Class 1: If it’s Baroque…

A. Alternative Versions

1. Title Slide 1 (Jephtha in Paris, Claus Guth)

The illustration shows a staged production of Handel’s oratorio Jephtha—not intended for staging in Handel’s time, and certainly not like this. Handel will be the featured composer for this class; we shall compare selections from four different works, in order to explore what we feel about them, and to define what's what. Unlike the Baltimore version of the class, however, which went into other eras as well, I have decided to confine this one to the Handel’s time and before, roughly 1600–1765. Hence my new title, “If it’s Baroque…”, with the implication that there are special problems involved in putting earlier on the stage today.

2. Poussin: Landscape with Orpheus and Euridice

Let us begin with an example from one of the first ever written, and certainly the earliest to be performed with any frequency today, La favola d'Orfeo (1607) by (1567–1643). The story is well-known. Orpheus marries Eurydice and is very happy. But then a messenger arrives to tell him that Eurydice has been bitten by a snake and is dead, so Orpheus goes down to the Underworld to rescue her. The scene we are about to see comes just before the tragedy.

This first part of the opera, however, emerges from an earlier tradition: that of the court masque; it was not composed for performance in a theater. As you will see, there is as much dancing as singing, and the air that Orpheus sings is in a strong rhythm characteristic of Renaissance dances. It uses a device called hemiola, in which six notes can be divided either into two groups of three or three groups of two. Oddly enough, it surfaces again in Latin American music, such as the song "America" from West Side Story.

3. Stills 1: Gilbert Deflo

I shall play a two-and-a-half-minute segment in three versions, beginning with the short chorus in which the Shepherds sing Orfeo's praise. We’ll discuss them after we’ve watched all three. The first is a 2002 production by Gilbert Deflo in Barcelona, which tries to do everything in the style of the original period. [I have shown this before in another class, incidentally, but I’ll try to keep such repeats to a minimum.]

4. Monteverdi: Orfeo, "Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi" (Deflo) 5. Stills 2: Trisha Brown

The second, I think from 1998, is the work of an American choreographer, the late Trisha Brown. There is so much dance in the score that it is not hard to make this the dominant medium, rather than singing. Besides, she is working with a collaborator, the British baritone Simon Keenlyside, who takes great pride in his athletic abilities.

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6. Monteverdi: Orfeo, "Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi" (Brown) 7. Stills 3: Barrie Kosky

The third example is just about its exact opposite, a 2012 production at the Komische Oper Berlin, by a director we shall see a lot more of, the Australian Barrie Kosky. Two points to note before I show it: it is sung in German, and the score has been arranged by a New Zealand composer, Elena Cats-Chernin. This is not so radical as it sounds. Early operas were seldom scored for specific instruments, but for whatever players were available, who would largely improvise their parts over a written bass line. Four centuries old or not, there is an in-the-moment quality to early opera that you sacrifice at your peril.

8. Monteverdi: Orfeo, "Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi" (Kosky) 9. Stills 4: all three versions

So there you have it! Let's discuss. [I don't know, but am prepared to guess, that the questions of which performance seems most "right" and which is most enjoyable will have quite different answers. A point to ponder, if so.]

10. Rameau: Les Indes galantes (Paris, 1999; Andrei Serban, director)

I now want to stretch your expectations even further, with a scene from a production in Paris that opened only last fall. It is from Les Indes galantes (“The Gallant Indes”) by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683– 1764), written in 1735. The previous production in Paris looked something like this: a simplified baroque tastefully updated. The plot, such as it is, is a series of excursions to foreign climes: Turkey, Peru, and Central America; the scene we are going to see is from an act called “The Savages.” Of course the thing positively reeks of cultural appropriation and colonialism. And with Paris reaping the fruits of its colonial legacy in constant racial and social unrest, such a production is irrelevant at best, insulting at worst. So what director Clément Cogitore and choreographer Bintou Dembélé have done is turn the situation on its head, by inviting the street people onto the stage of the venerable Opéra Garnier to match their own culture to Rameau’s music. See what you think. Don’t worry about the words; the chorus is just singing about how pleasant their forests are.

11. Rameau: Les Indes galantes (Paris, 2019; Bintou Dembélé , choreographer) 12. — still from the above

What did you think? There will be those who will say, I’m sure, that it was never intended to be done this way, and Rameau would be turning in his grave. Maybe, but the conditions in which it was intended to be done are different in almost every respect from those today. That particularly aggressive dance style, known apparently as krumping, takes some getting used to, but I am amazed by how well it fits Rameau’s music. And you can hear the effect on the audience.

