Handel Handels Finest Arias For Base Voice, Vol 2 PDF

HAndEl’s fiNesT   ariAs f Or BAS e VOiCE CHRISTOPHER

PURVES

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ARCANGELO · JONATHAN COHEN

CONTENTS

2

TRACK LISTING

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 page 3

ENGLISH

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 page 4

Sung texts and translation

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 page 7 

Performer biographies

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 page 11

FRANÇAIS

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 page 16 

DEUTSCH

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 Seite 20

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

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(1685–1759)

1  ARIA  Gelido in ogni vena COSROE  Siroe, Re Re di Persia HWV24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [5'02] 2  ARIOSO Turn not, O Queen, thy face away H AMAN  Esther  HWV50a . . . . . . . . . . . . . [2'49] 3  AIR   When storms the proud proud  A BNER  BNER   Athalia HWV52

.............................

[3'11]

..................................................  ACCOMPAGNATO [0'45] 4 —  . . . .grief 5  AIR  Opprest Oh, withmemory! never-ceasing GOBRIAS  Belshazzar HWV61 . . . . . . . . . . . . [4'01]

È ver che all’amo intorno CESARE Catone HW HWVV A7  aria by Porpora  . . . . . . . . . Concerto grosso in F major Op 3 No 4 HWV31 HWV3155 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6  ARIA  7 8 9 bl

 Andante – Allegro – Lentamente  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Andante  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Allegro  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minuetto alternativo  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RASPE Tolomeo, Re di Egitto HWV25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bm  ARIA  Piangi pur  A RASPE bn  AIR   Ah, canst thou but but prove me!  A BNER  BNER   Athalia HWV52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nell’africane selve bo bp bq br

[10'33] [3'56] [1'56] [1'32] [3'08] [2'59] [3'40]

RECITATIVO Nell’africane selve  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ARIA  Langue, trema, e prigioniero  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RECITATIVO Nice, là fra confine  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ARIA  Chiedo amore  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[13'55] [1'34] [6'31] [1'19] [4'29]

The walls are levell’d —  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[0'30]

bs RECITATIVE

HWV136a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

bt  AIR  bu  AIR 

[3'18] [6'37]

cl

[4'27]

cm cn

C ALEB  Joshua HWV64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . See, ragingfall’n flames arise How the art thou from thy height! H AMAN  Esther HWV50a . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ARIA  Tu di pietà mi spogli COSROE  Siroe, Re Re di Persia HWV24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ARIA   Vieni, o cara  A RGANTE RGANTE  Rinaldo HWV7a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  AIR  Shall I in Mamre’s fertile plain C ALEB  Joshua HWV64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHRISTOPHER CHRIST OPHER PURVES baritone ARCANGELO JONATHAN COHEN conductor 3

[7'55]

[4'15] [3'07]

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O OTHER COMPO COMPOSER SER of the early early eighteent eighteenthh century matched Handel’s use of musical  vocabularyy to convey the gamut of complex   vocabular dramatic personalities. This album features an assortment created throughout the composer’s long career, from an early Italian cantata to his English oratorios written forty 

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music is also melodious and intimately lyrical, and the melancholic conclusion ‘Chiedo ‘Chiedo amore’ can be interpreted interpreted seductively. The identity of the original singer is unknown, but it was probably the same extraordinary bass who sang  the murderous cyclops in the serenata  Aci, Galatea e  Polifemo (also performed in Naples during summer 1708).

 years later. These loyalty, examples contain mournfulness humour, cruelty, affection, tyranny, culpability, and celebration (and sometimes more than one of these), and illustrate how Handel responded responded imaginatively and engagingly to the predicaments of different characters. Several are political tyrants whose lust for power (or a   woman, or both) sends them out of control, others are menacing bullies for whom we may feel a mixture of  disgust and empathy, empathy, but the bass voice was also usually  the composer’s preference preference for anxious fathers fathers worrying  about their children, or faithful stalwarts in times of  political upheaval and warfare.  After leaving his native n ative Halle in his late la te teens, Handel  was introduced to opera in Hamburg, and then toured around Italy for over three years. Whilst in Naples he  Nell’africane icane selve (HWV136a) in summer composed  Nell’afr 1708. Accompanied only by basso continuo instruments, this chamber cantata is a virtuoso tour de force which navigates sudden dramatic contrasts, vivid imagery and wide leaps across a range of more than two and a half octaves (from a bottom C sharp to a top A). The volatile introductory  recitative observes that even a proud, majestic lion in the forests of Africa, immune to howling beasts and hissing  snakes, can have its courage shaken if startled by the insidious bright torch of a hunter; the poem continues to reveal that the powerless lion’s miserable weeping upon its capture is an allegory for the poet’s own loss of liberty  and confidence now that he has fallen deeply deeply in love with

