Alien Adventures: Exoticism in Italian-Language Baroque Opera

Author(s): Ralph P. Locke

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 150, No. 1909 (Winter, 2009), pp. 53-69
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25597660
Accessed: 29-02-2020 05:59 UTC

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This article was greatly
strengthened by comments
and suggestions from Roger
Freitas, Ellen T. Harris,
Rebecca Harris- Warrick,
Wendy Heller, Robert C.
Ketterer, Lowell Lindgren,
Margaret Murata, and
Amanda Eubanks Winkler.
A somewhat briefer version
has appeared in German
translation (by Arnold
Jacobshagen): 'Exotismus
in der Opera seria?', in
Arnold Jacobshagen & Panja
M?cke, edd.: H?ndeis Opern
(Laaber: Laaber- Verlag,
2009), pp.221?35. H?ndeis
Opern (divided into two
'Teilb?nder'; my chapter is in
the first) comprises volume 2
of Das H?ndel-Handbuch,
ed. Hans-Joachim Marx.
i. Nine ti served as the basis
for more than 30 operas by
such notable composers as
Hasse and Paisiello.
2. For a list of the operas
that were based (sometimes
freely) on each of Zeno's and
Metastasio's libretti, see the
Zeno and Metastasio entries
in Grove music online, at
www. oxfordmusiconline. com.
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RALPH P. LOCKE
Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language
Baroque opera
Italian operas of the 17th and early 18th centuries ? i.e. operas in
Italian, whether composed for Italian theatres or elsewhere ? are more
familiar to most music lovers than are operas in other languages. (Only
a handful of the latter are at all well known, including Purcell's Dido and
Aeneas and Rameau's Les Indes galantes.) Many Italian-language operas,
especially by Handel, have been successfully staged in recent decades,
sometimes in major opera houses and featuring such international singing
stars as the soprano Ren?e Fleming and the countertenor Andreas Scholl.
Even the veteran tenor Pl?cido Domingo took on a Handel role recently at
Washington National Opera: the intensely dramatic Bajazete (the Ottoman
Sultan Beyazid I) in Tamerlano. Many more such operas have been preserved
in stylish performances on CD or DVD, including some remarkable ones
by Vivaldi.
Since Italian-language operas of the era before Gluck and Mozart were
often based on tales about historical figures in ancient Greece and Rome,
one might expect that characters coming from more distant parts of the
world would rarely if ever appear in them. But the ancient Greek and
Roman empires interacted with ? and historians such as Herodotus reported
on ? quite distant locations, including Egypt, Georgia ('Colchis', native
land of the magic-wielding, murderous Medea), Persia, Scythia, even India.
Other libretto plots derived from stories about China or the Crusades that
were largely invented, though perhaps taken as historical by some audience
members.
As a result, many Italian opera libretti of the era included non-Europeans
among their main characters: generally ancient pagans or else (especially in
the many operas set during the Crusades) Muslims. Zeno's oft-set libretto
Statira involved a struggle between an ancient Persian crown princess (the
title role) and a Scythian king who has killed her father. Similarly, several
of Metastasio's most frequently set libretti took place in exotic locales,
including Siroe, re di Persia (Siroe, King of Persia) and Nitteti.1 The latter is
located in ancient Egypt and derives from one or several novels and plays
that embroidered on characters and events reported in Herodotus.2 As these
examples suggest, a recent observation by Melania Bucciarelli can be taken
more generally: 'Early-eighteenth-century Venetian opera' ? or, I would
say, 17th- and early 18th-century Italian opera as a whole - 'still enjoys
the musical times Winter 200g 53
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 54 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
What makes an opera exotic?
3- Melania Bucciarelli:
'Taming the exotic: Vivaldi's
Armida al campo d'Egitto\
in Michael Talbot, ed.:
Vivaldi, 'Moteiuma ' and
the opera seria: essays on a
newly discovered work and
its background (Turnhout,
2008), pp.81?102 (at p.81).
