Ruth Smith – The Handel Friends

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/

Sandra Bowdler

In a recent issue of the Handel News, I was much stimulated and entertained by the articles by Ruth Smith (1) and Brian Robins (2) on staging Handel, the former concentrating on the oratorios, the latter on the original staging of the operas. Smith concludes that Handel’s oratorios are better in non-staged performances; Robbins argues that, with respect to the operas, ‘only by seeing them as a totality unifying sets, costumes, gesture and expressiveness that we can truly understand the nobility of this great corpus of works on its own terms’. While finding myself sympathetic to both arguments, I have reservations about realising these ideals in the context of modern opera, and oratorio, performance. My views have been influenced by a long-term interest in the wider field of opera performance and recent experiences of Handel productions at home (Australia) and abroad.

Why do opera companies or other organisations even want to stage oratorios, when Handel has left us some 40 actual operas for the purpose? This is a puzzle, and can perhaps only be answered on a case-by-case basis by directors and intendants. I can hazard a guess with respect to the Sydney opera company Pinchgut Opera. From its inception – Semele in 2002 – the company has been associated with the (excellent) choir Cantillation, and it seems that it has specifically sought works with a large choral component. I think this also applies to the more recently established ‘Handel in the Theatre’ group in Canberra, which arose out of the Canberra Choral Society with Alexander Balus in 2014; though its current name seems odd as it has only performed oratorios, including the forthcoming Susanna. This argument about work for the chorus might also I daresay be applied to Glyndebourne. But why on earth would Halle Opera choose to stage Jephtha, albeit during the annual Handel festival there? Quite apart from its turning out to be a monumental train wreck, why not stick with actual operas? Perhaps modern directors feel that Handel’s oratorios provide more familiar storylines than the very obscure personages that feature in the operas? Although these days the likes of Jephtha, Susanna, Alexander Balus etc. are hardly household names.

The other issue highlighted by Smith is the way the oratorios are staged, with the literal specificity of stage action reigning in the inherent ambiguity of the oratorios’ text and music and thus restricting the imaginative reception by the audience. There is also the fact that modern directors are trying to do things with the oratorios that not only did Handel not intend, but which also do not work in a modern operatic context. It is interesting to consider what might be called the converse.

Smith mentions Wagner. I have attended quite a few successful concert performances of Wagner operas over the years (Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung come to mind). In Tristan in particular, staging is practically otiose: some 90% of the whole work comprises long ecstatic passages of singing during which a park and bark performance is practically obligatory. Those who love Wagner, and (like me) are drawn in by his excessively passionate, verging on decadent, music with its long unresolved passages culminating in orgiastic resolutions, see no need for stage encumbrences. The recent New York Metropolitan Opera production (available online and on DVD) has the sketchiest of sets. Regular opera-goers do not actually need elaborate settings. When it comes to Handel, however, directors and producers seem to feel the need to over-embellish.

Returning to oratorio, the recent Pinchgut production of Athalia, despite being musically outstanding, illustrated much that is wrong in staging oratorios, including some new terrible ideas. Who, outside this production, could possibly imagine that an 18th-century English oratorio needed surtitles translated into English (i.e. modern-day English)? This was almost enough to kill the whole production, with the distraction of having two sets of English words being thrown at you at once. I will not go into what might be described as directorial infelicities – I know my mentioning that there is a pretty explicit sex scene between Athalia and Mathan will be enough to have this readership running screaming from the room – but the director Lindy Hume is known for her desire to seek modern ‘relevance’. But every review I read blamed the work for its lack of dramatic cohesion, development and so on. In one case, the reviewer found that ‘Until the last 20 minutes or so of the performance, there was very little action in the story of the opera; this often made Hume’s job difficult, as she designed the protagonists’ movements on stage’ (3). Bloody Handel, making the director’s job difficult. While this might seem to justify Smith’s view, I can imagine another director taking Athalia and producing something both more like a regular modern opera production on the one hand, while on the other also preserving the underlying 18th-century sensibility. It can be done with Mozart and Wagner: why not with Handel?

In this vein, the way Robins describes modern Handel productions in his first paragraph is essentially correct, but not, to me, a bad thing. Those pared-down austere sets do exactly what Smith suggests in allowing the audience’s imagination to fill in the dark spaces; the ones that do not work so well are those forced into a more particularistic setting (e.g. Rodelinda always now seems to happen in a 20th-century police state) or one of fluffy over-embellishment without any particular regard for ‘authenticity’. I also loved his description of an historical performance, reinforced by a recent visit to the Baroque theatre in Cesky Krumlov (not alas for a performance, although the thought of sitting through four hours of opera on one of the benches is a matter of some trepidation). Someone once said to me however that were I (or any Handel fan) to sit through a full historically performed Baroque opera replete with 18th-century conventions, Gest, costume and so on, I/we would be bored stupid. Actually, I love the productions of Sigrid T’Hooft: her recent Parnasso in Festa at Bad Lauchstädt was utterly blissful, as were her Göttingen performances of Amadigi and Imeneo in recent years, all deploying the full authentic range of Baroque opera performance. But would we want all operas to be performed like that today?

The reality is that there are very few appropriate venues for such productions. Cesky Krumlov and Drottningholm are the only two surviving Baroque theatres in Europe, and presumably the world. Early 19th-century buildings like the Goethestheater at Bad Lauchstädt and the Deutschestheater in Göttingen serve well, but this is not the kind of venue in which Baroque operas can be solely performed if we have some hope of their gaining and maintaining an ongoing place in regular opera-going. Perhaps we do not want that, but if they are not performed in regular theatres they are not going to have much survival potential.

Another recent experience of mine was a performance of Tamerlano at La Scala in Milan, a heartland of the opera experience. The stage there is vast, and an ‘authentic’ performance would be lost in the shadows. What I saw was a huge modern production which relocated the scene to the Russian revolution. The mise en scène comprised an enormous train, occasionally in motion (clever back-projection of trees being rushed past) and more often stationary in the snowy wilderness, with doors opening to reveal interactions inside. Maybe Franco Fagioli as Trotsky was a bridge too far, but it was definitely a popular hit and did not, to my mind, get in the way of the story or the meanings inherent in the text and music. If we want Handel opera to survive and flourish, it needs to be performed in these 19th-century barns alongside the core operatic repertoire, together with the more privileged locations of specialised theatres in the context of festivals and informed audiences.

Tag: Ruth Smith

Handel in Cambridge

By Tony Watts

Staging Handel: a Response to Ruth Smith and Brian Robins

Sandra Bowdler