Il pastor fido (Handel)

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Work data
Original title: Il pastor fido
Beginning of the first act in the copy of D. Linikes.

Beginning of the first act
in the copy of D. Linikes.

Shape: Opera seria
Original language: Italian
Music: georg Friedrich Handel
Libretto : Giacomo Rossi
Literary source: Giovanni Battista Guarini , Il pastor fido (1585)
Premiere: November 22, 1712
Place of premiere: Queen's Theater , Haymarket, London
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours, 3 hours with prologue
Place and time of the action: in mythical Arcadia , in mythical times
people

prolog

Il pastor fido

  • Mirtillo, shepherd, in love with Amarilli (1712 soprano, 1734 alto)
  • Amarilli, divine nymph, secretly in love with Mirtillo (soprano)
  • Eurilla, nymph, secretly in love with Mirtillo and confidante of Amarilli (soprano)
  • Silvio, hunter, fiance of Amarilli (1712 alto, 1734 tenor )
  • Dorinda, shepherdess, in love with Silvio (old)
  • Tirenio, a blind sage, priest of Diana ( bass )
  • Muses, hunters, shepherds, priests

Il pastor fido (first version HWV 8a, second version HWV 8c) with the prologue Terpsicore (HWV 8b) for the second version is an opera ( opera seria ) in three acts by Georg Friedrich Händel .

First version - creation

After Handel had received the libretto again provided by Giacomo Rossi (as with Rinaldo ) , he began composing in September 1712 and was finished on October 24th. At the end of the third act he noted: “Fine dell Atto terzo | GFH | Londres | ce 24 d'Octobr v.st. | 1712 " . (“V.st.”, “vieux style”, is a reference to the Julian calendar, which was valid in England until 1752. ) On November 22nd, 1712, Il pastor fido was performed for the first time in London's Queen's Theater . It is the composer's second opera that he created for London. The then 27-year-old Handel - in possession of the experience he gained in 2½ years of service in a Hamburg orchestra and an eventful study trip through Italy that lasted 3½ years and was of decisive importance for his career - is "officially" awarded the Appointed court music director of Elector Georg Ludwig von Hanover (later King George I). In fact, at that time he had already been eyeing England. He accepted the position of Kapellmeister on June 16, 1710 on the condition that immediately after his appointment he would be able to spend a year away from the Hanoverian court in London. He arrived in the British capital for the first time in his life in November 1710 and in February 1711 he presented his new opera Rinaldo , which was a huge success. The triumph of Rinaldo and the entire subsequent career of the composer confirmed that Handel had made a very happy decision when he chose London as the place of his work and for many years focused his compositional activity on the art genre of Italian opera. When he returned to London in the autumn of 1712 to consolidate his position there with the performance of a new opera , the conditions at the Queen's Theater were significantly different: Aaron Hill , the theater director at the time and the creator of the Rinaldo scenario , had meanwhile given up his post, and most of the leading Italian singers, among them the celebrated star, the castrato Nicolini (who had sung the title role in Rinaldo at the time ), had left the theater. Opposite with lavish decorations, costumes and a large cast listed Rinaldo the new opera, Il pastor fido , with the cheapest equipment, with old costumes and scenes , less arias (many of them both borrowed and monothematic) and abbreviated recitatives on stage brought. The opera thus corresponded to the Italian ideal, which was less appealing and exhibited more stereotypes than earlier English pastorals, which Handel probably did not know.

Cast of the premiere:

The premiere clearly fell through, and after seven performances the piece was canceled. The opera chronicle, incorrectly attributed to Francis Colman , characterized the performance as follows:

“The Scene represented only y e Country of Arcadia y e Habits were old. - y e opera short. "

"The set represented the Arcadia region from beginning to end, the clothes were the old ones - the opera is short."

- Opera Register. London 1712.

