Transcript opera – week 2. handel in london

Opera – Week 2. Handel in
London
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Upbringing in Halle as organist composer, story
of Handel’s father – then gave up job as cantor
for opera.
First to Hamburg 1703 (Almira, 1705) – worked
with and under Keiser and Mattheson.
Then to Italy 1706-10. Moved around fast and
mixed with leading composers and patrons –
Corelli, Caldara and both Scarlatti’s. Other
operas – Nero, Florindo, Daphne, Rodrigo. Lots
of composition (particularly dramatic cantatas)
and the opera Agrippina (1709) a huge success
in Italy and abroad.
Handel Biography
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Handel internationally famous at 25, and appointed
music director to Elector of Hanover in 1709 on return to
Germany.
Immediately got permission for leave of absence to visit
London for the season 1710-11.
Again returned to Germany only to leave in 1712 for
another London season. This time Handel stayed on
without permission.
Queen Anne died and Elector George became King of
England in 1714. The embarrassed Handel however got
around the King and become the favoured composer of
the court and public.
Opera in London
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Music in the theatre was expected – almost throughout,
but opera (where music was the main thing) was rare.
System of theatre patents going back to Charles II was
still in operation. By 1700 there was still two licensed
theatres (Betterton’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields/Queen’s
Theatre Haymarket, and Christopher Rich’s Drury Lane).
By 1705 the theatre was in decline and audiences
wanted entr’acte/afterpiece type entertainment.
Drury Lane patent went to John Rich who opened the
new Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1714.
Challenge to straight theatre
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Afterpieces and operas perceived a great challenge to
straight theatre.
Opera in the Italian style became the rage for the
fashionable set.
The elaborate settings, public spectacle and famous and
novel singers produced enormous interest.
Opera seen as a challenge to the spoken word. Some
like Addison, Steele and Hogarth attacked opera as
foreign, extravagant, absurd and silly, etc. John Dennis
wrote An Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manner
(1706) attacking opera
Opera seen as a humiliation to English stage and actors.
Aggrippina (1709)
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Unusually good text – specially written by Cardinal
Grimani for Handel.
In Venetian tradition and for Venetian taste.
It is not a farcial Opera Buffa but on a scale with Opera
Seria in terms of emotional and dramatic range.
However it is deeply ironic and satirical.
All characters (Otho excepted) are morally worthless and
full of duplicity and devious machinations.
Story is from Annals of Tactitus and Seutonius’s Life of
Claudius.
Put on 27 times for enthusiastic audiences.
Aggripina (1709)
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Characters all pretty nasty – but played by great stars.
Diversity of vocal qualities – Nero was a castrati
soprano, Otho a trouser role for an alto woman, Narciso
a male alto, Juno a female alto, Palante a bass-baritone,
Agrippina and Poppea both leading sopranos, and
Claudius and Lesbo both basses.
Plot is about succession after Claudius. Agrippina wants
her son (by another marriage) Nero to succeed.
Claudius gives succession to Otho a leading general
and hero. Othos cares less for the succession than he
does for Poppea. After much duplicity involving the
roman lady/courtesan Poppea who everyone wants to
bed (Claudius, Otho, Palante and Narciso) Othos gets
Poppea and Nero the succession.
Conventions
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All the conventions of Italian opera are observed – no
chorus or dance; lots of arias interspersed by secco
recit; singers do not sing together but have their own
arias after which they exit; elaborate sets and
machinary; each singer gets the number of arias
appropriate to his/her role and importance; drama
resides in the recits and the musical importance in the
arias - many of which have orchestral
sections/interjections.
Lots of borrowing – normally in the case of Handel from
his earlier works but also occasionally from other
composers – though re-worked and up-dated for the
context.
Rinaldo
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The conception was Aaron Hill’s. Taking scenes
from Tarquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata the
libretist Giocomo Rossi developed a text to show
off the new theatre, Handel’s music but above all
magic and effects – birds, thunder and
lightening, firewords, amazing scene changes.
Performed 15 times but the cost of mounting the
production was huge.
Lots of Handel borrowings (only a third of the
arias were completely new)
Multi media show
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`When I approached tge bold undertakings
of staging operas in this building, I decided
that no trouble of penny should be spared
in order that the production should be
seen in their glory, and that at least the
blame would not be laid at my door should
this noble form of entertainment ever
become lost to this city’. Aaron Hill.
Synopsis
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Godfrey, General of the Christian Forces in the expedition against
the Saracens, to engage the assistance of Rinaldo a famous hero of
those times, promises to give him his daughter Almirena, when the
city Jerusalem should fall into his hands. The Christians, with
Rinaldo at their head, conquer Palestine, and beseige the King
Argantes in that city. Armida, an Amazonian enchantress, in love
with, and beloved by Argantes, contrives by magic to entrap Rinaldo
in an enchanted castle, whence after much difficulty being delivered
by Godfrey, he returns to the army, takes Jerusalem, converts
Argantes and Armida, to the Christian faith, and marries Almirena,
according to the promise of her father Godfrey.