Tag: Publication Year: 2022

Posted on

The Sound of Silence

By Robert Hugill

For anyone studying the operas of Handel, there are two prime collections, the composer’s autograph scores in the British Library and the conducting scores in the university library in Hamburg; carefully curated sets of the composer’s scores which descended to his assistant and copyist, John Christopher Smith. Not every Baroque composer was as careful as this, as those reviving Baroque opera know. But there is no similar collection of letters for the eager biographer. If we seek to elucidate Handel’s personal or interior life, then silence reigns.

Some letters survive, though few if any shed light on personal or emotional concerns. The lack seems significant, if someone could be that careful with manuscripts then the absence of letters is perhaps deliberate. We can elucidate a lot about the composer’s life, as Ellen T Harris did in her book George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends, but to know that the composer was friendly enough with someone to leave them a legacy in his will says nothing about the quality of that friendship, whether it turned on a mutual love of philosophy, the sharing a jug of claret or indeed late-night intimacy. These details are largely lacking, what we have in Handel’s personal life is a great silence.

And into this silence floods the music.

The revival and interest in Handel’s opera, which has continued to develop during the last 30 years, has come about not just because he could write a rattling good tune, but because the characters in the operas offer us deep emotional experiences. When on form, the composer takes his characters (and us) on psychologically profound journeys.

Given the silence surrounding Handel’s personal life, you wonder where this knowledge of the human heart came from. In essence, did the young George Frideric get his heart broken?

Many historical figures indulged in orgies of letter burning, out of a desire not to reveal anything too personal to posterity. (This was not necessarily out of a need to hide, even a figure like the novelist Mrs Gaskell asked her daughters to destroy her letters.) This silence could represent many things; there has been speculation about Handel’s sexuality, but silence could simply represent other types of illicit relationship such as with married women.

It may seem prurient to want to dig into a composer’s love life, but it would be useful and illuminating to know whether he fell in love with his heroines (Puccini) or identified with them (Tchaikovsky), to at least learn if not with whom, then how, why and when? With Handel, we just don’t know, yet his music gives us a vast array of characters embroiled in the complexities of love and with whom the composer is in deep sympathy.

Here it is perhaps useful to give a brief sketch of his life and where any emotional life might sit. Always independent of mind, Handel learned his trade as a jobbing musician (and then composer) at Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt Theatre but as soon as he could afford it, he took himself off to Italy (aged 21). There he eschewed attaching himself to a particular patron and dealt with a wide variety of Cardinals and Princes. He was not only highly talented but charming and personable as an early portrait would suggest (though it no-longer survives). He dealt successfully with the necessary complexities of a society where many of his patrons took a more than a professional interest in him. Princes and even Cardinals had liaisons with members of both sexes. Ellen T. Harris has explored this in her book on Handel’s chamber cantatas, pointing out that a few cantatas have homosocial elements in their text and that, intriguingly, when Handel came to reuse one in London, he removed these elements.

It is from this period that we have snippets of gossip about Handel’s ‘amours’ with his (female) singers. But once he moved to London (aged 25), the trail goes largely cold. He is linked to the circle of the Earl of Burlington, and the Duke of Chandos, but largely seems to remain magnificently alone. Which leaves us extremely curious. Yet from the music, we cannot help but feel that at some point he must have felt deeply rejected and experienced unrequited love.

Whilst Handel’s music can be highly erotic, just think of Poppea in Agrippina or Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, often, his richest and most emotionally expressive music is for the characters who suffer in love. The sorceress Alcina is, technically, the villain of the opera Alcina but by the beginning of Act Three, we are in no doubt that we are in sympathy with her as she experiences the loss both of her powers and her lover. Alcina is just the last in a series of sorceresses who thread their way through Handel’s operas, usually getting the finest music. Medea in Teseo is even allowed to get away with it, for her no religious conversion or comeuppance, instead, she departs magnificently in a chariot drawn by fire-breathing dragons.

