Handel! (Random Reviews from the Overflow Room 1)

[00:00:00]Hello friends, this is Dave Herurwitz, executive editor at classicstoday.com, here with random reviews from the overflow room.

[00:00:11][music] And now as we go backwards through the letter H, we have finally hit handle.

[00:00:21]And actually most of my handle is upstairs because when I wrote my book on handle, I was listening to just gobs and gobs of it. And I've got enough handle for like the next five billion years.

[00:00:33]And if I start with handle and do all of it, that's all we're going to do for like the next several years. So the overflow room handle is sort of my older handle collection and the newer collection which is like five times larger is is up there, but there's still an awful lot. I mean, because Handle wrote so much music and so much of it's marvelous and so much of it is very little known. So I want to take a little time to talk about some of this because uh there are masterpieces here. One of which is this and we're going to start right away especially in his operas Tamarano.

[00:01:11]Now Tamarano is one of the great great handle operas. He wrote it originally in 1724 >> [snorts] >> um and revised it later much better because he found a better version of the labretto believe it or not and uh decided well I can improve this and so he did. It has some remarkable features.

[00:01:29]Not the least of which is that it's one of the very few operas of the period where one of the leads is a tenor.

[00:01:34][snorts] The tenor is Be Jesit, the sultan of whatever he is um who is being held captive by Tamarano um and whose sexy daughter Aaria is desired by Tamarano. The story is actually a very good one. It's pretty pretty tightly wound. Um it's really very simple. Uh Tamarano is a tyrant and he has captured Be Jesit and his daughter. Um and he has a friend Tamarlano named Andronico, a Greek soldier who is in love with Aaria. And Aaria is in love with Andronico.

[00:02:13]Uh Tamarlano is supposed to marry Irene.

[00:02:16]But when Tamarano sees Astaria, he decides to dump Irene, much to her consternation, and go after Aaria. Now, Aaria um pretends to accept Tamaratto's advances because she secretly wants to kill him. Um although she changes her mind in act two and then decides to do it again in act three, more or less, something like that. Um, and and so, uh, it's it's it's a big mess and Irene is in disguise and, you know, trying to manipulate things to her advantage and Andronica is trying to get back with Aaria and that's basically the plot. But what happens at the end is really unusual for opera Syria particularly for on stage onstage antics because Bejit um is so distraught at what he considers to be his daughter's betrayal that he kills himself and his suicide is one of the most gripping things that Handel ever wrote. I mean, he takes it completely seriously as well he might.

[00:03:22]And it's it's it's a stunning piece of writing. It really is. It's it's it's very very moving and gripping and realistic, you know, for opera Syria with all of its conventions. And so once he's he's dead, um Tamarano is an awful person throughout.

[00:03:46]has no redeeming qualities is moved theoretically um and decides to allow Andronico to marry Estaria who at that point has been enslaved and you know treated rather badly because she tried to assassinate Tamando a few acts ago and and so uh they get together and and Irene and and Tamando get back together as they originally were supposed to but this ending is so implausibly unconvincing. Um, let's face it, as a happy ending supposedly, um, that the final chorus, which is, you know, oh, love reigns supreme and everything's back to the way it's supposed to be, it's entirely in the minor key. The music is totally at odds with the words, which is really fascinating. It really tells us where Handle's thoughts really were and sort of what's really going to happen. So, it's it's a solid three hours of singing to work all of the complexities out, but it's a remarkable work. And this is a fantastic performance of it. It's with Trevor Pinnick, the English concert. It was a live recording. The whole thing is available to watch on YouTube, by the way, for free. So, you can see it. It's on Avi, the label, but you can watch it.

[00:05:03]And I would. It's a very good production, a beautiful production that doesn't try and, you know, turn it into something that takes place in a salvage lyard in Los Angeles or something like that. You know, it's in [snorts] period costume and and it's it's it's it's faithful to to the work and to Handle's Conception. Um, the cast is uh Monica Bachelli as Tamarano. I mean, he's he's a counter tener, but he's a messo, thank god. Um, and let's see. Vijayit is Tom Randall Tener. Asteria is Elizabeth Norberg Schulz. Andronico is Graham Pashi Pushy Pushy something like that.

