Venice Baroque Orchestra with Philippe Jaroussky
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Friday, February 7, 2014, 8pm First Congregational Church Venice Baroque Orchestra with Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor PROGRAM A Legendary Battle: Farinelli & Porpora vs. Carestini & Handel Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) Overture to Germanico in Germania (1731–1732) Porpora “Mira in cielo,” from Arianna e Teseo (1727 ) “Si pietoso il tuo labbro ragiona,” from Semiramide Riconosciuta ( 1729 ) George Frideric Handel ( 1685–1759 ) Concerto Grosso in A minor, Op. 6, No. 4 ( 1739 ) Larghetto affettuoso Allegro Largo e piano Allegro Handel “Mi lusinga il dolce affetto,” from Alcina ( 1735 ) “Sta nell’Ircana pietrosa tana,” from Alcina INTERMISSION PLAYBILL CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Handel “Agitato da fiere tempeste,” from Oreste ( 1734 ) “Scherza infida,” from Ariodante ( 1734 – 1735 ) Handel Concerto Grosso in G major, Op. 6, No. 1 ( 1739 ) A tempo giusto Allegro Adagio Allegro Allegro Porpora “Alto Giove,” from Polifemo ( 1735 ) “Nell’ attendere il mio bene,” from Polifemo This performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsor Françoise Stone. Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES PERA IN THE OLD DAYS could be a cutthroat supported by a corporation of aristocrats Obusiness. Opera was invented as a private headed by King George II and Queen entertainment for an aristocratic audience Charlotte, for whom he had produced some of around 1600 in Florence to recreate the then- his greatest masterpieces— Julius Caesar , supposed experience of ancient Greek theater. Tamerlano , Rodelinda —at the King’s Theatre in It spread quickly to other courts and noble the Haymarket, which he leased from its owner, houses in Italy during the following years, and John Heidegger. Such was the popularity of in 1637 it became a public commodity with the Italian opera in London during those years that opening of the Teatro di San Cassiano in in 1733 , a rival company, the Opera of the Venice. Ten other opera houses opened in Nobility, was established. This upstart operation Venice before the end of the 17th century, all (founded in a fit of youthful pique by Frederick, trying to turn a profit with increasingly spec - the Prince of Wales, to defy his royal parents) tacular productions of a remarkable stream of outbid Handel for the use of Heidegger’s theater, new works, well over 350 of them in Venice and the Academy moved to John Rich’s new alone by ambitious composers and librettists Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, where competing for attention and income. Handel’s operas would alternate with the Opera flourished across Italy during the owner’s plays (and still continue to receive pa - late 17th century, but nowhere more brilliantly tronage from the King and Queen). than in Naples after Alessandro Scarlatti set - The Opera of the Nobility hired the illus - tled there in 1683 to become director of the trious Neapolitan Nicola Porpora as its house Teatro San Bartolomeo. Scarlatti composed composer and the five operas he wrote in some 40 operas in Naples, and their lyricism, London provided Handel with serious compe - theatricality, and cogent form, largely based on tition not only for their musical and theatrical a succession of “da capo” arias (literally “the qualities but also for their casting, which cli - head,” indicating a return, customarily deco - maxed when the great castrato (and student of rated by the singer, of the opening section fol - Porpora) Farinelli made his début in the city lowing a contrasting central episode: A–B–Aʹ), in Polifemo in February 1735 . “Farinelli was a spread their popularity to music centers revelation to me,” confessed Paolo Rolli, the throughout Europe. The stars of these shows opera’s librettist, “for I realized that till I had were the “castrati,” male singers who were cas - heard him I had only heard a small part of trated before puberty and whose voice retained what human song can achieve where I now the high range and purity of a boy soprano but conceive that I have heard all there is to hear.” who brought to it the strength, training, virtu - Handel countered with Giovanni Carestini, osity, and musical maturity of an adult male. who appeared in five of his operas during that The practice for musical purposes, largely con - time, including Alcina and Ariodante . fined to Italy, originated in the mid–15th cen - According to the celebrated German opera tury to supply high voices for church choirs, in composer Johann Adolf Hasse, “He who has which females were forbidden to participate, not heard Carestini is not acquainted with the but the castrati found their most lucrative per - most perfect style of singing.” formance opportunities in the burgeoning The fashion in London for opera in a lan - medium of opera 100 years later. guage few locals could understand had been Opera producers competed ferociously