Page 118 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Figure 6.9
In 1730, Handel tried (unsuccessfully) to hire the celebrated castrato Farinelli, whose life was chronicled
in a film of the same name.
For the film, the now-extinct castrato voice was simulated by synthesizing a female soprano with a male falsetto voice.
WATCH . . . a Handel aria from the film Farinelli (1994) online.
share of the profits, Handel formed an opera company, the Royal Academy of Music, for which he served as composer, director, and producer. He presented his first opera, Rinaldo, in 1711 at the Queen’s Theater, the same theater where in 1986 Andrew Lloyd
Webber premiered his Phantom of the Opera.
The type of Italian opera Handel produced in London is called op-
era seria (literally, “serious—as opposed to comic—opera”), a style that then dominated the operatic stage throughout continental Europe. In three long acts, opera seria chronicled the triumphs and tragedies of kings and queens, or gods and goddesses, thus appealing to society’s upper crust, namely the nobility. In Handel’s day, the leading male roles in opera seria were sung by castrati (cas- trated males with the vocal range of a female; Figure 6.9). Baroque audiences associated high social standing on stage with a high voice, male or female. From 1711 until 1728, Handel had great artistic and some financial success, producing two dozen examples of Italian opera seria. Foremost among these was Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar, 1724), a recast- ing of the story of Caesar’s conquest of the army of Egypt and Cleopatra’s romantic conquest of Caesar. As was typical, the male hero (Julius Caesar)
was portrayed by a castrato and sang in a high, “womanly” register.
But opera is a notoriously risky business, and in 1728 Handel’s Royal Academy of Music went bankrupt, a victim of the exorbitant fees paid to the star singers and the fickle tastes of English theatergoers. Handel continued to write operas into the early 1740s, but he turned his attention increasingly to a musical
genre less financially volatile than opera: oratorio.
Handel and Oratorio
An oratorio is literally “something sung in an oratory,” an oratory being a hall or chapel used specifically for prayer and sometimes prayer with music. Originating in seventeenth-century Italy, oratorio had something in common with today’s gos- pel music: It was sacred music sung in a special hall or chapel and was intended to inspire the faithful to greater devotion. By the time it reached Handel’s hands, how- ever, the oratorio had become close to an unstaged opera with a religious subject.
Both Baroque opera and Baroque oratorio begin with an overture, are divided into acts, and are composed primarily of recitatives and arias. Both genres are also long, usually lasting two to three hours. But there are a few important differences between opera and oratorio, aside from the obvious fact that oratorio treats a spiritual subject. Oratorio, being a quasi-religious genre, is performed in a church, a concert hall, or a theater, but it makes no use of acting, staging, or costumes. Because the subject matter is almost always sacred, there is more of an opportunity for moralizing, a dramatic function best performed by a chorus. Thus, the chorus assumes greater importance in an oratorio. It sometimes serves as a narrator but more often functions, like the chorus in ancient Greek drama, as the voice of the people commenting on the action.
By the 1730s, oratorio appeared to Handel to be an attractive alternative to the increasingly unprofitable opera in London. He could do away with the irascible and expensive castrati and prima donnas. He no longer had to pay for
96 chapter six late baroque music: bach and handel
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