There were other composers who set to music Old Testament librettos, and there is a rappresentazione entitled Abramo e Isacco that is considerably earlier than any of those we are concerned with here, but the works Handel heard all came from the Carissimi circle. Among those he certainly heard we might mention Gasparini’s Joseph in Egypt, G. Bononcini’s David, Ferrari’s Samson, and Perti’s Moses, but lest irrelevant comparisons be made between these and Handel’s Old Testament oratorios, it must be borne in mind that in Italy there was only one reason for turning to the Old Testament: a provision in the liturgy. In the Catholic liturgy during Lent all weekday Lessons in the Mass are taken from the Old Testament, in place of the usual Epistles. Since during Lent opera was forbidden and oratorio substituted as a subterfuge, decorum was even better observed—or camounaged—by hewing to the subjects of the liturgy special to the season. No one was deceived and no one was indignant. At practically all other times they preferred the New Testament, the lives of the saints, or allegorical subjects.
Like Handel, Carissimi was a religious man; nevertheless, his oratorio was clearly operatic in nature. Indeed there could not have been different sacred and secular techniques when recitative, aria, arioso, ensemble, and chorus—that is, the forms and means of dramatic music—were used in oratorio as well as opera. The historicus or testo was not different from the narrator in Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Indeed, as the recitative gradually turns into expressive singing, the historicus begins to sing arias and then disappears from the Italian oratorio. After 1690 he is seldom encountered. Even closer to opera was the oratorio volgare, the oratorio in the vernacular, whose principal seats were Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Naples, and Venice, and which became so popular that it all but eliminated the Latin variety. The particularly Italian twist in the development of sacred music is again in evidence, and perplexes the historian, for while the Italian Latin oratorio descended from the dialogue-motet and the historia-Passion, it has scarcely any connections with Catholic liturgy. Its counterpart, the popular oratorio in the vernacular, which owed its existence to religious practices, descending as it were from the dramatized laude, shows even more decided operatic influences. If we glance at the historical precedents, this turn of events will be seen to be quite natural.
As early as in the second decade of the 17th century we find such works as Antonio Cifra’s Scherzi sacri (1616) or Paolo Quagliati’s Affetti amorosi spirituali (1617), in the stile misto, the “mixed style,” and even the circle around St. Philip Neri insisted that the music performed in their oratory should be popular in tone and agreeable in melody, defending the principle of travestimento spirituale, a notion incomprehensible to the northerner. The secular tendencies towards what we may call the “concert oratorio” received an even stronger impetus with Carissimi’s works, which united Roman moral-allegorical opera with the concerted motet and cantata. Here we have a first synthesis of dramatic and church styles, in which is at work the same sensuous sorcery we see in opera. The southern Germans—Catholic—immediately accepted this new art (Kerll was a pupil of Carissimi) but the Protestant North was cautious. Handel watched and absorbed. There was no immediate need for the genre—he came to Italy to compose opera—and his Lutheran training must have made him somewhat apprehensive at seeing the Bible put to such use. But that incredible storehouse that was his brain preserved the impressions intact, ready for use at an instant’s notice.
Among other oratorio composers whose influence was far-reaching we must mention Francesco Foggia (1604-1688), a Roman, who next to Carissimi was the outstanding master. His son Antonio (1650-1707) was also well regarded, and since he worked with Alessandro Scarlatti at Santa Maria Maggiore, Handel must have met him during his first Roman visit. At any rate, Scarlatti surely brought the works of father and son to Handel’s attention.
Neither the old “liturgical” plays, nor the 17th-18th-century oratorios were inhibited, and they often abound in comical scenes and characters. The buffo elements were used as in the Roman opera. The secularization and the turning to the purely operatic ended by eliminating any distinction between the Latin and the vernacular oratorio; when Handel arrived in Italy this was a fait accompli. In Rome and everywhere else he could not help hearing a great many oratorios, and of course he realized that the road to oratorio led through cantata and opera. Like a sculptor who becomes a painter and retains a good many sculptural elements in the new medium, the oratorio composer never lost his dramatic bent and secular origins. Italian oratorio in the vernacular was definitely a form of entertainment that accompanied opera everywhere—in the Catholic world. In the Catholic courts abroad, such as Vienna or Dresden, it fulfilled the same function as in Rome: a substitute for opera during Lent.
