Handel’s second opera for the Royal Academy of Music takes as its theme the conflict between the arbitrary use of power by the state and personal honour. In Halle, audiences will shortly be able to hear Handel’s original conception of Floridante in a performance using the newly-published volume in the Halle Handel Edition.
Operas of the enlightenment end happily: the “best of all possible words” is reflected in their final scenes with reunited pairs of lovers and a transformed villain. Handel’s opera Floridante, however, begins with a happy end: Persia has conquered Tyre. The commander of the Persian fleet, the Thracian Prince Floridante, can now claim his promised prize, Elmira, the daughter of King Oronte. Even Timante, the defeated and imprisoned crown prince of Tyre, is happy: before the outbreak of war, he was betrothed to Rossane, Elmira’s sister. Now he can at least be nearby, if incognito. But then, a letter from the King hits all the participants and the audience like a blow: he withdraws the supreme command from Floridante and expels him from the country. Nobody understands Oronte’s motives until he himself reveals his plan to the daughter: he wants to marry her. For a few bars of recitative we suspect incest. But Oronte’s plans are political in nature: years ago, he had seized the rule of Persia. From the royal family, only a small child survived: under the name of Elvira, he pretended that the girl was his daughter. Now he wants to belatedly legitimise his rule through marriage and to win over the supporters of the old dynasty to his side. Yet, despite anticipated thanks for saving her, he only encounters hatred and abhorrence from her. The machiavellian opportunism of state comes up against a code of values in which love, truth and honour have their own absolute values. As a result, the conflict is clearly defined, during the course of which plans for escape, duels, a poisoned chalice, a prison scene and a revolution outside the door play their well-known parts from baroque opera.
For Handel too, 1720 was a happy end to three years without opera in London. Supported by King George I, who had already been Handel’s employer as Elector of Hanover, Handel headed the newly-founded Royal Academy of Music, for which he had assembled a first-class, almost entirely Italian ensemble.
Yet very soon there were tensions. In the management of the opera the conservative nobility won the upper hand, who were coolly opposed to the “German” King and sympathised with the Catholic pretender to the throne living in exile. As house composer, Handel acquired a competitor in Giovanni Bononcini, who knew how to win over the public with lighter, song and dance-like arias, and in Paolo Rolli, the Italian secretary of the opera, a vain and scheming librettist with little stage experience – a situation with plenty of potential for conflict.
Nothing of the conflicts became public knowledge. They began at the latest during the composition of Floridante, when Handel’s favourite for the role of Elmira, Margherita Durastanti, failed to return to London after her summer holiday because of illness: the management pushed through the promotion of Anastasia Robinson, lover of the Earl of Peterborough and a pupil of Bononcini, to prima donna. When roles were sung by new singers it was normal that new arias were composed, tailored to suit the abilities and preferences of the performers. Handel, however, only went along with this when it did not run counter to his conception of the roles. In the case of Elmira, the most important role in the opera, he was not prepared to make compromises. But Robinson had a lower voice and a more limited vocal range. He had to not only transpose the previously-composed arias, but also to reduce them to fit her vocal range, a procedure which was impossible without forfeiting quality.
In the next season, Handel regained favour and influence, though political developments helped him. For various reasons, not least because of their closeness to the instigators of a Jacobite conspiracy, Bononcini and Rolli fell out of favour. Together with his tried and tested librettist Nicola Haym, Handel was now able to create his great master operas Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano and Rodelinda.
Floridante also displays traits of this mastery, but suffered during Handel’s lifetime and continues to suffer today from the unfavourable conditions at the time of its composition. Those who want to perform this opera are bound to consider Handel’s original conception of the work. With the publication of the opera in the Halle Handel Edition, the materials required are now available. The success of Alan Curtis’s recording, an attempt to come closer to Handel’s ideal, has demonstrated that Floridante can hold its own amongst Handel’s operas. The opera will be performed at the Handel Festival Halle in June 2009 for the first time using the new edition.
Hans Dieter Clausen
(translation: Elisabeth Robinson)
from: [t]akte 1/2009