See also Angelo Mich?le
Piemontese: 'Persia e
persiani nel drama per
m?sica veneziano', in Opera
e libretto, vol.2 (Florence,
1994), pp. 1?34. Piemontese,
restricting himself to libretti
involving Persians (usually
in a Persian locale), counts
no fewer than 108 that were
performed in Venice in the
17th and 18th centuries and
270 that were written and
performed anywhere in
Europe. (These astonishing
numbers do not take into
account multiple settings
of a single libretto.) On
the range of (often exotic)
subject matter in Venetian
opera, see Eleanor Selfridge
Field: A new chronology
of Venetian opera and
related genres, 1660?iy6o
(Stanford, 2007), pp.55-57.
Wendy Heller explores the
specific fascination with
ancient Egypt in Venetian
opera: 'Venezia in Egitto:
Egyptomania and exoticism
in seventeenth-century
Venetian opera', in Francesco
Cotticelli & Paologiovanni
Maione, edd.: L'arte della
scena e Vesotismo in et?
moderna ? the performing
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only a small place in the musicological investigation of exoticism. Yet the
repertoire contains a significant number of suitable candidates for such a
study.'3
Is it exoticism that we encounter in libretti set in the ancient world or semi
legendary China? The consensus among scholars specialising in musical
exoticism would seem to be that it is not. Thomas Betzwieser puts the
prevailing view plainly: an opera of the 18th century that might, 'thanks to
its topography', seem at first to be exotic is generally not felt as such because
it lacks 'an Oriental ambience [e.g. sets and costumes], the portrayal of
foreign rites, or the use of exotic instruments', and also (he implies) because
it lacks music imitating or evoking in more comprehensive ways the musical
style of the locale.4 Another opera scholar, Gilles de Van, makes a similarly
categorical exclusion: he derides Baroque operas with Eastern characters for
taking place in some 'magnificent site' (he uses the generic Italian libretto
phrase 'luogo magnifico') that is marked by an 'indefiniteness in time and
space ', and he contrasts this with the specificity of 19th-century 'local colour',
which he clearly finds welcome and gratifying.5 Peter Bachmann, a noted
specialist in Arabic literature, reproaches the supposedly Muslim characters
in Tamerlano and other Italian libretti of the Baroque era for speaking like
ancient Greeks and Romans. In particular, he objects that they refer to
various divinities in the plural, a practice that would be sacrilegious within
Islam (for example, 'oh, gods' or 'the divinities [Numi] of honesty').6
Such scholarly head-shakings have a point. Most of the Italian operas of
this period that are set in Persia or other such countries make little matter of
locale and ethnicity. Instead, they focus on complicated tangles involving
arts and exoticism in the various individual Baroque (Paris, 2009), pp.163?219.
modern age (Naples, 2007), era works, or groups of them
pp. 141-57. On equivalent (such as opere serie about the 5. Gilles de Van: 'L'exotisme
trends in England, see James Moghul empire) in detail. fin du si?cle et le sens du
Anderson Winn: 'Heroic See, in particular, Bucciarelli: lointain', in Lorenza Guiot
song: a proposal for a revised 'Taming', and Piemontese: and J?rgen Maehder, edd.:
history of English theatre 'Persia', as well as various Letteratura, music e teatro al
and opera, 1656?1711', in chapters in Norbert Dubowy, tempo di Ruggero Leoncavallo:
Eighteenth-Century Studies Reinhard Strohm, et al., Locarno, Biblioteca Cantonale
vol.30 no.2 (Winter 1996? edd.: Italian opera in Central y?8?9 ottobre 1993 (Milan,
97), pp.i 13-37. Europe, 3 vols (Berlin, 2006); i995),PP-I03-i7(atp.io5).
and Fran?oise Dartois
4. Thomas Betzwieser: Lapeyre: 'Turcs et turqueries 6. Peter Bachmann: '
Exotismus und 'T?rkenoper' dans les "repr?sentations en "From Arabia's spicy
musique" (XVIIe-XVIIIe shores": Orient in H?ndeis
in der franz?sischen Musik des
ancien R?gime (Laaber, 1993), si?cles)', in Turcs et turqueries Textvorlagen', in G?ttinger
pp.16?17. A number of more (XVIe-XVIIIe si?cles), H?ndel-Beitr?ge vol.8 (2000),
recent articles have examined preface by Lucien B?ly pp.i-i4(atpp.3-4).
