Handel (32 page)

Sosarme
has all the faults and virtues of
Poro
and
Ezio
, and shows yet again how much the composer relied on the stimulus of a really good libretto. The pity is that Salvi's text had to be so heavily cut in order to suit Handel's requirements, though enough survives to remind us of the Florentine poet's gift for flexible dramatic verse, a powerful sense of situation and an ability matched by few other contemporary theatre poets to delineate credible human characters. As in
Ezio
the hero is folded rather too gently into the substance of the drama,
in which his stance is that of an ardent romantic as opposed to a warrior hero. In the latter posture he only emerges halfway through the second act in ‘Alle sfere della gloria', whose broad, leisurely musical paragraphs, sumptuously scored for oboes and strings with two horns, set up a heroic confidence echoed later on by the delightfully catchy ‘M'opporrò da generoso', its distinctive colouring created by a rare use of colla parte oboes within bustling quaver patterns on the strings.

The women are treated with that utter certainty of aim and expression which Handel almost always brought to his heroines. In Erenice, Sosarme's prospective mother-in-law, Salvi had created a maternal figure somewhat more sympathetic than either the ambitious Gismonda or the tigress Matilde. Her wavering hopes and fears, embodied, for example, in the structure of her ‘Vado al campo', its sense of urgent resolve underlined by the absence of ritornello and the pulse of the drumbeat bass, very quickly become our own. At moments like this, and in the anguished pathos of ‘Cuor di madre', punctuated by violin solos, we can see just how unfair is the charge levelled at opera seria that it lacks an adequate sense of continuous drama.

Anna Strada as Elmira was rewarded with what is surely one of the strongest of Handel's later soprano roles. Like Durastanti before her and Susanna Cibber later on, she was evidently the kind of singer the composer liked best, not so much a flashy vocalist as an artist whose sensitivity and expressiveness suited themselves ideally to the full range of Handelian effects. We are told that he took such care in composing for her that ‘from a coarse singer with a fine voice, he rendered her equal at least to the first performer in Europe'. How many other composers of the day would have dared to introduce a prima donna with an air on the scale of an exquisite miniature like ‘Rendi'l sereno al ciglio', a mere fifteen bars accompanied by strings alone, without continuo? He had done something of the sort before with Cuzzoni, and like her ‘Falsa imagine' (though this was not Strada's first appearance) the little aria became an instant favourite. It is Elmira who begins and ends both Acts I and II, the latter counterbalancing A minor and A major in the plaintive opening arioso and simile aria in which she likens her errant brother to a bird returning finally to its nest, with the help of insinuating triple time string figures. Impossible to avoid feeling,
whatever the librettist's contribution, that Handel must have appreciated a dramatic design which threw Strada, rather than Senesino, into such powerful relief though he flattered them both with the serene enchantments of ‘Per le porte del tormento', perhaps his most attractive operatic duet.

Sosarme
's success was more or less contemporary with events in the English musical world, which may have given Handel a certain additional satisfaction. His old rival Giovanni Bononcini had remained in London after the break-up of the first Academy, as he was already under the protection of Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, ‘with a salary of five hundred pounds a year, a sum no musician had before from any Prince, nor ought to have'. He had composed little following the notorious
Astianatte
, but at any rate found an appreciative patron in the Duchess, at whose private concerts ‘no other Music was performed to the first people in the kingdom than the compositions of her favourite master, executed by the principal singers of the opera'. Each was, however, proud and temperamental, and in 1731 they quarrelled irredeemably over the extras Bononcini added to his bills. He left her service for good, perhaps in a mood like that in which he had once dared to snub the Emperor Joseph I with the words: ‘There are many sovereign princes and only one Bononcini.'

At the same period a scandal had broken, which was to discredit him utterly in the eyes of many of his London admirers. The Academy of Ancient Music was a concert club, founded by some of Handel's friends and acquaintances, which met at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand and, besides giving excellent recitals, amassed an extensive music library from the members' donations. In 1728 Maurice Greene, newly appointed to the Chapel Royal post left vacant by the death of Croft, introduced a madrigal, ‘In una siepe ombrosa', to one of the Crown and Anchor concerts as a work by Bononcini. Three years afterwards the club library acquired the newly published
Duetti, Terzetti e Madrigali
by Handel's old Venetian associate Antonio Lotti, and what was everyone's surprise to find ‘In una siepe ombrosa' included in the book.

