I am one of those Handelians, but I agree with these observations about
the operas (I generally prefer the oratorios) and insistance on historical
practice and completeness.  I do like some works that Mozart wrote before
he was 20, however.


   To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
   Arts site, go to http://arts.guardian.co.uk

   Too much to Handel
   Its effect is horrible, said Shaw; it made Berlioz grind his
   teeth and curse. Should we call time on our obsession with
   Handel's music, asks Andrew Huth

   Andrew Huth
   Friday April 06 2007
   The Guardian

   Is London getting enough Handel opera?  We've just had Orlando
   at Covent Garden, Agrippina at the Coliseum, Ariodante at the
   Barbican, and the London Handel Festival's Poro, Re del'Indie.
   In the next few weeks, the Barbican is also giving us Giulio
   Cesare, Acis and Galatea and Amadigi.  That's a mere seven in
   four months.  Since Handel wrote around 40 operas his hardline
   fans are probably wondering why they can't have a few dozen more.
   They should sleep easy: there's plenty more Handel on the way.
   In two years' time we'll be celebrating the 250th anniversary
   of his death, when the enthusiasts will expect to hear every
   single note of every single version of every single opera.

   For three decades following his move to England in 1712,
   Handel's main activity was the composition of Italian opera.
   His theatre career, spiced with triumphs, flops, intrigues,
   rivalries, tantrums and bankruptcies makes for entertaining
   reading.  Eventually fashion turned against him, and in 1741 he
   abandoned the theatre for good.  A canny opportunist, he switched
   from Italian opera to English oratorio, from entertaining the
   aristocracy to edifying the middle classes.  He was soon idolised
   by the very people who despised the theatre as a sink of iniquity
   and whose attitudes and prejudices effectively killed music and
   drama in England for two centuries.  Sacred oratorio was another
   matter, though: it was the next best thing to divine service.

   If Victorian Handel-worshippers were even aware of the operas'
   existence, they dismissed them as one of the great man's failings,
   like his reputed ability to swear in nine different languages.
   "Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution,"
   explained George Bernard Shaw.  "What is more, he is a sacred
   institution.  When his Messiah is performed, the audience stands
   up, as if in church, while the Hallelujah chorus is being sung.
   It is the nearest sensation to the elevation of the Host known
   to English protestants.  Every three years, there is a Handel
   festival, at which his oratorios are performed by 4,000 executants,
   collected from all the choirs in England.  The effect is horrible:
   and everybody declares it sublime."

   The decline in monster oratorio performances coincided with the
   beginning of the Handel opera revival, which started timidly in
   the 1920s, gathered pace after the second world war, and really
   took off in the 1970s and 80s.  This revival was closely bound
   up with the quest to perform music of earlier periods on the
   right instruments and in the appropriate style.  A reduction in
   forces and a lighter touch in performance revealed the strength
   of Handel's slim, lean textures, and a study of baroque ornamentation
   showed how apparently simple lines could flower into gorgeous
   vocal display.

   Today, Handel's operas are better business than they ever were
   in his lifetime.  They're good box-office and relatively cheap
   to produce.  All one needs is a handful of singers and an orchestra
   that, with a bit of a squeeze, can be fitted into the back of a
   van.  Producers are attracted by the ever-shifting tangle of
   relationships and by the mythological or semi-historical settings
   that can be moulded to fit almost any concept.

   Bringing great music from the past back to life is a splendid
   thing.  But all the same, it is sometimes hard to avoid the
   impression of self-denying worthiness that clings to some Handel
   opera performances, particularly the unstaged concert versions.
   The Victorians may have regarded his oratorios with pious awe,
   but they also revelled in the size and sonority of their huge
   choruses and orchestras.  It was an acceptable form of sensuality.
   How much sensuality, how much genuine delight, can one read on
   the faces of a modern audience who sit for over three hours
   through an unbroken series of solo arias and recitatives?  Handel
   wasn't at all an austere composer, but his operas are highly
   stylised and depend on the manipulation of a limited range of
   forms.  Limitation can be a great stimulus to an artist, but
   even if we fully accept and enjoy the conventions Handel used
   with such wit and skill, we're still left with an awful lack of
   variety for a full evening's entertainment.  Don't th e devout
   Handel fans ever yearn for a chorus or a vocal ensemble?  Wouldn't
   they enjoy a bit more orchestral colour?  Or even some dancing
   now and then?

