Daily Blague

It's six o'clock on a Friday night, and in an hour or less I shall set forth for Lincoln Center, where I'm to see Handel's Orlando at City Opera. This will be the first time that I have seen any Handel opera twice. I vaguely recall the mid-Seventies production, with Marilyn Horne and Samuel Ramey, that came to Houston for a spell; I was underwhelmed. Much as I love the contralto/mezzo soprano voice, I don't think that women ought to take the older trouser roles in an age of blossoming countertenors. I know that I'm ready to hear Orfeo sung by David Daniels or Andreas Stoll (although I prefer the French version of Gluck's opera, for tenor). I might be ready to hear a man as Cherubino. Octavian? That would be a stretch, but I'm game.

Winthrop Sargent, who wrote about music in The New Yorker when I was young, made two observations that I recall with complete approbation. First, that Chabrier's Souvenir de Munich is the funniest piece minutes of music ever. That's a pretty rarefied remark, though, since few people have heard the piece, and most of those who know Tristan und Isolde don't like to hear it made fun of. On a more general plane, Sargent opined that the music of J S Bach was about the oldest that modern concertgoers could hear with complete comfort. (Although Telemann and Vivaldi were born slightly earlier, and their music remains equally accessible, Sargent's rule is well-stated.) You can test this for yourself by listening to a few of the Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, that Arcangelo Corelli polished to a high lustre that they were published posthumously. It is clear at once that Corelli influenced Handel even more massively than Vivaldi influenced Bach, but Corelli's brief movements, while frequenly lovely, seem undernourished, especially the quick ones. There is something unsatisfying about his penchant for brevity; it may be that he simply didn't know how to stretch his ideas over a five-minute frame, as the masters of the following generation did with such ease. I haven't done any scholarly analysis of Corelli's music; I'm just passing on the persistent finding of my ears.

A similar chasm lies between the operas of Mozart and earlier ones. Handel's opera breathe an atmosphere that is no longer piped into public halls. Here I think the difference is sociological, not musicological. What happened between the half-century between the composers' primes was the emergence of an affluent bourgeoisie. Although Mozart's greatest operas were written in Italian for courtly audiences, he knew how to appeal to the middle class as well - Die Zauberflöte proves that clearly enough - and it may even be said that much of what he learned from writing Die Entführung aus dem Serail, like The Magic Flue a singspiel written as popular theatre, found its way into the sophisticated fabrics of the Da Ponte operas, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Handel's intended audience was absolutely aristocratic. It had no real sense of humor, because humor involves ridicule and disrespect; aristocracies prefer the burlesque. The operas of Handel's day were sugar-coated morality tales designed to show the nobles in the audience - who might, collectively, be the producers - how they ought to carry themselves; at the same time, they flattered their audience. That audience has passed from the earth forever. We are left with chains of beautiful and even affecting arias that, as operas, are missing something. The attempt to render Handel's operas appealing with sight gags and extraneous effects and rude gestures is misguided, because while it may entertain today's audiences it will never build a public for these works.

I have the odd feeling that I've written up Orlando before even seeing it. 

And how was it?