Bononcini's initial response was an outraged denunciation of Lotti as a plagiarist, claiming that he himself had written the madrigal thirty years earlier for the Emperor Leopold. Application to Lotti himself by the club produced a declaration of authenticity, which Bononcini declined to answer.
A second letter to Venice elicited Lotti's affidavit, under seal of a public notary, with testimony from four witnesses who had either seen it in rough draft or sung it before it went to press, and from the author of the text, Paolo Pariati. As a venerable member of the Venetian musical establishment Lotti cannot have needed to pass off so unremarkable a piece as his own: Bononcini's reasons for doing so may have been connected with the sort of contemptuous arrogance for which he had become noted. Greene meanwhile stuck to his guns and, on seeing his friend dishonoured, withdrew to set up a rival society with the violinist Michael Festing at the Devil Tavern, further down the street, ‘and the joke upon this occasion was that Dr Greene was gone to the Devil'. Bononcini finally quitted London for Paris in October 1732, never to return.

Whatever his pleasure in seeing his rivals discomfited and his opera successful, Handel's triumphs were alloyed by a piece of musical piracy which was to have momentous consequences, not only for the direction ultimately taken by his own career, but for the concert life of eighteenth-century London as a whole. On 23 February 1732, eight days after the new opera's première, a private performance of the Cannons oratorio
Esther
(or
The History of Hester
, as Lord Percival calls it) took place. This was given at the Westminster house of Bernard Gates, who many years earlier sang bass solo in Queen Anne's birthday ode and the
Utrecht Jubilate
, and was now Master of the Chapel Royal Children. Gates himself, according to the printed libretto, ‘join'd in the Chorus's, after the Manner of the Ancients, being placed between the Stage and the Orchestra; and the Instrumental Parts (two or three particular Instruments, necessary on this Occasion, excepted) were performed by Members of the Philharmonick Society, consisting only of Gentlemen'. The all-male cast was drawn from among Gates's choristers, the part of Esther being taken by John Randall, later professor of music at Cambridge, and the oratorio was ‘represented in action'. Two further performances followed at the Crown and Anchor, organized by William Huggins, who provided the costumes. Handel was present on one of these three occasions, probably the first of them since it was on his birthday. The idea may originally have been to honour him by presenting a work which few people, apart from the Duke of Chandos and his friends, for whom it was originally composed in 1718, would have had the chance of hearing. It was a hit for all concerned, as Percival noted:
‘This oratoria or religious opera is exceeding fine, and the company were highly pleased, some of the parts being well performed.' The Academy of Ancient Music later adopted the pleasing habit of celebrating the composer's birthday with an
Esther
revival.

Bernard Gates, however, had other, slightly less laudable intentions in presenting Handel's first English oratorio to a wider public. He had already flourished his Handelian colours against Greene's Bononcinian partisanship in the wake of the Lotti madrigal affair, and the
Esther
performances seem to have constituted a further demonstration of loyalty. A more exalted enthusiast in the shape of Anne, the Princess Royal, was soon eager to hear the music. Since she could hardly be expected to go to a Fleet Street tavern, the King's Theatre was chosen as a suitable venue, but the solo roles would need to be taken by stronger voices than those of the Chapel Royal choristers. On 2 May Handel duly offered a revised and expanded
Esther
, including music from the Coronation Anthems and other works, and featuring stars from his current company, Senesino, Strada, Bertolli and Montagnana. The Italian singers coped valiantly, if not altogether successfully, with the English text. ‘You would have sworn it had been
Welch
,'commented one audience member, who was disappointed to find ‘this Sacred
Drama
a mere Consort, no Scenary, Dress or Action'. Handel, he noted, was ‘plac'd in a Pulpit, I suppose they call that (their Oratory)' with the soloists ‘in their own Habits'. The chorus may or may not have included Chapel Royal men and boys. An advertisement in the
Daily Journal
was careful to emphasize the decorum of the occasion: ‘NB There will be no Action on the Stage, but the House will be fitted up in a decent Manner for the Audience.'