I’ll get back to more comparisons later, but first I need to give you some background explanation, both generally about who does what in opera, and specifically in terms of baroque conventions.

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B. Basic Concepts, Mostly Baroque

13. Stage director and conductor

I have been talking about stage directors: Gilbert Deflo, Trisha Brown, Barrie Kosky, and Clément Cogitore. This might be a moment to check what exactly a stage director does. That’s easy. A modern opera production is typically in the hands of two people: the conductor, who is responsible for everything you hear, and the stage director, who is responsible for everything you see. They share the singers between them. This graphic (featuring two Canadians, as it happens) should make things clear. Of course when I say that stage directors are responsible for the set design, costume design, lighting design, and choreography, I don’t mean that they do everything themselves. Generally speaking, they work with a team of specialists in these fields—but they all report to the stage director.

A stage director, actually, is a fairly modern concept; until the later 19th century, so far as I know, the staging just more or less happened. Wagner, however, staged every detail of his own works, and his grandson Wieland Wagner, working in the 1950s, could be cited as the first stage director in the modern sense, independent from the conductor and his co-equal. Nowadays, composers are expected to take a back seat and leave it to the professionals.

14. Staging an old work 1 15. Staging an old work 2 16. Staging an old work 3 17. Staging an old work 4

But the stage director is very much in focus when it comes to staging an older work today. Any staging of an older opera involves building a bridge between the past and the present. • You start with a score, and you read everything in it; the music is your Bible. But no score earlier than about 1870 will tell you what to do on the stage. • So the first task is to imagine what the composer himself would have seen; more on that in a moment. • But time has passed. What has changed in terms of: musical understanding, theater technology, the availability of singers, the expectations of the audience, and our political and moral perspectives? • Every production is thus an act of interpretation, of bridging the past to the present.

I don’t expect to answer all these now, but bear these questions in mind as we look at actual productions in the weeks ahead. The photos on the right, incidentally, are all modern productions of Handel’s . They range from the restrained period production by Jonathan Miller at Halle to two such different concepts as those at by Davide Livermore at La Scala, Milan, and Graham Vick at Covent Garden, London.

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18. Czesky Krumlov 1 19. Czesky Krumlov 2, with stage machinery 20. Czesky Krumlov 3

The earliest production photo in the sequence I have just shown is from the 18th-century theater at Cesky Krumlov, near Prague; we shall be returning there next week. But it serves to demonstrate the theater technology of the time, which basically consisted of painted wings, headers, and backdrops which slid or dropped into place, together with devices for managing the appearance of gods from above or devils from below, and some simple mechanical devices for things like water. Despite the appearance of perspective in this photos, everything is painted on the flat surface, and all the painted surfaces are front on to the audience. Now this is a technology that can be recreated today, but should it be? The use of flat, obviously painted scenery puts the opera into quotes, as it were. It also calls for a rhetorical acting style to match. Sometimes that is exactly what we want; more often not.

21. Lully: designs for Atys

Enough talk. Let’s look at a production that very much “puts the opera into quotes,” going out of its way to get every last detail correct. It is a production by Jean-Marie Villégier of the opera Atys by the father of French opera, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87). Premiered in 1676, it is thus closer to Monteverdi than Rameau. It is a perfect example of opera designed for performance at court. It so happens we have a design for the Prologue of the original production, where you can see the God of Time descending from the heavens, using all that baroque machinery. Now Villégier did not have such resources at his disposal, so he keeps Time earthbound. He also adds a little tongue-in-cheek trick by presenting this (just the Prologue) as a dress-rehearsal rather than a performance. He adds a director/conductor/choreographer figure (presumably Lully himself) telling people where to go! Don’t worry too much about what is going on—it is basically Flora and her Nymphs preparing for Spring—but look at the detail around the edges: the notes being passed between the dancers, and the antics of the Harlequins. It’s something you are meant to enjoy, but not to take too seriously. And it’s diametrically different from that Rameau clip!

22. Lully: Atys, opening of the Prologue (Les Arts Florissants, Paris 2011) 23. — still from the above

C. Castrati and Others

24. Baroque opera costumes

French opera is a special case, with its own traditions. I want to turn now to Italian opera seria, which held sway not only in Italy, but in England and the German countries also. The term opera seria means what it says: serious opera dealing with big themes of great moral consequence—much like a tragedy but with a happy ending. The major characters were drawn from myth or history, involving moral conflict, and featuring gods, goddesses, and others of high degree. Contrary to our modern concept of drama, the emphasis was less upon the interaction of two or more characters than the emotional and moral changes within each character individually.

