Didone abbandonata (Handel)

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Work data
Original title: Didone abbandonata
Title page of the libretto, London 1737

Title page of the libretto, London 1737

Shape: Opera seria
Original language: Italian
Music: Leonardo Vinci , Johann Adolph Hasse a . a., editing: Georg Friedrich Händel
Libretto : Pietro Metastasio , Didone abbandonata (Naples 1724)
Premiere: April 13, 1737
Place of premiere: Theater Royal, Covent Garden , London
Place and time of the action: Carthage , mythical time
people
  • Didone , Queen of Carthage , in love with Enea ( soprano )
  • Enea , hero of Troy , lover of Didone (soprano)
  • Jarba , King of the Moors , under the name "Arbace" ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Selene , Didone's sister, secretly in love with Enea ( Alt )
  • Araspe, Jarba's confidante and in love with Selene ( tenor )
  • Osmida, dignitary at the court of Carthage, Didone's confidante (old)
  • People of Carthage, refugees from Troy

Didone abbandonata , German The Abandoned Dido ( HWV A 12 ) is a dramma per musica in three acts. The pasticcio is the arrangement of the first opera libretto of the same name by Pietro Metastasio based on the opera Leonardo Vinci , by Georg Friedrich Handel .

Emergence

The Daily Post reported shortly after Handel had ended the 1735/36 season with the eighth performance of Atalanta a few days earlier:

“We hear that several Persons have been sent to Italy from the two Theaters, to engage some additional Voices, for the carrying on of Operas for the ensuing Season, and that Sig. Dominichino, one of the best Singers now in Italy, is engaged by Mr. Handel, and is expected over in a short time. "

According to reports, the two opera houses have sent various people to Italy in order to look for a few more voices for the next season, and Signor Dominichino, one of the best Italian singers today, is said to have been hired by Mr. Handel and is expected here shortly . "

- The London Daily Post , London, June 18, 1736

The named singer then came to England from Dresden in October and, as was customary, was first heard at court before his first appearance:

“On Tuesday last Signor Dominico Annibali, the celebrated Italian Singer lately arriv'd from Dresden, to perform in Mr. Handel's Opera in Coven-Garden, was sent for to Kensington, and had the Honor to sing several Songs before her Majesty and the Princesses, who express'd the highest Satisfaction at his Performance. "

"Last Tuesday [5. October] the celebrated Italian singer Domenico Annibali , recently arrived here from Dresden to appear in Handel's Coventgarden Opera, was sent to Kensington, where he had the honor of performing various chants for the Queen and Princesses, who were most pleased with this performance . "

- The Old Whig , London, October 14, 1736

Another newspaper report, according to which the three ladies engaged by the opposing " Opera of the Nobility ", found the same approving reception at court:

“Signora Merighi, Signora Chimenti, and The Francesina (Three Singer lately come from Italy, for the Royal Academy of Musick) had the honor to sing before her Majesty, the Duke, and Princesses, at Kensington, on Monday Night last, and met with a most gracious Reception, and her Majesty was pleased to approve their several Performances: after which, The Francesina, performed several Dances to the entire Satisfaction of the Court. "

"Signora Merighi [Antonia Margherita Merighi], Signora Chimenti [Margherita Chimenti, called" La Droghierina "] and the Francesina [Elisabeth Duparc, called" La Francesina "], three singers who had recently come for the Royal Music Academy of Italy last Monday evening the honor of singing to the Queen, Duke and Princesses at Kensington, and met with a most gracious reception; Her Majesty deigned to applaud her lectures, and in the end Francesina made the court a great pleasure with her dances. "

- The London Daily Post , London, November 18, 1736

Anna Maria Strada had spent the summer with Princess Anna , who had meanwhile been married to Holland . She returned on October 4th:

"Last Night the famous Signora Strada arriv'd from Holland, who is come on purpose to sing next Thursday in a Concert of Musick at the Swan Tavern in Exchange-Alley."

