Departure and arrival: Handel and Graupner in Hamburg

Antonio Belluci, Antiochus and Stratonice, ca. 1700. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In the fall of 1706, 23-year-old Christoph Graupner was rescued from an impending law career by the timely arrival in Leipzig of the invading army of King Karl XII of Sweden. A conflict over the Polish succession determined Graupner's fate: Karl supported Stanisław Leszczyński against Augustus II (the Strong), King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, where Leipzig was located. Abandoning his legal studies at the University of Leipzig he fled to the free city of Hamburg, where he took up a position as the harpsichordist for the public opera house.

Music was Graupner's first love. Before shifting to jurisprudence, he had studied at the renowned Thomasschule in Leipzig for eight years. And his choice of Hamburg was clearly not random. For an aspiring musician and composer, Hamburg was full of opportunities. Its opera house was one of the largest in Europe, and there was a constant demand for new works. And the musical possibilities at the Hamburg Opera had recently expanded because one of its most promising young composers had just departed for Italy: a 21-year-old named Georg Friederich Händel.

Almira, Queen of Castile

Cover of the Boston Early Music Festival recording of Almira. Image source: Presto Music

Händel's first composition for the Hamburg Opera, entitled Der in Krohnen erlangte Glücks-Wechsel, oder Almira, Königin von Castilien (Fortune Changed by a Crown, or Almira, Queen of Castile), had been staged the year before. Händel had played in the opera orchestra since his arrival in the city as an 18-year-old in 1703. He had started out as one of the second or third violins, and in his first rehearsals had pretended as a joke that he couldn't keep time. But his true skills were soon apparent, and by 1705 he had become the orchestra's harpsichordist and leader.

The commission for Almira had arisen because the chief composer for the Opera, Reinhard Keiser, had run himself into debt and had left the city to avoid his creditors. Händel was given a libretto that Keiser had already set and which followed a pattern common for opera in the cosmopolitan port city of Hamburg. The libretto was mainly in German, but it incorporated some Italian-language arias and French-style dance scenes. And although opera in Italy was increasing divided into works that were either entirely dramatic (opera seria, "serious opera") or comedic (opera buffa, "comic opera"), in Germany the two genres were still mixed: high-born characters expressing elevated sentiments were followed in the next scene by crowd-pleasing comedic characters drawn from popular theater who commented on and parodied the actions of their social betters.

Title page of the libretto of Händel's Der in Krohnen erlangte Glücks-Wechsel, oder Almira, Königin von Castilien. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The action of Almira is complicated. The title character, the newly crowned queen of Castile, secretly loves her secretary Fernando, although his birth is obscure. Her father's deathbed wish is for her to marry a son of her counselor Consalvo; his only surviving son is named Osman. Osman is ambitious of being elevated to the monarchy by marrying Almira, but is in love with the Princess Edilia. She returns his love, but has a rival, the Princess Bellante. Bellante in turn is being pursued by Consalvo. Meanwhile Almira is also being pursued by Raymondo, the disguised king of Mauretania. And Consalvo has another son who is believed to have been lost at sea. . .It required something like five hours, with intermissions, to untangle all the love-knots.

Almira has many familiar touches, including the first version of the melody Händel would later reuse in his Roman oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The triumph of Time and Disillusionment, 1707) as "Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa" (Leave the thorn, pluck the rose) and in his first London opera Rinaldo (1711) as "Lascia ch’io pianga" (Leave me to weep). It is in the plaintive arias for the sopranos that Almira is most distinctively Handelian, as can be heard in Edilia's "Schönste Rosen und Narzissen" (Lovely roses and narcissus):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2SKgk4ChfE&list=PLZYGiV3Y1tsIgttLHG4FeD2fZJMs3HrSM&index=2

The singer is Amanda Forsythe as Princess Edilia in the 2013 stage production of the Boston Early Music Festival. A superb studio recording by the ensemble was released in 2017 on the CPO label. In addition to Forsythe it features Emöke Baráth (soprano) as Queen Almira, Colin Balzer (tenor) as Fernando, Christian Immler (baritone) as Consalvo, Zachary Wilder (tenor) as Osman, Jesse Blumberg (baritone) as Raymondo, and Teresa Wakim (soprano) as Princess Bellante; it is available on the Boston Early Music Festival website. We can only hope that a full-length video of the fully staged opera will be released someday.