Even the lines, written with such sarcastic urgency, suggest that the failure of Il pastor fido was not only - and perhaps not primarily - caused by the unfavorable conditions, but above all by the fact that the type of opera it represented, the Pastoral and especially its Italian variant were never popular in England. Handel had become acquainted with two basic types of opera in Italy, the heroic opera and the lyric pastoral, and he certainly found it natural to introduce himself to the London audience from both sides.

libretto

Title page of Guarini's literary model (1590)

The roots of the shepherd's play poetry as a literary genre go back to antiquity, to the idylls of Theocritus and Eclogues of Virgil . The pastoral drama , the Shepherd game itself is in the Renaissance born. Its first representative was the work of Poliziano: Fabula di Orfeo (1480). Although it existed in many different forms, in different nations and epochs, the shepherd game is always the same in its basic features: Its "heroes" are nymphs and shepherds, in most cases not true shepherds, but men who only love and Hunting is interested in chatting with each other and the ladies they love in a refined literary style. Mostly they are allegorical figures without individual traits, possibly mythological figures. (The shepherd game authors of the 16th and 17th centuries adapted Ovid's love stories particularly often , such as Acis and Galathea , Apollo and Daphne or Orpheus and Eurydice .) The setting of the shepherd games is always a peaceful, idyllic landscape, mostly Arcadia . The plot of the pastorals, set in the idyllic Arcadia, consists exclusively of entanglements in love and intrigues, with mythological and magical elements, the sacrifice custom and religious ceremonies in general playing an important role. The most famous and effective shepherd's game in literary history is the play Il pastor fido by Giovanni Battista Guarini (1585), which was first printed in Venice in 1590 and had a total of twenty (!) Editions in Italy up to 1602. From the moment it was written, this piece inspired countless musical arrangements. We know more than 550 madrigals, which take up part of the work; a number of madrigal collections were given the title Il pastor fido and Guarini's work or other Italian shepherd games served as the literary basis for the new art genre emerging in the last decades of the 16th century: opera. Fifty years earlier, shepherd games with music were performed in Ferrara , and the first operas by the composers of the famous Florentine Camerata , the society that gave birth to opera, were pieces with a pastoral theme, such as Jacopo Peris Dafne (1598) and Euridice ( 1600). Up until the opening of the first public opera houses in the thirties of the 17th century, the pastoral genre remained predominant, until it was ousted from the stages by a new type of opera, the dramatic hero opera that was rapidly becoming popular, tragically or epically thematized . It was only revived in the last few decades, as a result of the activities of the Society of the Arcadian Academy , founded in 1689 , which endeavored to achieve natural simplicity in the literary style and which now simplified the old pastoral opera, which had become too complicated and affected, in a new one Form: half as extensive as the mythological or heroic operas, it only employs four to five actors and there is hardly a choir to be found in it; their musical style is compact and simple, the orchestra generally consists of only strings. The most outstanding master of Italian pastoral opera designed in this way was Alessandro Scarlatti , from whom Handel had also learned a lot and whose works served as models for more than a hundred Handel cantatas composed in Italy, which had a strong operatic character.

In May 1734, Handel brought out the opera in a new version with the second Royal Academy of Music (15 performances) and in November afterwards in a slightly modified version (5 performances), but this time with a newly composed prologue Terpsicore (see the sections “Second Version” and “Terpsicore”).

The first performance in modern times is due to the pioneer of historical performance practice August Wenzinger . It took place on September 5, 1946 in the St. Albansaal in Basel as a production by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Basel Marionette Theater. Of the six performances of this production, two were in Italian and four in German.

Second version - creation

In 1734 Handel took up the work again and reworked it by incorporating a number of movements from the Serenata Il Parnasso in festa , which he had written shortly before, and from other operas into the score. The opera was performed in this version on May 18, 1734 in the King's Theater on Haymarket. Here, however, Handel had to move out in the summer due to a lack of money and the competing opera company, the Opera of the Nobility ("Adelsoper"), moved in. As if that weren't enough, this Handel also recruited the stars of his ensemble, including a. Senesino . In June, he finally moved to the newly built Theater Royal Covent Garden , where he brought Il pastor fido back to the stage with small changes. The most significant revision concerns the role of Silvio: originally a role for an alto, it was now sung by a soprano before it was set up for tenor John Beard in the fall .