"Yesterday evening the famous Signora Strada from Holland arrived, initially for the purpose of singing" Zum Schwan "in the Börsenallee the following Thursday."

- The London Daily Post , London, October 5, 1736

Handel began on August 14, 1736 with the new compositions for the following season and first tackled Giustino . In the middle of this work he wrote Arminio , which he obviously wanted to prefer, only then did he finish Giustino . However, before the premiere of this opera in January, Handel started a third: Berenice . Handel had approached the new season with the same strategy as the two years before: resumption before Christmas and new works in the new year. All three operas were premiered in the first half of 1737, first Arminio on January 12th, followed by Giustino on February 16th. After three performances of the latter had taken place, Lent came, which limited the theater evenings. Extremely handicapped by this, Handel announced that the operas should also be played during Lent, on Wednesdays and Fridays, and continued with other performances by Giustino . He chose these days in order not to meet the “Aristocratic Opera”, and he could also rent the theater on these days for £ 33 cheaper. It was a severe blow for him when these opera performances were also banned. Now he was forced to concentrate on oratorio works:

“We hear, since Operas have been forbidden being performed at the Theater in Covent Garden on the Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, Mr. Handel is preparing Dryden's Ode of Alexander's Feast, the Oratorios of Esther and Deborah, with several new Concertos for the Organ and other instruments; Also an Entertainment of Musick, called II Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita, which Performances will be brought on the Stage and varied every Week. "

“As we learn, after opera performances have been banned on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent, Mr. Handel is preparing Dryden's Ode from the Alexander Festival , the oratorios Esther and Deborah with various new concerts for the organ and other instruments, and another new musical entertainment called II trionfo del Tempo e della Verità ; these works are to be performed alternately during these weeks. "

- The London Daily Post , London, March 11, 1737

For the first time since 1733/34, Handel had managed to hire two famous castrati, Gioacchino Conti , who had already made a strong impression in the spring of 1736, and Domenico Annibali, who had been poached from the Dresden court, for his ensemble. Together with his loyal prima donna Strada, he was able to take on his competition for the first time and this apparently encouraged him to tackle the most ambitious season he had ever planned. Between November 1736 and June 1737 he presented no fewer than twelve works, eight operas and four oratorios - five of them were new to the London audience. Instead of his usual quota of one or two operas per season, he composed three. Since January 1734 he worked on his early Italian oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707), comprehensively to II trionfo del Tempo e della Verità . After he was done with it, he turned to the opera Didone abbandonata by the “modern” composer Leonardo Vinci to set it up for his stage.

In the first two years after moving to the Covent Garden Theater in the fall of 1734, Handel pursued a new strategy for his opera company. He drew a number of conclusions from the failure in the 1733/34 season in which he had bet on the castrati Carestini and Scalzi and operas by Hasse and Vinci. Not only did he give up on hiring new Italian singers, but he also composed choirs and introduced ballets and instrumentals. (In 1733 he had left Vinci's ballets and choirs in Semiramide .) He offered more oratorios and, most importantly, made exclusive use of his own works. With the old strategy he could well take on the competition with Senesino and Porpora , with Farinelli and Hasse, who could now be heard at the Haymarket Theater , but no longer. The new system is coherent: the cost of ballet and ballerina Marie Sallé had to be saved for the singers and in some cases also for the equipment, which forced Handel to hire English singers such as Cecilia Young and John Beard . He also performed more oratorios than operas in order to offer the audience something completely different in quality than was shown by his rivals at the Haymarket. In 1733/34 he had tried to beat the competition with their own weapons.

The changes at the top of his opera ensemble in 1736 make it clear that Handel's new strategy was hardly initiated by artistic ideals: it was primarily determined by tactical considerations. Senesino was out of the running and Farinelli had lost his fascination, and in the meantime Handel had won the favor of the Prince of Wales . So he basically returned to the style of opera seria that had satisfied European audiences for decades. The clearest sign of this was the commitment of the castrati Gizziello and Annibali and the production of Metastasios and Vinci's Didone abbandonata .

