Alcina (composed in 1735) is the most celebrated of Handel’s ‘magic’ operas. Its dynamic situations are compelling and poignant: Handel’s portrayal of an enchanted hero, his brave true love and their evil enemy inspired him to create a particularly fine score that examines intense emotional experiences such as loss, guilt, lust, nostalgia and the restoration of memory. ...
The mid-1730s operas Orlando, Ariodante and Alcina represent the artistic peak of Handel’s operatic career. Their stories all originate in the epic poem Orlando Furioso by the playwright and poet Ariosto, who was born and bred at the Ferrara court in the late fifteenth century. Orlando portrays the destructive insanity of its title-hero, who ignores his destiny by ...
A small number of Handel’s dramatic works are known as the ‘magic operas’, including Rinaldo, Teseo (1712), Amadigi (1715), Orlando (1733) and Alcina. These operas feature protagonists who use sorcery to manipulate love, usually for evil ends. Most common among these operas is the prima-donna sorceress figure, who attempts to compel a castrato hero away from his true ...
active 1719–40, Italian The exceptional soprano Strada is known to have sung in Vivaldi’s La verità in cimento (‘The Truth Tested’, 1720) in Venice in 1721. Between 1724 and 1726 she sang for Vinci, Porpora and Leo at Naples, where she also married the theatre manager Aurelio del Pò. She arrived in London in 1729, where she ...
1587–c. 1637, Italian Francesca Caccini was the daughter of composer and singer Giulio Caccini (1551–1618). She sang at lavish musical entertainments staged in Florence and also performed in Paris with her mother and sister in 1604–05. Francesca, known as La Cecchina (‘The Little Fairy’), was extremely versatile: she was not only a singer, but a talented performer on ...
, the Opera of the Nobility moved into the King’s Theatre. Handel, meanwhile, enjoyed the facilities of the newly built Covent Garden, where his operas Ariodante and Alcina (both 1735) were enhanced by ballets featuring the brilliant French dancer Marie Sallé. In the later 1730s, a need to sustain his London public seems to have brought Handel ...
theatre seasons. For the 1734–35 season, Handel established an independent opera company at John Rich’s new Covent Garden Theatre, but, despite the successes of Ariodante (1735) and Alcina (1735), Handel struggled against competition from the ‘Opera of the Nobility’, which had replaced him at the King’s Theatre. The rivalry did not benefit either faction, and by the ...
c. 1704–c. 1760, Italian Carestini studied in Milan from the age of 12, and gave his debut there in 1719. He studied with Antonio Maria Bernacchi, and sang alongside his teacher in his Roman debut of Alessandro Scarlatti’s La Griselda (1721). He spent most of the 1720s singing in operas by Leonardo Vinci (c. 1696–1730), Porpora and Hasse ...
(Jool’-yo Ka-che’-ne) c. 1545–1618 Italian composer Caccini was a singer and instrumentalist at the Medici court. His most important publication was Le nuove musiche (‘The New Music’, 1602), which contained madrigals and strophic songs with basso continuo. Its preface, in which ornamentation and figured bass are discussed, outlines the stile rappresentativo. In this new monodic style he sought to follow ...
1710–78, English Arne was born in Covent Garden, so it is not surprising that he spent most of his life providing music for the theatre. In 1732 he formed an English opera company with Lampe and Carey, and their first production Amelia (1732) featured his sister Susanna (later Mrs Cibber, for whom Handel composed ‘He was despised’). ...
The rise of opera in the early Baroque period provided increased musical opportunities for women, especially as singers, but also as composers. One of the earliest female opera singers was Vittoria, who worked for the Medici court in Florence. Her career was overshadowed by that of another Medici employee, the composer and singer Francesca Caccini, who ...
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