Handel (7 page)

What most clearly appealed to him was the form's dramatic potential. Three of his finest cantatas are cast in the shape of tragic
scenas
, the heroine in each being a woman driven by circumstance to the brink of despair.
Agrippina condotta a morire
(Agrippina led to her death), whose title encapsulates its theme, is a striking essay in structural control and an excellent illustration of the way in which the Baroque recitative and aria form are designed to work. Initially Agrippina is still the vigorous Roman matron of history, properly outraged at the way events have overtaken her, but as her nerve starts to crack, so does the rigidity of the cantata's outlines. Her third air collapses into simple recitative after fourteen bars, briefly resumes with her resolve, then peters out again, a pattern continued through the scene with an aria whose middle section changes from quadruple to triple time. The whole piece ends with superb abruptness on four bars of unadorned recitative.
Armida abbandonata
, of which J. S. Bach made himself a copy, opens with an extraordinary stretch of declamation introduced by a vocal line supported on two arpeggiando violins and featuring one of the earliest of those plangent sicilianos Handel enjoyed devising for his lovelorn heroines. The cantata
O numi eterni
, for soprano and continuo, carrying his fame out of Italy under its better known name of
La Lucrezia
, is an eloquent musical portrait of the ravished Roman heroine in her final moments, a companion, in its tragic poignancy, to those paintings of Lucretia by artists like Reni and Guercino so popular with Baroque patrons and collectors.

One of the best, however, was probably completed after Handel's return to Germany.
Apollo e Dafne
or
La terra è liberata
is almost an opera in itself. The cantata's effectiveness springs less from mere polish of line and surface than from Handel's penetrating sense of the realities of feeling that lie beneath the mythological framework. The simple harmonies and cheerful ditties of the sun god, bumptious after strangling the Python, are answered by the gentler, more reserved cast of Daphne's music as in ‘Ardi adori' she meets his advances not so much with anger as with detached remonstrance. The duet ‘Deh! lascia addolcire' emphasizes their separateness by the use of glacial flute tones, a different tempo for each of them, and the fact that their voices are never allowed to blend.
Apollo's final pursuit is brilliantly realized in an air with concerto grosso accompaniment, which dissolves into alarmed recitative as Daphne is transformed into the laurel he ultimately hails in a dignified lament.

The principal soloist at the first performances of many of Handel's Roman cantatas was the soprano Margherita Durastanti. In 1700, aged only fourteen, she had made her debut as a singer for the opera-mad Duke Ferdinando Carlo of Mantua, remaining under his patronage until 1704, when the pressures of money and politics forced him to rein in his theatrical enthusiasm. By January 1707 she had arrived in Rome with her mother as chaperone and was installed as one of Marchese Ruspoli's singers. Durastanti was evidently an able linguist (her farewell to the London stage was in English) and Handel composed cantatas for her in Spanish and French. More important, she was the first singer we know of whose individual vocal qualities were directly related to the music Handel wrote for her. She was not particularly attractive – a contemporary caricature stresses her jutting ‘singer's chin' and large breasts – but her evident gifts as a singing actress helped to ensure the success of several of his operas with the London public. The two of them were much in each other's company during this Roman spring and summer, and it is not inconceivable that their relationship was more than merely professional, though documents are silent on any such liaison.

In February the pair set off in Ruspoli's entourage to stay at his villa near the ancient Etruscan town of Cerveteri. It was the end of the stag-hunting season, and Handel himself rode out with the Marchese for a day's sport. His newly composed cantata,
Diana cacciatrice
, was performed that morning, possibly, as has been deduced from the final rousing fanfares, to speed the hunters on their way. A fortnight later Handel (who had been allotted his personal servant) and Durastanti followed Ruspoli to Civitavecchia, principal western port of the Papal States. Here the Marchese had fitted out a brigantine in splendid style as an alternative to the traditional galleys still favoured by the Pope's naval establishment. Was the cantata
Udite il mio consiglio
, with its slightly mysterious Arcadian text, meant to offer an elaborate metaphor for this change from oared vessels to sailing ships, especially significant now that pontifical armed forces seemed likely to be dragged into the War of the Spanish Succession? Perhaps so,
since its première took place at a banquet thrown by Ruspoli for the civic and military governors of Civitavecchia on 18 March.