Vinci's opera, composed for Rome more than ten years earlier, was brought to the attention of Handel by his friend and later librettist of Saul , L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato , The Messiah and Belshazzar , Charles Jennens . Thanks to the efforts of Edward Holdsworth , a close friend and classical scholar who traveled extensively across the continent, Jennens received regular broadcasts of music from Italy, including apparently the score of Vinci's Didone . On the days around the premiere of this pasticcio, April 13, 1737 at the Covent Garden Theater , Handel suffered a catastrophic breakdown as a result of his physical and mental tension: a stroke ! Due to the paralysis of his right arm and the mental clouding, Handel's second harpsichordist Johann Christoph Schmidt jun. take over the evening management.

Cast of the premiere

At that point it was completely unclear whether this stroke of fate would end his work as a composer and conductor forever. In any case, his friends and followers were by no means sure, as the scholar James Harris wrote to his cousin, the Earl of Shaftesbury :

"Y r Lord p’s information concerning M r Handel's Disorder was y e first I received - I can assure Y r Lord p it gave me no Small Concern - when y e Fate of Harmony depends upon a Single Life, the Lovers of Harmony may be well allowed to be Sollicitous. I heartily regrett y e thought of losing any of y e executive part of his meritt, but this I can gladly compound for, when we are assured of the Inventive, for tis this which properly constitutes y e Artist, & Separates Him from y e Multitude. It is certainly an Evidence of great Strength of Constitution to be so Soon getting rid of So great a Shock. A weaker Body would perhaps have hardly born y e Violence of Medicines, w ch operate So quickly. "

“Your lordship's news of Handel's illness was the first to reach me - I can assure you that I am very concerned about it. If the fate of harmony depends on a single life, one must forgive the friends of harmony for the excitement. I feel it is the deepest loss when we lose him as a performing musician, but I can easily come to terms with it as long as his ingenuity remains with us, because it is what defines the artist and sets him apart from the crowd. It is certainly a sign of great strength and endurance that he overcame such a severe blow so quickly. A weaker body would hardly have been able to cope with the powerful drugs that work so quickly. "

- James Harris : Letter to the Earl of Shaftesbury , London, May 5, 1737

Apparently, he still had considerable reserves of strength that he could mobilize with his iron will, and so the Daily Post reported two and a half weeks after the stroke:

“Mr. Handel, who has been some time indisposed with the rheumatism, is in so fair a way of recovery, that it is hoped he will be able to accompany the opera of Justin on Wednesday next, the 4th of May; at which time we hear their Majesties will honor that opera with their presence. "

“Mr. Handel, who had been suffering from rheumatism for some time, is on the mend, so one can hope that he will be able to conduct the Giustino opera next Wednesday, May 4th . According to reports, Your Majesties will honor this opera performance with their presence. "

- The London Daily Post , London, April 30, 1737

It is unlikely that this hope would be fulfilled and that Handel would lead the performances again at the beginning of May. In his Memoirs of Handel (1760) the Earl of Shaftesbury reported:

“Great fatigue and disappointment, affected him so much, that he was this Spring (1737) struck with the palsy, which took entirely away, the use of 4 fingers of his right hand; and totally disabled him from Playing: And when the heats of the Summer 1737 came on, the Disorder seemed at times to affect his understanding. "

“Great fatigue and disappointment burdened him so much that he was paralyzed in the spring that completely deprived him of the mobility of four fingers on his right hand and made it impossible for him to make music. And when the hot days of summer 1737 approached, the disease sometimes seemed to confuse his mind. "

- Earl of Shaftesbury : Memoirs of Handel , London 1760

The Earl of Shaftesbury, who had attended a rehearsal on May 12, 1737, wrote in a letter in reply to his cousin:

“I was at the rehearsal of the charming Berenice this morning, when I received an inexpressible delight. [...] Mr Handel is better though not well enough to play the harpsichord himself [,] which young Smith is to do for him. "