It appears that a person of considerable force must have intervened to prevent a scriptural episode being given theatrical representation, and in so profane a setting as the opera house. Few public figures of the day wielded such influence as the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson. A pillar of the Whig establishment and known as ‘Walpole's Pope', he was hard-working, scholarly, devout and well-intentioned, an exemplary figure who brought dignity to his calling in an era when the established Church was becoming noted for complacent worldliness. Gibson was active in expressing his disapproval of the age's loose morals. During his London episcopacy he operated, with varying success, against Heidegger's masquerades,
‘houses which entertained Sodomitical Clubs', Sunday racing, prostitution and drunkenness. His swift intervention in regulating the circumstances of the
Esther
performance, however, probably owed more to efficiency than highmindedness. The bishop had been Dean of the Chapel Royal since 1721 and was seriously concerned with organizing the smooth running of its services, overhauling its accounting system and establishing new rules for the choir. It was natural enough that he should want to concentrate his singers' activities on the chapel rather than the theatre.

As now given in the Haymarket,
Esther
made a significant impact on the audiences over six evenings in May. The same anonymous pamphleteer who had derided the Italians' broken English and called the oratorio ‘a Religious
Farce
' pointed out that Handel had ‘put near £4000 in his Pocket, of which I am very glad, for I love the Man for his Musick's sake'. Yet, as if one piece of theatrical buccaneering was not enough, the
Daily Post
announced a forthcoming performance of ‘a celebrated Pastoral Opera call'd Acis and Galatea' by the company currently engaged in presenting English operas at the New Theatre (formerly the Little Theatre) on the east side of the Haymarket. This enterprise was managed by Thomas Arne, father of the composer, assisted by the German bassoonist John Frederick Lampe and the poet Henry Carey, an admirer of Handel. It was a thoroughly laudable scheme, though like various others of its kind (Richard D'Oyly Carte's Royal English Opera of the 1890s, for example) it was destined to failure. What is interesting, however, is that both the piratical
Esther
and
Acis
were Cannons works – so was Thomas Arne responsible for the former as well, and if so, did he obtain the scores from one of the Cannons musicians? Pepusch, even if he must have taken part in the Crown and Anchor performances, seems as likely a source of supply as any, since, though he was always interested in what Handel was up to, his regard for him was distinctly grudging. Whatever the truth of the matter Handel felt compelled to weigh in with a counterattack, and on 5 June an
Acis
revival was duly mounted at the King's Theatre, significantly without stage action ‘but the Scene will represent, in a Picturesque Manner, a rural Prospect, with Rocks, Groves, Fountains and Grotto's; amongst which will be disposed a Chorus of Nymphs and Shepherds, Habits, and every other Decoration suited to the Subject'.

The end product was more grotesque than anything else.
A phrase of the German critic Marpurg's sums up this 1732
Acis
and needs no translation:
ein gar besonders mischmasch
, and so it was. For a start, the performances were bilingual (a lesson had been learnt from
Esther
) and sections of
Aci, Galatea e Polifemo
, on ice since 1708, were added to the Cannons
Acis and Galatea
. Airs from the early operas, the Birthday Ode and the
Brockes Passion
thickened the brew, and five new pastoral characters joined the dramatis personae. Nobody seemed quite certain what was actually being performed; Arne's pirates called it an opera and Lord Percival noted it as ‘the fine masque of
Acis and Galatea
composed by Hendel'. It was unlikely, in its current form, to inspire a spate of English operas, but at least the composer himself had brought the work, originally composed for private entertainment, into the public domain and it was revived on several occasions during the next ten years.

The importance of the
Acis
and
Esther
revivals can be readily appreciated. Though neither was improved by the composer's additions and alterations, each was brought before a much wider public than the sort of select aristocratic audience for which it was originally devised. The novelty of the entertainment had been emphasized for Handel by Arne's performances, which pointed to a potentially responsive and enthusiastic audience for this kind of musical hybrid if only someone had the initiative to carry it further. As for Gibson's veto, that effectively put paid to the concept of staged oratorio and sowed the seeds of a controversy, which still looms large, as to the validity and authenticity of these works in a fully theatrical context.