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25. Breakdown of , Act I

In consequence, the main—almost the only—expressive unit was the solo aria. Look at this index page to Handel’s Giulio Cesare. The first act consists of 15 numbers, one of which is a chorus, and one a beautiful but very static duet. All the rest are arias, 13 of them in a row, each expressing a single emotion, or just occasionally a contrast of emotions. And because of this one-emotion-one-aria principle, the major characters need several over the course of the opera to show all the facets of their personality. Caesar has four in this act alone; Cleopatra has three.

26. Farinelli, Cuzzoni, and Senesino

Emphasis on the aria meant emphasis on the singers who could deliver them. It was an age of opera stars, and none were more starry than the castrati—musically gifted boys who has been castrated at puberty so as to combine the flexibility and purity of the unbroken voice with the lung power and stature of a mature man. Handel wrote the title role of Julius Caesar for one of the most famous of these, Francesco Bernardi (1680–1750), known as Senesino. The next picture shows him onstage with his younger rival Carlo Broschi (1795–82), known as Farinelli. It is a caricature, since the castration made the unfortunate men grow into rather odd shapes and sizes, especially later in life.

Though I have also showed this before in another class, I am going to end this section with a clip from a 1994 film about Farinelli, Farinelli, il Castrato, by Gérard Corbiau. You will find it sums up a lot of what I have just been saying. The scene is as interesting for the audience reaction as for the performance itself. It shows him singing the aria "Ombra fedele anch'io" from the [real] opera Idaspe written by his brother Riccardo Broschi, whom we see conducting from the pit. The voice used for the movie is an electronic synthesis of a soprano, Ewa Mallas-Godlewska, and a , Derek Lee Ragin, who is a former alumnus of mine at Peabody.

27. Broschi: Idaspe, “Ombra fedele anch’io” (from the film Farinelli, il Castrato) 28. Title slide 2 (Farinelli title page)

D. Handel with Care — or with Abandon

29. Handel: Orlando, “Fa mi combattere” text

In the second hour, I want to show you three arias from operas by (1685–1759), undoubtedly the greatest opera composer of his age. Each will be shown in two versions, so that we may compare and discuss. The first is from his Orlando (1733), one of several operas he based on the great Italian epics of the Crusades, in this case, the Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The Christian knight Orlando, has been driven mad by his unrequited love for the pagan princess Angelica. In this aria, he begs her to impose tests on him as proofs of his love. Note how well Handel’s music expresses both the derring-do and the hysteria.

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Note also that this, like most Handel arias, is in da capo form. After the first section, the singer moves to a shorter bridge passage, then returns to sing the first section again—da capo means “from the top.” The repeat is exactly the same music on paper, but the singer is expected to improvise his own variants and ornaments. We shall hear this in two performances by the countertenor Bejun Mehta, the first in concert, and the second in a not very crisp video of a production in Brussels by Pierre Audi. Don’t worry about the strange set that looks like a junk car yard; my point is to see how the aria comes across differently when it is staged.

30. Handel: Orlando, “Fa mi combattere” in concert 31. Handel: Orlando, “Fa mi combattere” in Pierre Audi production 32. Handel: Orlando, “Fa mi combattere” text (repeat)

So what do we think? Specifically, it makes a difference to show the aria with another person, doesn’t it? One of the things I have always taught my students is that all arias are duets. Even if there is nobody else there onstage, there is still a recipient in the singer’s mind: God, for example, or his own face in a mirror. This is obviously important with Handel, where the aria is the dominant form.

33. Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” text

Let us test this out with an aria from an earlier Handel opera, Giulio Cesare (1724). This one comes almost at the very end. Cleopatra, who has almost lost the civil war with her brother Tolomeo, has been freed from prison by Caesar, and now sings a song of rejoicing. Again, we shall watch it in two versions, one a production by Francisco Negrin in Copenhagen, the other a version by David McVicar for Glyndebourne, that subsequently came to the Met. In this case, we shall play only the first section of each aria, without the bridge and da capo repeat. Cleopatra’s shaved head, incidentally, is historical, but I imagine that being imprisoned has deprived her of her usual regalia

34. Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” (Inger Dam-Jensen, Copenhagen) 35. Handel: Giulio Cesare, “Da tempeste” (Danielle De Niese, Glyndebourne) 36. — still from the above

So who is the imagined audience here? Negrin treats this entirely personally, and makes it into a kind of love duet between Cleopatra and her rescuer; her shaved head only adds to the emotion. But who is the partner in McVicar’s production? It can only be the audience itself. Although not at all a baroque production in its imagery—nineteenth-century costumes and WW2 ships—it is quite frank in its use of baroque stagecraft, down to the formal wings and the sea machine in the background. McVicar is reminding us that were are in fact in a theater, and that by sitting here we are buying into a convention that we can acknowledge at some times, forget at others. Here, he very much wants us to acknowledge it, and the bond of complicity between stage and audience is a big part of the fun

37. Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” text

The third aria I offer with some trepidation, because the production I most want to show is very racy and may shock some people. But it also provides a perfect example both of the range of latitude available to the Handel director, and also of how to make the most of a traditional da capo. So here goes.