We have said that Handel watched and observed; actually he did compose one work that was clearly neither a festa nor a cantata but an oratorio. A little of the mature Handel shows even in this early work, for a certain psychological insight penetrates behind the allegory—in a word, he tries to characterize in music. The contemporary trend is shown in that La Resurrezione has only two choruses, and they are a bit perfunctory, but the rest, notably the imaginative orchestration, demonstrates that Handel was a good student.
Handel, used to the grammar-school poetry of Postel, was now given a libretto in the elegant language of an able and cultivated poet. The story of the Resurrection is, however, complicated, in the operatic manner, by the introduction of the extraneous figure of Lucifer. Here we encounter the ancestor of Polyphemus, for the Prince of Hell is a vigorous and malevolent basso whose extremely difficult and virtuoso lines are already wholly Italianate and full of picturesque word-painting. Also, as Percy Young shrewdly observed, in this very first of Handel’s oratorios “the angel who admonishes Lucifer... exhibits delicious femininity,” and he justly laments that “Handel’s gentle courtesy and his chivalry” are not properly appreciated. Outstanding is the work’s orchestral part, the muted violins creating a convincing mood, the violas often divided into several parts, gamba arpeggios combined with flute, and many other happy and very modern touches; a real genre piece cast in a nocturnal mood. While Handel’s reorientation is manifest and deliberate and the Italian influence marked, La Resurrezione still shows counterpoint and canonic writing that come from the cantor’s art, though all this is considerably attenuated. La Resurrezione is altogether secular and in keeping with the prevailing Roman conception of subterfuge opera. Some of this music appears in Agrippina also. Handel remembered La Resurrezione for a long time and borrowed from it for Alexander Balus and Joshua.
The performance of this oratorio (which followed Scarlatti’s Oratorio della santissima Annunziata by two weeks) took place in the Ruspoli palace in a sumptuous production and.with a large orchestra under Corelli’s direction. The operatic nature of the production was enhanced by the presence of a prima donna who took the role of Mary Magdalene. Ruspoli was severely reprimanded by the Pope for his violation of the edict forbidding undisguised opera. Handel moved into the Ruspoli residence to be close at hand, and was rewarded with a resounding success. Still, he must have decided that the Roman scene had yielded enough for his purposes, and it was time to explore the other musical centers of Italy. Accordingly, he left Rome in May of 1708, arriving in Naples in June. His departure was hastened by the impending siege of Rome by the imperial forces, which he must have watched with anxiety as the city’s gates were sealed one by one.
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BEFORE FOLLOWING Handel on his trip to Naples, we must retrace our steps and examine an entr‘acte in Handel’s Roman adventure —a second visit to Florence, which took place in July 1707. There must have been some reason for this interruption of his Roman explorations, and it is usually ascribed to the production of his opera Rodrigo. While opera was proscribed in Rome, and Handel was occupied with cantata, church music, and oratorio, in the privacy of his quarters he did not forget the main purpose of his Italian tour, making his first experiment since Hambu
rg in the genre by refurbishing his Almira with the aid of newly acquired techniques. Rodrigo was scarcely more than an experiment, since the body of the work, especially the arias, was taken from the score he had brought with him from Hamburg; but there are changes. The arias in Rodrigo remained somewhat ungainly, rather conspicuously instrumental in conception, but the recitatives, which in Almira have a perfunctory church flavor, show considerable gains in dramatic awareness and expression. Some biographers think that Rodrigo was produced during Handel’s first visit to Florence; there is little likelihood that this is so. Most others place it during this second visit; however, Otto Erich Deutsch, whose knowledge of the documents relating to Handel’s life is unexcelled, states that “whether this opera was really performed in Florence has not yet been established.” 15 So here our musicological sources end; not, however, the human documents, for apparently Lucrezia d’André was not the only Florentine musical belle in whom Handel became interested. Vittoria Tarquini, called La Bombace, was the singer to whom Mainwaring assigns the partnership in the second Florentine love affair; she sang at the opera house. Where the English biographer obtained his story is not known, but since he was writing in 1760 he could have had access to sources the modern historian can no longer hunt down. Although Mainwaring was not the most reliable of researchers, he spent some time and effort collecting his data before composing his biography, which was published one year after Handel’s death. It was immediately translated into German by one who knew Handel very well and would be expected to object to the story, if unfounded, or at least to question its authenticity; Mattheson never hesitated to correct another author. In addition, a decorous and solemn Englishman of Mainwaring’s cast would have preferred to do without the love story; most modern Handel biographers are still nervous about such earthy things. It seems, therefore, that we have both an affirmation of the performance of Rodrigo and a little chink in the Handelian armor through which we can see a portion of the man.
