Agrippina georg friedrich handel biography book

For many people, Handel is Baroque opera: musical and scenic spectaculars based on classical myth, medieval romance, or history, with castrati singing elaborate, highly ornamented da capo A-B-A arias. After his death in , they were neglected for nearly two centuries. In the name of authenticity, the HIP enthusiasts should logically bring back castrati — but, as the old joke has it, do they have the balls?

Neither the Janet Baker Julius Caesar in English nor a staged oratorio had convinced me of his genius. The witty but usually wrong Denis Forman, too, was sniffy about opera seria:.

Agrippina georg friedrich handel biography book: The opera tells the story of

In the days of orthodox opera seria, each of the top singers had four arias. When they had sung their aria they disappeared. This must have given the scriptwriter quite a few problems in trying to keep the momentum of the story going along, but the truth is that there was no momentum and precious little interest in the story. The compulsory exits of the lead singers demonstrate that the whole elaborate apparatus of courtly opera was designed pretty well solely to show off the singers and everything else, libretto, recitatif, scenery etc.

Wagner was a long way off. With it, Kaminski argued, Handel established himself as the finest musical dramatist between Monteverdi and Mozart.