George Frideric HANDEL {<»«>-) / ACIS AND GALATEA ^^^K Caiaten Sophie Daneman soprano Damon Patricia Petibon soprano Acis Paul Agnew imor Condon Joseph Cornwell tenor Polyphemus Alan Ewing tenor Andrew Sinclair tenor Francois Piolino tenor David Le Monnier baritone Handel AGIS AND Ci A «.ATEA Daneman Petibon Agnew Cornwell Ewing HANDEL AC I I VÌVA Daneman Petibon Agnew Cornwell Ewing William Christie Les Arts Florissants GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759) ACIS AND GALATEA Galatea Sophie Daneman soprano Damon Patricia Petibon soprano Acis Paul Agnew tenor Coridon Joseph Cornwell tenor Polyphemus Alan E wing bass Andrew Sinclair tenor François Pioiino tenor David Le Monnier baritone LES ARTS FLORISSANTS WILLIAM CHRISTIE COMPACT DISCI 39'18 ACT 1 1 Sinfonict - Presto 3 14 2 Chorus: "Oh, the pleasure of the plains" 4'48 3 Recitativo (Galatea): "Ye verdant plains and woody mountains" 0'42 4 [Air] Andante [Galatea): "Hush, ye pretty warbling quire!" 6'30 5 [Air] Larghetto [Acis): "Where shall I seek the charming fair?" 3'03 6 Recitativo {Damon): "Stay, shepherd, stay!" 0'19 7 [Air] Andante [Damon): "Shepherd, what art thou pursuing" 3'58 8 Recitativo [Acis): "Lo! Here my love" 0'25 9 [Air] Larghetto [Acts): "Love in her eyes sits playing" 6'05 10 Recitativo [Galatea): "Oh I Didst thou know the pains" 0'14 11 [Air] Andante [Galatea): "As when the dove laments her love" 6'08 12 [Duet] Presto (Acis, Galatea): "Happy we!" 2'40 13 Chorus: "Happy we!" 1'10 COMPACT DISC 2 5T55 ACT 2 1 Chorus - a tempo ordinario: "Wretched lovers!" 4'21 2 Recitativo accompagnato - furioso [Polyphemus): "I rage, I melt, I burn" 1' 1 5 3 [Air] Allegro [Polyphemus): "O ruddier than the cherry" 3'02 4 Recitativo [Polyphemus, Galatea): "Whither, fairest, art thou running" 0'56 5 [Air] Allegro e staccato [Polyphemus): "Cease to beauty to be suing" 4'27 6 [Air] Allegro [Damon): "Would you gain the tender creature" 5'40 7 Recitativo [Acis): "His hideous love provokes my rage" 0'22 8 [Air] Allegro [Acis): "Love sounds th'alarm" 4'32 9 [Air] Larghetto [Coridon): "Consider, fond shepherd" 6'33 10 Recitativo [Galatea): "Cease, oh cease, thou gentle youth" 0'24 11 [Trio] Andante e staccato [Acis/ Galatea, Polyphemus): "The flocks shall leave the mountains" 2' 14 12 Recitativo accompagnato [Acis): "Help, Galatea I Help, ye parent gods!" 1' 14 13 Chorus - Adagio ma non troppo: "Mourn, all ye muses!" 3'42 14 [Air & chorus] Pianissimo ed Adagio [Galatea, Chorus): "Must I my Acis still bemoan" 6'05 15 Recitativo [Galatea): "Tis done : thus I exert pow'r divine" 0'27 16 [Air] Larghetto [Galatea): "Heart, the seat of soft delight" 3'36 17 Chorus: "Galatea, dry thy tears" 3 03 LES ARTS FLORISSANTS Hiro Kurosaki, Florence Malgoire violin Mix Verzier*, Paul Carlioz cello Anne-Marie Lasla* bass viol Jonathan Cable* double bass Sebastien Marq, Michelle Tellier recorder Pier Luiqi Fabretti, Andrea Mion oboe Claude Wassmer bassoon Elizabeth Kenny*, Brian Feehan* archlute William Christie* harpsichord, organ WILLIAM CHRISTIE *continuo Continuo organ by Bernhart Junghänel, Gütersloh 1990 Two-manual French harpsichord Ecoie Hemsch by D. Jacques Way & Marc Ducornet, Paris 1997 Digital recording Producer: Martin Sauer Sound engineer & Editor: Didier Jean Recording: May 10-13, 1998 : Salie Wagram, Paris Front cover: François Perrier ( 15901650) - Acis ei Galatée se dérobant au regard de Polyphème Paris, Musée du louvre © AKG Paris Design: De l'Esprit Back cover: William Christie, pnoto Michel Szabo © Eralo Disgues S.A., Paris, France 1999 ACIS AND GALATEA and Galliard, did reach the stage of the Haymarket Winton Dean opera house. In an attempt (in Gibber's words] "to give the Town a little good Musick in a Language they ds and Galatea has always been one of understand", they concentrated on masques performed Handel's most popular works, yet has seldom if as after-pieces to straight plays in the theatres in Drury A ever been revived as he originally wrote it or as fane and Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were in effect short he directed it in any of his subsequent performances. Its operas, generally in two scenes or interludes, in the history is complex and of considerable interest. He first Italian style (that is, with sung recitative in place of grappled with the subject in a serenata, Ac/, Galatea spoken dialogue]; the plots were pastoral or e Polifemo, composed to celebrate a nobleman's mythological, with a vernacular comic element but little wedding in Naples in 1708. This had only the three or no chorus. The principal composer was Pepusch at characters of the title, Aci as a soprano castrato, Drury Lane; his Venus and Adonis (March 1715] and Galatea as