Germanico (Serenata)

Germanico is the title of a serenata by an unknown composer for six singers, choir and orchestra.

The plot is based on an episode in the life story of the Roman general Germanicus (15 BC - 19 AD), whom the Romans pay homage to after his victory over Arminius , and who dreams of a new Caesar . Compared to a conventional opera seria , the Serenata largely lacks dramatic moments.

The catalog of the holdings of the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, printed in 1929, lists the Serenata as a work by George Frideric Handel , which, however, is nowhere else passed down or mentioned.

The work was then found in this archive by the conductor Ottavio Tenerani in January 2007 when he was looking for Vivaldi's manuscripts. The world premiere recording of the ensemble Il Rossignolo under the direction of the Finder took place in 2010 on the classic label Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and with the indication of Handel as the composer. A cover sheet with the title of the Serenata belonging to the manuscript of the score is missing. Instead there is a title page from another hand with the inscription: “Germanico del sig. Chicken ". Investigations of the paper of the manuscript revealed an assignment of the piece to the 18th century, including the attribution, but at the moment the chronological order cannot be narrowed down any further. Germanico shows striking similarities in form and style with other scores in the Austrian National Library in Vienna: Cetre amiche, a un cor che langue by an anonymous composer (1702), Il ritorno di Giulio Cesare vincitore della Mauritania by Giovanni Bononcini (1704) and Attilio Ariostis I gloriosi presagi di Scipione Africano (1704). The libretto could be by the Neapolitan Donato Cupeda or by Pietro Andrea Bernardoni.

The text indicates that the Serenata is a tribute music for the Habsburg Archduke Joseph, who later became Emperor Joseph I of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation .

Georg Friedrich Handel's works from the Italian creative period have one important feature in common: They are teeming with borrowings of their own thematic material from the Hamburg and Italian times, as well as Reinhard Keiser's ideas . There is no such thematic correspondence in the Serenata Germanico .

Web links

Carlo Vitali: "Trade - True or False?" , Opera Today , May 31, 2011
Thomas Migge: A new Handel or not? Dispute over the opera "Germanico" in the classical music scene. Deutschlandfunk, August 3, 2011
Guido Fischer: Germanico (CD review), rondomagazin.de, August 27, 2011
Germanico - Handel (attr.) - Un'opera inedita - Il Rossignolo on YouTube (Documentation, Italian)

Individual evidence

^ Lindsay Powell: Germanicus. The Magnificent Life and Mysterious Death of Rome's Most Popular General. Pen and Sword, Barnsley 2013, ISBN 978-1-78159-120-8 , pp. 195–206 ( limited preview in Google book search).
↑ Riccardo Gandolfi, Carlo Cordara Arnaldo Bonaventura: Catalogo delle opere musicali teoriche e Pratiche di autori vissuti sino ai primi decenni del secolo XIX: Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica di Firenze (= Bibliotheca musica Bononiensis . Band 11 ). Forni, Bologna 1977, Opere teatrali, p. 143 (Italian, reprint of the 1929 Parma edition).

[1] Lindsay Powell: Germanicus. The Magnificent Life and Mysterious Death of Rome's Most Popular General. Pen and Sword, Barnsley 2013, ISBN 978-1-78159-120-8 , pp. 195–206 ( limited preview in Google book search).

[2] Riccardo Gandolfi, Carlo Cordara Arnaldo Bonaventura: Catalogo delle opere musicali teoriche e Pratiche di autori vissuti sino ai primi decenni del secolo XIX: Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica di Firenze (= Bibliotheca musica Bononiensis . Band 11 ). Forni, Bologna 1977, Opere teatrali, p. 143 (Italian, reprint of the 1929 Parma edition).