Mainwaring describes La Bombace charmingly:
She was a fine woman, and had for some time been much in the good graces of his Serene Highness. But, from the natural restlessness of certain hearts, so little sensible was she of her exalted situation, that she conceived a design of transferring her affections to another person. Handel’s youth and comeliness, joined with his fame and abilities in Music, had made impressions on her heart.
But La Bombace was ruled out by Handel’s best-known modern English biographer, Sir Newman Flower, as a most unlikely object of his love—she was of middle age! Our eminent and strait-laced historian could not have been familiar with the traditional role middle-aged women have always played in the introduction of young men, especially artists, to the mysteries and delights of love. It is rather well known that they were successful in their noble endeavor even when smoking big black cigars and wearing men’s trousers. As a matter of fact, it seems that La Bombace’s charms were still sufficient to attract the attention of Prince Ferdinand himself. On this pleasant note the second Florentine visit ended and Handel returned to Rome, where we have already seen him engaged in more profitable pursuits.
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NAPLES IN 1708 presented a rather fantastic political-artistic picture. Though of course an ancient Italian city-state, it was then a Spanish colony ruled by a viceroy who, in the admirable custom of international politics of the day, did not have to be a Spaniard if his allegiance and executive abilities were satisfactory. When Handel stayed in Naples the viceroy was Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, a Venetian, whose wealthy family owned several opera houses, a circumstance that was to benefit Handel. Armed with recommendations from Roman Arcadians, Handel immediately found himself at home, settling down for a stay of nearly a whole year. His sojourn in Naples is a complete mystery. He had no position yet lived well, and though we get an occasional fleeting glimpse of his doings, all we know is that he composed and presumably watched the scene, which was well worth watching.
Mainwaring is positive that while in Naples Handel had at his disposal “a palazzo and was provided with table, coach, and all other accommodations.” In the absence of any visible means of livelihood, considering the mores of the times (as well as Handel’s still unbeatified status), the known passion of many of the great and wealthy for music and musicians, especially if the musician was a heroic-sized young man who when seated at the keyboard bowled over everyone within hearing, he should have had no difficulty obtaining his table, coach, and palazzo. In the circles Handel frequented this sort of largesse was not unusual. A life of lettered ease, of enlightened dilettantism, of refined luxury, of discreet libertinage, was characteristic of Baroque aristocracy, especially in Naples, where the per capita density of nobility was exceptionally high.
Although Handel’s sojourn in Naples consumed nearly a third of his time in Italy, it is usually dealt with in a few paragraphs. While it is true that we know next to nothing about his activity there, it is noteworthy that his first—and phenomenally successful—original Italian opera, Agrippina, was composed in Naples and not in Venice where it was produced. The serenata Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo was written in Naples too. There were a multitude of things to be observed, studied, and assimilated in a city that had rich and ancient musical traditions. In 1708 Naples was not yet the famous seat of opera it became shortly after Handel’s departure, though it already had an operatic tradition of its own. Here we should recall Henry Prunières’s pertinent observation that in the second half of the 17th century opera was not so much regional as it was “pan-Italian.” Undoubtedly Handel learned a great deal in Naples, his later works show this on every page. Once we probe into the state of music in St. Januarius’s city at the turn of the century it will be seen that the year Handel spent there must have yielded very profitable experiences.