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7- Don Neville: 'Nitteti,
Grove music online.
8. This emphasis on the
correction, purgation, and
possibly even religious
conversion of a heathen
tyrant echoes what, in the
oratorios, is often the divine
punishment - and resulting
improved morals ? of
'us' Israelites/Christians;
see Ruth Smith: Handel's
oratorios and eighteenth
century thought (Cambridge,
i995),pp.27i-75.
9. 'L?, l'esclavage est pr?s
de la grandeur: l'amour
y touche ? la f?rocit?: les
passions des Grands sont
sans freins': Beaumarchais's
preface to Tarare (opera
with music by Salieri), in
Betzwieser: Exotismus, p. 3 36;
cf. John A. Rice: Antonio
Salieri and Viennese opera
(Chicago, 1998), p.380.
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several or all of the following: romantic love; lustful desire; private vendetta;
fidelity to the memory of a dear one; and loyalty to country, family, or a
close friend. The knot is often sliced, toward the evening's end, by a tyrant's
sudden generosity (as in Statira) or the revelation that one person is in fact
somebody else long presumed dead (as in Nitteti). Indeed, Nitteti (though
set in ancient Egypt) has been aptly described by Don Neville as a 'twin' to
the same librettist's L'olimpiade, which is peopled entirely with Greeks and
takes place during preparations for the Olympic Games:
Both dramas deal exclusively with love triangles woven around characters drawn from
Herodotus (two men and one woman in L'olimpiade, two women and one man in Nitteti)
in which the two contestants are friends. The resolutions then come about through the
discovery of a blood relationship between one of the friends and the character [who is]
adored, and his/her union with a figure of royalty who has been on hand throughout.7
Still, the fact is that many of these Italian operas were set, expressly, not
only in a distant time but in a distant place, and the two factors of time
and place may have some bearing on how one digests the characters and
situations. Among other things, this double-distancing may amount to
one way that high European civilisation attempted to control and contain
the perceived threat of foreignness, namely by rewriting it in the image
of Europe 's own honored forebears. Viewed from that angle, the question
of whether the Eastern characters are perceived positively or negatively
can be considered a secondary one: more basic is that those characters have
been colonised as so much new matter to be squeezed into the existing
boxes of European musical theatre. In any case, the portrayals often are
quite negative, with Eastern tyrants, in particular, subjected to a moralising
'improvement' or 'correction' at the end, as if they had seen the light and
found it rising in the West.8
Clearly, the stereotypes and cultural myths about foreigners (the few
available 'histories' of foreign countries were fragmentary and heavily
anecdotal) allowed characters in serious operas to engage in various kinds
of exaggerated and dramatically effective actions. As the French playwright
and librettist Beaumarchais put it with a touch of coyness (in his 1787 preface
to a French opera for which he had written the libretto, Tarare):
Our oh-so-civilised manners [les moeurs tr?s-civilis?es] are too well established {m?thodiques]
to be theatrically effective. Oriental manners, more varied [disparates] and less familiar,
leave more opportunity to the imagination. [...] There, slavery rubs shoulders with
[aristocratic] greatness, love borders on ferocity, and the urges of the Great Ones know
no constraints.9
Metastasio's libretto L'eroe ci?ese {The Chinese hero, 1752) can serve as
an example of how this worked. The plot is based on a horrifying incident
- perhaps true, perhaps not - from Du Halde's famous book on China
(1736), about a third-dynasty minister who had, years before, saved the
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200C) 55
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<)6 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
io. Nowadays the people's
name is written as 'Tatar'.
I preserve the old spelling
to avoid anachronism.
Later in this paragraph,
I use 'Gypsy' (rather than
'Rom') for the same reason.
ii. Further on Azucena, see
Ralph P. Locke: Musical
exoticism: images and
reflections (Cambridge,
2009), pp.156?60.
12. Letter of 9 January
1752, in Pietro Metastasio,
ed. Bruno Brunelli: Tutte
le opere, 5 vols (Verona,
1947-54), vol.3, p.707.
