A season of Handel operas, part 4: Ariodante
Lurcanio prevents his brother Ariodante from throwing himself on his sword when he sees Polinesso entering Ginevra's apartments. Illustration by an unknown engraver after Thomas Coxon (1591) after Girolamo Porro (1584), for Canto V of Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, translated by Sir John Harington, 1634 edition. Image source: Internet Archive
Ariodante (1735). Megan Moore (Ariodante), Amanda Forsythe (Ginevra), Ann McMahon Quintero (Polinesso), Richard Pittsinger (Lurcanio), Robin Johannsen (Dalinda), Brandon Cedel (King of Scotland), Jason Mcstoots (Odoardo). Boston Baroque conducted by Martin Pearlman. Streamed performance of 27 April 2025, available on demand at https://baroque.boston/ariodante
In this final post in the series on Handel opera performances marking the 340th anniversary of his birth, we'll see how he responded artistically to facing perhaps the greatest crisis of his career: at the end of the 1732–33 season, all but one of the singers in his company and several members of his orchestra deserted him for the rival Opera of the Nobility.
The one singer who remained loyal to Handel was his prima donna, Anna Maria Strada del Pò.
Anna Maria Strada del Pò by Johann Verelst, 1732. Gerald Coke Handel Collection, Foundling Museum, London. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Mrs. Mary Pendarves wrote of Strada that "her voice is without exception fine, her manner perfection, but her person very bad." [1] The music historian Charles Burney wrote that "Strada's personal charms did not assist her much in conciliating parties, or disposing the eye to augment the pleasures of the ear." Portraits tend to flatter the sitter, but it's difficult from the Verelst painting above to understand why she was not thought to be a handsome woman. However, all accounts mention her excellent singing; Burney continued, "by degrees she subdued all their prejudices, and sung herself into favour. . .[B]y the care [Handel] took in composing for her, and his instructions, from a coarse singer with a fine voice, he rendered her equal at least to the first performer in Europe." [2]
Handel managed to build a company around her by recruiting a new primo uomo, Carestini, to replace his departed castrato star Senesino. Burney wrote of the castrato,
Carestini's person was tall, beautiful, and majestic. He was a very animated and intelligent actor, and having a considerable portion of enthusiasm in his composition, with a lively and inventive imagination, he rendered every thing he sung interesting by good taste, energy, and judicious embellishments. He manifested great agility in the execution of difficult divisions from the chest in a most articulate and admirable manner. It was the opinion of [the composer Johann] Hasse, as well as of many other eminent professors, that whoever had not heard Carestini was unacquainted with the most perfect style of singing. [3]
Joannes [Giovanni] Carestini, engraved by John Faber Jr. after George Knapton, 1735. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London
Through his Italian agents Handel also contracted with Carlo Scalzi as second castrato, the Negri sisters Maria Caterina (contralto) and Maria Rosa (mezzo-soprano), and his old friend Margherita Durastanti, whom he had known and worked with for 25 years. Although Durastanti was now probably 50 years old, Lady Bristol reported after seeing the second opera of Handel's 1733–34 season, a revival of Ottone, that "old Durastanti. . .sings as well as she ever did." [4] (She had appeared in the same role, Gismonda, in the orginal production of Ottone in 1723.) A German bass living in London, Gustavus Waltz, rounded out the company.
For his fall and early winter season Handel cobbled together three pasticci, two based on the music of Leonardo Vinci and one on the music of Hasse. In January 1734 Handel presented a new opera, Arianna, a retelling of the Ariadne/Theseus myth, which ran for an impressive 16 performances. This is especially remarkable because the Opera of the Nobility had opened its season at the end of December with Nicola Porpora's opera on the same subject, Arianna in Nasso. The season ended with a variety of works including a revival of the oratorio Deborah (1733); a celebratory serenata, Parnassus in festa, for the wedding festivities of Princess Anne, the daughter of George II to whom Handel had given music lessons; and a revival of Il pastor fido (The faithful shepherd, 1712) in an expanded version.
Handel had shown that his company could survive almost total replacement. But at the end of the season came another blow: Handel's lease on the King's Theatre in the Haymarket expired, and the Opera of the Nobility took it over. Fortunately John Rich had just opened his new Theatre Royal Covent Garden the previous year, and Handel was able to move his productions there. However, Handel also knew that the Opera of the Nobility had secured the services of the most sought-after singer in the world, the castrato Farinelli, who would join a company that included Senesino and Handel's Royal Academy soprano Francesca Cuzzoni. Handel realized that for his 1734–35 season he would need to provide something new and different if he wished to retain his audience.
The first of those innovations was the addition of the dance company of Marie Sallé, a former soloist with the Paris Opéra, who was renowned for her fluid and expressive style of dancing. To showcase Sallé and her dancers, Handel opened the season by adding dance numbers and a danced prologue with vocal accompaniment, Terpsichore, to Il pastor fido.
Portrait of a Dancer (Mademoiselle Marie Sallé?) by Nicolas Lancret, c. 1735. Image source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
After a revival of Arianna and a pasticcio, Oreste, based on his own music, in January 1735 Handel presented a new opera, Ariodante.