In Amadigi, most of the characters experience love, and Handel finds ways to bring strong emotional expression to a form like opera seria which, in the wrong hands, can seem stiff or lacking in emotional connection. By the end of Amadigi, Amadigi and Oriana are happily united, but it is two other characters, Dardano and Melissa (another of Handel’s sorceresses) who get some of the most extraordinary music. They both experience unrequited love in different ways, and Handel uses his music to take them on a journey and to give a depth to the opera which is lacking in the source (Amadis de Grèce, a French tragédie-lyrique by André Cardinal Destouches and Antoine Houdar de la Motte.). In Act Two, Dardano has a powerful expression of the pain of thwarted love in ‘Pena tiranna’, an aria with a remarkable richness of texture, and then when Orianna seems within his grasp his remarkable aria, ‘Tu mia speranaza’ seems to convey the irony of his situation (he is about to die). From the first, Handel seems interested in Melissa as a woman in love, rather than simply a sorceress, and by Act Three she realises that love is not something to be cured by magic, and her final scene has intense pathos as well as being structurally imaginative in the way Handel depicts her steps faltering and life ebbing away.

This is music which as well as being powerfully memorable, is psychologically profound and erotically charged. So, we are permitted to try and fill the silence at the heart of Handel’s life with events which might suggest how the composer was able to write music with such a deep knowledge of the workings of the human heart.

This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author and of English Touring Opera who commissioned it for their tour of Amadigi, re di Gaula

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

Book review: Three Papers on Handel by Anthony Hicks

By Les Robarts

In these short papers Tony Hicks explores some of the creative work of three men whose labours inextricably link them to Handel’s music. They are a twentieth-century conductor, an Italian poet who wrote verse to be set to music, and an English librettist for Handel. Written by an acknowledged expert on Handel sources, these papers typify the author’s assiduous scholarship. He delves behind the music, finding new sources and unveiling hidden meanings, taking readers carefully and logically through his topics, flawlessly sharing his extensive knowledge. He makes his methods approachable and, more importantly, readable.

Your eyes won’t glaze over at any discussion of diminished thirds, augmented fourths and submerged tenths, for there isn’t any. No technical words obscure meaning, no arcane musical analysis clogs the story. The few music examples illustrate verbal underlay, how the words fit musical notes. Written with rigour these papers allow discerning readers easily to follow this Handelian sleuth’s logic. He never assumes prior knowledge, for every point is explained. While detail is fastidious it is never otiose, its simplicity belying considerable intellectual depth.

In presenting Paolo Rolli’s cantatas and strophic songs, Hicks sets out concise terms of reference and makes no claim to being definitive. His decidedly exploratory style does not hide a confident expertise, inviting readers with occasional tentative suggestions, e.g. ‘it is plausible that Rolli and Handel would have encountered each other when they were in Rome’. He never hides the need for further research. Such provisos prevent reckless assertion and disarm negative criticism.

Wordbooks published for Handel’s oratorios whose words are by Thomas Morell aroused curiosity by some inverted commas preceding the poetic text on the page. Hicks identifies several sources for the quotations, concluding that what he found should provide ‘a better-informed view’ of the librettist’s work. Isn’t it odd that Handel’s reputation has suffered from indictments of ‘borrowings’ while literary writers are not morally scarred when employing ‘quotations’?

Reading a biography of Thomas Beecham led Hicks to explore connections between Beecham’s ballet music and Handel. Not all is what is claimed, he finds, for some locations are misattributed. Hicks sets all to right.

These papers resonate with the author’s astonishing grasp of sources, materials, context, and interleaved concepts. In a closely wrought discussion he never speculates but offers possibilities. Judicious conclusions carry us with him. Hicks opens fascinating vistas as he lets readers into a hitherto unrevealed world of three musical and poetic artists associated with Handel across three centuries.

Hicks is a secure guide, modest in style, never pompous. Be assured, he smiles as he conducts us to broad conclusions while sometimes accepting that for all his exertions he still cannot be certain. We emerge from these brief tours engrossed and wiser, even entertained. Be prepared to be amazed, for new information, fresh interpretation and invention await the purchaser. Colin Timms, editor of the three papers, updates Hicks’s spoken papers in the light of recent research. No lover of Handel’s music should be without this book.

The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation at the Foundling Museum together with the Handel Institute published this booklet as a tribute to Tony Hicks who died in 2010. Copies may be obtained from the Foundation through: colin@ foundlingmuseum.org.uk

Posted on

Handel in Cambridge

By Tony Watts

In 1733 Handel visited Oxford at the invitation of its University’s ViceChancellor. Although Handel was reported as not accepting a doctorate offered to him, it was a great occasion, attended by many Heads of Houses from Cambridge, and included the first performance of his new oratorio, Athalia in the Sheldonian Theatre. So far as we know, Handel never visited Cambridge. But it was reported that he refused a doctorate here too (though no documented evidence of either offer exists), and he had other contacts with Cambridge: for example, Thomas Morell, one of his main librettists, was a Fellow of King’s. But subsequently, Cambridge has made a huge contribution to both Handel scholarship and Handel performance, at least comparable to that of Oxford. The Cambridge Handel Opera Company (CHOC) is part of that tradition.