13. Further on operas set
in China, see Kii-Ming
Lo: 'China-Mythen im
italienischen Opernlibretto
des Settecento', in Peter
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emperor's son by offering his own son instead to an angry mob. The rest
of the opera elaborates on this premise in the usual manner, with two male
female couples and much confusion about identity, loyalty and love. The
two women are captive Tartar princesses (sisters) and are thus exotic in two
ways: to the audience, and also to the Chinese men in the cast.10 One of the
two young men is, of course, the true prince and rightful heir, for it turns
out that an old man had found the baby wrapped in royal robes and raised
him secretly, with the plan of restoring him to the throne. The 'crowd kills
royal prince ' premise is one that might have been thought risky by various
court censors if the opera's action had been placed in Europe, because it
could have suggested an inherent antagonism between the local king or
emperor and his non-royal subjects. A century and a half later, Verdi and
his librettists, in 77 trovatore, would place a baby-burning scene in Europe
of somewhat recent times (specifically 1409 AD). Yet only one individual
is involved in abducting and killing the child ? no angry mob ? and she is
semi-foreign: the Gypsy woman Azucena. (As an added precaution on the
librettists' part, the abductee is merely the younger son of a local count, not
heir to a throne.)11
Aside from the premise and the characters' names, there might seem to
be little in L'eroe ci?ese to differentiate it from other Metastasian libretti.
Nonetheless, the fact that the action unfolds in China did bring certain
advantages. Metastasio wrote the libretto for a production at the court in
Vienna in 1752 (with music by Giuseppe Bonno). The main performers
were to be one tenor (playing the minister Leango, an Italianisation of Le
Ang) plus four ladies of the court, two of whom played the two young men.
Metastasio came to the decision to set the work in China because (as he
recalled soon after) the four aristocratic women did not want to 'expose their
legs to the onlookers [a'profani] V2 Presumably, Roman soldiers' uniforms
were considered too revealing, what with their bare ? well, probably
stockinged ? thigh and knee, whereas Chinese robes were modest.
The sturdy libretto that resulted transcended its immediate commissioning
context, going on to be set by 18 composers over the next 30 years, no doubt
with little if any musical emphasis on the Chinese locale. No doubt most or
all of these settings were devoid of stylistic references to Chinese music. Still,
the music ? whether routine or imaginative ? that the various composers set
to Metastasio's text must have helped keep its images of Chinese barbarity
(and one Chinese man's devotion to the imperial family) alive on stage, and
kept the audience's attention.13
Csob?di, et al., edd.: und Gespr?che des Sal^burger 'Delizia e saggezza dell'antica
Politische Mythen und Symposions 2001 (Anif/ Ci?a secondo Metastasio',
nationale Identit?ten im Salzburg, 2003), pp. 185?202; in Opera e libretto, vol.2
(Musik-) Theater: Vortr?ge and Elena Sala di Felice: (Florence, 1994), pp.85?106.
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

14. Ellen T. Harris:
'With eyes on the East and
ears in the West: Handel's
Orientalist operas', in
Journal of Interdisciplinary
History vol.36 (2006),
pp.419-43 (esp. 434-36)
15. Reinhard Strohm: Essays
on Handel and Italian opera
(Cambridge, 1985)^.59.
16. Preface to the published
libretto, which was based on
previous libretti by Nicolo
Minato, 1654, and Silvio
Stampiglia, 1694 (London,
1738), facsimile in Hallische
H?ndel-Ausgabe (Kassel,
1955- ), series II, vol.39:
Serse (ed. Terence Best),
p.xxv.
17. Anthony Hicks: 'Serse',
Grove music online.
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Onstage locales: Ancient Persia and India, the Muslim
empire, China
The problem of whether and how much and how to read an Italian Baroque
opera (such as L'eroe ci?ese) 'exotically' is intensified when one turns to
Handel. His operas were nearly all composed for London to Italian libretti,
and many involve locations and individuals in some Eastern locale. Ellen T.