for waning ever since the riotous success of the the se rvices of the leading castrati, and one of satirical Beggar’s Opera that Gay and Pepusch the most entertaining such episodes in the his - had unveiled in 1728 , and the Handel– tory of opera unfolded in London between 1733 Porpora rivalry ended in, at best, a draw— and 1736. Since 1719, George Frideric Handel, Porpora fled back to the Continent in 1736 , German-born, Italian-trained, and the leading both companies collapsed the following year, opera composer in London since the première and Handel was completely out of business as of his Rinaldo in 1711 , had been successfully an opera composer by 1740 . Handel did well running the Royal Academy of Music, largely in his second career, however, during which PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES he created Messiah , Israel in Egypt , Judas and worked as composer and teacher in promi - Maccabeus, and the two dozen other English- nent positions in Venice, Dresden, Rome, and language oratorios that have made him a con - Vienna (where the young Joseph Haydn was tinuing musical force from his day to ours. his pupil, valet, and accompanist), until finan - cial reverses resulting from the Seven Years’ Nicola Porpora ( AFHF–AGFH ) War and the evolution of musical taste away Overture to Germanico in Germania from his dated Baroque idiom led him to re - turn home to Naples in 1759 . He taught again Composed in 1731–1732 . Premi èred in February at the Conservatorio di San Maria di Loreto 1732 at the Teatro Capranica in Rome. and the Conservatorio di San Onofrio, and filled a commission from the Teatro San Carlo Nicola Porpora has today been largely relegated (Il Trionfo de Camilla ), but the opera was a fail - to the fringes of operatic history, but in his day ure and he resigned his teaching posts in 1761 . he was considered a worthy rival of George His last years were spent in poverty. “Porpora Frideric Handel , the early–18th-century’s most kept so miserable a table,” reported his student celebrated composer. Porpora was born into Domenico Corri, “that he was frequently the family of a Neapolitan bookseller in 1686, driven out of the house by hunger to seek a din - studied on scholarship for a decade at the city’s ner elsewhere.” The musicians of Naples Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo , and arranged and performed gratis at his funeral débuted as an opera composer with Agrippina following his death on March 3, 1768 . at the Royal Palace in Naples in 1708 . The pre - Germanico in Germania (“Germanicus in mière of his Flavio Anicio Olibrio three years Germany”), prem ièred at the Teatro Capranica later led to appointments as maestro di cappella in Rome in February 1732, concerns the ex - to Prince Philipp of Hesse-Darmstadt, the gen - ploits of the Roman general Nero Claudius eral of the Austrian army in Naples, and to the Drusus, who received the title Germanicus for faculties of the Conservatorio di San Onofrio his and his father’s military victories north of and Conservatorio di San Maria di Loreto, the Alps. The overture follows the typical form where he established his reputation as one of for 18th-century Itali an operas: a vigorous the era’s foremost teachers of composition and opening Allegro , a slow-tempo passage (this singing. Porpora’s career flourished during the one for horns in the style of a Minuetto ), and a 1720s , when he produced operas and serenatas spirited finale for the full ensemble. for public and court performance and helped promote the careers of his most gifted students, Porpora notably the singers Carlo Broschi (who became “Mira in cielo,” from Arianna e Teseo music history’s most famous castrato as Farinelli), Gaetano Majorano (pseudonym: Composed in 1727. Premièred on October 1, Caffarelli), and Giovanni Carestini. Porpora 1727, at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo expanded his career to Rome in 1721 with in Venic e. Eumene and to Venice four years later ( Siface ), where he joined the faculty of the Ospitale Arianna e Teseo (“Ariadne and Theseus”), degli’Incurabili. In 1733 , he went to London to composed in 1727 for the Teatro San serve as the resident composer for the Opera Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, concerns the of the Nobility, a company newly established by mythical tale of Ariadne, daughter of King Frederick, the Prince of Wales, to compete with Minos of Crete and keeper of the labyrinth Handel’s Royal Academy of Music. Porpora where the dreaded Minotaur is confined, and took along Farinelli and other of his star pupils her love for the Athenian prince Theseus, and composed five operas, an oratorio, and a whom she helps to overcome the monster. serenata, but he could not establish superiority Theseus addresses his bravura aria Mira in over Handel. After two-and-a-half years in cielo, a Giove impera (“Look up to heaven, he England, Porpora returned to the Continent gives orders to Jove”) to Eros, the god of love.