The collection of Handel autographs in the Fitzwilliam Museum is second in importance only to the Royal Collection in the British Library. Handel was the great hero of the Museum’s founder, Viscount Fitzwilliam, who acquired all the material that had not been bound and presented to King George III. This comprised over 500 leaves of complete, incomplete and uncompleted works, fragments and sketches, written between about 1708 and Handel’s death – now bound in 15 volumes. This collection has subsequently been extended, notably by Francis Barrett Lennard’s gift in 1902 of 67 volumes of early copies of Handel’s scores. In addition, the Fitzwilliam holds the terracotta model of Roubiliac’s famous statue of Handel erected during Handel’s lifetime in the Vauxhall Gardens: public statues of living individuals other than monarchs were rare in England at that time, and the informality of Handel’s attire and pose are strikingly realistic.

There are also important Handel collections in several College libraries. In particular the Rowe Music Library in King’s contains a substantial collection of both contemporary manuscript sources and of 19th century copies assembled by A.H. Mann (1850- 1929), and its Rowe Collection is even richer in first editions of Handel’s music. In addition, the Wren Library in Trinity houses several scores of Handel’s English oratorios which were edited and/or published in Cambridge in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The first biography of Handel – published in 1760, a year after the composer’s death – was written by John Mainwaring (c.1724-1807), a graduate and Fellow of St John’s. A later biography was written by Edward Dent (1876- 1957), a Fellow of King’s and Professor of Music. Dent was also responsible for bringing to Cambridge a number of eminent musicians to escape Nazi persecution, including the great scholar Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967), cataloguer of Schubert’s compositions: while in Cambridge (1939-51) Deutsch collected material for his Handel: A Documentary Biography (1955), which served for decades as the ‘bible’ of Handel biography and was the precursor to Handel: Collected Documents. The most substantial work on Handel’s music, the monumental three volumes on his operas and oratorios, was by Winton Dean (1916-2013), a graduate of King’s: his work is widely recognised as seminal in musicology as a whole, a benchmark for analytical and perceptive scholarship, based on comprehensive and strongly contextualised documentary research.

Christopher Hogwood (1941-2014), a graduate and Honorary Fellow of Pembroke and also an Honorary Fellow of Jesus, was a leading figure in the early-music revival of the late 20th century, wrote yet another biography of Handel, and was involved in several concert performances and recordings of Handel operas and oratorios by the Cambridge-based Academy of Ancient Music, of which he was the founder. More recently, Andrew Jones, a Fellow of Selwyn, was founder and conductor of the Cambridge Handel Opera Group (see below), and is currently preparing an edition of Handel’s continuo cantatas; and Ruth Smith, an independent Cambridge-based Handel scholar, is author of Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought and of many essays in programmes for Handel productions both in the UK and internationally.

Many of the most important books on Handel have been published by Cambridge University Press. These include the five volumes of Handel: Collected Documents, The Cambridge Companion to Handel, The Cambridge Handel Encyclopaedia, and several monographs.

Only one performance of Handel’s works is recorded as taking place in Cambridge during his lifetime: Acis and Galatea at Trinity in February 1756, conducted by John Randall, Professor of Music in the University. Randall subsequently performed Messiah in the Senate House a month after Handel’s death, in May 1759, following this over the next few years with a series of other Handel oratorios in the same location: a number of these were designed to raise funds for the new Addenbrooke’s Hospital (echoing the role famously played by Handel’s own performances of Messiah in fund-raising for the Foundling Hospital in London). Between 1789 and 1809 The Musical Society at the Black Bear Inn in Market Street was almost a Handel Society, an average of three out of eight items at their monthly concerts being devoted to Handel. The first performance in England of Mozart’s arrangement of Alexander’s Feast was given in the Senate House in 1819; and the first revival in England of Semele in the Guildhall in 1878, under Sir Charles Stanford.