Harris has intriguingly suggested that the heavy predominance of 'the East'
in Handel's operas may be related to the overseas commercial interests of
the investors in Handel's opera house.14
Theatrically imaginative and musically fecund, Handel's operas ? in
general, not just the ones with exotic locales and characters ? show much
influence from other genres, including the pastoral tragicomedy and the
distinctly English genre of the semi-opera (or 'extravaganza'), a frankly
exotic instance of the latter being Purcell's The Indian queen^ adapted from
a heroic play about Mexico by Robert Howard and John Dryden. (Unlike
in that Purcell semi-opera, though, Handel's characters follow the Italianate
convention of singing throughout, never speaking.) As a result, the
works tend to be less purely tragic, noble, and restrained than the, in
many ways, highly standardised opere serie composed around the same
time in Italy and Austria. They often emphasise human weakness or
delusion, sometimes in a rather jocular manner. All of this combines to
make it hard for the audience to take the historical situation and geographical
location seriously. Handel's Tolomeo, re d'Egitto (1728), for example, avoids
historical matter and concerns of place almost entirely, turning Cyprus into
what Reinhard Strohm nicely terms 'an island of Love, a fairytale Arcadian
landscape'.15
An extreme but revealing case is Handel's Serse (1738). It derives
ultimately from a Venetian libretto of 1654 (decades before Zeno and
Metastasio). Larded with jokes and mock-heroic (and mock-romantic)
gestures, Serse is sometimes called 'Handel's only comic opera'. The title
character is the great Persian warrior-king Xerxes I. Yet the opera contains
very little historical or geographical reference. The preface to the published
libretto was frank about this: 'Some imbecilities, and the temerity of Xerxes
(such as his being deeply enamour'd with a plane tree, and the building [of]
a bridge across the Hellespont to unite Asia to Europe) are the basis of the
story; the rest is fiction.'10
Fiction it certainly is! The plot enacts (as Anthony Hicks fairly puts
it) 'a court intrigue involving the rivalry between Xerxes and his brother
Arsamene for the love of Romilda, and the rivalry of Romilda and her
mischievous sister Atalanta for the love of Arsamene'.17 All of this is
playful variation on history, perhaps faintly echoing reports ? themselves
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200?) 57
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 58 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
i8. 1738 libretto (see n.16),
p.xxv. 'Vegetable ', at the
time, meant any growing
thing, whether edible or not.
Still, this quasi-scientific
word - as also the Italian
libretto's 'vegetabile ' - seems
pointedly pompous.
19. Xerxes, marching with
his troops against Greece
through Phrygia toward the
Hellespont, was befriended
by Pythios (a Lydian), who
offered him money to help
fund the war; he also learned
that Pythios' father once
gave Darius a 'golden plane
tree ' and 'golden [grape?]
vine'. After entering Lydia,
Xerxes noticed by the side
of the road 'a plane-tree so
beautiful, that he presented
it with golden ornaments,
and put it under the care
of one of his Immortals' ?
Herodotus, trans. George
Rawlinson: The Persian wars
(New York, 1942), ch.7,
sect.26?32, pp.509?11.
20. On this work as a
throwback to 17th-century
mixtures of comic and
serious, see Winton Dean:
'Handel's Serse', in Thomas
Bauman & Marita Petzoldt
McClymonds, edd.: Opera
and the Enlightenment
(Cambridge, 1995),
pp. 135-67.
21. Betzwieser: Exotismus,
pp.16?17; cf. Strohm:
'Metastasio's Alessandro
neirIndie and its earliest
settings', in his Essays,
pp.232-48.
22. Sven Hansell: 'Cleofide',
Grove music online. A fine
recording is available,
featuring Emma Kirkby in
the title role, with William
Christie conducting:
Capriccio 10193?10196.
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only partly substantiated - that the historical Xerxes, after his defeat by the
Greeks, spent his remaining years beset by palace feuds and obsessed with
his harem.