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This is the opening aria from Handel’s Alcina (1735), another subject from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Alcina and her sister Morgana rule over a magic island, to which they entice warriors, seduce them, then turn them into animals, which they keep in a kind of private zoo. The curtain rises as one such young man, Bradamante, enters with a companion and bumps straight into Morgana. This is the aria in which she sets her sights on him. Only not a “him”; Bradmante is actually the fiancée of Alcina’s current victim, Ruggiero, and she has come here in disguise to rescue him. Both the productions I shall show are updated. The first, by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito in Stuttgart, uses only the first part of the aria, and sets the action in a once grand but now dilapidated building.

38. Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (Catriona Smith, Stuttgart) 39. — still from the above

Seduction scenes are common enough in opera—but because common, they can fail to surprise. Not so my next production, by the British director Katie Mitchell at Aix-en-Provence, who uses a much stranger kind of sex-play, into which Bradamante is drawn as a clearly-unwilling participant. Not only does Mitchell set up the dangerous world of Alcina and Morgana’s island, she also beautifully motivates all the improvised ornaments with which the singer, Anna Prohaska, decorates the da capo.

40. Handel: Alcina, “O s’apre al riso” (Anna Prohaska, Aix-en-Provence) 41. — enlarged still from the above

What did you think? Were you embarrassed? If Mitchell confuses, even embarrasses the audience, this is deliberate. Not knowing whether to watch or look away, whether to drink it in or laugh, puts us also into a realm where nothing that follows will ever be quite normal. The photo, incidentally, shows the full stage that we have been watching only in part; the inclusion of offstage action in other spaces has become a Mitchell specialty; we will see more when we watch her Lucia di Lammermoor.

E. Making Devotion Personal

42. Two Messiahs

I’d like to end with a return to Handel, but to something that is not an opera at all: a staging, believe it or not, of his oratorio Messiah. Now other Handel oratorios have been staged, things like Jephtha or Saul or Samson, because they have real characters and they tell stories; the challenge is not so different from an opera. But Messiah has no story and no characters; how can it be staged?

Director Claus Guth, who is one of my heroes, starts with the idea that in moments of extreme pressure, even normally secular people often turn to thoughts of God. He starts his story, therefore, in a large impersonal funeral home. The male soloists are connected somehow—close friends or even brothers. One of them has committed suicide, and this is his funeral. The rest of the oratorio will alternate between this real-time setting and various scenes of flashback or personal struggle. I will put two of these on the website, the opening tenor solo and the duet “He shall feed His flock”; which I actually play will depend on the time available.

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In the opening sequence, the tenor is the minister, who must address the gathering with words of comfort. But it is clear that he himself is in a crisis of doubt. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people”—do these promises have any meaning any more? He pulls himself together and enters the room, but you can still see his inner doubt. The tenor is Richard Croft.

43. Handel: Messiah, “Comfort ye, my people”

The other sequence comes towards the end of the first part. The alto—usually a woman, but here the countertenor Bejun Mehta whom we have seen before—comes into a room and finds the dead man’s widow in tears. What can he say to comfort her? There are these lines from the Bible, but does he really believe them, are they adequate? What I admire about this scene is Guth’s restraint. He does not try to spell everything out. Even more than grief, the scene is filled with love—though not sexual love. There is clearly a history between these two, but we are not told what it is; we need not be. [Look out, incidentally, for the beautiful ornamentation added by the singers whenever the music repeats.]

44. Handel: Messiah, “He shall feed His flock”

What Guth has done, I think, is to remove the odor of sanctity. Instead of treating these as words from the Holy Writ, he admits the possibility of doubt. And because the characters are themselves testing the words as they are singing, we also hear them as something new. It is a goal to be reached for in any opera: to sing words as if for the very first time. But here, in a sacred drama, it makes for an especially profound experience, because it is expressed in human terms, by people no more perfect in their faith than we are ourselves.

45. Title slide 3 (Semele in Seattle, Tomer Zvulun)

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