A particularly significant series of Cambridge productions was the staged performances of Handel’s oratorios between 1925 and 1948, following the powerful movement in Germany to stage these works – which, though highly dramatic, were not designed by Handel for staged performance. The stage première of Semele was mounted in 1925 by Dennis Arundell, a Fellow of St John’s: a reviewer noted that the artists included two Borzoi dogs, a fantail pigeon, and two goats, which “appeared to require a little more stage experience”. This was followed by staged performances of Samson, Jephtha, The Choice of Hercules, Susanna, Saul and Solomon, some at the Guildhall and others on the back lawn of King’s. They were conducted by Cyril Rootham of St John’s and later by Boris Ord of King’s, with staging by Camille Prior, and costumes and sets by Gwen Raverat – all famous Cambridge figures. The 1935 performances were part of a substantial Cambridge Handel Festival.

In the 1980s Andrew Jones founded the Cambridge Handel Opera Group (CHOG). Its first production, Rodelinda (1985), was followed by 14 further productions of Handel operas, every two years, usually with four performances, at West Road Concert Hall. A distinctive aim of these productions was to observe principles of 18th century performance practice in visual as well as musical respects. They were always in English, with new translations by Andrew Jones that were often used elsewhere, notably at the Coliseum in London. They were accompanied by a Study Afternoon on the opera being performed, with presentations by Handel scholars and, usually, the Stage Director.

Alongside CHOG, there have been other recent staged Handel productions in Cambridge, including by Colleges, like Xerxes at Fitzwilliam (2007), and by Cambridge University Opera Society, like Jephtha (2015). Particularly notable have been productions by English Touring Opera, of which there were at least ten in Cambridge between 2007 and 2014 at the Arts Theatre and West Road, many produced by James Conway.

CHOG ended in 2013, but King’s graduate Julian Perkins has subsequently revived it as CHOC. Its first production was Rodelinda (2018) at The Leys; Tamerlano is its second. CHOC reaffirms the staging principles which underpinned CHOG’s work, and has also sustained the tradition of the Study Afternoon, now extended by the “Green Room” online seminars, again linked to the production – both curated by Ruth Smith. CHOC’s production values, and its commitment to promoting relevant scholarship alongside its productions, give it a unique position in the world of Handel performance. It has also mounted a concert performance of John Eccles’s Semele in Trinity, recorded in a much-praised CD, in collaboration with the Academy of Ancient Music and Cambridge Early Music – bringing together the vibrant earlymusic scene in Cambridge. In all these respects, CHOC is building upon and extending a long, rich and widely influential tradition.

The CHOC production of Tamerlano will be staged in Cambridge on 5, 6, 8 and 9 April. Tickets are available from Cambridge Live: https://www.cambridgelive.org.uk/tickets/events/cambridge-handel-operacompany-presents-handels-tamerlano

Meanwhile, CHOC is holding three online ‘Handel’s Green Room’ discussions in February/March, curated by Ruth Smith, on preparations for the Tamerlano production. For details, and to subscribe to CHOC’s News Bulletin, see: https://cambridgehandel.org.uk/

Posted on

Arias for Ballino

By Leo Duarte

Opera Settecento, whom you may think of as “The pasticcio people” after our performances at the London Handel and Halle Handel Festivals of Handel’s 34 PROOF 7: 21-10-22 pasticcio operas, Elpidia, Ormisda and Venceslao is poised to go into the recording studio next month with tenor, Jorge Navarro Colorado. We are most grateful to those members of The Handel Friends, The Serse Trust and Jorge’s family whose donations have enabled us to record our first CD which is entitled “Arias for Ballino.”

Owen Swiney relates that Handel talent-spotted Annibale Pio Fabri, known affectionately as Balino or Ballino, the diminutive form of his forename, in Bologna. Swiney writes, “This Man Sings in as good a Taste as any Man in Italy.” Of a performance of Lotario in London, Mrs Pendarves wrote, “a tenor voice, sweet clear and firm..He sings like a gentleman without making faces. The greatest master of musick that ever sung upon the stage.” I hope any of you who have recently attended ETO’s Tamerlano production will agree this review could easily have been written about Jorge’s performance in the role of Bajazet. Before travelling to London, Ballino sang in operas by Vivaldi, Caldara, Alessandro Scarlatti, Orlandini, Gasparini, Leo, Vinci and Porpora. In 1719 he became a member of the Accademia Filharmonica of Bologna as a composer. He was named President of the Society no less than five times. In London Handel wrote roles for him in Lotario, Partenope and Poro and he appeared in revivals of Cesare, Tolomeo and Rodelinda. Handel also transposed arias from Scipione, originally written for castrato, specifically for Ballino to sing the title role. Later in his career he was based in Vienna, had considerable success in three operas by Hasse performed in Madrid and composed his own setting of Metastasio’s great libretto, Alessandro nell’Indie. With such a wealth of wonderful repertoire associated with Ballino, we have not only put together an enticing and varied list of arias but can also claim modern premieres for many of them.

