are instructive, presenting the composer as the honoured guest, whose choice of Exton for ‘Quiet and Retirement’ is to be properly respected and whose readiness to comply with the family’s ‘very moderate’ requests thus appears a mark of genuine condescension.

Their house guest was, after all, the modern Apollo, revered as such by visitors to Vauxhall Gardens, where his statue had been placed six years earlier as a species of tutelary spirit. The sculptor Louis-Francois Roubiliac contrived a stunning synthesis of antique and contemporary in his image of the lyre-plucking god of music, with a putto for his amanuensis, as nobody else but Handel, nonchalant in smart Georgian undress, a turban to keep his head warm, one slipper off and the knee-buttons on his breeches unfastened. Roubiliac’s proto-Romantic impulses would find still freer play in his Westminster Abbey monument, with its dramatic juxtaposition of the modern composer and another celestial avatar in the shape of psalmist King David as a bardic harper.

Handel’s request to be buried in the Abbey, with money set aside for a monument, can be seen as a final gesture in his lifelong self-presentation in the guise of the artist as gentleman. Does this aspect of his career especially matter, sub specie aeternitatis? I think it does, more especially since there has been an understandable revolt against earlier ideas of him as the maverick freelance going it alone without salaried posts or official commissions. This necessary revisionism in its turn, however, requires adjustment. How the world saw him and on what terms he was prepared to confront it clearly mattered to Handel both personally and professionally. Without snobbery or toadying he could hold his own among noble and ‘polite’ Handelists like Shaftesbury and the Harris brothers and enjoy the advantages of their encouragement and active collaboration. The aesthetic taste and discernment of a figure like Charles Jennens in helping to shape works as original in concept as Saul, Messiah or Belshazzar was the most obvious advantage reaped from such a milieu. That Handel was careful not to be just another among that ‘lousy crew…. of foreign fiddlers’ Thomas Hearne accused him of bringing to the Oxford Act of 1733 is quintessential to his unique experience as a musician in the broader context of his period.