The first act has barely begun when Serse sings a throbbing, long-phrased,
sarabande-tinged aria that would, under such titles as 'the Famous Largo
from Xerxes\ become one of the most enduring of Handel's hit tunes. (It
is still often performed today as piece for organ or for a melody instrument
such as trumpet or violin.) In the opera, the Persian emperor sits under a
plane-tree and thanks the tree for the comforting shadow cast by its broad,
lobed leaves. The situation and the sung text seem calculated to render the
Eastern monarch ridiculous. For full effect, I quote both the sung words
and the rhyming translation that opera-goers at the King's Theatre in 1738
would have read on the facing page in the printed libretto:
Ombra mai fu No, never vegetable made
Di vegetabile, A dearer and a lovelier shade...1
Cara ed amabile,
Soave piu...
Herodotus had given Xerxes's worshiping of a tree a somewhat more
serious context (though with his usual undertones of criticism for the
effeteness of Persians).19 Perhaps the opera's Serse (Xerxes) is trying to
behave in the manner of a stereotypically philosophical Eastern prince, such
as Europe was coming to know from the Thousand and one nights (about
which more below) and long knew from the biblical books attributed to King
Solomon {Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs). But to no avail: Serse is promptly
ridiculed by another character for cooing to a 'rough tree-trunk' that cannot
return his affections. This character is Romilda, and Serse, after he hears
her singing, is instantly smitten. (Complications ensue: Serse is already
betrothed to Amastre, and Romilda loves Serse 's brother Arsamene.)20
A more typical, less extreme instance is Metastasio's famous libretto
Alessandro nelVlndie {Alexander [the Great] in India, 1729). Several dozen
composers including Handel set some version (whether faithful or altered)
of Alessandro. Betzwieser argues that the exoticism of operas using this
libretto resided in the Indian locale but nothing more: the composers treat
the text no differently than they would have if the two great national powers
that struggle in it for power and territory were both European.21 Again, there
is some truth in such objections. Hasse 's much-admired setting (1731, and
entitled with the name of the heroine: Cleofide) uses a version of the libretto
that, in conjunction with what Sven Hansell nicely calls the 'coquettish' tone
of Hasse 's music, shifts the emphasis even more emphatically, especially
in the arias, from geopolitical struggle to amorous entanglements.22 These
entanglements apparently alluded to specific individuals in the Dresden
electoral court of Friedrich August (the 'Strong'), for which it was composed
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23. Hansell:l Cleo fide , Grove
music online.
24. On the origin,
compilation, and European
dissemination of the
Thousand and one nights,
see Robert Irwin: The
Arabian Nights: a companion
(London, 1994).
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and to which, to some degree, it may have literally belonged. (Hasse was
apparently not free to perform the work anywhere else. Five years later,
for Venice, he composed almost entirely new music to a somewhat different
version of the same libretto, this time calling it Alessandro.)2^
Handel's Poro, re dell'Indie and Giulio Cesare in Egitto
All of this might seem to point toward the conclusion that the exotic
setting in Italian operas of the High Baroque era functioned primarily as a
conventionalised, superficial 'given'. Still, two questions need to be raised,
(i) Why employ such a distant foreign setting? After all, whereas oratorio
necessarily retold Biblical stories set in Egypt or Canaan, opera was free
to choose or invent its tales and place them in any geographic location,
including one that was close to home. (2) Does a primarily 'superficial'
(surface-level) component have no bearing on how we perceive the work
and its characters?
The two points are intertwined. Take again Metastasio's Alessandro
libretto (set by Handel as Poro, re dell 'Indie {Poro, king of the Indies), 1731).
One of its two main male roles is Poro, known to history as Porus, the king
of India whose elephants were overwhelmed by the Greeks' horses in 336
BC on the left bank of the Hydaspes (today known as the Jhelum River).
Is it entirely by chance, hence insignificant, that this role was given to a
historically attested king of India or, rather, did the librettist figure that this
basic 'given' would make the character's intense jealousy-in-love plausible
and dramatically effective? As it happens, the sense of West vs. East does not
reside solely in that one 'given' but is intensified by Metastasio's decision to
provide Alessandro with many occasions, throughout the three acts, to show
clemency, forbearance, or self-denial: though the great conqueror loves the
Indian queen Cleofide, he finally cedes her to the woman-crazed (hence, in
the end, less heroic, less steadfast) Poro. All these decisions play upon certain
stereotypes of the non-European male ruler ? as, presumably, did the very
choice of Xerxes and Ptolemy for similarly love-besotted roles in Handel's
aforementioned operas that bear their names {Serse and Tolomeo). But, in
the case of Poro of India, the trait may have been reinforced by certain
reports about India: for example, that men there could take several wives.