Despite the pressured circumstances under which it was produced, Ariodante is among Handel's most dramatically effective operas; Burney wrote that "it abounds with beauties and strokes of a great master." [5] In this work Handel returned to the source of his 1733 opera Orlando: the 16th-century epic poem Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The libretto Handel chose, by Antonio Salvi, is set in the court of the King of Scotland. The knight Ariodante loves the king's daughter Ginevra, and she returns his love.
The Act I music for a dance for "Nymphs, Shepherds and Shepherdesses" (enacted by Marie Sallé and her company) celebrating the impending union of Ariodante and Ginevra, here performed by the Freiburger Barockorchester conducted by Nicholas McGegan—in my opinion, unsurpassed in capturing the dance character of Handel's music:
But Ginevra is also the object of the ambitions of Ariodante's rival for her favors and the throne, Polinesso. To add to the romantic complications, Ginevra's lady-in-waiting Dalinda loves Polinesso, while Ariodante's brother Lurcanio loves Dalinda. Dalinda was sung by another new addition to Handel's company, the 23-year-old English soprano Cecilia Young. Burney wrote that "her style of singing was infinitely superior to that of any other Englishwoman of her time." [6]
The plot of Ariodante is set in motion when Dalinda unwisely reveals her feelings to Polinesso. Exploiting her willingness to please him, the conniving and unscrupulous courtier convinces Dalinda to dress in Ginevra's clothes and allow him to enter her chambers at night from the garden, where he has arranged for Ariodante to be watching.
An example of Handel's economy of scene setting: the opening of Act II, the "short, but beautiful symphony" depicting moonrise in the garden, which probably accompanied a stage effect [7]:
For Ariodante, of course, the beauty of the evening is shortly to be shattered by his witnessing of Ginevra's apparent unfaithfulness. The devastated Ariodante leaves the court that night, and later his suicide is reported. Lurcanio denounces Ginevra's infidelity as the cause, and demands that the King uphold his own law. Under that law the King must condemn his daughter to death unless a champion can successfully defend her honor against her accuser.
The action of Ariodante moves swiftly, and the second act features one moving aria of grief and loss after another. First is Ariodante's great Act II aria "Scherza infida" (Play, faithless one) in which he despairs over what he believes is Ginevra's unfaithfulness.
"Scherza infida" performed by Anne Sofie von Otter accompanied by Les Musiciens du Louvre conducted by Marc Minkowski:
|
Scherza, infida, in grembo al drudo, io tradito a morte in braccio per tua colpa ora men vo. Ma a spezzar l’indegno laccio, ombra mesta, e spirto ignudo, per tua pena io tornerò. |
Play, faithless one, in your wanton lover's arms. For your crime I now go to embrace death. But to torment your perjured love As a shadow, a wraith, I will return to haunt you. |
Von Otter and Minkowski treat this aria as an anguished cry of loss, pain, and suicidal despair. It begins at a daringly slow tempo and slows even further in the da capo; it is as though we can hear the ebbing of Ariodante's will to live. The great Lorraine Hunt with Nicholas McGegan and the Freiburger Barockorchester, as well as Joyce DiDonato with Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco, treat "Scherza infida" almost as a rage aria; their versions are two minutes shorter than von Otter and Minkowski's. While I think it's valid to emphasize either Ariodante's anger or sorrow, I find von Otter's heart-wrenching lament to be the more moving approach, and it is the reason I turn to Minkowski's version almost exclusively when I want to hear this opera.
In the second Act II aria of sorrow, the King mourns Ariodante's apparent suicide; he does not yet recognize that his daughter Ginevra is implicated. "Invide sorte avara" (Envious, grudging Fate), performed by Denis Sedov with Minkowski:
|
Invida sorte avara, misero! in questo dì nel prence mi rapì parte del core. Or nella figlia cara del cor l'altra metà, oh Dei! mi rapirà forse il dolore. |
Envious, grudging Fate, I am wretched! In that Prince you have taken from me Lies part of my heart. Now perhaps my dear daughter, The other half of my heart, Of God! will be taken from me By her deep sorrow. |
Finally, Ginevra, disgraced, alone and bereft, repudiated by her father, yearns for her own death. "Il mio crudel martoro" (My cruel suffering), performed by Lynne Dawson with Minkowski:
|
Il mio crudel martoro crescer non può di più; morte, dove sei tu, che ancor non moro? Vieni; de’ mali miei, no, che il peggior non sei, ma sei ristoro. |
My cruel suffering Surely can become no greater; Death, why do you tarry, Why am I still alive? Come, Death; you are not The worst of my evils But will be my relief. |
Boston Baroque's cast for Ariodante is a good one, although it does not equal the singers on any of the three recordings mentioned. As Ariodante, Megan Moore does not quite have the tonal beauty and security of von Otter, or the compelling dramatic presence of Hunt or DiDonato. But she gives a sensitive performance of "Scherza infida," the acid test of any Ariodante, in a reading that is more closely aligned with von Otter's than with Hunt's or DiDonato's. And she and her excellent Ginevra, Amanda Forsythe, have convincing chemistry.
