A strong plot, and fabulously imaginative music: but until now Handel’s “Giustino” has not been one of his most frequently-performed operas. With the new edition this could all change.

Strange things happen: a peasant’s son falls asleep whilst ploughing, and in a dream is called upon by the goddess of destiny to leave his native soil and follow his true heroic destiny. Scarcely has he set out on his way than a princess appears who is pursued by a bear. Giustino (this is the young peasant’s name) kills the beast and saves the princess Leocasta, who immediately falls in love with him and invites him to her palace. There the Byzantine Emperor Anastasio is just arming himself for battle against Vitaliano’s rebellious troops; his wife Arianna follows him into battle and is taken prisoner. Now it is up to Giustino to defeat the usurper and to save the Empress from a sea-monster who threatens to devour her – chained to a cliff by Vitaliano’s henchmen. Giustino also passes this test, and we are now just at the beginning of the second act of a fairy-tale, a fantastical and effective stage plot, at the end of which the peasant’s son turns out to be a noble Prince and an evil schemer called Amanzio, a kind of Jago of Baroque opera, and gets his just punishment.

The colourful, rich and opulent plot is matched by Handel’s music, which he wrote in 1736 to his Dramma per musica “Giustino” (HWV 37). Handel’s London opera company was then in competition with a second enterprise, the “Opera of the Nobility”, with the famous Farinelli as star singer, and Handel had planned to put forward three newly-composed stage works – “Arminio”, “Giustino” and “Berenice, Regina d’Egitto”. In “Giustino” he not only employed a wealth of stage effects, but also scored his music for large forces – trumpets, horns, oboes and recorders are heard – and the chorus numbers have accompagnati, echo effects and stage music. In the process, he created musical groupings encompassing several scenes, as were in fact first encountered in operas of the second half of the century: so, scenes 4 to 7 of Act 1 (Giustino’s life as a farmer, his dream, his setting off into the world, the rescuing of Leocasta) were depicted in an uninterrupted alternation of accompagnati, arias, chorus, sinfonia and simple recitatives – a musico-dramatic master stroke.

For the 1736/37 opera season Handel was able to count on the oboe virtuoso Giuseppe Sammartini, and rearranged two existing fully-composed musical numbers for him: the Overture and Arianna’s aria at the end of the second act, which develops into an extended bravura aria with ad lib cadenza for the oboe. At the end comes a large-scale solo-chorus complex, an alternation between the protagonists which transitions into a choral finale, all worked out as a festive chaconne.

In the 4th volume of his “General History of Music” of 1789, Charles Burney wrote an assessment of  “Giustino” which is as enthusiastic as prophetic: “Upon the whole, this opera, so seldom acted and so little known, seems to me one of the most agreeable of Handel’s dramatic productions”. The historic critical edition of the opera in the “Halle Handel Edition” will serve to bring this “most agreeable” work nearer to present-day audiences once more. The opera had its premiere at the Covent Garden Theatre on 16 February 1737, but Handel had already completed his composition five months earlier on 20 October 1736. Then, however, it was still unclear whether Sammartini would actually perform with the opera orchestra, and also, he had composed the role of Amanzio for a bass. The role of the scheming General was ultimately taken by an alto, Maria Caterina Negri, who specialised in trouser roles. The composer continued to use the time for further revisionary interventions, so that a surviving complete early version in Handel’s autograph can clearly be distinguished from the later version of the premiere.

In its main section the new volume of the “Halle Handel Edition” contains the version of the first performance, for the first time in its complete form, and the appendix contains the possibility of exploring the first version. It is somewhat more concise and compact, but above all, is shaped dramaturgically more compellingly than the form of the work which was then heard on the London stage. For modern-day interpreters, both versions offer rich material for exciting productions, which may help this magificent heroic legend – aptly described by Anthony Hicks as a “theatrical extravaganza” – to achieve greater popularity.

Wolfgang Hirschmann
(translation: Elizabteh Robinson / from [t]akte 2/2024)