Cast of the premiere of the new version:

Terpsicore - emergence

When Handel transferred to John Rich at the Coventgarden Theater in the fall of 1734 , he performed Il pastor fido again on November 9, 1734, this time with the Terpsicore prologue , since Rich had engaged a choir and the ballet of Marie Sallé .

The Italian text is also from Giacomo Rossi, who also wrote the text for the opera itself. Terpsicore is a one-act, independent dance game, but at the same time also a prologue that is related to the opera in such a way as to provide the “divine” framework for the plot of the opera in Arcadia. He has his own plot, which is completely self-contained and gives no hints, let alone references to Il pastor fido : At Apollo's request, the muse of dance art (Terpsicore), which is at the center of the plot, should show the various types and characters of the To represent love. Nevertheless, Handel's dance game is more than just a ballet of affect. The gesture art of dance, together with the pieces of music tailored to it, should make it possible to see, hear and feel which joys and sorrows, profundities and jealousies can appear and occur as (sound) images of love, including serious content and bizarre excesses.

Cast of the premiere at the Theater Royal, Covent Garden:

  • Apollo - Giovanni Carestini, called "Il Cusanino" (mezzo-soprano castrato)
  • Erato - Anna Maria Strada del Pò (Soprano)
  • Terpsicore - Marie Sallé (dance role)
  • Mirtillo - Giovanni Carestini (Mezzo-Soprano Castrato)
  • Amarilli - Anna Maria Strada del Pò (Soprano)
  • Eurilla - Maria Rosa Negri (Alt)
  • Silvio - John Beard ( tenor )
  • Dorinda - Maria Caterina Negri (alto)
  • Tirenio - Gustav Waltz (bass)

action

Historical and literary background

Guarini describes his piece as "Tragicomedia pastorale". The storylines in the pastoral drama are extremely complex and ramified: in addition to nineteen characters, a choir is employed. Rossi's libretto attempts to reduce the plot to the minimum necessary for understanding, and nevertheless assumes that the opera-goer knows Guarini's original.

prolog

Erato and her subordinates prepare a celebration of homage for Zeus. Apollo is expected to receive the homage as Zeus' representative. The altar of Diana is covered with the corpses of sacrificed girls: this is the result of the oracle given by the goddess, which punished the land of Arcadia for the infidelity committed by a girl, that all girls “illegally” addicted to love and Women have to die. The punishment lasts until two conditions are met: When two young people of the divine sex unite in love and a faithful shepherd sacrifices himself for a girl. Erato has decorated the altar in such a way that you cannot see the cruel sight. On this occasion, she hopes that Apollo will be favored. But he's interested in - Terpsicore. At last she comes, late and hesitant. The concealed sacrificial altar is the object of their attention, less the celebration of homage. Apollo asks them to dance. She uses her dance to indicate that it is time to do something for people, it is time to put a stop to pointless dying. She finds sympathy neither with Apollo nor with Erato. Apollo asks her to depict the passions of love and the fire of jealousy in dance. Terpsicore makes a second attempt to point out the needs of the people who came through the oracle. She brings up the shadows of the people who are involved in the conflict of the apparently next victim - Amarilli. She prays for her, but Apollo only has eyes for his dance muse. Erato abruptly ends the party. Diana, already certain of her next victim, competes with Apollo and his muses for Amarilli's fate.

first act

The consciousness of the oracle weighs on Amarilli. Nevertheless, she cannot love her fiancé, the hunter Silvio. She only loves and desires the shepherd Mirtillo. But a union with him would mean her death, as the goddess Diana would atone for her infidelity in the person who was awarded. Nevertheless, she hopes for a way out of the situation.