Almira was a major hit. Keiser, perhaps catching wind of Händel's success, returned to Hamburg during the following season. Händel's new opera Nero (now lost) was being staged, but it was replaced by Keiser's setting of the same libretto. Perhaps concluding that Hamburg wasn't big enough for both of them, Händel accepted an invitation from a member of the Medici family to go to Italy. After four years in Venice, Florence, and Rome, he was appointed Kapellmeister to Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover, who would become Britain's King George I just a few years later. Händel/Handel preceded King Georg/George to London and established Italian opera there; much of the rest of the story you probably know. If not, please see my post on Jane Glover's Handel in London.

Antiochus and Stratonica

Cover of the Boston Early Music Festival recording of Antiochus und Stratonica. Image source: Presto Music

Coming to Hamburg just after Händel's departure, Graupner seized the moment. Only months after his arrival Graupner's opera Dido, Königin von Carthago (Dido, Queen of Carthage) was produced. Following the latest Italian trends, Graupner included only serious characters in his tragedy, which ends with a double suicide (and a marriage, of course). But the lack of comedy did not meet with the Hamburg public's approval, and Dido was a flop.

Undeterred, Graupner quickly wrote another opera for the following season: L’amore ammalato, Die kränkende Liebe, oder Antiochus und Stratonica (Love-sickness, or Antiochus and Stratonica, 1708). He made sure to include a comic character, Negrodorus, who is introduced at the very beginning of the opera (he has the second aria) and appears in comic interludes throughout. In Act I he sings, "No matter how lovely the opera, / if Harlequin doesn't play his part, / it won't succeed!" Graupner and his librettist Barthold Feind had learned their lesson.

Title page of the libretto for Graupner's L’amore ammalato, Die kränkende Liebe, oder Antiochus und Stratonica. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Antiochus features two thwarted loves. The first is the love of the sorceress Mirtenia for Demetrius, the royal treasurer, who is inconveniently married to Ellenia. The second is the love of Antiochus for Stratonica, who is inconveniently married to Antiochus's father King Seleucus. Seleucus, recently widowed, has married the much younger Stratonica, and his son Antiochus is stricken with love for his stepmother. But although his love sickens Antiochus and drives him mad, no one dies in this opera. (Another lesson learned?) Instead, Seleucus eventually recognizes that he should not stand between Antiochus and Stratonica, while Demetrius is reconciled to his wife Ellenia, and Mirtenia is united with Hesychius, the doctor who diagnosed the only cure for Antiochus' suffering.

Antiochus is filled with inventive orchestral writing and attractive melodies, such as Seleucus' melancholy aria of unwelcome recognition, "Zu den Wolcken" (Among the clouds):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Bxg1CZPB8

The singer is Harry van der Kamp from the excellent 2020 recording of Antiochus and Stratonica by the Boston Early Music Festival soloists and orchestra, which is also available on the Boston Early Music Festival website. In addition to van der Kamp it features Christian Immler (baritone) as Antiochus, Hana Blažíková (soprano) as Stratonica, Sunhae Im (soprano) as Mirtenia, Sherezade Panthaki (soprano) as Ellenia, Aaron Sheehan (tenor) as Demetrius, Jesse Blumberg (baritone) as Hesychius, and Jan Kobow (tenor) as Negrodorus.

Graupner would go on to write three more operas over the next two seasons, plus possibly contribute arias to three of Keiser's operas (alas, only Dido and Antiochus and Stratonica have survived). But in 1709 Graupner got an offer he couldn't refuse: to become the vice-Kapellmeister in the court of Ernst Ludwig, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. When the aged Kapellmeister Wolfgang Carl Briegel died three years later, Graupner was given his position.

Postscript: The best man

Graupner is virtually unknown today in comparison to other musicians and composers of his era. But it's not for lack of talent: "Zu den Wolcken," for example, would not be out of place in a Bach cantanta.

In 1723 the position of Thomaskantor, the head of musical instruction at Graupner's alma mater, the Thomasschule in Leipzig, became vacant. After Telemann withdrew from consideration Graupner applied. But when the Landgrave suddenly remembered to pay his back salary and gave him a big raise, Graupner declined the offered position and remained where he was. The Leipzig town council grudgingly awarded the position instead to their third choice, Johann Sebastian Bach, deciding that "since the best could not be obtained, a mediocre candidate would have to be accepted." [1]

The mediocre Bach would go on to write nearly 300 church cantatas. For the court of the Landgrave, where he remained until his death at age 77, Graupner would compose more than 1400. On the evidence of Antiochus and Stratonica there is a lot of wonderful music by Graupner remaining to be discovered and performed.

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1. Jörg Jacobi, "Rediscovery of a youthful masterpiece," booklet essay, Antiochus and Stratonica, Boston Early Music Festival recording, 2020.