Difference between revisions of "MuseData: George Frideric Handel"

Latest revision as of 20:07, 28 August 2024

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George Frideric Handel

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+#REDIRECT [[George Frideric Handel]]
-==Life==
-==Operas==
-===The Royal Academy (1719-28)===
-===The Royal Academy (1729-34)===
-===Covent Garden Theatre (1734-37)===
-Covent Garden opened on December 7, 1732. Spoken plays constituted most of the repertory that the theater initially offered to the public. The theater was built by John Rich, manager of the Duke's Company at Lincoln Inn Fields. There Rich's singular success rested on his support for John Gay's highly successful <i>Beggar's Opera</i> (1728), a low-life work with simple songs and other incidental music that satirized Italian opera and those who admired it. Its popularity heightened existing tensions with serious opera.
-The new theater lay within a district of produce and flower vendors sanctioned a century earlier by royal charter. This conferred on it the designation "royal" and the right (shared only with Drury Lane) to present spoken plays to the public. The idea of interleaving opera performances a few nights week created an opening for Handel. While <i>Ariodante</i> was taking shape, Handel composed ballet music for a revival of <i>Il pastor fido</i> and assembled the pastiche <i>Oreste</i>, both of which were performed at the theater late in 1734.
-====<i>Ariodante</i> (HWV 33)====
-Handel's <i>Ariodante</i> was composed between August and October 1734. The <i>London Daily Post</i> reported on January 1 (when the work was in rehearsal) that "the Scenes prepar'd for [it] are thought to excell any Thing of the Kind that has yet appear'd." [http://ichriss.ccarh.org/HRD/1735.htm] Opening on 8 January 1735, it was the first new opera entirely by Handel to be performed at the Royal Theatre at Convent Garden. The <i>castrato</i> Giovanni Carestini sang in the title role.
-Antonio Salvi's text (then called <i>Ginevra in Scozia</i>) was originally composed in 1708 for a production (with music by Giacomo Perti) at Pratolino (Florence). It became better known through Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's setting (as <i>Ariodante</i>) for San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, in November 1716. It was this opera production that launched the stellar career of Faustina Bordoni, whose voice was by now celebrated throughout Europe.
-Mark Stahura's 1994 edition of <i>Ariodante</i>, based on Handel's autograph in the British Library and made under contract with the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH) with the help of Frances Bennion and Edmund Correia Jr., is available here: [[Ariodante | <i>Ariodante</i> score and parts]].
-====<i>Alcina</i> (HWV 34)====
-<i>Alcina</i> opened at Covent Garden on 16 April 1735. The score, which had been started early in February, was completed only eight days earlier. Anna Maria Strada del Pò took the title role. It was a popular work, enjoying eighteen performances in 1735 and three more in 1737.
-[[File:Bird_of_May.png|350px|thumb|right|Beginning of the "Bird of May" (arrangement of the Musette movement) for violin and basso continuo from Handel's <i>Alcina</i>. Glasgow University Library.]]
-Rich in the use of "woodland" instruments (flutes, piccolo, and oboes), a few excerpts took on a life of their own in such editions as John Walsh's <i>Alcina for a flute, containing the overture, songs, and symphonys curiously transpos'd and fitted for the flute</i>. John Bland's <i>Bird of May: To a favorite aire in </i>Alcina <i> by Mr. Handel</i> prompted John Simpson to issue <i>Bird of May: To a nightingale....The adieu to the Spring Garden at Vaux Hall</i>, and many further issues, all in 1735 and 1736. The basis for this "favourite aire" was nothing other than the Musette movement of the opera's overture. The rest of the eighteenth century, in which images of natural innocence were highly valued, was filled with musical depictions of nightingales.
-The sorceress Alcina had a long history on the opera stage. Antonio Fanzaglia's libretto had been written for Riccardo Broschi's opera <i>L'isola di Alcina</i>, which had been performed in Rome in 1728. It was based on Cantos 6 and 7 of Ariosto's <i>Orlando furioso</i>. The knight Ruggiero is retained, but other roles have been modified. Handel, who had become acquainted with text during his visit to Italy in 1729, revised the music in 1736 and again in 1737, leading to a production in Brunswick in 1738.