Amanda Forsythe (Ginevra) and Megan Moore (Ariodante) in the 2025 Boston Baroque production conducted by Martin Pearlman.
Robin Johannsen's bright soprano is well-deployed as Dalinda, particularly in her Act I aria "Apri le luci, e mira" (Open your eyes, and look), in which she declares her feelings for Polinesso. Unfortunately she is costumed by designer Neil Fortin more as a lady's maid than as a lady-in-waiting. In the libretto she is described as "attendant on Ginevra," and in Harington's translation of Ariosto, Dalinda says of herself that at court she "kept a place of honor." The knight Lurcanio (the excellent Richard Pittsinger) would be unlikely to ardently declare his love to a servant, as he does in "Del mio sol vezzosi rai" (My bewitching sun). Dalinda is from an aristocratic family; she is not a chambermaid.
Polinesso is one of Handel's most effectively characterized villains; his insinuating music makes both Ginevra's and the audience's flesh crawl. Here is Polinesso's entrance, in which he accosts Ginevra and declares his love, and her indignant response: "Duke, if ever your presence was unwelcome to me, it is more so now." From the Minkowski-conducted recording, Ewa Podles as Polinesso and Lynne Dawson as Ginevra:
https://youtu.be/X9rOzyfaHq8?t=18
If as Polinesso Boston Baroque's Ann McMahon Quintero does not quite have the spine-shivering low notes of Ewa Podles for Minkowski, she acquits herself well and has a suitably menacing stage presence.
And as the King, Brandon Cedel convincingly portrays a man suddenly torn between his roles as Ginevra's doting father and her implacable sovereign. The moment in Act I when the King surprises his daughter and Ariodante in the garden, interrupting their tender love duet, is still, for both the characters and the audience, a moment of both dramatic and musical surprise—and then of relief, when it quickly becomes apparent that he has come not to forcibly part the lovers, but to bless their union. All too soon, however, he must carry out the law's decree.
Ariodante is now available on demand at the Boston Baroque website. As with other Boston Baroque opera productions, it is presented with full costumes (by Fortin, evoking the 18th century of the opera's creation) and stage action (by Eve Summer), while the setting is evoked through projections (by Camilla Tassi). Handel included dance sequences for Marie Sallé and her company, but the Boston Baroque production does not include dancers and the dance music is cut.
In its first run in 1735, Ariodante was performed a respectable 11 times. But the rivalry between the two companies took its toll; in future years eventually both would go bankrupt. Perhaps spurred by the fierce competition, while Ariodante was in production Handel was busy composing another opera based on Orlando Furioso: Alcina, perhaps his greatest opera. Strada sang the role of the alluring sorceress, while Cecilia Young sang the role of her sister Morgana, Carestini the besotted knight Ruggiero, and Caterina Negri his abandoned fiancée Bradamante. When it was put on in April after his Easter-season oratorios, it ran for a remarkable 18 performances, ending only in early July as the London Season was drawing to a close and many of his audience members were leaving for their country estates or the continent.
It is striking that after the loss of almost his entire company, having to relocate to a new theater, and facing the direct competition of a rival company comprising some of the greatest singers in the world, Handel was able, within a matter of months, to compose and stage two of his best operas. Although he would go on to compose another ten operas, none would be as successful commercially or artistically as Ariodante and Alcina. These two works represent a second peak of his creativity after the miracle year that produced Giulio Cesare (February 1724), Tamerlano (October 1724), and Rodelinda (February 1725). Donald Burrows writes, "In terms of musical variety and quality, the 56 performances of Handel's 1734–35 Covent Garden season constitute one of the most attractive seasons he ever mounted in London." [8]
Other posts in this series:
- A season of Handel operas, part 3: Giulio Cesare
- A season of Handel operas, part 2: Alceste
- A season of Handel operas, part 1: Acis and Galatea
And a bonus post:
- Quoted in Donald Burrows: Handel, Master Musicians, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 130.
- Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, Vol. 4, London, 1789, p. 342. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-general-history-of-mus_burney-charles_1776_4/page/342/mode/1up
- Burney, p. 370. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-general-history-of-mus_burney-charles_1776_4/page/370/mode/1up
- Quoted in Burrows, p. 178.
- Burney, p. 388. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-general-history-of-mus_burney-charles_1776_4/page/388/mode/1up
- Burney, p. 653. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-general-history-of-mus_burney-charles_1776_4/page/653/mode/1up. Over the next decade Cecilia Young continued to appear in Handel's English-language oratorios. In 1737 she married the composer Thomas Arne, making her the sister-in-law of Susannah Cibber, who sang in the first performance of Messiah. In the 1740s Thomas Arne became the house composer of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and Cecilia Arne frequently performed there.
- Burney, p. 386. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-general-history-of-mus_burney-charles_1776_4/page/386/mode/1up
- Burrows, p. 186.
No comments :
Post a Comment