In late May the Marchese Ruspoli left Rome once again, this time with his entire household, for the
villeggiatura
, always a part of the seasonal rhythm of Italian life. Nowadays the summer exodus takes place in August and is generally a dash to the seaside, but in the eighteenth century it was a slow, stately progress to the country villa, where the sweltering days were spent in gossip, flirting, and pottering about the estate. Handel, with his love of the country, must have enjoyed a two-month sojourn at Ruspoli's moated palace in the little town of Vignanello, in the foothills of the extinct volcano Monte Cimino, between Rome and Viterbo. He was busy in any case with
Armida abbandonata
and had written three Latin motets,
O qualis de coelo sonus
, a
Salve Regina
and
Coelestis dum spirat aura
, for the weekend celebrations of Pentecost and St Anthony's Day, when the cathedral was presented with a new altarpiece by the painter Michelangelo Ceruti. The Marchese was well pleased with the music and its performers. Handel got a jewelled ring and so did Durastanti, which suggests either that as a woman she was given the then exceptional privilege of being allowed to sing in church, or, more likely, that the motets must have been given in the Ruspoli palace.

At meals Handel, listed in the Ruspoli accounts as ‘the Saxon', joined Durastanti at the top table, ‘
l'eccelentissima tavola
'. As a distinguished addition to the company in the dining room, Cardinal Ottoboni had dropped in on his way to Bologna. With him he may have brought the soprano Vittoria Tarquini, since the Vignanello guest list includes someone simply referred to as ‘Vittoria', and a week later we find the diva detained in Ferrara by the advance of the imperial army. Nicknamed ‘La Bambagia' (cotton wool), either for her flossy blonde hair or her generous figure, she was the mistress of Ferdinando de' Medici, Crown Prince of Tuscany, but this seems not to have deterred other admirers, among them the young Saxon composer. She, rather than Margherita Durastanti, may have given the first performance of
Armida abbandonata
and another work written for the villa party,
Una alma innamorata
.

It seems reasonable to assume that a more important commission than either of these two works was preoccupying Handel during his days in the Latian countryside. The exact circumstances under which he came to compose his first Italian opera are unknown,
and for many years even its actual performance history was in question. It has now been discovered that it was given in Florence during the early autumn of 1707, and that its title (it has always been called
Rodrigo
for convenience) was
Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria
(The greatest victory is over oneself). It was probably presented in the Teatro del Cocomero, which since 1652 had been the seat of the Accademia degli Infuocati, a splinter group of members of the original Accademia degli Immobili, established under the protection of Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de' Medici. One of numerous such learned bodies in Florence – there were also the Sorgenti, the Cadenti and the Nascenti, as well as the Conversazione del Centauro and various smaller ones – the Infuocati had their theatre, now known as the Nicolini, in Via dei Servi by the Duomo. Its name was taken from the exploding grenade which the Infuocati – literally ‘aflame' – had adopted as their symbol and which resembled the watermelons,
cocomeri
, still sold on stalls in Florence today. Renamed Teatro Niccolini, it has the distinction of being one of four surviving theatres (all of them rebuilt since the eighteenth century) associated with Handelian first nights.