-Stage witches were intended to be alluring enchantresses. This set them radically apart from countless alleged witches, who had been burned at the stake in considerable numbers under the edict of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_England James I]. The subject was highly topical when <i>Alcina</i> was performed, because King [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_II_of_England George II] would very soon modify James's [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Witchcraft_Act_1735 Witchcraft Act] (1604) by reducing the sentence to fines and imprisonment, with effect from June 24, 1736.
-The 1868 edition of <i>Alcina</i> by the Händel Gesellschaft (the German Handel Society) is available for viewing and download [http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00016931/images/index.html (1868 edition of Handel's <i>Alcina</i> at the Vifamusik website)]
-====<i>[[Atalanta]]</i> (HWV 35)====
-<div class="floatright">
-<htmlet>atalanta</htmlet><br>
-<font size="1">Performed with CCARH <br>score/parts</font>
-</div>
-{{atalanta}} <!-- Go to Template:atalanta to edit content -->
-====<i>Arminio</i> (HWV 36)====
-Composed in September 1736, <i>Arminio</i> was first performed at Covent Garden on 12 January 1737. Antonio Salvi's text on Arminius (Hermann), the Germanic chief who defeated Roman legions in the first years of the first century, had been written for an earlier setting (Pratolino, 1703) by Alessandro Scarlatti. The subject itself had been treated in Venetian operas of the later seventeenth century.
-<i>Arminio</i> was not by any measure one of Handel's more successful operas. After its initial six performances, it had no revivals, nor did it generate any significant number of circulated offshoots. Some cast members were little known to London audiences. In particular, the <i>castrato</i> Domenico Annibali, who sang in the title role, was well known at the Dresden court, his principal place of employment, for his appearances in the operas of Johann Adolf Hasse, but had no particular impact in London.
-The German Handel Society edition is available for download from Vifamusik: [http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00016934/images/index.html Arminio (1882 edn.)].
-====<i>Giustino</i> (HWV 37)====
-Composed during a three-week period starting on August 14, 1736, <i>Giustino</i> had its premier at Covent Garden on February 17, 1737. It was more successful than <i>Arminio</i> in that ten performances were given over a four-month period. The text had been inspired by that of Niccolò Beregan (Venice 1683),  for Giovanni Legrenzi's like-named work, and its adaptation by Pietro Pariati (Bologna 1711; Rome 1724).
-A flute arrangement of the "overture, songs and symphonys" was published soon after its premier by John Walsh (London, 1737) under the title <i>Justin</i>. Specific items within the work were recycled by Handel in subsequent operas and oratorios. The Händel Gesellschaft edition can be downloaded from Vifamusik: [http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00016933/images/index.html Giustino].
-====<i>Berenice</i> (HWV 38)====
-<i>Berenice</i>, the final opera in Handel's Covent Garden series, opened  on May 18 1737. Handel had composed it from mid-December to late January. Anna Maria Strada del Pò was featured in the title role.
-Its libretto, by Antonio Salvi, had been written in 1709 for performance at the Villa of Pratolino (Florence). As a subject for dramatization, Berenice had much older roots in Renaissance <i>commedia</i>.  Interest in had been rekindled in the late seventeenth century by Racine's stage tragedy. It was conveyed to the musical stage by a spectacular setting for the Contarini Villa at Piazzola (near Treviso). The work was recast for Venice (1711) as <i>Le gare di politica e di Amore</i> by Gio. Maria Ruggieri.
-The Händel Gesellschaft edition is available for download from Vifamusik: [http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00016935/images/index.html <i>Berenice</i>].
-==Oratorios==
-==Instrumental Music==
-==References==

Difference between revisions of "MuseData: George Frideric Handel"

Latest revision as of 20:07, 28 August 2024

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