Genserico

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Work data
Original title: Genserico
Shape: Opera seria (fragment)
Original language: Italian
Music: georg Friedrich Handel
Libretto : after Nicolò Beregan , Il Genserico (1669)
Place and time of the action: Rome , 455
people
  • Genserico , king of the African turns ( bass )
  • Onorico , his son and Hereditary Prince ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Eudossia , Roman empress, widow of Petronius Maximus ( soprano )
  • Placidia , her older daughter, lover of Olibrio (soprano)
  • Flacilla , her younger daughter, in love with Onorico (soprano)
  • Olibrio, a distinguished Roman, in love with Placidia ( old )
  • Elmige, confidante of Onorico, in love with Placidia (bass)
  • Roman court ladies, Roman and Wendish soldiers, servants

Il Genserico or Genserico , also incorrectly called Olibrio ( HWV A 2 ), is a fragment for a Dramma per musica in three acts by Georg Friedrich Handel . In the middle of the first act, Handel left the piece for unknown reasons. He used the music elsewhere.

Emergence

Silver coin Siliqua , Geiserich

After the opening of the ninth season of the Royal Academy of Music with a resumption of Admeto and the world premiere of Riccardo Primo in November 1727, Handel set about composing the second opera for the current season: Genserico , possibly based on a libretto by one of his Londoners Poet ( Nicola Francesco Haym  ?), Based on the model by Nicolò Beregan (Venice 1669, with music by Antonio Cesti ) and the German counterpart by Christian Heinrich Postel (music: Johann Georg Conradi , Hamburg 1693 and Georg Philipp Telemann as victory of Beauty , Hamburg 1722). Beregan's libretto was dedicated to the Duchess Benedikta Henriette von Braunschweig-Lüneburg . In this respect, the topic was known in Hanover and Handel may have come into contact with it. Since his version is closer to Postel's text than to the Venetian original, we can assume the existence of an intervening Italian textbook, i.e. between 1669 and 1693, perhaps even in connection with Hanover. This interim version could thus have been the basis for Handel's text, which has connections to both of the librettos mentioned.

The thesis advocated by Charles Burney and many biographers up to Friedrich Chrysander that the text of Handel's Genserico was based on the libretto for Flavio Anicio Olibrio by Apostolo Zeno , which the latter had written in 1707 for the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice , is now considered to be refuted. Burneys had made a misleading entry in the autograph of Siroe (page 29), which was initially adopted unchecked by musicology. For this reason one occasionally finds reviews of Handel's operatic fragment under the title Olibrio or Flavio Olibrio .

For reasons unknown, however, Handel rejected work on the Genserico when he reached the ninth scene of the first act. While the introductory chorus and the six arias of these scenes are completely orchestrated, all secco recitatives , of which only the texts were entered between the staves, remained without notes. The cast of the games results from the coding .

Possible planned occupation (according to Strohm )

In June 2012, during the Handel Festival in Halle (Saale), there was a concert performance of a pasticcio under the title Gensericos Rache , which combined the arias of this fragment with selected pieces by Telemann on this subject and texts by Berlin writer Christoph Klimke . Under the direction of Lorenzo Ghirlanda, the youth baroque orchestra played "Bach's heirs".

action

The libretto begins at the time of the second sack of Rome in 455. After the assassination of the emperor Valentinian III. On behalf of the usurper Petronius Maximus , the legendary Vandal King Gensericus brought powerful Rome into his power with a brilliant coup. The Vandals (or Wends) plunder and murder above all the male population, at the same time they want to win the beautiful Roman women for themselves and thus triumph over the heart of the empire in matters of love: Gensericus wants the Roman imperial widow Eudossia for himself, while his previously unwilling son Onorico whose daughter Flacilla is to have. The Vandal Prince Elmige, in turn, falls violently in love with Placidia , who is already engaged to the Roman Olibrio. A love carousel begins to spin - and after overcoming a few obstacles, the couples find each other.

music

Handel used the music he had already created for subsequent operas Siroe (HWV 24) and Tolomeo (HWV 25). He took over the original pages of the Genserico overture , without rewriting, in the score of Tolomeo ; the introductory choir forms the basis of the final chorus there. In the first act of Siroe , Handel relied on five of the six arias he had composed for Genserico . Two he took over unchanged, only with different text, three took the ideas of the template and modified them for the new context. So Handel wasted nothing. The sixth aria ( È già stanca l'alma altera di portar , No. 7) was already borrowed from his Italian studies: Non ha forza nel mio perto altro affetto (cantata Care selve, aure grate , HWV 88, Rome 1707/08).

“Had the other two arias [ Ho nel seno un certo core and Stimo fedele ] not by chance fit so well into the new context and thus rendered a new copy by the composer unnecessary, we would probably be of his arrangement of Flavio Olibrio [Genserico!] have learned nothing. We must particularly like the fact that the original of the third aria [ Son come un arboscello ] is there. It is not simply borrowed, but for Faustina significantly redesigned and completely redesigned; It is therefore not only instructive and remarkable as a remnant of an unknown and unfinished work, but also as a musical variant. "

- Friedrich Chrysander : GF Handel , Leipzig 1860

The preserved and reworked movements are distributed among the two following operas as follows:

  • Overture -> Tolomeo : Overture
  • Applaudo ogn'uno l'Eroe sovrano (No. 1) -> Tolomeo : Applauda ogn'uno il nostro fato (final chorus, No. 31, revision)
  • Quando contento di stragi (No. 2) -> Siroe : Se il mio paterno amore , (No. 2, revision)
  • Di pur se il cor si piega (No. 3) -> Siroe : Se il labbro amor ti giura (No. 4, revision)
  • Ho nel seno un certo core (No. 4) -> Siroe : Or mi perdo di speranza (No. 9, only new text)
  • Stimo fedele (No. 5) -> Siroe : Chi, è più fedele (No. 8, only new text)
  • Son come un arboscello (No. 6) -> Siroe : D'ogni amator la fede (No. 3, revision)

orchestra

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

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Reinhard Strohm : Handel and his Italian opera texts. In: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera , Cambridge University Press 1985, Reprint 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-26428-0 , pp. 54 f.
  2. ^ A b Bernd Baselt : Thematic-systematic directory. Instrumental music, pasticci and fragments. In: Walter Eisen (Hrsg.): Händel-Handbuch: Volume 3 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik , Leipzig 1986, ISBN 3-7618-0716-3 , p. 349
  3. ↑ a b Friedrich Chrysander : GF Handel , second volume, Breitkopf & Härtel , Leipzig 1860, p. 180 f.
  4. ↑ Winton Dean : Handel's Operas, 1726-1741. Boydell & Brewer, London 2006, Reprint: The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-84383-268-3 , pp. 91, 100