Until now Opera Settecento has focused on resurrecting neglected operas as concert performances, although both our Halle and Vienna performances have been broadcast around the world. It is a big step for us to launch our first CD and we need in the region of a further £10,000 to make its release in 2023 a reality. Cheques can be made payable to The Serse Trust, and sent to 6, Beechwood Avenue Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 9TE. We are a registered charity so can claim Gift Aid on your donation if you are a UK tax payer. As a taster of what is to come, here is a link to Jorge singing with us on Youtube. 

https://youtu.be/PUcWXO52sJk
Posted on

Handel’s Fairest Dalila

By Miranda Houghton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

The progress from Keyboard virtuoso to Opera composer of Genius 

By Mark Windisch

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


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

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

Duke Johann Adolf I

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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

An interview with Alexander Chance

By Francisco Salazar

Alexander Chance is a fast-rising singer who became the first countertenor to win the International Handel Singing Competition.

He has performed at Wigmore Hall, Musikfest Bremen, Nargenfestival in Tallinn, and The Grange Festival, among others. This season as he continues his rise with performances in Ravenna, Japan, Munich, Tel Aviv, and Prague, among many others.


OperaWire had a chance to speak about his Handel Competition win and what he is looking forward to as his career grows.


OperaWire: Tell me about winning the Handel competition? What does this competition mean to you?
Alexander Chance: It’s a competition that gets a lot of attention in the early music world, and I’d always viewed it (as with all competitions) as something I’d have absolutely no chance in, but I finally convinced myself this year to go for it. I wanted to get to the final so that I could invite friends who hadn’t heard me sing before, or hadn’t heard any Händel, or both, and share with them a side of me they hadn’t maybe seen before. This was a great competition for me in that sense because the final happens in the heart of London on a
Friday evening, in a church with an acoustic perfect for Händel’s music, with an orchestra and a conductor, in Laurence Cummings, who are real Händel specialists. Winning was a bonus.

OW: You are the first countertenor to win the International Handel Singing Competition, also winning the Audience Prize. What does that mean to you? What does it mean to make history?

AC: There have been plenty of wonderful countertenors in the final over the years, and really just to be named among them is an honor. I think this was the first year when countertenors have come 1st and 2nd (Meili Li, whom I know quite well, and who is a fantastic person and singer), so I’m pleased that we could jointly fly the flag.

OW: How do you go about choosing your repertoire for a competition like this one?

AC: Within the normal guidelines of showing enough range and variety, and a mixture of opera and oratorio, I chose pieces I knew very well for the earlier rounds: I find walking into a room with a panel of judges and only a pianist or harpsichordist to accompany you (with whom you’ve had ten minutes to rehearse) the most nerve-wracking thing you have to do as a singer. You have very little time to create an atmosphere and leave a convincing
impression, and so I felt I needed to perform pieces I knew like the back of my hand, and could rely on if I got nervous. The final was different – I just chose the pieces I liked the most and thought the audience would like.

As it happens, I hadn’t performed any of them before, which seems a little foolhardy in retrospect, but I knew that I’d have plenty of preparation time, and rehearsal time with the orchestra. Getting to sing “Cara Sposa,” one of Händel’s most beautiful arias, without having to worry about performing the rest of the opera (“Rinaldo”), was a treat!

OW: What are the keys to doing a competition for you?


AC: This was the first competition I’d entered, and in fact it may well be the last! I’ve always been terrified of them, far more so than any concert or opera I’ve ever done. I was focused on showing variety in each round, and planning what I wanted to sing in each round months beforehand, so that I’d have time to learn them from memory well before I needed to perform them. Especially with regard to the final, I wanted to treat it like a concert rather than a competition, and take advantage of the fact that there was a wonderful orchestra and conductor helping me out, and friends and family in the audience who were there to hear me enjoy myself.

