The Classical Music Book

88 AN INTERNATIONAL STYLE

director. He traveled to Europe

to engage the finest orchestral

musicians and the most celebrated

singers, including the Italian

castrato Senesino, and the

soprano Francesca Cuzzoni.

Handel understood the

audience’s continual hunger for

novelty. When London audiences

became used to these artists,

he brought in another soprano,

Faustina Bordoni, who built a rival

fan base among the audience,

reinvigorating interest in the opera

for a few more seasons. The high

fees paid to such luminaries may

have been part of the reason that

the company went out of business

in 1728 with debts of around

£20,000 (over $5.5 million today).

Master of stagecraft

Handel wrote a series of 13 operas

for the Royal Academy of Music,

which had 235 performances in his

lifetime. Masterpieces in the Italian

style, they included Giulio Cesare

in Egitto (“Julius Caesar in Egypt”,

1724) and Alcina (1735). Although

he used the operatic conventions of

the day—recitatives and arias—to

unfold the narrative, he gave the

operas a dramatic structure that

was unusual at the time. He also

understood the importance of

spectacle, and a number of his

operas required elaborate stage

machinery. In Alcina, which was

written for the new opera house

at Covent Garden, the stage

directions include “with lightning

and thunder, the mountain

crumbles, revealing Alcina’s

delightful palace.” Such stage

effects attracted audiences just

as much as the music.

A new direction

When Italian opera went out

of fashion in London after the

extraordinary success in 1728

of John Gay’s The Beggar’s

Opera, which satirized the form,

Handel used his skills to create

and popularize oratorios in English.

Starting with Deborah (1733),

these thrillingly dramatic works for

solo singers, chorus, and orchestra

told biblical stories with English-

language librettos, but were

performed unstaged in theatres. To

some extent influenced by operatic

traditions, and even Greek tragedy,

Handel developed a directness of

style and a new kind of robustness

that appealed to British audiences.

The public flocked to hear works

such as Messiah (1742), Samson

Public music and

concert-going

London was the first city to

establish public concerts with

paying audiences. The trend

began around 1672, when the

violinist and composer John

Banister organized a paying

concert in his own house. By

the time Handel arrived in

London, there were purpose-

built venues for chamber

music concerts. In addition,

theatres in Drury Lane and

the Haymarket offered Italian

and, later, English opera to

London’s beau monde.

From around 1740, pleasure

gardens sprang up across the

capital, most famously in

Vauxhall. Here visitors

would stroll, dine, and be

entertained by live music from

wind bands and orchestras.

A rehearsal of Handel’s Music

for the Royal Fireworks in

Vauxhall Gardens, in 1749,

attracted some 12,000 people,

each paying two shillings

and sixpence, and causing

a three-hour traffic jam on

London Bridge.

The band plays music from

an illuminated bandstand in

London’s Vauxhall Gardens, UK,

while visitors stroll and dance

in the open air.

He saw men and women

where others have seen only

historical-mythical busts.

Paul Henry Lang

Music critic

Handel understands

effect better than

any of us—when he

chooses, he strikes like

a thunderbolt.

Wolfgang Amadeus

Mozart

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