   At least we've learned that "authentic" performance can be sensual
   - not something that could be taken for granted in the pioneering
   phase of the early music movement, when any concession to pleasure,
   let alone beauty of tone or properly tuned instruments, took
   second place to dour notions of historical accuracy.  There's
   nothing so depressingly old-fashioned as a 30-year-old recording
   of baroque music.  But one vital element is still missing.  Handel
   operas live or die by the singing, and we're not hearing what
   really thrilled his original audiences: the male castrato voice.
   In the early days of the Handel opera revival, the castrato parts
   tended to be transposed down an octave for tenors.  Now they're
   usually given to male countertenors or to women.  Whatever
   gender-bending solution we choose, it won't be the real thing
   until some enlightened Home Secretary decides that our streets
   could be made safer by castrating a few hoodies and teaching
   them to sing.

   Respect for the original texts is another very splendid thing,
   but the dogma that nothing must be changed and nothing cut ensures
   that we are spared no longueurs or weaknesses.  Handel worked
   under enormous pressure, and no-one can claim that he always
   composed at the highest level.  Any full-length work, even the
   best of them, has its less than inspired patches.  Minor pieces,
   too, are accepted as though they're major ones, a lack of
   discrimination similar to the respect accorded to every note
   composed by Mozart.  Last year's anniversary reminded us that
   there are enough mature masterpieces by Mozart to satisfy us for
   a lifetime, and there are very few reasons why we should seriously
   bother with anything he wrote before he was 20.  Completeness
   is a virtue for historians, archivists and the compilers of
   dictionaries, but has little to do with living art.

   With so much vocal and instrumental talent around, and with so
   many groups prepared to investigate obscure corners of the baroque
   repertory, there's no need to allow Handel a monopoly.  There
   are literally thousands of operas from the early 18th century
   that haven't been staged in modern times, and even if we can
   dismiss most of them there's no excuse for not being a little
   more adventurous.  Seven Handel operas in London within a few
   months is all very well, but not one of our major companies has
   ever produced anything by Rameau, his great French contemporary,
   a magnificent composer whose stage works contain far more variety
   than anything Handel can offer.

   Yes, Handel is wonderful.  Of course he's a great dramatist.
   Of course we're lucky to be able to hear and see his operas
   again.  But there's no disrespect in suggesting that something
   is out of proportion.  As it happens, there are plenty of people,
   a surprising number of them professional musicians, who find the
   Handel cult puzzling.  Some have never recovered from gruesome
   amateur Messiahs in childhood.  Others cringe from the beefy
   cheerfulness that Handel so often falls back on.  Many find his
   initial ideas striking enough, but lose interest after a few
   bars when the rum-ti-tum takes over.  It has been pointed out
   that his sometimes erratic word setting in the English oratorios
   reinforced the myth, widespread for many years, that English
   isn't a suitable language for singing.

   Such dissent is rarely aired in public, though.  The doubters
   tend to follow the example of that arch-sceptic Berlioz, who
   prudently kept his feelings to himself during his visits to
   England: "When I hear or read certain pieces by that gross master,
   I content myself with a vigorous grinding of teeth until I'm
   back home and can heap curses upon his head in private."

   Giulio Cesare (April 19) and Amadigi di Gaula (May 18) are at
   the Barbican, London (020-7638 8891).  Acis & Galatea is at
   Christ Church Spitalfields, London (020-7377 6793) on April 25

   Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

Roger Hecht

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