Lucio Papirio dittatore (Handel)

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Work data
Original title: Lucio Papirio dittatore
Title page of the libretto, London 1732

Title page of the libretto, London 1732

Shape: Opera seria
Original language: Italian
Music: Geminiano Giacomelli , Nicola Porpora , arrangement: Georg Friedrich Händel
Libretto : Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni , Lucio Papirio dittatore (Parma 1729)
Literary source: Apostolo Zeno , Lucio Papirio dittatore (Vienna 1719)
Premiere: May 23, 1732
Place of premiere: King's Theater , Haymarket, London
Place and time of the action: Rome , 324 BC Chr.
people

Lucio Papirio dittatore ( HWV A 6 ) is a dramma per musica in three acts and was the first in a series of operas by other composers that Georg Friedrich Händel adapted for the London stage between 1732 and 1737 and brought to the stage as pasticcio .

Emergence

The deterioration in Handel's situation as the sole composer of the opera company first became apparent in the 1731/32 season. While he initially shared this task with a second composer, Giovanni Battista Bononcini , during the first opera academy , he was now solely responsible for “filling” the repertoire. As a result, in addition to his own, he gradually brought out operas by other composers in his arrangement. The first novelty, after the resumption of Tamerlano , Poro and Admeto, was not a pasticcio on January 15, 1732, like Venceslao in the previous year , but Handel's own, but not very successful, Ezio . After that, Handel first took up Giulio Cesare , which is always popular with the audience , followed on February 15 by another new opera, Sosarme, re di Media , as well as Il Coriolano ( Ariosti ) and his Flavio, re de 'Longobardi .

The first real success of this season was the oratorio Esther on May 2nd. The popularity of the six performances of the English oratorio in May would certainly have made further opera performances unnecessary, but Lucio Papirio dittatore had its premiere on May 23rd . The opera may have been rehearsed before and during Esther's unexpected success . Judging by a note in the “Opera Register”, the opera diary between 1712 and 1734 that was wrongly attributed to the diplomat Francis Colman , the piece fell through:

"May y e 23. Lucius Papirius a New Opera Handell it did not take."

"May 23, Lucius Papirius, a new opera by Handel, it failed."

- “Opera Register”, London, May 1732

The opera had only four performances until June 6, when it was canceled.

Cast of the premiere

For Lucio Papirio dittatore , Handel almost completely took over an opera by Geminiano Giacomelli and only changed parts of the recitatives or had the arias adapted to the voices of the singers in his own ensemble by transposing them, so that the London version of Lucio Papirio is actually not a pasticcio in the strict sense. Handel's director's score, which has been lost, is based on a London copy of Giacomelli's opera owned by Sir John Buckworth , a director of the Royal Academy in 1726 and a director of the Opera of the Nobility with which Handel was in contact in 1733 .

libretto

The libretto Lucio Papirio dittatore was originally written by Apostolo Zeno, Pietro Metastasios' predecessor in the office of the imperial court poet Charles VI. Written for Vienna in 1719 and set to music by Antonio Caldara . A setting by Antonio Pollarolo was also staged in Venice in 1721. In 1729 Giacomelli composed his opera on the basis of a libretto by Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni , which is a revision of the Zeno model and not the competing textbook by Antonio Salvi ( Lucio Papirio , Rome, Carnival 1714 with music by Francesco Gasparini ). Frugoni took over some of the recitatives from the latter. In Parma, Giacomelli's opera was performed in an all-star cast with Farinelli , Antonio Bernacchi , Francesco Borosini and Faustina Bordoni at the beginning of May 1729, where it had probably heard Handel himself. Almost at the same time as Handel's adaptation, in the spring of 1732, there was another production of Zeno's drama in Rome, with music by Giovanni Porta .

Only the harpsichord part (with instrumental parts) and the printed libretto have survived from Handel's performances. The usual “Favorite Songs”, mostly printed by John Walsh , did not appear this time.

action

Lucius Papirius, in a picture in the Schedelschen Weltchronik .

Historical and literary background

325 BC The repeatedly elected consul Lucius Papirius Cursor was appointed "dictator rei gerundae causa" to lead the Second Samnite War (326-304 BC), of which he became the main hero. Papirius was an excellent general and a man of ancient Roman rigor and efficiency. 324 BC As a dictator, he condemned his Magister equitum Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus to death for a battle he had delivered against his orders and was only moved to pardon him by the combined requests of the father, the Senate and the people.

"Lucius Papirius the ro e mer. a hohberu e mbter war to wardr of the ro e mix rat dictator erwelet into one. vnd shall he set in Quintum fabium a hawbtman of raysigen gezeugs the name Auss befehnus the ro e mix council a war against the Samnites fu e r. Shortly afterwards the same dictator went to Rome. di you need to do something and Quinto Fabio tells the hawbtman that he shouldn't hit the ground with his being in his absence. But after abscheid of dictators ERKU e the Fabius ndigte by speher the enemy of the roof over all zerru e dung hours. accordingly Fabius was so excited that he began to attack the Samnites. vnd to fierce quarrel with the horses the zawm withdrew cns them spo e ret vnder let the enemy lull. So the ine does not make known. vnd warden (as Pliny sits) xx m . slain enemy that day. that made Fabius nit to the dictator sunder the ro e mix get advice. therefore vrteyler ine the dictator back to the pen of death that he quarreled with the enemy in his absence against his potion. but when Fabius to death gefu e ret Wardt. then he was done away with by great favor of the people and knighthood. vnnd one such auffru o r against the obgenanten Papirium the dictator he Kawm with the live dauon kome. vnd afterwards the Samnites the Ro wiewol e besloßen mer in a confined place. with great ernider Slacht laid yet the ro have e mer in the following iar Auss befelhnus a Board auff anlaytung of obgenanten Papirij same Samnites hurwiderumb vberwunden. "