Informational tidbits such as this - however misleading or oversimplified -
may have been reinforced by the scenes of frank carnality that Westerners,
in Handel's day, were encountering in wildly popular published translations
and retellings of the Thousand and one nights. Certain tales in that massive
collection originated in India or Persia or explicitly refer to those locales.24
Besides, many Westerners made little distinction between regions that we
today think of as being very separate, such as North Africa, Turkey, the
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200$ 59
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 6o Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
25. Susan McClary: 'Music,
the Pythagoreans, and
the Body', in Susan Leigh
Foster, ed.: Choreographing
history (Bloomington,
Indiana, 1995), pp.82-104
(at pp.97-100).
26. On the (originally
New World) sarabande
and chaconne and their (at
least sometimes) ongoing
exotic associations, see the
studies by Robert Stevenson,
Louise Stein and Rose
Pruiksma, summarised in
Locke: Musical exoticism,
pp.23 & 88.
27. Further on Caesar's
attraction to Cleopatra in
this opera, see Robert C.
Ketterer: Ancient Rome in
early opera (Urbana, Illinois,
2008), pp. 116, 118?19 &
122?23.
28. The librettist's preface
to Handel's Giulio Cesare,
reproduced in the piano
vocal score (the full score
is not yet available) of the
Hallische H?ndel-Ausgabe,
series II, vol.14 (ed. Frieder
Zschoch), p.vi.
29. As Craig Monson points
out, the libretto that Handel
set (by Nicola Haym)
sharpened the viciousness
of Tolomeo by suppressing
various bits of comic byplay
that were in Giacomo
Francesco Bussani's original
libretto (set by Antonio
Sartorio, 1676). See Craig
Monson: ' "Giulio Cesare
in Egitto": from Sartorio
(1677) to Handel (1724)', in
Music & Letters vol.66 (1985),
pp.313-43.
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Arab Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. In any case,
India was largely ruled by the Muslim Mughals from the mid 16th century
to the early 19th.
Once one admits this possibility that Easterners were chosen for certain
roles with intent and not by chance, we are freed to consider as plausibly
exotic the portrayals of many other non-European figures in Handel.
These would include three characters in Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724):
Cleopatra, her brother Tolomeo and Tolomeo's henchman Achilla. Cleo
patra deceives Cesare (Julius Caesar) about who she is. (She identifies
herself as her own handmaiden.) Then she displays herself ? in a kind of
'opera within the opera', on its own little stage-set - costumed as Virtue
and singing an exquisite and, as Susan McClary has explained, sexually
tempting aria ('V'adoro, pupille').25 Most remarkably, her aria is prefaced
and accompanied by instruments performing onstage. In other words, the
instruments are part of her show, her come-on, and Cesare hears and sees
them. What McClary does not explicitly mention - except in a glancing
reference to 'Caesar's imperial body' and to the aria's being in the style of
a sarabande ? is that Cleopatra is a seductress from what is, to Rome, a
distant, dangerous province.26 Even the instruments that are used onstage
in this scene are unusual, or used in unusual ways: harp, theorbo, and (in
the little orchestral sinfonia that opens the scene) a spiritedly bustling viola
da gamba. These can reinforce, to eye and ear, Cleopatra's toying, and
brainy, use of her uncommon beauty, her kohl eye-makeup (not stated in
the stage directions, but surely a prerequisite!), and other attributes of the
non-European female. When her aria ends, Caesar runs toward the adored
(and cultivatedly adorable) creature, but the little stage-set closes, and the
frustrated Roman is brusquely informed that the woman to whom he is so
attracted will next await a visit from him in her apartments.27
Equally striking in this opera is Cleopatra's brother Tolomeo (Ptolemy
XII), summarised in the preface to the libretto as 'the youngf,] ambitious
and licentious King [...] naturally cruel and void of Honour'.28 Tolomeo
luxuriates in personal nastinesses. He has the head of the Roman general
Pompeo (Pompey) chopped off and presented to Caesar as 'a gift', and
he consigns Pompeo's widow Cornelia to his harem and forces himself
on her.29 His extreme instability is made repeatedly clear in the music that
Handel created for him, most notably in the aria 'L'empio, sleale, indegno'.
