Reception of Handel Operas, Then and Now

university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 4, fall 2003 M A R Y A N N P A R K E R Reception of Handel Operas, Then and Now In 1902, the venerable musical critic and gentleman scholar J.A. FullerMaitland wrote the following in the The Oxford History of Music: It is merely as an important incident in Handel’s career that the opera of the early eighteenth century is worth studying; the admirer of that master who should be led, by his appreciation of certain semi-dramatic works, to make researches into the operatic scores, would be grievously disappointed, from whatever point of view he approached them. He would find sequences of airs in great abundance, an astonishingly small number of which have survived the operas in which they were first heard. ... The verdict of posterity has in this case been pretty just, and when such airs as ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, ‘Ombra mai fu’, ‘Mio caro bene’, ‘Verdi prati’ ...and a few others, have been mentioned, the value of the Handelian school of opera has been fairly summed up. (203–4) This remarkable quotation is an accurate representation of the late nineteenth-century English attitude to Handel’s operas. Given the evolutionary and ethnocentric intellectual trends of the period, we are perhaps not surprised at Fuller-Maitland’s dismissal of early eighteenth-century Italian opera. But how on earth could he have been led to suggest that Italian opera, which was Handel’s main preoccupation for the better part of four decades, was an ‘incident’ – albeit an important one – in his career? The answer to this question begins with a discussion about the love-hate relationship between the English people and Italian operas, in particular Handel’s operas. Once we have answered this question, we are led to the story of how Handel’s operas were rediscovered in the twentieth century, not in England but in Germany, the country of his birth. The peculiar relationship between the English people and Italian opera began during the decade before Handel’s arrival in London in 1710. In his 1760 Handel biography, the Reverend John Mainwaring gave his assessment of the situation: Excepting a few good compositions in the church style, and of a very old date, I am afraid there was little to boast of, which we could call our own. At this time, Operas were a sort of new acquaintance, but began to be established in the affections of the Nobility, many of whom had heard and admired performances of this kind in the country which gave them birth. But the conduct of them here, reception of handel operas, then and now 851 1 See Knapp. For an excellent summary, see also Burrows, 61–65. 2 See Lindgren, 157–58.Lindgren also provides achronology ofoperas produced in London, as well as critiques thereof, during the years 1705–19. 3 See also Harris, Handel as Orpheus. As she says, ‘The persistent English association of homosexuality with Italy led to a related connection between the importation of Italian opera and the resultant decline of ‘manly’ English music’ (18). university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 4, fall 2003 i.e. all that regards the drama, or plan, including also the machinery, scenes and decorations, was foolish and absurd almost beyond imagination. ... The arrival of Handel put an end to this reign of nonsense. (76–78) At first glance, we might suspect that the author’s admiration for Handel caused him to exaggerate his hero’s role in the operatic life of London. However, the facts seem to bear out his assertion. During the first decade of the eighteenth century, amidst constant rivalry among various impresarios , attempts by British composers to create English-language operas had been overshadowed by the increasing popularity of Italian works. In 1706, a version of Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla with English recitatives was a huge success at the Drury Lane theatre. By the end of the decade, London audiences were ready for works sung throughout in Italian; however, these were pasticcios or arrangements of works that had been composed in Italy. In 1710, Johann Christoph Pepusch’s L’Idaspe fedele, based on Francesco Mancini’s...