 Within by a few leaving Italy, was employed the months Elector ofof Hanover (soonHandel to become George I of Great Britain), but he was immediately immediately granted permission to travel to England in late 1710. Soon after his arrival he was commissioned commissioned to compose compose  Rinaldo (1711)—the first all-Italian opera to be created especially  for the London stage. The villanous Argante is the infidel king of Jerusalem; after his aggressive parleying with the Christian crusader heroes has amounted to nothing, he is left alone and summons Armida—a fickle Amazonian sorceress whose assistance he desperately needs to defeat the enemy at the gates. She is not only Argante’s secret  weapon but also his lover—as is explained in the wistfully  murmured invocation ‘Vieni, o cara’ with transparent eroticism. In 1712 Handel settled permanently in London, but between 1717 and 1720 he spent at least some time as a  guest at Cannons, the country estate of James Brydges, the Earl of Carnarvon. The first English oratorio  Esther  was probably performed for Brydges in about 1720: the prideful and spiteful counsellor Haman gleefully plots the genocide of the exiled Jews, but his cruel treachery is exposed by the Persian king Assuerus’ new and hitherto secretly Jewish queen Esther. Upon being sentenced to death by the indignant king, the shaken Haman beseeches Esther to forgive him and intercede on his behalf (the hushed ‘Turn not, O Queen, thy face away’, with gently pulsing strings). The wily politician’s honey-tongued petition for clemency is

the Arcadian beauty beauty Nice. There The re are fiendish technical fiendish challenges in the aria ‘Langue, trema, e prigioniero’, but the

rejected firmly of by his Esther—forcing him to confront thethou dire consequences sinister machinations (‘How art

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fall’n from thy height!’, with solo oboe suspensions enhancing its tormented warning against worldly ambition). In 1727 Handel became a naturalized British citizen. ci tizen. By  this time he was the principal artistic director (to use modern parlance) of the Royal Academy of Music—a  company founded by Royal Charter to establish more

initially pretends to be a shepherdess called Delia). Towards the end of Act II, Tolomeo defends Seleuce from Araspe’s unwelcome amorous attention, and the couple cou ple reveal their true identities; Araspe orders his guards to bind Tolomeo in fetters, and vents scornfully that Seleuce’s weeping cannot mollify his implacable wrath (‘Piangi pur’).

effective regular in high-quality seasonsAll of Italian operas atgovernance the King’sofTheatre the Haymarket. of the Royal Academy’s annual seasons between 1720 and its eventual collapse in 1728 featured Giuseppe Maria Boschi (  fl 1703– 1703– 44), who specialized in playing implacable tyrants. The title-hero in Siroe (1728) is beloved by the Persians for his valour and virtue, but his jealous father king Cosroe circumvents Siroe’s rightful succession to the throne. As the crisis worsens in the middle of Act II, Cosroe misjudges that Siroe has attempted to murder Idaspe (who is actually  Siroe’s beloved Emira in disguise; she wants revenge for Cosroe’s murder of her father, and Siroe has sworn to keep her true identity secret but attempted to dissuade her; therefore, he cannot admit why they have been found together with his sword drawn). In confrontational rising  minor-key figures, Cosroe sends his own son to prison and condemns him to death (‘Tu di pietà mi spogli’). As the opera reaches its dramatic climax, Cosroe realizes the execution of his innocent son was a mistake, but believes it is too late to revoke the horrific order order.. Feeling the icy pangs of a belated moral conscience, cons cience, he expresses bitter remorse and confesses his culpability in ‘Gelido in ogni vena’, a  larghetto in the extraordinary key of F sharp minor, with a  restless bass line, contrapuntal strings and an anguished  voice part. Boschi also played a villainous tyrant in Handel’s next opera, Tolomeo (1728). The exiled title-hero is the rightful king of Egypt but hides on Cyprus as a shepherd; a reunion

During opera the early 1730s the soloist in Handel’s company wasprincipal Antoniobass Montagnana  (  fl 1730–50). A few months before creating the role of  Zoroastro in Orlando, Montagnana took part in the pasticcio Catone. Metastasio’s drama about the Roman patriot Cato’s preference to commit suicide rather than submit to the dictator Julius Caesar was first set to music by Vinci (Rome, 1728), but the poet’s own revised version was soon set to music by Leo (Venice, 1728). Handel might have seen Leo’s  version whilst in Italy Italy recruiting recruiting new singers, singers, and its its overture overture and nine arias were the basis of the pasticcio produced by  Handel’s company in London; the rest of the arias were swapped for music by Hasse (six arias), Porpora (four),  Vivaldi (at least two) and Vinci (one). It is unlikely Handel chose many (if any) of these substitutions—most were taken from the repertoire of the singers in his company.  Julius Caesar’s ‘È ver che all’amo intorno’ (Act III, scene 4) is a generic simile aria expressing optimism that the disapdisap pointed angler will eventually hook an elusive fish from the stream if he has enough patience; featuring an elaborate bassoon obbligato, the suave showpiece was taken from Porpora’s Poro (Turin, 1731). The notion of morally upright defiance against a wicked dictator is also explored in the oratorio  Athalia (Oxford, 1733). Fed up with the idolatry and evil perpetrated upon  Judah by Queen Athalia (the (the daughter of Jezebel), Jezebel), the piety  of the righteous Israelites is established in the oratorio’s extended opening scene, which includes ‘When storms the

 with hisking beloved wifewho Seleuce is disrupted by the cruel Cypriot Araspe, is infatuated with Seleuce (who

proud’. Assigned an anonymous priest inscore the that printed  wordbook, Handeltoclarified clarifie d in his autograph this

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