The Opera Strikes Back

So, we now venture once more into the world of Opera, this time looking at “English” Opera. I say “English”, because although the music was written in England, and it was arranged specifically for the English stage and premiered there, that was about as English as early Opera got: Handel wrote the first successful English Opera, and of course Handel was German; the Opera libretto was in Italian, written by an Italian (one Signor Rossi). In fact the whole style is very much after the Italian style popular at the time.

When Handel arrived in London in 1710, Great Britain was politicaly fraught (to put it mildly). The English Civil War (1642-46) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had both resulted in Parliament overthrowing/deposing the current monarch. This created the early precursors to modern political parties, the Whigs and Tories, whose squabbling spilled out regularly into daily life through aggressive pamphleteering. At this time as well, there was the risk of a renewed autocratic monarchy with the succession of the Hanoverian Dynasty after Queen Anne’s reign. Scotland and England had just united in 1707, and soon after Handel arrived, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, bringing an end to the Spanish war of Succession and the threat of a united France-Spain superpower. Whilst Britain celebrated, Handel’s Hanoverian employers did not. Handel navigated all these political intrigues very astutely (despite being fired by his Hanoverian employers), taking advantage of opportunities to start Opera in London.

The gentry, thanks to the post-revolutionary atmosphere, were amazingly vague; what constituted for a class or caste was very fluid, and the strict rules of class and fashion were no longer as relevant. The court was no longer the place of ultimate intrigue; apart from the House of Lords, much of the country’s ruling elite socialised in clubs, which gave the perfect opening to insert an Opera House; with a generous sponsorship from the royal family, it would be the darling of London social life.

Despite this, there seems to have been much scepticism: the English were very nationalistic, and like Louis XIV’s France, were suspicious of foreign arts, especially those they could not even understand! They also had there own tradition of spoken theatre. Added to this was a religious issue: the Anglican church had split away from the Roman Catholic church in 1534, and since then a healthy fear of all things Popish was encouraged by the ruling classes (even though the few catholics in the north of Britain were relatively well-behaved). Italians were papists, so this must be a conspiracy to invade the country!

Handel’s first Opera, Rinaldo, is an interesting choice as his first attempt at Italian Opera in England. Based on the same plot as Lully’s Armide, the opera follows the story of Rinaldo, a famous (but made up) christian hero, taking part in a crusade to retake Jerusalem. Armide, or Armida in this version, is a muslim sorceress who has launched a vendetta against Rinaldo for releasing prisoners of hers. To cut a very long story short, Armida trys to kill Rinaldo, falls in love with Rinaldo; Armida casts spell, Rinaldo falls in love with Armida; Armida feels guilty, calls up the goddess of hate to return her hatred of Rinaldo, which backfires when the goddess of hate instead curses her to forever love Rinaldo; Rinaldo escapes enchantment, escapes palace, and Armida is left alone with an eternally broken heart and a chariot pulled by dragons. The End. There are of course many nuances to this story, but we will only deal with those relevant to Act I. What makes this an interesting choice for the first plot of English Opera, is that the plot had been used before, at least once in Lully’s Armide. To write the Opera in Italian, and to actually premier it in that language, seems very brave. Although it would be more work, premiering Rinaldo in a language the audience could understand, you would think, would be a much safer way to start. However, Rinaldo was a success, I think partially because of the horrendous amount of flattery stuffed into the original programme’s dedication and preface, not just of the Queen, but also the English people, practicing on their credulity by claiming that English Opera be the most splendid of all, something that not many Englishmen would have been used to hearing (the Germans famously referred to England as “Das land ohne Musik“, “the land without music”).

So without further ado and with that relevant background, let’s take a look at Act I of Rinaldo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wwKiWrpEes

The Overture.

The orchestral overture to Rinaldo is very long (six and a half minutes!), but is thankfully very beautiful. I especially love the recurring violin solo; I can very much imagine this music playing while the audience took their seats, and it actually reminds me of the very long opening credit sequences in old Disney movies, like Sleeping Beauty.

Scene I.

Scene I opens with the four Christian Generals, Godfrey, Almirena, Eustatio and Rinaldo, discussing the march on Jerusalem. Godfrey, the leader of the Christian forces, wishes to march on Jerusalem as soon as possible, and is backed by his brother Eustatio, and Rinaldo’s fiance Almirena. Rinaldo, however, wants to pause and marry Almirena as soon as possible. I find the exchange between these four characters quite amusing; there is an air of fractiousness about the participants that I feel is accentuated by the frequent alternation between the singers and the orchestra. You can really tell that three are trying to convince Rinaldo, and you can sense his only grudging ascent to their wishes.