Mirtillo is disappointed with Amarilli's supposed coldness against him. For Eurilla, this is a welcome opportunity to attract Mirtillo, whom she longs for dearly. She promises him help with his recruitment for Amarilli. Mirtillo's wreath should help her with this.

Amarilli meets her fiancé Silvio. He doesn't care who his fiancée loves. He alone loves the hunt and Diana, the goddess of the hunt.

Amarilli draws new hope from Silvio's behavior for her secret love for Mirtillo. The girl Dorinda, however, loves Silvio. Yes, she even admires his devotion to the idol of Diana, in whose place she would like to be herself. She openly reveals her feelings for him to Silvio. The hunter, never so provoked by a girl, is frightened and confused.

Second act

Mirtillo is waiting for Eurilla's promised help. Next to the asleep Eurilla lays the wreath with an anonymous invitation in the cave where the lovers of Arcadia grant each other the fulfillment of their love. Mirtillo finds the letter, immediately believes that Amarilli is the sender, and storms away happily.

Amarilli, in turn, concludes from the "find" that Mirtillo got this letter from another girl. Eurilla confirms her fear. For Amarilli, all hope seems to be gone forever.

Dorinda continues to pursue Silvio. She has noticed that he is by no means insensitive to female beauty. Now she is playing openly with her charms, certain of near victory.

Eurilla sends the hesitant Mirtillo to the cave of love, assuring him that Amarillis is waiting for him there. Amarillis was also able to persuade her to enter the cave, but only because she wants to convince herself of the alleged infidelity of her lover at this place. Eurilla's plan is fulfilled: Amarilli and Mirtillo meet, recognize their love and loyalty to one another, nothing in the world can separate them. Eurilla quickly fetches the priests as witnesses to the “illegal” love that is taking place here.

Third act

Dorinda also follows Silvio while hunting. Fright and confusion as well as Dorinda's tenderness cause love to break out in Silvio. Then Eurilla comes to announce with an almost undisguised triumph that Amarilli is being led to sacrifice. Amarilli is ready to die. But she wanted to say one last farewell to the beloved Mirtillo.

At the last moment Mirtillo rushes over, frees Amarilli and offers himself up as a sacrifice. This fulfills the condition for the lifting of the oracle. The goddess Diana has lost her power over people. The blind Tirenio announces it and gives the couples together who are united in true love: Amarilli and Mirtillo, Dorinda and Silvio. Eurilla will be forgiven for the intrigue, since she too only acted out of love; their repentance atones for their offense.

The mezzo-soprano Giovanni Carestini
Handel's favorite singer Anna Maria Strada (portrait by Johannes Verelst, 1732)

music

Two thirds of the music in the 1712 version is composed of arias taken over from cantatas and oratorios composed by Handel in Italy, and the entirety of the piece is a prime example of pastoral opera of the 18th century. Among the 23 arias in the work are only seven accompanied exclusively by the continuo instruments, two more are so-called unison arias, in which the violins sound parallel to the singing voice without bass. In contrast to the colorful orchestra of Rinaldo , in which there were also four trumpets, no brass played at all in Il pastor fido of 1712 and only ten numbers (including two short instrumental symphonies and the overture ) can be heard from oboes and bassoon, and twice a pair of transverse flutes. In addition to the arias, there are a total of two completed numbers in the piece that occupy a larger ensemble: a duet and the short “coro” that concludes the third act, which, however, according to Italian opera practice, is not by a real choir, but by the ensemble of Soloist was sung. All of this was in stark contrast to the taste of the English audience, which loves choirs, ballets or orchestral numbers that perform natural phenomena or battles, as well as the traditions of the masque .