“This morning I was at the rehearsal of the lovely Berenice , which gave me incredible pleasure. […] Handel is doing better, but not well enough to play the harpsichord himself, the young Smith [Schmidt jun.] Should do it for him. "

- Earl of Shaftesbury : Letter to James Harris, London, May 12, 1737

Didone , Handel's last pasticcio with music by other composers, had little success and only ran briefly: on three evenings in April and a fourth on June 1st. The young tenor John Beard was probably later replaced by the boy William Savage . It is unknown whether Savage's voice broke and in which position he sang the part. Nothing of the pasticcio's music was printed.

libretto

Aeneas tells Dido of the fall of Troy. (1815), Louvre , Paris

The text for the opera is based on Pietro Metastasio's first poem, Didone abbandonata , performed for the first time with music by Domenico Sarro on February 1, 1724 in the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples .

Handel arranged his pasticcio on the basis of the Vinci opera, which was performed two years later in Rome. But because no copy of the Roman libretto was apparently available in London, the anonymous librettist (or Handel?) Relied primarily on this first version from 1724.

The episode from Virgil's Aeneid , in which the Trojan warrior Aeneas and the Carthaginian Queen Dido meet but he finally leaves them behind - in order to follow his destiny and to found Rome - is one of the most popular operatic materials of the Baroque. True to the Virgilian model, Metastasio's libretto is, however, one of the rare copies of the early opera seria that does not end with a happy ending, the conventional “ lieto fine ”. Presumably mainly because of this tragic ending and the unusually large number of Accompagnato recitatives at the end of the opera, the template was particularly interesting for Handel.

Earlier arrangements of the operatic material can be found in Francesco Cavalli : La Didone (Venice 1641), Pietro Andrea Mattioli : La Didone ( Bologna 1656), Henry Purcell : Dido and Aeneas (London 1688), Henri Desmarets : Didon (Paris 1693) and Christoph Graupner : Dido, Queen of Carthago (Hamburg 1707).

Metastasio's textbook was then set to music more than fifty times in the course of a century, including a. by Tomaso Albinoni (Venice 1724), Nicola Porpora ( Reggio nell'Emilia 1725), Leonardo Vinci (Rome 1726), Baldassare Galuppi ( Saint Petersburg 1740), Johann Adolph Hasse ( Dresden 1742), Niccolò Jommelli (Rome 1747), Tommaso Traetta (Venice 1757), Giuseppe Sarti ( Copenhagen 1762), Niccolò Piccinni (Rome 1770), Stephen Storace ( Dido, Queen of Carthage , London 1792) and Saverio Mercadante ( Turin 1823).

music

The manuscript of Vinci's opera must have been available to Handel as early as 1736, because musical ideas from Didone abbandonata can be found in his operas Arminio and Giustino . Initially, Handel wanted to perform the opera as true to the original as possible, but had to make some changes later (probably at the urging of the singers). This manuscript, which has now been published in facsimile, contains numerous comments by Handel regarding his arrangements. The preparation of the performance score was done in several phases: The director's score contains a note from Samuel Arnold , the temporary owner of both performance scores, describing the relationship between the two sources. This shows that the harpsichord score ("half score") was first made, in which Handel entered the recitatives with the abbreviations customary for London and changed some of the arias in them. Then the director's score was written and combined with parts of the harpsichord score. Handel's autograph additions were incorporated into the latter (apart from two autograph recitatives in the final scenes of the second and third act) and have disappeared with this.

Handel essentially retained Vinci's music; thirteen of his arias, the overture and a sinfonia in the third act found their way into the final version; he only changed the sequence by exchanging individual parts according to the role hierarchy. He also took over Didone's very emotional last scene, which ends in the Accompagnato recitative without a final chorus. This is all the more astonishing, since up to now he has always replaced original Accompagnati with his own secco recitatives in comparable cases. Probably chosen by the singers are the nine arias by other composers ( Geminiano Giacomelli , Antonio Vivaldi and Hasse) added by Handel. Interestingly, the original poems Metastasios of the new music were placed under the new music for three arias: Sono intrepido nell'alma (No. 16), A trionfar mi chiama (No. 22) and Cadrà fra poco in cenere (No. 28). One of the interludes for Annibali can no longer be traced in the director's score; it was Quel pastor che udendo al suono by Giovanni Alberto Ristori , which was probably one of the Dresden presentation arias Annibalis and was included in the third act and the new text Mi tradì l'infida sorte (No. 20).