Scene II.

A herald arrives from Jerusalem, announcing that the king of Jerusalem will come and parlay. There is a brief discussion on whether they should allow him to come, and upon agreeing, Eustatio launches into a long aria, optimistically wondering what King Argante wants to talk about. Accompanied by cello and harpsichord, the music sets up an air of nervous expectation.

Scene III.

Expectation fulfilled! The beginning of scene III is hilarious; a trumpet fanfare interrupts Eustatio, and Argante marches onto the stage, launching into a hugely impressive, bombastic aria. Veiled with insults and disdain, Argante nevertheless pleads for a three-day truce. Godfrey, equally disdainful, agrees as they can afford to be generous, basically going on about how amazing  the Christians are for being so magnanimous in victory.

Scene IV.

A very short scene. Argante, now alone, is much less confident; he’s nervous and despairing about the invasion of his lands, and calls Armida to him to alleviate his pain. The music is very pensive, and how Argante sings seems almost self-conscious after the bombastic nature of Scene IV I feel is just genious to create character depth.

Scene V.

This is a powerhouse scene, and probably my favourite of the whole act. The music is absolutely wonderful: fast and furious strings and harpsichord, and Armida, sung by Cecilia Bartoli, is just phenomenal! I also doubled up laughing, because with this production the “dragons” or evil spirit equivalent are eight or so hands in black suits with what look like squids on their heads, who roll on stage, sway around a bit then roll off again (there is a very funny moment where one of the spirits goes on the wrong side when they are about to go off, and has to roll across nearly the entire stage, forcing Argante to jump over him). Argante, who is obviously infatuated with Armida, plans with her how they can possibly beat the Christians. They decide that obviously without Rinaldo, the Christians are next to useless, so decide to try to deprive the Christian forces of him …

Scene VI.

A very annoying scene, for me at least. Rinaldo and Almirena have fun in a grove that has been enchanted by Armida (IT’S A TRAP!). The music is nice enough, very pastoral and reminding me of Bach’s Sheep may Safely Graze in places, and I must admit the love duet at the end is absolutely beautiful now that I’ve watched the performance: a song of innocent love. The innocent frolicking on stage, though, is very annoying and makes me gnash my teeth at times, and the famous bird song? One of the evil spirits crawls to the front of the stage with a small branch with fake birds on it, which he shakes around a bit whilst a piccolo makes bird impressions. I know they probably couldn’t do what they did in the original, releasing wild birds onto the stage, but whilst I did rather enjoy the touch of the evil spirit (it is, after all, Armida’s trap in the works at this moment), I do think it slightly ruined the mood, and the scene overall is a bit too silly.

Scene VII.

Armida kidnaps Almirena, duels with Rinaldo (they need to work on their sword fighting), and are spirited away by evil spirits. Rinaldo is left alone, and oh my goodness his grief aria is incredibly beautiful: slow, sonorous and wandering. The moment of absolute, dejected stillness from Rinaldo at the end is utterly breathtaking. With an increasing experience of Opera, I can see that this is a common affectation: it is very effective.

Scene VIII.

Godfrey and his brother Eustatio try to console Rinaldo. Eventually, Eustatio launches into a very driven, vaguely militaristic passage, where he convinces Rinaldo to use his grief and anguish to fuel him to conquer Jerusalem and go after Armida, reclaiming his love. Eustatio gets quite animated, marching around the stage and at one point skirmishing with the conductor of the orchestra (they are much better sword fighters).

Scene IX.

Rinaldo finishes the act with a heavily ornamented, uplifting aria backed by the orchestra, venting steam and vowing vengeance. The long upward runs I think are an excellent example of word painting, signifying the characters rise in spirits.

Overall, I enjoyed Act I of Rinaldo. At times I found it hard to follow the original libretto from the Opera, and upon making sure that both the video and libretto were of the 1711 version (Rinaldo went through several rewrites, before falling out of the performance repertoire before Handel’s death, being revived only recently), I have concluded that not all the arias and recitatives have actually been sung in the production I listened to (provided above). I noticed that all the recitatives were accompanied by cello and harpsichord, which were improvised back in the day. Considering the reputation of especially the cello improvisors of the day (they were told off for being too crazy!), I think it would have been nice to hear some more adventurous improvisation. Otherwise, I really enjoyed listening to this Opera.