When Handel brought Il pastor fido to the stage again in London 22 years later , he took these English traditions into account and worked on the piece fundamentally. From the overture originally consisting of five movements - which in an opera seems to be quite long - Handel kept only the usual three parts (majestic introduction with sharp dots, fugue, dance movement) and added two new instrumental pieces (symphonias) at the beginning of each following act. The piece is considerably enriched by the added choral movements, which Handel took from his “fresh” Serenata Il Parnasso in festa . In addition, he swapped the continuo for an orchestral accompaniment in four arias and significantly expanded the scope of the work by adding several new arias or a new duet. The truly radical overhaul was not in vain: the second version saw a total of 20 performances (along with the performances at the Covent Garden Theater in November), which was considered a serious success at the time.

At the Theater Royal Covent Garden he now had at his disposal the French Marie Sallé and her company, an excellent ballet ensemble and an expressive solo dancer. Handel made good use of the new opportunities and ensured ballet an important role in every opera of the season, including the revivals. He also composed a few dance movements for the end of all three acts of Il pastor fido and at the beginning of the opera - again largely composed of some of his earlier operas - a prologue in which the Sallè and its company could shine.

In addition to the inserted ballets and the prologue, Handel also made some changes in the arias. Although he is always very fond of transferring parts of one of his works in original or revised form into another - especially when he had little time to write new compositions (some numbers we even find in five or six different pieces) - there is one such thing extensive loan quite unusual for him too. One could almost call Il pastor fido a pasticcio .

If one compares the line-up of the three premieres, it becomes clear that the changes to the arias were mostly necessary because of the change of actors. Many great singers of that era worked in London under Handel, and numerous great Handel arias preserve the memory of this collaboration.

The figure most in the spotlight of all versions of Il pastor fido was a Primo uomo , the performer of Mirtillo, who was sung in the first version by the castrato soprano Valeriano Pellegrini , and in the second version by the mezzo- soprano Giovanni Carestini , who was excellent as a singer and also as an actor. For this Handel added two new arias and exchanged all six arias for more finely worked pieces.

The part of Amarilli was sung by Anna Maria Strada in 1734 , who had been engaged by Handel for the second Royal Academy in London in 1729 and was the leading soprano ( prima donna ) in Handel's troupe until 1737 . During her collaboration with Handel, she turned out to be one of the best stage actresses in Europe. Handel thought she was a better singer than her two famous predecessors, Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni . Of the two female sopranos, Amarilli and Eurilla, Eurilla still had the largest and most difficult part in 1712 (compared to Amarilli's three arias she sang five), so the situation changed immediately with the appearance of Strada in the version of 1734: the role the Amarilli was expanded and ranked on a par with the primo uomo Mirtillo.

The second version of Eurilla was played by an older singer, Margherita Durastanti , who had an old friendship with Handel (they had already worked together in Rome). In the meantime she had lost some vocals and in 1734 she could only sing in the mezzo-soprano. Obviously, the composer tried to present the skills of his colleague from the most advantageous side; he crossed out two virtuoso arias of the Eurilla and gave her - with a new text - the grateful piece Frode, sol a te rivolta (HWV 8c, No. 4), which was originally sung by Silvio; Furthermore, instead of the heavily decorated and demanding aria Occhi belli (HWV 8a, No. 10), the musically more interesting and easy-to-sing aria Hò un non sò che nel cor (HWV 8a, No. 18, HWV 8c ), which was still part of Dorinda's role in 1712 , No. 14, transposed down a whole tone, but with the original text). In the performances in late 1734, the appearance of the English singer John Beard, who had just been discovered by Handel and later became quite famous, brought about the greatest change. Beard made his debut with the pastor fido on the opera stage, and for his sake the composer converted the original castrato alto role of Silvio into the tenor position and also re-composed the very virtuoso aria Non vo 'mai seguitar (HWV 8c, No. 7b), which forms one of the most effective details of the whole work.

The duet from the prologue Tuoi passi son dardi / Col mezzo d'sguardi (HWV 8b, No. 9) is a fine and splendid movement with a sensual mood so typical for Handel: unison recorders, muted strings, pizzicato cellos and les Orgues doucement, e la Teorbe . This is the only surviving reference to the use of an organ by Handel in one of his operas.