The recitatives had to be partially rewritten addition to the aforementioned cuts, but only in cases where the changed tessitura had to be adapted to the singer and textual changes. Six arias have also become more compact, e.g. B. by omitting the input knob. Vinci's Se vuoi ch'io mora ( no.14 ) finally underwent a fundamental change and is almost a new composition.

Handel and the pasticcio

For Handel, the pasticcio was a source of which he had made frequent use, especially at the time when the competitive situation with the aristocratic opera put him under pressure, for example between 1729 and 1734, when he brought seven pasticci to the stage. Handel's working method in the construction of the pasticci was very different, but all materials are based on libretti by Zeno or Metastasio , familiar in the European opera metropolises , which many contemporary composers had adopted - above all Leonardo Vinci, Johann Adolph Hasse, Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Leo , Giuseppe Orlandini and Geminiano Giacomelli. Handel composed the recitatives or adapted existing ones from the chosen template. Very rarely did he rewrite an aria, usually in order to adapt it to a different pitch and tessit. Wherever possible, he included the repertoire of the singer in question in the selection of arias. Most of the time the arias had to be transposed when they were transferred from one context to another or transferred from one singer to another. They also got a new text by means of the parody process . The result didn't always have to make sense, because it was more about letting the singers shine than producing a coherent drama. Apart from Elpidia (1724) and Ormisda (1730), which were the only ones who saw revivals, Handel's pasticci were not particularly successful, but like the revivals of his own operas, they required less work than composing and rehearsing new works and could good to use as a stopgap or start of the season, or to step in when a new opera, as was the case with Partenope in February 1730 and Ezio in January 1732, was a failure. Handel pasticci have one important common feature: the sources were all contemporary and popular materials that had been set to music in the recent past by many composers who set in the “modern” Neapolitan style. He had introduced this with the Elpidia of Vinci in London and later this style merged with his own contrapuntal working method to the unique mixture that permeates his later operas. The fundamental problem with Handel's pasticci, however, that his own music, in his own opera house, was too tough competition to any imported original Italian opera, seems to have become clear to him at this point, because Didone was his last pasticcio of a “modern” “Composers.

Success and criticism

"The opera of Dido (in my opinion a very heavy one) will be acted but once more tomorrow only."

"The opera Dido (in my opinion a very cumbersome piece) will only be performed once tomorrow."

- Earl of Shaftesbury : Letter to James Harris, London, April 26, 1737

orchestra

Two oboes , two horns , two trumpets , strings, basso continuo ( violoncello , lute , harpsichord ).

literature

  • Leonardo Vinci: Didone abbandonata / Leonardo Vinci; introduction by Howard Mayer Brown; libretto by Pietro Metastasio. [music] / Vinci, Leonardo, 1690-1730. , Garland Publishing, New York 1977, ISBN 0-8240-2628-4 .
  • Reinhard Strohm : Handel's pasticci. In: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera , Cambridge University Press 1985, Reprint 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-26428-0 , pp. 197 ff. (English).
  • Bernd Baselt : Thematic-systematic directory. Instrumental music, pasticci and fragments. In: Walter Eisen (Ed.): Handel manual: Volume 3 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik , Leipzig 1986, ISBN 3-7618-0716-3 , p. 403 f.
  • John H. Roberts: Handel and Vinci's 'Didone abbandonata': Revisions and Borrowings. Music & Letters, Vol. & N68, No. & n2, Oxford University Press (1987).
  • John H. Roberts: Didone abbandonata. In: Annette Landgraf and David Vickers: The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia , Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88192-0 , pp. 190 f. (English).
  • Winton Dean : Handel's Operas, 1726-1741. Boydell & Brewer, London 2006. Reprint: The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-84383-268-3 . P. 128 ff. (English).
  • Steffen Voss : Pasticci: Didone abbandonata. In: Hans Joachim Marx (Hrsg.): The Handel Handbook in 6 volumes: The Handel Lexicon. (Volume 6), Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2011, ISBN 978-3-89007-552-5 , p. 560.

