Music by George Frideric Handel Libretto based on Antonio Salvi First performance: Covent Garden, London; Jnuary 8, 1735
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Program note by Martin Pearlman
Handel, Ariodante In the summer of 1734, Handel lost his position as director at the King's Theatre in London. Some of his rivals thought that he might be forced to retire, but to their surprise, he quickly signed a deal with the recently opened theater at Covent Garden and began work on another opera. The new venue, as it turned out, not only allowed him to continue his work, but -- for the several years that it was still solvent -- it offered him opportunities that he had not had before. John Rich, the impresario of the theater, was known for elaborate productions, and Handel was offered not only spectacular sets, but also dancers and even a small chorus. Until then, he had generally followed Italian operatic traditions by rarely incorporating dances and by having opera "choruses" sung only by the soloists.
Ariodante premiered in January of 1735. It was Handel's first opera for Covent Garden, but it was not the great success that he hoped for. Although the eighteenth-century historian Charles Burney wrote that it "abounds with beauties and strokes of a great master," one contemporary wrote that it was "sometimes performed to an almost empty Pitt," and, despite its happy ending, Queen Caroline said that it was considered "so pathetic and lugubrious" that everyone "has been saddened by it." It was briefly revived in the following season but without the dances and with a new castrato who, not having had time to learn his arias, replaced them with Italian arias that he happened to know. It was hardly a fair hearing. Not until our own time, beginning with the Handel bicentennial in 1959, did Ariodante begin to receive numerous revivals and become the popular opera that it is today.
Ariodante is one of three Handel operas -- Orlando, Ariodante, and Alcina -- that are based on episodes from Ariosto's great epic Orlando furioso. The story, set in Scotland, is the only one among his operas set in the British isles. A spurned lover undertakes a plot to destroy the reputation of the king's daughter, Ginevra, and thereby puts her life in danger. The story of her downfall and ultimate rescue is told simply and straightforwardly with no subplots or digressions, but, as the libretto tells us, it is "somewhat alter'd, to give the greater Force to the Passions of the Actors, and a more extensive Field of Variety to the Musick." In the original epic, the heroic knight Rinaldo, who is flying around the world on his hippogriff, comes upon the scene just in time to save Ginevra. But with great economy, the opera eliminates his role, leaving it to Ariodante to save her. Another "somewhat alter'd" part of the story concerns Dalinda, Ginevra's maid who unwittingly aids the plot against her. In Ariosto's original, she ultimately retires to Denmark to do penance as a nun, but in the opera, she is absolved and celebrates the happy outcome with her new lover Lurcanio.
The libretto by Antonio Salvi was first set to music by Jacopo Perti decades earlier, during the time of Handel's apprenticeship in Italy, and it is possible that Handel may have heard a performance. In any case, he clearly knew the work, since he used the words to one of the arias in his opera Radamisto, and borrowed some lines from it for a cantata. For his own setting of the opera, Handel -- possibly with a collaborator -- added some new lines of text, shortened a number of the Italian recitatives for his English-speaking audience, and rearranged parts of the story.
The opera is in three acts. Most of the first act is a celebration of the love between Ariodante and Ginevra and anticipates their wedding. The true action of the drama with the unfolding of Polinesso's plot begins only in Act II and builds into Act III. It is there in the darkest moments of the story that we hear Handel's most inspired music, as he reveals the deep emotions of his characters. Ginevra, lighthearted and naïve in Act I, ends the second act with the deeply moving aria, "Il mio crudel martoro" ("My cruel torment"). Also in Act II, her lover Ariodante, thinking himself betrayed, expresses his profound grief in the famous aria "Scherza infida." Here the striking orchestration reflects his anguish, as muted violins and pizzicato basses pulse over wailing long notes in the bassoon. Even the king sings a beautifully poignant aria in Act III, when, in a major key, he says farewell to his daughter.
It has often been pointed out that the central twist in the plot, the deception of the chambermaid who dresses up as her mistress, occurs also in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. However, Shakespeare's immediate source may not have been Ariosto. A similar ruse occurs in Spenser's The Faerie Queen and elsewhere. It seems to have become a popular device for the time.
Handel's singers When he moved to Covent Garden, a number of Handel's singers and orchestra players, including some of his star attractions, defected to his rivals, whose newly formed Opera of the Nobility had taken over the King's Theatre. However, two of his well known Italian singers remained with him, the great soprano Maria Strada and the contralto Maria Caterina Negri, and for them he wrote the roles of Ginevra and Polinesso in Ariodante. However, some of the other roles were more difficult to cast. In his autograph score, we can see that Dalinda's music was first written for an alto, but then rewritten in a higher tessitura for soprano, and Lurcanio's music was originally meant for a soprano castrato but was converted to a tenor role midway through the manuscript. Having reworked those roles, he hired local English singers, soprano Cecilia Young and tenor John Beard, both of them rising young talents who went on to sing regularly for Handel and build stellar careers. Having lost his main castrato Senesino to his rivals across town, Handel turned to the high mezzo castrato Giovanni Carestini for the title role of Ariodante.
The dances With Covent Garden importing the choreographer Marie Sallé and her dancers from the Paris Opera, Handel added dances to Ariodante, but they were added late in the process. He finished and dated the first two acts of his autograph without them and then composed a collection of dances from which Mlle. Sallé could choose what she wanted upon her arrival in London. They were thus not as integral to the opera or as tailored to the story as the vocal music. In fact, a few of the dances were never used in Ariodante but were moved to his next opera, Alcina. For the revival of Ariodante in the following year, all the dances were omitted, perhaps because Mlle. Sallé was not in London at the time, but some of them had a second life, reappearing as movements in his trio sonatas.
As for Marie Sallé, she went on to dance in Handel's next opera Alcina, but she shocked the English audiences, when, according to the Abbé Prévost, she danced "without skirt, without a dress, in her natural hair, and with no ornament on her head," in other words, wearing only a simple muslin drapery over her bodice and no wig. After being hissed in her final performance of Alcina, she left England vowing never to perform there again.