Terpsicore and Il pastor fido together make a long evening. Handel himself shortened some of the later performances: for example the B-part and the da capo of Gran tonante (HWV 8b, No. 2), Di Parnasso i dolci accenti (HWV 8b, No. 3) and Caro amor (HWV 8c, No. 13). There was also a 29-bar line in the Chaconne (HWV 8b, No. 5). Eurilla's arias Frode, sol a te rivolta (HWV 8c, No. 4) and Hò un non sò che nel cor (HWV 8c, No. 14) were completely deleted , which does not shed a good light on the singing qualities of Rosa Negri (who later was engaged as a soprano in Dresden) throws. The E major movement in the final ballet was also omitted (HWV 8c, No. 36).

Success & Criticism

“[...] the opera; which, upon the whole, is inferior in solidity and invention to almost all his other dramatic productions, yet there are in it many proofs of genius and abilities which must strike every real judge of the art, who is acquainted with the state of dramatic music at the time it was composed. "

“[…] The opera, which, on the whole, is inferior to almost all of his other dramatic productions in terms of craftsmanship and inventive talent. Nevertheless, there is much evidence of his ability and genius to be found in it, which every real art judge who is familiar with the dramatic music that was composed during this time has to admit. "

- Charles Burney : A General History of Music. London 1789.

orchestra

1712: Two transverse flutes , two oboes , bassoon , strings, basso continuo (violoncello, lute, harpsichord).

1734: Two transverse flutes, two oboes, bassoon, two horns , strings, basso continuo (violoncello, lute, harpsichord).

1734 (prologue): two recorders , two oboes, bassoon, two horns, strings, organ , theorbo , basso continuo (violoncello, theorbo, harpsichord).

Discography

  • Cetra LPC 1265 (1958): Dora Gatta (Mirtillo), Cecilia Fusco (Amarilli), Irma Bozzi Lucca (Eurilla), Anna Reynolds (Silvio), Rena Gavazioti (Dorinda), Renato Miville (Tirenio)
Orchestra e Coro da camera di Milano; Dir. Ennio Gerelli (HWV 8a)
  • Hungaroton HCD 12912-3 (1988): Paul Esswood (Mirtillo), Katalin Farkas (Amarilli), Maria Flohr (Eurilla), Gabor Kallay (Silvio), Marta Lukin (Dorinda), Jozsef Gregor (Tirenio)
Savaria Vocal Ensemble; Capella Savaria ; Dir. Nicholas McGegan (HWV 8c) (147 min)
  • Hungaroton HCD 31193 (1993): Derek Lee Ragin (Apollo), Katalin Farkas (Erato)
Chamber Choir; Capella Savaria; Dir. Nicholas McGegan (Terpsicore HWV 8b) (40 min)
  • Harmonia Mundi 907 585.86 (2012): Anna Dennis (Mirtillo), Lucy Crowe (Amarilli), Katherine Manley (Eurilla), Clint van der Linde (Silvio), Madeleine Shaw (Dorinda), Lisandro Abadie (Tirenio)
La Nuova Musica; Dir. David Bates (HWV 8a) (145 min)

literature

Individual evidence

  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 978-3-7618-0717-0 , p. 58.
  2. ^ Winton Dean, John Merrill Knapp: Handel's Operas 1704–1726. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-84383-525-7 , p. 220.
  3. ^ Silke Leopold: Handel. The operas. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 2009, ISBN 978-3-7618-1991-3 , p. 267.
  4. ^ A b Winton Dean, John Merrill Knapp: Handel's Operas 1704–1726. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2009, ISBN 978-1-84383-525-7 , pp. 222 f.
  5. ^ Charles Burney: A General History of Music: from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. Vol. 4, London 1789, reproduction true to the original: Cambridge University Press 2010, ISBN 978-1-108-01642-1 , p. 237.

Web links

Commons : Il pastor fido  - collection of images, videos and audio files