The long Spanish reign left its mark on Naples. The territory was practically bilingual, and the combination of Italian with Spanish Catholicism resulted in an extraordinary number of religious institutions. With the influx of Spanish officials the already numerous Neapolitan nobility was doubled, and since in those days churches, monasteries, and noble houses all cultivated music, Naples was by nature a musical center. There was another regional feature that was to determine the course of the Neapolitan School: the presence of the commedia dell’ arte and of the highly developed and popular Spanish spoken theatre, both of which eventually called forth musical prototypes. The famous orphanages, called conservatories, founded in the 16th century, became much-admired musical institutions in the 17th, especially beginning with the activity of Francesco Provenzale. It was here that Handel first learned about the prowess of the castratos; Naples, particularly the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, trained singers who were sought for all over the country.
Francesco Provenzale, a native Neapolitan, must be considered the “founder” of the school. His was a disappointing career, for after finally rising to the post of royal conductor, he was twice displaced by Alessandro Scarlatti (1680, 1684). Finally, in 1690 he was made honorary maestro, whose obligation was to assist and substitute for the titular conductor. Since Scarlatti was often absent or ill, Provenzale was largely responsible for the office, which he fulfilled with fine musicianship. When he assumed his duties as master of the Conservatorio de’ Turchini, after having successfully taught at the Loreto, the number of students who wanted to work under his guidance was so large that they had to be limited by law—to a hundred and fifty! Provenzale not only taught his students but saw to it that their operas were performed, a system emulated by all other conservatories in the country. Similarly influential as a teacher was Gaetano Greco (c. 1657-c. 1728), himself a pupil of Scarlatti and the teacher of Domenico Scarlatti and Nicola Porpora, and probably also of Durante, Vinci, Pergolesi, and many other future masters of the Neapolitan school. This lively and imaginative composer attracted disciples and colleagues alike. Handel could also observe a procedure of no mean significance to him: Greco was an extremely skilful master at borrowing a popular m
otif and working it into a poetic and very personal composition.
During Handel’s stay an impressive number of Neapolitan masters were active, and whenever he ventured out of his palazzo he ran into music and musicians. The principal opera composer of the older generation besides Provenzale was Pietro Andrea Ziani (c. 1620-1684), whose operas Handel must have heard. Though a native of Venice, from 1678 to his death he taught in Naples at the Conservatorio di Sant’ Onofrio and was master of the Royal Chapel, where Alessandro Scarlatti succeeded him at his death. A many-sided and prolific composer of operas, cantatas, and church music, a colleague and friend of Cazzati and Cavalli, he was well known and much performed both in Naples and in Venice.
Opera in Naples started in the middle of the 17th century, first with performances of Monteverdi, Cavalli, and other Venetians; but soon the Neapolitans Coppola, Provenzale, Ziani, and others were represented. In the eighties Scarlatti took command of the scene, but the Teatro San Bartolomeo continued a remarkable repertory of works by Pasquini, Legrenzi, Pallavicino, Gasparini—that is, the leading lights of Venetian opera. However, we must bear in mind that Naples had a very pronounced spirit of its own, that Scarlatti, though he eventually became synonymous with Neapolitan opera, was only a “naturalized” Neapolitan, himself being vastly influenced by this spirit. Perhaps nowhere else is there the same intimate blending of sobriety with softness of line, of crude drama with delicacy, of scrupulous observation of realistic and humorous detail with spiritual intensity.
Among the native composers of note was Francesco Mancini (1672-1737), an orphan educated at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, and a pupil of Provenzale. In January 1708 he became conductor, but by the end of the year had to cede his post to the returning Scarlatti. He had to wait until Scarlatti’s death in 1725 before his “right to succession” could be exercised. Mancini, intimately bound to local traditions, was actually Scarlatti’s competitor; his fame spread all over Italy and then to England. Compared to Scarlatti’s, his music is less carefully worked; his part-writing, especially, was inferior to the great Sicilian’s, but in noble Neapolitan pathos he matched his formidable rival. Mancini, whom Handel could not miss in Naples, will come within our purview as soon as we follow Handel to England; his Idaspe was among the very first Italian operas performed in their entirety in England. He also composed a great deal of other music, and how highly he was esteemed can be seen from the fact that some of his chamber music was edited for London by Geminiani.
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