One of the Infuocati at the time of Handel's Florentine visit was Antonio Salvi, Prince Ferdinando's court poet and one of Italy's most important librettists. He may have supplied Handel with the text, a revision of Francesco Silvani's
Il duello d'Amore e di Vendetta
, written for Venice in 1699. The story is very loosely based on events and characters from the last days of Visigothic Spain, but though the historical figures of Roderick and Julian both appear, the invading Moors they were responsible for letting in do not and the drama ends with a lively coro, the customary closing ensemble for all the singers that rounded off a Baroque opera. There is some distinguished poetry here, and among two or three highly effective dramatic moments the finest is undoubtedly the scene in Act III when, as Giuliano and Evanco are about to kill the tyrant Rodrigo, Florinda rushes in to claim vengeance for herself and is in turn stopped by the appearance of her infant son in the arms of Esilena, brandishing the child as an object of moral blackmail.

The autograph manuscript of
Rodrigo
is incomplete. Evidence from the printed libretto, however, under its title
Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria
, suggests that the original concept had been significantly adjusted by the time of its first performance. Several arias were replaced,
another was reassigned and a duet disappeared altogether. It has since been possible to reconstruct the entire piece with the help of early manuscript copies of Handel's works and, in one case, through an inspired musicological conjecture linked to
The Triumph of Time and Truth
(1758) an English-language recension of
Il Trionfo del Tempo.

If not a masterpiece,
Rodrigo
marks an interesting transitional phase in Handel's successful absorption of the dominant Italian operatic style. The score seems to have been assembled in rather a hurry, using an overture (with dance suite attached) possibly composed while he was still in Germany and a number of airs adapted, sometimes without much regard for their change of context, from various recently written cantatas. For the first time Handel found himself engaging directly with the newest features of Italian opera seria, including a more flexible recitative style, than he had used when writing operas in Hamburg, and the growing convention of the exit aria, in which the drama allowed the singer, after applause for vocal display, to leave the stage (over half the arias here observe this convention). He could also reveal the mastery he had acquired, through cantata writing, of the da capo air, the standard operatic unit of the day, with its A and B sections and chances for ornamented reprise. Though several of the arias may seem to reflect the idiom of Giacomo Perti, the currently approved Florentine model, the prevailing influence is that Roman manner which was to provide a permanent stylistic basis for Handel's invention. The recitatives, however, are nervously handled and the role of Esilena is burdened periodically with prolix declamatory paragraphs.

A glance at
Rodrigo
suggests that Handel had made a careful study of Alessandro Scarlatti in particular. The two could not have met at this time, however, as Scarlatti was in Urbino during the summer and autumn of 1707, and writing miserable begging letters from there to Prince Ferdinando, depicting himself and his family, accurately enough, it seems, as being on the bitterest edge of poverty: Ferdinando sent a remittance accompanied by a curt, though polite reply. The relationship between patron and composer, which a year before had brought
Il Gran Tamerlano
to the Pratolino stage as the fifth of Scarlatti's works to be given there, now cooled disastrously, as the Prince looked to Giacomo Perti for the new Pratolino opera,
Dionisio, Re di Portogallo
, to a libretto by Salvi. As
Sosarme
it was to be set by Handel in 1732.

None of Handel's surviving music was provided for Ferdinando himself,
though the
Rodrigo
libretto, omitting the names of both its author and the composer, notes that the work was performed ‘under the protection of the Most Serene Prince of Tuscany'. Political analogies between the opera's plot and the current political situation in Spain have recently been suggested, and Ferdinando, whose mother was a French princess and whose father, Grand Duke Cosimo, was pro-Bourbon, no doubt appreciated these. How Handel spent his time otherwise at Florence is sketched in for us by a nugget of gossip retained by Mainwaring, who, besides remarking that he received a present of a hundred sequins and a service of plate for
Rodrigo
's composition, says ‘
VITTORIA
, who was much admired both as an Actress, and a Singer, bore a principal part in this Opera. 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. Tho' she had the art to conceal them for the present, she had not perhaps the power, certainly not the intention to efface them.' Vittoria Tarquini was certainly in Florence during this period, as a star of the Pratolino operas, but she was not among the
Rodrigo
cast. How far her amorous involvement went with Handel we can never know, but a letter from the Electress Sophia of Hanover to the Queen of Prussia in 1710 bears out the existence of a liaison.