Esther (Handel)

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Esther ( HWV 50) is the first English-language oratorio by Georg Friedrich Händel .

Emergence

Handel wrote the first version of the oratorio at a time when he was working for the Earl of Carnarvon (from 1719 Duke of Chandos) at his country estate, Cannons . More than half of it consists of acquisitions from older works, including Handel's Brockes Passion .

The first performance is not well documented, but it is generally assumed to be in 1718, as a copyist of Handel made a copy of the score in that year. This is also supported by the fact that the instruments used largely correspond to the musicians' lists for Cannons at the time in question. The work with the title Haman and Mordecai was organized into six scenes at this time and was apparently still referred to as Masque . From this, Winton Dean draws the conclusion that it was staged; however, this is not proven.

After the performance in Cannons, Esther was forgotten for a long time. On February 23, 1732, it was performed privately on Handel's birthday in the Crown & Anchor Tavern ( Strand ), under the direction of Bernard Gates, director of the children's choir at Chapel Royal and a friend of Handel. The performance was repeated twice privately.

A public performance of Esther as "Oratorio or sacred Drama" in the York Buildings was suddenly announced for April 20th . It is not known who was behind this event, but Handel acted immediately. He revised the work to include many new numbers, most of which he adopted from his anthems and Italian operas. This second version was performed on May 2, 1732 at the King's Theater on Haymarket. The announcement contained the note "There will be no Action on the Stage, but the House will be fitted up in a decent Manner, for the Audience".

libretto

In the various text prints that have come down to us, the author mostly mentioned is John Arbuthnot , but also Alexander Pope . Both poets were closely associated with the earl. The libretto is loosely based on the tragedy of the same name by Jean Racine (1689), which draws its characters from the book of Esther .

people

At the first public performance in 1732, the cast was sung by the following singers:

literature

  • Winton Dean : Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques . Clarendon, Oxford 1989, ISBN 0-19-816184-0 , (Original edition: Oxford University Press, Oxford 1959), (English).
  • Hans Joachim Marx : Handel's oratorios, odes and serenatas. A compendium. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-525-27815-2 .
  • Albert Scheibler, Julia Evdokimova: Georg Friedrich Händel. Oratorios guides . Edition Cologne, Lohmar 1993, ISBN 3-928010-04-2 .

Web links

  • Score by Esther , 1st version 1720 (Handel work edition, edited by Friedrich Chrysander , Leipzig 1882), accessed on July 15, 2014
  • Score by Esther , 2nd version 1732 (Handel work edition, edited by Friedrich Chrysander , Leipzig 1882), accessed on July 15, 2014