And so we return to C18 England and to Handel. It’s 1728 and he’s shocked by the popularity and financial success of the Beggar’s Opera and London audiences’ evident rejection of Italian opera seria. At that point, so the story goes, Handel ditched opera and turned to oratorio. Hence The Messiah. And also Saul (our focus this week) and a great number of other such pieces.
Yes, but it wasn’t so simple. Firstly, this massive change is not due entirely to John Gay - there were a lot of factors at work other than the fickle shift of audience favour. And secondly, the line between opera and oratorio, never a clear one, was further smudged as the years passed.
Handel’s life was increasingly complicated by 1728. He had a tidy fortune building up, but an ongoing challenge of opera snobbery and finances. With a group of aristocrats he'd formed the New Royal Academy of Music (1719), and by 1728 he had written about 30 operas for it - but their dramas had been augmented by the wars of highly expensive divas and class conflicts splendidly portrayed in Gay's work. Read all about it here.
Opera business got much more expensive and complicated as opera tastes changed. Handel was committed to England – he’d become a British citizen in 1726. In 1729 the directors of New Royal Academy of Music closed it - everyone except Handel had lost money. It's a complex story of warring political groups and costly temperamental Italian stars! It had produced 461 performances: 235 (13 of them operas) by Handel. So he started a new Second Academy, which was undermined by a rival Opera of the Nobility and survived only until 1734.
When is an oratorio not an opera?
Meanwhile, what’s he producing? There's no clear break due to Beggar's Opera. In the years to follow, Handel wrote many operas, some classed as opera seria (e.g. Alcina). Serse (1738) was a major departure from opera seria, and flopped. But the big oratorios were the Handel news.
It’s not new news. He'd been composing oratorios since 1707. And the very familiar oratorio of Zadoc the Priest came the year before Beggar’s Opera, 1727. (Do you need reminding of the most recent coronation? Zadoc is played on Maundy Thursday every year as the Queen gives alms to selected seniors. Watch her here in 2011.
Nor did the shift exclude opera. Here’s Wikipedia’s somewhat fuzzy distinction between the two:
An oratorio … is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio, the choir often plays a central role, and there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church.
Britannica is equally vague. And here’s a less pompous account, stressing that oratorio is about choirs. And yes, that's a very strong new direction for Handel.
Handel and oratorios
After his illness in 1737, Handel turned away from opera to these works. And Saul (premiered that year, 1737) was just one of many. It’s late baroque period now, and oratorios were big in continental Europe as well.
Everyone knows Messiah but it’s atypical. His librettist, Jenner, was a biblical scholar and the narrative is biblical extracts. More about Handel and The Messiah here – with sing-along video! And much more about The Messiah – and also about money, charity and Jenner, the librettist - here.
Here's the libretto of Saul. http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/saul.htm.
'In his other oratorios, from Saul to Jephtha, he forged an inspired synthesis of Italian opera seria and English anthem that also drew on Restoration masque, German Passion and Greek tragedy. Although the oratorios were never staged in Handel’s lifetime, modern productions have proved that they can be more excitingly dramatic than his operas. Read more here.
He’s buried, of course, in Westminister Abbey, with a self-funded statue.
'Today, as we look up at Roubiliac’s statue, some 12 feet above ground level, Handel himself looks up, symbolically, to heaven, an angel above his head, an organ behind his body, and a scroll of music in his hand containing both music and words of a movement from Messiah, his best-loved work.
It reads “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth.”
And thus to Saul
Go back to our blog post on this opera/oratorio – here. You’ll find there links to the Biblical story. And descriptions of Kosky's production - as an opera!
For discussion: the Bible is pretty explicit about the love of David and Jonathon: go here for the extracts and wonderful images from classic painters and more recent LGBTQ artists.
Here's the libretto of Handel's Saul
Do you learn in advance from reviews?
Here’s the Guardian review of the Glyndebourne production we will watch. And here’s Bachtrack. And Limelight.