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Notes 58.3 (2002) 666-670



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Music Review

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo: Serenata a tre, HWV 72


Georg Friedrich Händel. Aci, Galatea e Polifemo: Serenata a tre, HWV 72. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Windszus unter Mitarbeit von Annerose Koch und Annette Landgraf. (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, Ser. 1: Oratorien und große Kantaten, Bd. 5.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000. [Editorial policy, pref., in Ger., Eng., p. vii-xvi; facsims., p. xvii-xx; texts and trans., p. xxi-xxx; score, 105 p.; Krit. Bericht, p. 107-24. Cloth. ISMN M-006-49585-6; BA 4068. DM 225.]

George Frideric Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, composed in Naples, 1708, tells basically the same story as his musically unrelated Acis and Galatea, composed ten years later in England. The English work has eclipsed the Italian one in popularity for numerous reasons. Acis and Galatea opens with a depiction of a pastoral idyll punctuated by the longing, desire, and exuberant joy of the soprano-tenor couple, and combining humorous parody with ominous foreboding, continues with this reverie's violent interruption by the lovesick bass giant. Following Acis's death, the cantata concludes with a wrenching portrayal of Galatea's grief and her transformation of Acis into a "flowing stream" (or, metaphorically, a living memory). The Neapolitan cantata (or serenata a tre) lacks all of these elements. Adhering to Italian operatic convention, the young lovers in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo are both treble voices, with Aci's soprano role lying higher than Galatea's mezzo-soprano. The lovers are never shown in a happy state but are from the beginning oppressed by the pursuit of the giant, who is more conventionally villainous. After Aci's death, Polifemo presses on with his suit of Galatea, who calls on her father, a water god, to transform Aci into a stream as she plunges into the ocean to greet his arrival. Left alone, Polifemo hears Aci's voice in the flowing stream expressing his eternal love and finally realizes that "the constancy of those who once have known true love cannot, nor ever could, change." The three singers then slip out of character and move figuratively (or literally) to the footlights to deliver the moral that those who love well and are constant are never without hope. The striking contrasts between the Italian and English renditions of this story are based on different artistic traditions, and, in particular, the divergent choices in terms of vocal range and musical depiction may explain some of the relative obscurity of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. Nevertheless, these distinctions, especially given the expanding interest in baroque opera and its conventions, as well as the musical riches of the score of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, do not in themselves explain the different receptions of the two works. Part of the problem has also been that until now there was no complete edition commercially available, for when Friedrich Chrysander prepared this work for publication in the Händel-Gesellschaft edition (Georg Friedrich Händels Werke, 53 [Leipzig: Ausgabe der Deutschen Händelgesellschaft, 1892?; reprint, Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1965, etc.]), the autograph's final signature of four leaves containing the end of Polifemo's aria "Del mar fra l'onde" (no. 18), his accompanied recitative relating Aci's declaration of eternal love (no. 19), and the concluding trio "Chi ben ama ha per oggetti" (no. 20) had been separated from the main manuscript (and was then in private hands). Some of this material was supplied from later sources, but no copy of Polifemo's recitative seemed extant. The missing pages were later discovered bound into a manuscript copy of Acis and Galatea in the Egerton Collection (MS 2953) now housed at the British Library. In preparing the new edition of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA), the editor [End Page 666] Wolfram Windszus, in collaboration with Annerose Koch and Annette Landgraf, used the divided, but complete, autograph as the primary source, while also consulting an eighteenth-century copy containing no recitatives, from which two nineteenth-century copies were...

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