AN ENTERPRISING GENTLEMAN
Handel was an enterprising gentleman from Germany who became one of the kings of the Baroque era. He enjoyed huge success in London in the 1700s with his Italian-inspired operas, magnificent oratorios and captivating orchestral pieces. Handel was involved in several opera companies and also composed on commission for the English court.
42 OPERAS
Handel wrote no fewer than 42 operas. My favourites are Agrippina in Barrie Kosky’s highly entertaining sex-meets-power staging from Munich and Robert Carsen’s magnificent reality show version of Il Trifono (The Triumph of Time and Wisdom), which took the Salzburg Festival by storm with Cecilia Bartoli in the lead role.
STRICT MUSICAL STRUCTURE
Handel’s operas are often quite long and require inventive staging. Arias tend to follow a strict A-B-A structure, where the first part is the melody, the second part a melodic contrast and the third part an extended repetition of the first. Alcina, for example, offers 44 arias, a myriad of choral pieces and a lot of recitatives in a complicated plot. It could well be a long evening.
FINGER ON THE PULSE
Handel had his finger on the pulse and was not afraid to change style and genre when the mood shifted. When the Italian opera craze subsided, Handel, with his keen business sense, switched to oratorios, which could be performed without expensive costumes and stage design. Messiah, with its phenomenal Hallelujah chorus, is one of the highlights of music history.
REUSE IS GOLD
Handel was known for reusing his golden, melodic themes across compositions and contexts. The well-known, beautiful and expressive aria Lascia Ch’io Pianga from Rinaldo also appears as dance music in Almira and as an aria in Trifono under the title Lascia La Spina. Does it matter?