Web links

Commons : Didone abbandonata  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references / comments

  1. ^ Editing management of the Halle Handel Edition : Documents on life and work. In: Walter Eisen (Hrsg.): Handel manual: Volume 4 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik , Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7618-0717-1 , p. 267
  2. ↑ a b Edition management of the Halle Handel Edition: Documents on life and work. In: Walter Eisen (Ed.): Händel-Handbuch: Volume 4 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7618-0717-1 , p. 269
  3. ^ Editing management of the Halle Handel Edition: Documents on life and work. In: Walter Eisen (Hrsg.): Handel manual: Volume 4 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7618-0717-1 , p. 270
  4. ↑ a b Friedrich Chrysander : GF Handel , second volume, Breitkopf & Härtel , Leipzig 1860, p. 394 ff.
  5. ↑ a b c Friedrich Chrysander: GF Handel. Second volume, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1860, p. 399 ff.
  6. ^ Editing management of the Halle Handel Edition: Documents on life and work. In: Walter Eisen (ed.): Handel manual. Volume 4, Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7618-0717-1 , p. 277
  7. ^ A b John H. Roberts: Handel and Vinci's 'Didone abbandonata': Revisions and Borrowings. Music & Letters, Vol. & N68, No. & n2, Oxford University Press (1987), p. 141
  8. ↑ a b c d Reinhard Strohm : Handel's pasticci. In: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera , Cambridge University Press 1985, Reprint 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-26428-0 , pp. 197 ff. (English).
  9. ↑ a b Edition management of the Halle Handel Edition: Documents on life and work. In: Walter Eisen (Hrsg.): Handel manual: Volume 4 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7618-0717-1 , p. 280
  10. ↑ a b Christopher Hogwood : Georg Friedrich Handel. A biography (= Insel-Taschenbuch 2655), from the English by Bettina Obrecht, Insel Verlag , Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2000, ISBN 3-458-34355-5 , p. 238 f.
  11. ^ Handel House Museum . www.handelhouse.org. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  12. ↑ Commerce Reference Database . ichriss.ccarh.org. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  13. ↑ a b c d John H. Roberts: Didone abbandonata. In: Annette Landgraf and David Vickers: The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia , Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88192-0 , pp. 190 f. (English).
  14. ^ Didone abbandonata . theater academy. Archived from the original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  15. ↑ a b c d Bernd Baselt : Thematic-systematic directory. Instrumental music, pasticci and fragments. In: Walter Eisen (Ed.): Handel manual: Volume 3 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik , Leipzig 1986, ISBN 3-7618-0716-3 , p. 403 f.
  16. ^ Steffen Voss: Pasticci: Didone abbandonata. In: Hans Joachim Marx (Hrsg.): The Handel Handbook in 6 volumes: Das Handel-Lexikon , (Volume 6), Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2011, ISBN 978-3-89007-552-5 , p. 560.
  17. ↑ now in the Newberry Library in Chicago
  18. ↑ today in the British Library , Add. MS 31607
  19. ↑ Winton Dean : Handel's Operas, 1726-1741. Boydell & Brewer, London 2006. Reprint: The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-84383-268-3 . P. 128 f.
  20. ↑ Reinhard Strohm : Handel's pasticci. In: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera , Cambridge University Press 1985, Reprint 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-26428-0 , p. 199. (English).
  21. ↑ Commerce Reference Database . ichriss.ccarh.org. Retrieved June 17, 2013.