[00:05:42]Irene is Anna uh Bonitatibus and Leone whoever she is or he or I don't remember is Antonio. It's a guy um Aete. Anyway, the bottom line is it's a masterpiece and really emotionally gripping and sort of coldly emotionally stunning. It really is. I mean, neat stuff. Not the kind of thing you expect in an opera series. You don't feel distanced from these characters. They really move you and their situations are very, very finely drawn. So there's that. Then we've got Alchina. Oh, this is a famous one. William Christy, Lazar, Floris, Salt with Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, Natalie Des, Kathleen Coleman, Timothy Robinson, Lauron Nauri, and Juanita Lascaro. Well, it doesn't get any better than that, does it? In terms of casting, Alchina, of course, is a sorceress. It's another one of Handle's great operas. It's fantastic. This performance is on. It's amazing. I This was an extra one. I've got another one up there, believe me, or two or three.

[00:06:55]Uh, striking and incredible. And I I think another testament to the fact that although everybody says that, you know, opera is in the toilet, um, it depends what kind of opera, we're in really good shape with opera Syria. And it's fabulous how modern singers are not just automatically learning to sing, you know, Vagner and Verde. They are students of vocal technique and period performance practice and they are singing these roles fantastically and you know giving them real humanity and meaning and depth and then these two operas are examples of that. And then we have to continue this clump since we spent so much time talking about the operas. We've got three fabulous, fabulous messiahs. All very different.

[00:07:43]Very, very different. First, the Maris Messiah. Boy, was this ignored when it first came out. It's fabulous. You've got Elizabeth Harwood, Janet Baker, Paul Eswood, Robert Tier, Raymond Herring. I mean, Paul Eswood, you know, he's a counter tener. I can deal without that, but it's okay. Um, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Ambrosian Singers. This is the Messiah ornamented to the nines.

[00:08:07]Some people have objected to the degree that McCaris ornamented all of the music in this performance, but it's pretty spectacular and it moves like everything McCaris did. So, it's it's quite brilliant and different from every other um and marvelously sung, but it was really I don't know what happened, but it you know, this is French EMI. It's lumi. You couldn't get this uh in like English. I mean, it's sung in English.

[00:08:32]Makes no sense. Then we've got my reference recording for Messiah the Pinnac um with the English concert in the English concert choir. Oh, this is incredible. It's got Arlene Oa um and Sophie Fodder, Michael Chance, Howard Crook, and John Tomlinson. And and it's just a thrill from beginning to end.

[00:08:50]amazingly sung with the best Hallelujah chorus you're ever going to hear in your life on period instruments anyway [snorts] because if you're not into period instruments there is of course well ma mccaris wasn't period instruments but it was appropriate stylistically for inappropriate stylistically we've got beatum in the Eugene Gusen's orchestration with with symbols and bass drums and snare drums and screaming and yelling and oh god It's fun and it's parts one, two, and three with an appendix [clears throat] featuring [snorts] ah the cast Jennifer Vivian, Monica Sinclair, famous in her as [snorts] the as the Gilbert and Sullivan contrato par excellence. Her cataw was amazing.

[00:09:37][snorts] You know, there is beauty in the bellow of the blast. There is grander in the rolling of the gale. Oh, never mind. Uh John Vickers tenor and Georgio Tottsy bass with Beichchum and the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra and chorus 1959 in glorious stereo a performance that is that is absolutely positively wrong in every possible way and it's a masterpiece. It's glorious.

[00:10:04]You want to I mean do we care about anacronism? No.

[00:10:09]Amazing. Just amazing. So you've got to hear it. Um, you owe it to yourself to own it. And boy, this has been a very good clump of handle. I mean, there's only five things in it, but they're all fantastic. And some of them will be familiar, and some of them will be very unfamiliar, but it's all really worth exploring. So, there's a lot more nifty stuff to come. Keep on listening, friends. Thanks for joining me. Take care.