- Hartmann Schedel : Register of the book of chronicles and stories ... , Nuremberg 1493

Argomento

“In the year 430 [!, 324 BC is correct. BC], after the city of Rome was built, Lucius Papirius Cursor was chosen to be dictator in the war against the Samnites. He appointed Quintus Fabius Rutilianus, son of Marcus Fabius, who had been consul once and dictator three times, as his war tribune. Now that Papirius arrived at Imbrinium in the face of the enemy, the fortune-tellers suggested to him that before the hostilities began, he should return to Rome once more, receive new premonitions, and reconcile the gods. As a result, he left the command of the army to Quintus Fabius, with the forbidden to dare to meet with the Samnites in any way. The disobedience of Quintus, who had seized the opportunity to attack and conquer the enemy, gave the dictator such an opportunity for such anger that he hurriedly returned to the camp, and acknowledged that he had been struck with rods and then beheaded should be. Quintus took refuge in the legions and incited them to indignation; afterwards he fled to Rome that night, where his father appealed first to the council, then to the people. But nothing in the world was able to persuade Papirius to forgive the guilty party, except for the petitions that the tribunes made for him within the framework of the whole people. With these and even more circumstances, the incident can be read in the eighth book of the first Decas by Titus Livius. The truth of the story has been connected with the probable love, as can be seen in the present Singspiel. "

- Carl Heinrich Graun : Lucius Papirius. A Singspiel which on the most gracious command S r . Royal Majest. von Prussen on the Hof-Schaubühne in Berlin is to be performed, Berlin 1745

music

Sir John Buckworth, whose relationship with Handel is worth investigating, possessed several scores of Italian operas which are still preserved today. One of them is Giacomelli's opera and the only surviving manuscript of this composition, which Handel used as the basic model. It is dated Parma a di 15 maggio 1729 . All changes that Handel made to Giacomelli's score served to adapt the parts to the cast of singers available to him. They were primarily transpositions of the arias and recitative passages. The weighting of the roles, however, remained unchanged - unlike in the following Pasticcio Catone . Handel kept 21 of the 28 arias in Giacomelli's score. The beginning of a 22nd aria appears only in one instrumental form, as a brilliant sinfonia . Another aria was planned for Papiria, but was deleted again before the text booklet was printed. Only two of the arias, inserted for Montagnana from his personal repertoire, come from works by Porpora : Chi del fato e della sorte (No. 4) from Siface and Alma tra miei timori (No. 25) from Poro .

Handel revised Giacomelli's recitatives with a method that he did not otherwise use: he apparently gave his secretary Smith senior a copy of the libretto from which the intended abridgements of the texts emerged and allowed him to use the original recitatives, omitting those passages, the Handel change intended (including most of the recitative lines by Quinto Fabio and Rutilia), copy them. Handel then added in pencil the missing notes, which were later colored by Smith, and made further changes. The result was a mix of Handel and Giacomelli (whose basses were often retained even when the vocal part was rewritten), with an occasional touch of the older Schmidt.

Handel and the pasticcio

The pasticcio was a source for Handel, of which he made frequent use in the following years. They were not new to London or the continent, but Handel had only released one, L'Elpidia, ovvero Li rivali generosi in 1724. Now he delivered seven more within five years: Ormisda in 1729/30, Venceslao 1730/31, Lucio Papirio dittatore , Catone in 1732/33, and no less than three, Semiramide riconosciuta , Caio Fabbricio and Arbace in 1733/34 . Handel's working method in the construction of the pasticci was very different, but all materials are based on libretti by Zeno or Metastasio , which are familiar in the European opera metropolises and 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 . For example in Semiramide riconosciuta , where he completely recomposed an aria for an old castrato Saper bramante (No. 14) for bassist Gustav Waltz , because a simple octave transposition (which has been common since the 1920s until today) was not an option for him. 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. Aside from Ormisda and Elpidia , who were the only ones to see revivals , Handel's pasticci weren't particularly successful - Venceslao and Lucio Papirio dittatore only had four performances each - but like revivals, they required less work than composing and rehearsing new works could well be used as a stopgap or start of the season, or 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.

orchestra

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

literature

Web links

Commons : Lucio Papirio dittatore  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commerce Reference Database . ichriss.ccarh.org. Retrieved May 2, 2013.
  2. ↑ 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. 177 ff.
  3. ^ A b Bernd Baselt : Thematic-systematic directory. Instrumental music, pasticci and fragments. In: Walter Eisen (Ed.): Händel-Handbuch: Volume 3 , Deutscher Verlag für Musik , Leipzig 1986, ISBN 3-7618-0716-3 , p. 363.
  4. ^ A b John H. Roberts: Lucio Papirio dittatore. In: Annette Landgraf and David Vickers: The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia , Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88192-0 , pp. 402 f. (English).
  5. ↑ The Schedelsche Weltchronik . wikisource.org. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  6. ↑ Lucius Papirius . digital-sammlungen.de. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  7. ↑ 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.