OW: This summer you’ll be at the Ravenna Festival. Tell me about the
repertoire you’ll perform there? What do you like about performing
Britten’s music?


AC: I’m singing Britten’s “Canticles” with Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake. This is exciting not only because they are both masters of this music, but also because Julius was our next-door neighbour when I was young, and we’d often hear singers like Ian come over to rehearse with Julius next door. I’ve known him and his family since I was about 5 years old, so performing with him now will be surreal.


Britten’s music is always enchanting to listen to or perform; he has an uncanny ability to conjure up mysticism. Both of the canticles featuring countertenor (“Abraham and Isaac” and “Journey of the Magi”) are based on religious stories, but both come in secular forms: the text of the latter is a TS Eliot poem, and the former is based on a Chester Miracle Play. They represent an interesting junction between his church music and his operas. I know a
little about both, having sung his religious music at school and university, and having sung the role of Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Grange Festival last summer. I always love how prescriptive he is, and how precise with his markings on the page, meaning he always knew exactly what he wanted from each note. This makes memorizing the Journey of the Magi, in particular, a real challenge!

OW: What does it feel like to perform at this important festival?


AC: I’ve performed at the Ravenna Festival once before, with the Tallis Scholars a few years ago. I love the city, and the people who run the festival, or at least those I’ve met, are a delight. I’m particularly looking forward to a nice meal outside on a nice street after the concert with my girlfriend, who is coming for the week!

OW: The countertenor is sometimes limited to performing only baroque. However, today there are many composers composing for the voice type. What excites you about that and what is some repertoire that you are excited to develop?

AC: Baroque music is a real treat to perform. I love the idea that composers writing today, as ever, will write for particular voices, which means getting to sing music perfectly suited to one’s own voice. I’d like the chance to perform some of the newer opera roles for countertenor, such as Jonathan Dove’s “Flight,” or Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel.” Equally, if a composer like Jonny Greenwood, who blurs the boundaries between conventional classical music and ‘popular’ music, ever felt moved to write for countertenor (and let’s face it, all of Radiohead’s music is written for countertenor), that would be an exciting prospect.

OW: As a young artist, what are you excited about for the upcoming years? Where do you hope to see your career?


AC: In terms of the future of classical music, I’d love to see more young people come to concerts and operas, a wider array of venues, more variation in how long (or short) concerts are. Personally, I want to make as much of the next ten or so years as possible, which (one’s 30s) are probably the best time vocally for a countertenor, perform as much varied repertoire and go to as many places as I can; and then perhaps do something entirely different afterward. Touring is great fun when you are young, but it takes a lot out of you, and I always miss my girlfriend and my friends when I’m away. And, to be perfectly honest, it is often difficult to make enough money from this job to live comfortably. That might sound like a bum note on which to end, but it’s true!

This interview is published in print by kind permission of the Salazar brothers, founders of the website OperaWire which is an online haven for all passionate about opera around the world.

Posted on

‘(Al)l the world at the foundling hospital’

G. R. Sargent, Interior view of the Foundling Hospital chapel from the sanctuary, ca 1830.
© Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

It is midday on 6 April 1773 and the Foundling Hospital chapel is jam-packed. 35 instrumentalists (plus music stands and instruments), 18 chorus singers, 12 boy choristers, 4 soloists and 1 organist have squeezed into the western gallery, and over eight hundred members of London’s elite are seated in the pews. The musicians have tuned, and the audience is sitting in hushed anticipation, waiting for the concert to begin.

Transcription of a newspaper advertisement for the 1773 performance of Messiah at the
Foundling Hospital. From the Morning Chronicle on 5 April 1773.


But before the music starts, let us consider the logistics of organising such an event. Although ostensibly a charitable and a musical endeavour, the list of expenses relating to this event from the Foundling Hospital minutes demonstrates that several local businesses directly benefited from this performance of Handel’s Messiah. Among the expenses listed are transport for one of the soloists (a ‘Coach for Mr. Rheinhold’) at 7s, and a payment of
£3.3s to ‘Mr Clay High Constable’, who was presumably in charge of security. £4.16s (around £400 in today’s money) was spent on advertisements, such as the one below which appeared in the Morning Chronicle the day before the concert. Like modern concert flyers, these advertisements outlined the location and timing of the event, the programme and the soloists, and gave instructions on where the tickets could be purchased and for how much.

