Handel’s oratorio “La Resurrezione” marked the arrival of an international musical talent. The almost two-hour work takes as its theme the Angel’s fight against Lucifer, equating it to the Resurrection. It is now published in an Urtext edition in the Halle Handel Edition.

On Easter Sunday, 8 April 1708, Handel’s second Italian oratorio, La Resurrezione di nostro Signor Gesù Cristo, was performed in sumptuous surroundings in the Palazzo Bonelli, the Roman palace of the Marchese Francesco Maria Ruspoli, one of Handel’s patrons. The oratorio was repeated the next day, Monday 9 April.

Documents in the Ruspoli archives (published by Ursula Kirkendale in 1967) give many details about the preparations for the performances, the work of the painters and carpenters and their payments, the orchestral players and the singers, and even of the refreshments served in the interval between the two parts of the oratorio.

A stage was erected for the orchestra and the singers, behind which was a large painted backcloth by Michelangelo Cerruti (1666–1748), representing the Resurrection with cherubs and angels, the Angel sitting on the tomb, St. John the Evangelist beside a mountain, and devils plunging into the abyss. A large orchestra, led by Arcangelo Corelli, had been assembled, following the precedent of similar ensembles for important occasions.

The payment document lists the names of four male singers, who appear elsewhere in the documents as soprano, contralto, tenor and bass respectively: they sang the Angel, Mary the wife of Cleophas, St. John and Lucifer. The part of Mary Magdalene was sung by a female soprano described by a contemporary as living in Ruspoli’s house, and generally assumed to have been Margherita Durastanti, who had been in Ruspoli’s service since January 1707. She was later to take the title-role in Agrippina in Venice, and sang for Handel in London during the 1720s and 1730s.

Ruspoli was risking Papal displeasure by having a woman sing in La Resurrezione, because in January 1703 Clement XI had issued an edict forbidding the participation of women in public musical performances; and indeed before the second performance on Monday 9 April a reproof was delivered, according to the diary of Francesco Valesio, “for having a female singer in the oratorio the previous evening”. A letter written on 17 April by the Bavarian representative confirms that it was delivered personally to Ruspoli by Cardinal Paolucci, and that the singer in question was“ a female singer that he has in his house”, but neither document gives any information about how this affected the Monday performance. Ursula Kirkendale assumed that a castrato took over the role of Mary Magdalene for the second performance, and most modern commentators have repeated the idea; but there seems to be no contemporary evidence for it and no indication of a payment to an extra singer.

There is no record of any further performances of La Resurrezione in Handel’s lifetime, nor for more than two centuries afterwards.

The libretto

The author was Carlo Sigismondo Capece (1652–1728). All four New Testament gospels give accounts of the Resurrection, with differences of detail about the identity and actions of the witnesses to the event. Capece based his text on two sources: 1) St. John’s gospel, in which the evangelist claims to have been one of those present at the tomb; and 2) the tradition of Christ’s descent into Limbo, or “The Harrowing of Hell”, for the purpose of releasing the souls of the virtuous men and women of antiquity who had been placed there before the redemption of mankind brought about by Christ. The story is told through the emotional reactions of the three disciples as the events unfold, beginning on the morning of Easter Saturday; this is set within the framework of a confrontation between the Angel and Lucifer (Satan), who objects violently to Christ’s descent into Hell.

Handel’s autograph has survived: it has no overture, and shows a different beginning for the oratorio from the one recorded in the performing score: this score, which has the same word-text as the printed libretto, was written by a team of Roman copyists, and was undoubtedly used for the performances and as a source for the performing parts. Clearly the composer revised the opening of the work before performance, and in doing so improved its dramatic coherence.

When Handel travelled to England the autograph score went with him, but the performing score remained in the Ruspoli archives in Rome, and it was eventually acquired by Bishop of Münster in 1862. This score was not properly studied until the middle of the 20th century, so before that its evidence about what was actually performed was unknown, and the editions published by Arnold in about 1796 and Chrysander in 1878 gave only the autograph version of the work.

The new HHA edition is the first complete critical edition of this remarkable oratorio, one of the young Handel’s finest compositions in Italy; it is a work of great dramatic power and some startlingly original and beautifully scored music. Its best known number is the lovely aria “Ho non so che nel cor” for Mary Magdalene, which Durastanti sang again in Agrippina in 1709. An Appendix gives the movements which Handel rejected in his revision.

Terence Best
from [t]akte 2/2010