The Vocal Duets of G. F. Handel and His Italian Contemporaries (C. 1706–1724)
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3. Dramatic Duet 3. 1. defInItIons, typoLogIes and methodoLogy This third chapter (at the same time also the second main part of this study) devotes itself to the dramatic duets by Handel and his Italian contemporar- ies in the period 1706–1724, with occasional excursions into earlier years all the way back to 1690 for comparative purposes, in order to see how the way some of these composers wrote duets developed up to the main period in question. As such it will concentrate on duets in the various Italian vocal dramatic genres already outlined in Chapter 1.2, but the fo- cus will be on opera duets. The reasons for this are not only that they are usually the most numerous dramatic duets in the opuses of the composers under question due to the status of opera as a genre, but also their public nature, which facilitates the investigation of context. It is also impossible to avoid certain key issues in the development of opera seria, the genre to which most of the duets examined in this chapter belong. Reference sources repeat these slightly commonplace but nonetheless true topoi on ensembles in opera of the first half of the 18th century: Reforms to the opera seria in the early 18th century (reducing the number of characters) […] made ensembles rarer in serious genres, Typologies and Methodology / 3. 1. Definitions, but they remained important in comic works and it is there that they attracted the richest and most varied treatment. During the first half of the 18th century the duet was the most common ensemble in all types of opera, typically for the main lovers in strong emotional situations. Indeed, in many opere serie the lovers’ duet was both the dramatic highpoint and the sole concerted number. (Cook 2001) duet 3. dramatic Ensembles are relatively rare in Handel’s operas. The most common, often at the end of acts, are duets in which the protagonists of the tragedy give expression to their emotions of bliss or total despair.117 (Marx 2002, 586) 117 Ensemblesätze sind in den Opern Händels relativ selten. Am häufigsten kommen (meistens am Aktschluss) Duette vor, in denen die Hauptpersonen der Tragödie im Moment der Glückseligkeit oder der völligen Verzweiflung ihren Emotionen Ausdruck verleihen. 157 While it will never be an aim of this study to contest the truthful- ness of these claims, they leave us with the seemingly ungrateful task of studying a phenomenon that is seemingly rare and somewhat typified. The so-called reforms of the end of the 17th century, introduced by a circle of poets around Apostolo Zeno, strove to ennoble libretto writing with features of Aristotelian aesthetics, such as his famous category of dramatic verisimilitude. It was this tendency that Pietro Metastasio later imposed as a norm, holding ground for the remainder of the century.118 Calella (2000, 125) is only one of many authors who explain that this novel operatic dramaturgy considered the simultaneous musical speech of mul- tiple dramatis personae unverisimilar (cf. also Rousseau 2008 as quoted by Saville 1958, 134), and, therefore better avoided, which in turn led to a comparable paucity of ensembles when compared to earlier operatic history of the 17th century. As a result, the diversity of Handel’s dramatic duets (and ensembles in general) should not be “regarded in opposition to Metastasian dramaturgy or even as a pre-reform, but as a sign of a dramaturgic freedom that was characteristic of the early 18th century”119 (Calella 2000, 126). Handel must have been aware that the tide was turning because two out of his three settings of Metastasian librettiSiroe ( and Ezio) contain no ensembles whatsoever, but he continued to display his original affinity for duets, since “the examination of around 250 opera seria libretti in the period 1710–1745 nevertheless shows unequivocally that the number of ensembles in Handel’s opere serie lies above the average, especially in the twenties and the thirties”120 (Calella 2000, 128). / 3. 1. Definitions, Typologies and Methodology / 3. 1. Definitions, The examination of the vast repertory of dramatic duets by Handel and his already mentioned Italian contemporaries should revoke the im- pression of scarcity and uniformity conveyed by the reference books quot- ed above. However, it is necessary to forewarn that in part of the older literature on the subject the pejorative tone partly stems from a misunder- standing of the dramaturgy of opera seria. Heinz Becker, writing as late 3. dramatic duet 3. dramatic as 1980, remarks on a “lack of dramatic tension” (Becker 1980, 85) that is inherent in the binary, linear interchange of (secco) recitatives and arias, which is a typical imposition of classical dramaturgy on a genre that does 118 From a vast variety of literature on the subject, a monograph by R. Freeman (1981) and the numerous writings of