Logo: takte
Das Bärenreiter Magazin
  • Portrait
  • Music Theatre
  • Orchestra
  • Contemp. Music
  • Complete Ed.
  • Publications
  • Calendar
  • Contact

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

George Frideric Handel’s “Fernando” in Halle

George Frideric Handel
Fernando, Re di Castiglia (Fragment). Edited by Michael Pacholke (Halle Handel Edition II/27.2)
First performance (in concert) using the new edition: 1.4.2020 London (London Handel Festival), Opera Settecento, conductor: Leo Duarte (on 5.6.2020 also at the Handel Festival Halle)
Cast: Dionisio (tenor), Isabella (alto), Alfonso (alto), Elvida (soprano), Sancio (alto), Fernando (alto), Altomaro (bass)
Orchestra: ob I, II, cor I, II, tr I, II, vl I, II, III, va, db, b.c. (vc, db, bsn, hpd)
Publisher: Bärenreiter, BA 10713, BA 10260, performance material available on hire

When Handel embarked on the composition of another new opera after Ezio in December 1731, he initially wanted to retain the geographical and historic setting of the original libretto Dionisio, Re di Portogallo (Florence 1707, Antonio Salvi). Under the title Fernando, Re di Castiglia Handel began to set the story about a struggle for power between King Dionisio and his son Alfonso, in which Fernando, King of Castile, intervenes. The plot is set in the former Portuguese capital of Coimbra and its surroundings and, because of the mingling of historic and fictional events and people, can only roughly be dated to the period around 1300.

As a result, Fernando, Re di Castiglia has the most “modern” subject of all Handel’s operas after Tamerlano. This modernity is manifest in the portrayal of a father-son conflict amongst the ruling classes, with parallels to the English situation at the period when the opera was written; the setting in Portugal, the traditional ally of England, and the resolution of the conflict by the intervention of a ruler of Spain, equally traditionally at odds with England and Portugal. These were the elements which would have moved Handel and his unknown librettist in the midst of the composition process to transfer the plot to an innocuous oriental location. And so the opera was composed as Fernando, Re di Castiglia until shortly before the end of the second act, but then completed as Sosarme, Re di Media.

Fernando is thus a fragment and an early version at the same time. The editor Michael Pacholke has edited the fragmentary Fernando producing a performable form, comprehensible in musical and philological terms, as part of the Halle Handel Edition of Sosarme. A conductor’s score and parts will shortly be available on hire from Bärenreiter-Verlag. The vocal score of Sosarme, including the Fernando sections, is available on sale, thereby completing the performance material.

Tobias Gebauer
(from [t]akte 2/2019 – translation: Elizabeth Robinson)

<- Back to: Music Theatre

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

Music theatre

Ut Orpheus, now distributed by Alkor
Love and Freedom. Cavalli's opera "Scipione Affricano" in a new edition
„Rusalka“ – finally revised. The new Urtext Edition of Dvořák’s Opera
Much more than the “Danse bohemienne”. Bizet's opera “La Jolie de Perth”
Rameau’s masonic opera “Zoroastre” in the 1756 version
Not just “Carmen”: the new editorial project “Bizet’s Other Operas”
Conquest opera - Gaspare Spontini’s “Fernand Cortez”
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” from Bärenreiter
Surprise of surprises – Rameau’s “Surprises de l’amour”
“La clemenza di Tito” – even with social distancing
Laying a curse to rest - The new edition of Rameau’s Les Boréades
Theatrically rich with varied chorus and dance scenes - Telemann’s opera for Hamburg “Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe oder Orpheus”
Magnificent music and drama - A conversation with René Jacobs about Telemann’s opera “Orpheus”
Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Les Fêtes d’Hébé ou Les Talents lyriques”
Erotic, mystical, nightmarish - Jules Massenet's opera “Thaïs” available for the first time in a scholarly-critical edition
ImprintData Protection