Alcina Opera in three acts
Music by George Frideric Handel Anonymous libretto based on Riccardo Broschi's L'isola di Alcina First performance: Covent Garden, London; April 16, 1735
Cast: Alcina, sorceress (soprano) Ruggiero, a knight, fiancé of Bradamante (mezzo) Morgana, Alcina's sister (soprano) Bradamante, a knight, fiancée of Ruggiero (alto) Oronte, Alcina's general (tenor) Melisso, former tutor and mentor of Ruggiero (bass) Oberto, boy searching for his father (soprano) Choruses of courtiers and of Alcina's prisoners
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Program note by Martin Pearlman © Martin Pearlman, 2020
In 1735, just one year before his opera company collapsed, Handel had his last great success as an opera impresario. Alcina opened at Covent Garden on April 16, 1735, a mere eight days after he completed the score, and it ran till the end of the season in early July for a total of 18 performances. Following the first rehearsal at Handel's house, one of his friends wrote that the opera was "so fine I have not words to describe it . . . While Mr. Handel was playing his part, I could not help thinking him a necromancer in the midst of his own enchantments."
The anonymous libretto, based on Riccardo Broschi's L'isola di Alcina (1728), which was in turn derived from Ariosto's Orlando furioso, has all the popular elements of an opera of the time, including confused relationships, disguises and magic spells. But Handel's setting adds deeper dimensions. Nowhere is this more true than in the character of Alcina herself, a wicked sorceress who comes across as surprisingly vulnerable. In only one aria is she truly in a rage, all the rest being arias of love and desperation.
The diva for whom Handel wrote this complex role was Anna Maria Strada del Pò, who had sung all of his leading soprano roles for the previous six years. The estimable journalist Charles Burney, writing not long afterwards, reported that the public did not like her when she first came to England. "[She] was a singer formed by himself [Handel], and modelled on his own melodies. She came hither a coarse and awkward singer with improvable talents, and he at last polished her into reputation and favour." In the end, she was "equal at least to the finest performer in Europe."
The brighter role of Morgana was taken by Cecilia Young, whose singing, according to Burney " was infinitely superior to that of any other English woman of her time." But the star of the cast was the alto castrato Giovanni Carestini, who sang the role of Ruggiero and who had the "fullest, finest, and deepest counter-tenor that has perhaps ever been heard." Nonetheless, all did not go smoothly between the composer and his star singer. Carestini's role included the aria Verdi prati, which soon became the most famous aria in the opera, being encored at every performance. But the aria was a slow one and perhaps did not give him the opportunity that he wanted to show off his virtuosity, for at first he refused to sing it, claiming that it did not suit his voice. On hearing this, Handel went in a rage to his house and, according to Burney, cried out in his thick German accent, "You toc! don't I know better as your seluf, vaat is pest for you to sing? If you vill not sing all de song vaat I give you, I will not pay you ein stiver." Carestini did sing the aria, but he left the company at the end of the season, leaving Handel without an answer to his rivals, who had engaged the great castrato Farinelli to sing with their company.
The original production of Alcina contained a number of ballets, but they turned into something of a scandal, when the imported French ballerina Marie Sallé shocked the English audiences with her revealing costume. 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.
With Sallé and her dance company gone, Handel removed the ballet music from the opera. The fact that the ballets were there in the first place appears to have been more of a concession to popular fashion than a requirement of the drama. During the brief period when ballet was popular in London, Handel added it not only to his latest operas but also to some of his earlier ones. Once the fashion passed, he removed the dances.
In the following season, Handel revived Alcina with various changes and cuts. Among other things, there were no ballets; the new castrato who replaced Carestini was a soprano, rather than a mezzo; and the soprano role of Morgana had to be transposed for a new singer who was a mezzo. But even reviving this popular opera, albeit in a less extravagant production, could not save Handel's company from collapsing under a huge deficit at the end of the season. As a result, this wonderful opera with its famous arias went dormant, and it was only toward the end of the twentieth century that it began to be performed with some frequency and to be recognized as one of the composers great works.