R. Strohm (1979, 1997, and 2008 in particular) deserve to be singled out. 119 Im Gegensatz zur metastasianischen Dramaturgie oder sogar als ‘Vorreform’ angesehen werden, sondern als Zeichen einer dramaturgischen Freiheit, die für das frühe Settecento charakteristisch war. 120 Eine Überprüfung von ca. 250 Libretti von Opere serie im Zeitraum 1710–1745 zeigt jedoch eindeutig, daß die Anzahl von Ensembles in Händels Opere se- rie besonders in den späten zwanziger und in den dreißiger Jahren über dem Durchschnitt lag. 158 not conform to it. The concept of dramatic action as a sequence of events mediated by dialogue is often not suited to the affect-laden exchanges of arias at the musical heart of opera seria. “Opera depends on action, and action commands dialogue. The actual problem of opera was, not so much musical speech, as much as ‘dialogicism’ [Dialogizität, A/N], dialogue in the sense of a verbal exchange of two partners on stage, and not in the sense of two people singing together.”121 (Becker 1980, 82) This singling out of the principle of dialogue as crucial to dramatic development in opera, and of the duet as its ideal musical embodiment seems to suggest that duets which affirm dialogue are superior to the ones that do not. That Handel’s age did not see it that way does not need further explication. For Schläder (Schläder 1995), the constitution of the 19th-century opera duet according to the so-called la solita forma, that is, the multi-movement structure interchanging “dramatic” movements such as tempo d’attacco or tempo di mezzo with “lyric” ones such as the canta- bile and the cabaletta, is a sign of the increased role of the duet in opera’s dialogic development. Counterpoint featured prominently in duets written between 1650 and 1750, but for Schläder it remained a means of differenti- ating the vocal parts in the texture without contributing in the least to the evolution of dramatic dialogue. Although Schläder goes to great lengths to name the numerous exceptions in Handel’s works that either break the da capo mould or are integrated into a sequence of numbers, he objects to them for conforming too much to the structural model of the aria without a tendency to develop its own norms. Robinson, too, speaks of ensembles in 18th-century Neapolitan opera as the “extension or enlargement of the solo Typologies and Methodology / 3. 1. Definitions, aria rather than a development or evolution of earlier ensemble types like the madrigal” (Robinson 1972, 151), whereas Dent (1910a, 547) is even more restrictive when he maintains that “the Da Capo form was incompatible with dramatic progress”. Calella (2000, 123) rightfully warned against the risks of such a teleological approach that sees ensembles of the 17th and the 18th centuries as a mere preliminary stage to the opera buffa ensembles duet 3. dramatic of Mozart, in comparison with which they seem thoroughly undramatic. Schläder’s claims about Handel’s duets could be applied to the duets of many of his contemporaries, for they, too, would be considered by him as no more than brief moments of textural culmination (in the simultaneity of two voices singing together) that neither illustrate nor contribute to the dramatic development of the opera. 121 Die Oper lebt jedoch von der Aktion, Aktion aber erheischt den Dialog. Das eigentliche Problem der Oper war somit weniger das musikalische Sprechen als vielmehr die Dialogizität, Dialogizität im Sinne von Wechselrede zweier Bühnenpartner verstanden, nicht von Zwiegesang. 159 Similarly, the following remarks by Robinson (1972, 156) were meant with opera seria and opera buffa of the second half of the 18th century in mind, although the same risk persists: So long as composers desired subtlety through the understatement of characters’ differences, where these were expressed simultaneously, the conventional ensemble gave them the chances they sought. What the mode of the period prevented was any musical exploitation or ex- aggeration of the conflicts where characters disagreed. Ill-mannered retorts, interruptions, words uttered out of turn, were the requisite of the comic rather than of the serious ensemble. […] It is correct to say that characters in the serious ensemble were more united in the way they musically expressed their thoughts, more prepared to let one remark follow on in orderly fashion from the last and let the melody and harmony of their parts cohere, than those in other. What was disappointing was that more touches of realism could not be introduced when characters felt themselves opposed to each other. (Robinson 1972, 156) Even when their own or the well-being of their loved ones is at stake, the characters preserve the all-pervasive countenance (cf. Strohm 1997, 210), which does not allow for an unseemly expression of conflict in a duet. On the contrary, composers were attracted by the possibility to unite two characters so that “the melody and harmony of their parts cohere”.