Goodness triumphs, and Beauty is purified: Handel’s allegorical oratorio “La Bellezza ravveduta nel trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” is an extremely attractive work, thanks to its melodic richness and captivating arias, duets and quartets.

Handel’s first oratorio was composed in Rome at the beginning of 1707 and was long known as Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (“The Victory of Time and Disillusion”, HWV 46a), But in the primary source, a manuscript preserved at Münster in Westphalia, it is entitled La Bellezza Raueduta nell’ Trionfo Del Tempo e del Disinganno. In modernised spelling, the title of this allegorical oratorio is La Bellezza ravveduta nel trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (“Beauty Reformed by the Victory of Time and Disillusion”). The correct title helps to distinguish between the strictly dramatic early work, with its vocal parts sung entirely by four soloists (portraying Beauty, Time, Truth or Insight and Sensual Pleasure), and the later oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità, (“The Victory of Time and Truth”), HWV 46b, with its five choruses and more strongly reflective elements, in the 1737 version. More than half of the music in HWV 46b is completely or largely different from that in HWV 46a and only about a third is the same, or little altered. This has now been clarified, despite the almost identical titles of the work.

La Bellezza ravveduta is an allegorical oratorio with a plot which follows the most typical theme found in this genre – that of controversy. The dialogues in oratorios of this kind were partly, or in the case of HWV 46a, exclusively expressed through ‘personifications’. An actual person or a personification is pulled in two directions. People argue over her, she is tugged to and fro, but ultimately she remains steadfast in faith or is converted or purified. The personifications in allegorical oratorios are abstractions, and as such, mainly have fixed roles, either belonging to the side of good (Time and Truth or Insight) or bad (Sensual Pleasure). Bellezza, however, is an embodiment of the openness, mutability and multifaceted nature of some allegorical figures. The result – goodness triumphs and evil is defeated – is clear from the outset, but in our case Beauty is purified through the triumph of Time and Truth over worldly pleasures.

As there was no corresponding record in Francesco Valesio’s (1670–1742) official Diario di Roma, we can be relatively certain that HWV 46a was performed neither in Rome nor elsewhere during Handel’s lifetime. Performances of La Bellezza ravveduta during Lent 1707 might have been thwarted by Carlo Cesarini (1666 to 1741 or later), “maestro di musica” at the court of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili (1653–1730), the librettist of the oratorio. There is evidence of performances of Cesarini’s oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo nella Bellezza ravveduta  for the period 1718 to 1725; a printed libretto survives from 1725. It remains unclear whether the music now lost was written entirely by Cesarini, or whether something of Handel’s composition survived. Vestiges of Handel in Cesarini’s oratorio might include those arias from La Bellezza ravveduta, whose texts fit metrically to Handel’s music in the libretto of 1725. Perhaps the beauty of arias such as Tempo’s powerful “Urne voi, che racchiudete”, Piacere’s “Lascia la spina”, one of Handel’s most famous melodies, or Piacere’s virtuoso “Come nembo che fugge col vento” prompted Cesarini to curb his ambition to replace Handel’s music with his own. He might also have hoped that listeners would think he was the composer of these pieces too.

With La Bellezza ravveduta the 22-year-old Handel, then right at the beginning of his oratorio output, achieved one of his greatest successes in this genre. In its melodic richness, much inspired by the works of Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739), the composition was not surpassed by any other oratorio. At the end of an impressive sequence of captivating arias, duets and quartets, Bellezza’s absolution and return to a god-fearing virtuous life, accompanied by her stunningly beautiful, heart-breaking concluding aria “Tu del Ciel ministro eletto” expressed in a poignant E major, is a high point of dramatic irony in Handel’s output.

Unlike many other oratorios and all Baroque operas, there is never any departure from the plot: all the arias relate to the dispute between the four dramatis personae. And this pared-down dramatic structure is another reason that the oratorio has been performed many times in recent years, mainly in staged performances and to great acclaim, but still under the now-obsolete, less meaningful title Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.    

Michael Pacholke
(from [t]akte 1/2020 – translation: Elizabeth Robinson)