a contralto; there was no chorus. It has Apollo and Daphne (January 1716) were antecedents nothing musically in common with the English setting if not models for Handel, the former with a bird aria except the accompaniment of one aria, which Handel 'Chirping warblers' accompanied by a 'flagelletto', the had also used elsewhere. Nor does it represent a latter with close resemblances in plot and language particular climax in Handel's career. The English Ads (Daphne, lustfully pursued by the god, is changed into on the other hand is a landmark not only in Handel's a tree). An earlier masque, Acis and Galatea by John career but in the history of English music, for it Eccles (1701), had a decidedly coarse libretto that establishes a link between the masque of Purcell's time could have offered Handel nothing, but like the others it and Handel's oratorios, which it strikingly anticipates in enjoyed a good deal of success. its dramatic use of the chorus. Handel's earlier settings In June 1717 Italian opera at the Haymarket fell into of English words, mostly for the church, had followed abeyance, with no immediate prospect of resumption, the native tradition established by Purcell and his and Handel, who had been living in the household of contemporaries. Ads and Galatea was something the Earl of Burlington, took a post as house composer entirely different. to the Earl of Carnarvon (later Duke of Chandos) at Its birth was not wholly without precedent. The craze Cannons a few miles out of London. Here he found for all-sung Italian opera in London, introduced by Pepusch installed as Master of the Musick. Carnarvon Clayton's Arsinoe in 1705 and reaching a climax in had close links with the Burlington circle, which 1711 with Handel's Rinaldo, sung by the leading included the poets Pope and Gay and the author and singers in Europe, inspired a reaction in favour of stage physician John Arbuthnot, with all of whom Handel was works in English. This movement, in which the poets probably already acquainted. This was the milieu from Colley Cibber and John Hughes and the composers which Ads and Galatea sprang J.C. Pepusch andJ.E. Galliard were the most prominent The simple plot, a Sicilian myth personifying the figures, could not seriously challenge the Italian opera, activities of Mount Etna, comes from Book XIII of Ovid's though one work, Calypso and Teiemachus by Hughes Metamorphoses; it had already been the subject of an opera by Luily (1686). The shepherd Acis and the and no double bass. The chorus 'Happy we' and the nymph Galatea are in love, but Acis has a rival in the air 'Would you gain the tender creature?' were not giant Polyphemus, who pays clumsy court to Galatea. present. Against the tenor parts in the opening chorus Though warned by the chorus of nymphs and Handel wrote the names of three singers (one of them shepherds, and despite the pleading of Galatea and James Blackly, who had sung the part of Mars in the advice of Damon, another shepherd, Acis defies Pepusch's Venus and Adonis at Drury Lane), but later the giant. While the lovers pledge eternal faith the crossed them out. (Brian Trowell has shown, from furious Polyphemus hills Acis with a massive rock. internal evidence, that Handel's first plan may have The chorus suggest to the disconsolate Galatea that she been to use only three voices, as in the Naples use her divine powers to make him immortal. She serenata.) changes him to a fountain, and the chorus bid her dry But Acis was probably never performed in the version her tears: he will flow on for ever, "murmuring still his of the autograph. A very early copy belonging to the gentle love". Earl of Malmesbury, dated 1718 and almost certainly This libretto was a composite undertaking, mainly by based on the lost performing score, records changes. Pope and Gay with a contribution from Hughes (whose A bassoon and a double bass had joined the Cannons cantata Venus and Adonis had been Handel's first band; the obbligato instrument in '0 ruddier than the setting of English words in 171 1) and possibly from cherry' was a sopranino, not a treble recorder; and an Arbuthnot. Embedded in the text are adaptations from air, 'Would you gain the tender creature?' was added Pope's Pastorals and translation of the Iliad and for the third tenor in the character of Condon, so that Dryden's of the Metamorphoses. Handel composed the each of the five singers had a solo as well as an music in the early summer of 171 8; a guest at ensemble part. The number of singers was not Cannons in a letter of 27 May mentioned "a little increased; the names of the characters are written opera now a makeing for [Carnarvon's] diversion against the parts in one of the choruses.