Sourcing these tickets was yet another expense. A Mr Jones was paid £3.6s for sourcing the paper and printing the tickets. Although much larger, more decorative, and without the barcodes and download access experienced today, they nevertheless included information typically expected on a ticket, including the Hospital’s crest, essentially the logo of the institution, and the same details offered in the advertisement. To ensure that this batch of tickets could be used several years running, only the generic information was printed,
with details specific to that year’s performance written in by hand.

Ticket for the 1773 performance of Messiah at the Foundling Hospital.
© Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

The payment list also provides information about the performers at this concert. Whereas newspaper advertisements only give the names of the star soloists, the Miss Linleys and Mr Stanley, the payment list names all members of the and, from the front desk violinists to the bassoonists and the kettle drummer. Chorus members were also listed, with the exception of a possible volunteer chorus of around 26, used to bolster the paid singers. These volunteers literally ‘sang for their supper’, receiving beef and wine at a total cost of £2.6s in exchange for their services. The named chorus members, orchestra, and
soloists, however, did receive a fee. Most earned 15s (about £65 today), although some section leaders, such as the oboist John Parke, received a guinea (c. £90 today) while the poor viola players took home a mere 10s.6d (c.£45). Although the Hospital paid for his coach, Frederick Reinhold waived his fee, while fellow soloist Robert Hudson received 3 guineas. By far the most extravagant fee, was the £100 (c.£9,000) awarded to the concert manager, Thomas Linley, for himself, his violinist son Thomas junior and his two
daughters Elizabeth and Mary, who were the soprano soloists.

While the 1773 payment list sheds some light on the costs of organising a concert and on the statuses of various musicians in eighteenth-century London, it does not explain how the performers came to be there, bows in the air, breaths held, waiting to begin. In a time before social media, when googling ‘string players in London’ was simply not an option, concert organisers relied on word-of-mouth recommendations to find and hire musicians. It was therefore vital that musicians carefully maintained their business networks to ensure
continuous employment in a relatively insecure profession. An introduction to some of the musicians taking part in this performance of Messiah will take you on a whistle-stop tour through some of the close-knit, interconnected networks that helped to sustain London’s music industry.

‘The Nest of Nightingales’
Known as ‘The Nest of Nightingales’, the Linleys were a musically precocious family, with eight children employed in the music profession and three appearing at the Foundling Hospital in 1773. Their father Thomas was a singer, composer and concert master, and his wife Mary’s musical talents were said to match those of her husband. Following success in their native Bath, Thomas Linley senior and four of his children, Thomas, Elizabeth, Mary and Maria, made regular appearances in the London oratorio seasons from the late 1760s, including at Drury Lane Theatre, managed by John Christopher Smith and John Stanley, who were also involved in the annual Foundling Hospital concerts. Keeping it in the family had its advantages; older family members helped younger members to make professional contacts in addition to teaching them practical musicianship, such as how to compose or play musical instruments.

Elizabeth Linley depicted as St Cecilia by Thomas Watson, c. 1779. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

Continual immersion in this world from an early age certainly seems to have affected the young Thomas junior. When asked by a gentleman, already impressed by the skills of his sisters, whether he too was musical, little Thomas replied: ‘Oh yes, Sir, we are all geniuses!’. Alas, Thomas’s assertion turned out to be unwitting foreshadowing of the tragic events to come. On learning of Thomas’s death in a boating accident aged 22, his friend W. A. Mozart called him a ‘true genius’, whose contribution to English music would be irreplaceable.

Transcription of a newspaper advertisement for Thomas Linley’s 1773 benefit concert.
From the Public Advertiser on 12 April 1773.

(Ed: Our noble chairman spotted the 18th century typographical error in the
penultimate sentence.)


At the time of the Foundling Hospital concert in 1773, though, Thomas’s career was going well. 6 days after his performance at the Foundling Hospital he would perform at his own benefit concert, alongside ‘capital musicians’ including the oboist Johann Christian Fischer. His sisters Elizabeth and Mary also sang, although this appearance was to be Elizabeth’s last. The following day she married the playwright Richard Sheridan, who forbade her from
performing in public. Similar to the previous newspaper snippet, the Thomas Linley’s advertisement advises that tickets for his benefit were on sale at various coffee houses. Alternatively, they could be acquired from Mr Linley directly at his lodgings in Marylebone High Street, where he lived with another musical family, the Storaces.

Thomas Linley junior by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1771.

The Storaces were evidently family friends of the Linleys. Double bassist Stefano Storace was active in London from the late 1750s and played at the Foundling Hospital on several
occasions, including in 1773. He had also acted as Elizabeth Linley’s agent during their appearances at the Three Choirs Festival. Elizabeth visited the Storaces with her new husband on their return from honeymoon.

A Musical Affair
Stefano Storace was also acquainted with another musical couple, the Pintos. They had perhaps got to know one another after Thomas Pinto and Stefano were both members of the committee for the Royal Society of Musicians in 1766 and 1767. Stefano was also one of the witnesses at Thomas’s wedding in 1766. Violinist Thomas Pinto led the band and played solos at some of London’s most popular theatres. Like many musicians, he was also a teacher and one of his pupils, John Coles, was in the violin section at the 1773 Messiah concert at the Foundling Hospital. Yet despite his moderate success, Pinto was apparently
‘very idle, inclining more to the fine gentleman than the musical student, kept a horse, was always with a switch in his hand instead of a fiddle-stick.’


Until shortly before her marriage to Thomas Pinto, soprano Charlotte Brent had been romantically involved with her teacher, the illustrious composer and serial philanderer Thomas Arne. They had probably been an item since around 1755 when Charlotte, Thomas Arne, his wife Cecilia, Cecilia’s sister Esther and nieces Elizabeth and Polly travelled to Dublin. After Cecilia, formerly a celebrated soprano, became ill and stopped performing, Thomas began composing for Charlotte instead. Thomas left Dublin in 1756 accompanied by Charlotte, leaving Cecilia behind.


Thomas Arne plays ‘Rule Britannia’ on the chamber organ,
after Francesco Bartolozzi, c. 1785. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

Fire insurance documents record a lengthy affair. Nine years after the fated trip to Ireland, Cecilia was living with a carpenter named Mr Goldstone. Charlotte, meanwhile, was residing with Thomas Arne, where she also insured her £400 worth of possessions. By 1772, Cecilia had moved in with Polly, who by then had married the violinist François-Hippolyte Barthélémon.

François-Hippolyte Barthélémon is depicted in Thomas Rowlandson’s 1784 image of a musical performance at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. He is seated directly behind the soprano Frederika Weichsel (1745-1786). Also depicted are the green-jacketed oboist Johann Christian Fischer, and the rotund kettle drummer Jacob Neilson.


Music pavilion at Vauxhall Gardens, after Thomas Rowlandson, 1785. © Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

At the time this image was created, Frederika lived with her husband, oboist Carl Weichsel, at No. 3 Church Street, just south of Soho Square, and Thomas Rowlandson rented an apartment next door at No. 4. Frederika’s connection to Rowlandson and her prominent position in the image have led David Coke and Alan Borg to suggest that this work may have been commissioned by Frederika herself. Alternatively, they propose that Rowlandson may have presented the picture to Frederika as a retirement gift. Either way, due to various anachronisms in the organisation and ages of those featured, we know that this collection of musicians and audience members are a hypothetical ensemble rather than an accurate depiction of a performance.

However, the musicians depicted must have known each other. Barthélémon frequently performed alongside Fischer and he also played a violin concerto at Stephen Storace’s 1770 benefit concert. In the spring of 1773, Fischer played at Thomas Linley’s benefit concert, and Fischer and Frederika Weichsel performed together at least twice in that season alone. Carl Weichsel and Fischer would presumably have been aware of one another as they were both oboists, and Neilson had long been associated with Vauxhall Gardens, where Frederika Weichsel had been a star performer for over 20 years. All four musicians had performed at the Foundling Hospital. Neilson played the kettledrums there every year between 1767 and 1777 including in 1769 alongside Carl Weichsel, in 1770 with Fischer and Carl Weichsel, and in 1771 and 1772 with Frederika Weichsel. Neilson also took part in the Hospital’s 1773 performance, which is where we find him now.


Among the musicians surrounding Neilson, Storace, Cole, and the Linleys must have been several familiar faces. Some were related, others knew each other through teaching or had played together in the past, including at the Foundling Hospital. Even those they did not recognize might one day become a business partner, an accompanist or a next-door neighbour. Concert appearances like this not only provided much needed income but also
exposed performers to the musical networks that would help them to secure their next gig. But it is not time to pack away yet; they have a job to do at the Foundling Hospital. Let the music commence!