Tolomeo announces his determination to tread upon the 'haughty head' of
the 'unworthy' Cesare rather than let him 'disturb my peace [of mind]' (a
particularly ironic phrase in the mouth of this hyper-impulsive character).
Tolomeo's vocal line leaps upward again and again to two notes on a high
pitch ? a kind of written-out sarcastic (and prematurely triumphant) 'Ha
ha!'
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30. Winton Dean & John
Merrill Knapp: Handels
operas: 1304?1326 (Oxford,
1987), p.499.
31. Even though the
historical Cleopatra was
known to have been of
Greek origin, she and her
brother Ptolemy had long
been treated, whether in
history books or legend -
to the extent that writers
even made the distinction
back then ? as essentially
'Easternised' by their long
sojourn in and association
with Egypt. As Lucy
Hughes-Hallett puts it,
'In the imagination of the
Romans she was a barbaric
[i.e. essentially foreign]
debauchee ' ? Cleopatra:
histories, dreams and
distortions (New York, 1990),
p.15.
32. Ketterer insightfully
relates to their historical and
literary origins a number
of portrayals of African
and 'Eastern' characters in
libretti about the foreign
wars of ancient Rome.
These include an important
invented character in
Metastasio's Catone in Utica:
the wily Numidian (i.e.
North African) captain Siface
(named after the renowned
Syphax, king of western
Numidia during the Punic
Wars) - Ancient Rome in
early opera, pp.109?II- Ratone
was set 28 times by such
composers as Vivaldi and
(with most durable success)
Johann Christian Bach.
33. Recordings of Karl
Heinrich Graun's Monte^uma
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As for Tolomeo's henchman Achilla (Achillas, a bass role), Handel
scholars Winton Dean and J. Merrill Knapp leave no doubt that there is
something essentially non-European to the character. They dub him 'this
braggart Egyptian traitor, equally disposed to do his master's dirty work
and feather his own soiled nest'.3? (One may well wish that the scholarly
duo had done more to make clear that their wording was meant to convey
the attitude of Handel's day and does not refer to some special reality about
Egyptians, whether past or present.) More generally, we see in Tolemeo
and Achilla, as in Handel's Poro, another tendentious pattern on the part of
the librettists (reflecting a prejudice of the day): the Eastern males, being
driven by such base emotions as lust, cupidity and desire for power, do
not experience the kinds of moral conflicts that Western leaders ? such as
Alexander and Julius Caesar ? do.
Although the three characters just discussed from Handel's Giulio Cesare ?
Cleopatra, Tolomeo and Achilla - are among the more vivid in the operatic
repertoire, they are largely missing from previous studies of musical
exoticism. Furthermore, with regard again to Cleopatra, we might consider
that not to acknowledge the relationship between her seductive wiles and
her Easternness (emphasised early in the opera) makes it difficult to capture
fully ? and to explore ? how she becomes transformed into a more 'universal'
loving and suffering figure as the opera progresses.31 After all, the process
of purgation of the foreign can take many forms in opera (as in literature).
Whereas Tolomeo and Achilla both die onstage and unmourned, Cleopatra
is elevated 'above' her Egyptian origins, and then, at the end, reinserted into
them in a less threatening position. She accepts the dead Tolomeo's crown
and sceptre from the hands of Cesare, thus becoming, in the words of the
libretto, 'a tributary Queen [of Egypt] to Rome's great Emperor'.32
Degrees of Otherness
So much for Greek and Roman history. Serious Baroque operas involve
characters from many Elsewheres (of different historical and legendary
eras). Miriam Whaples ? the pioneer scholar on pre-1800 exoticism ?
lists, among the most frequently treated such topics or central characters,
the Sultan Beyazid II (his captivity under the Tartar emperor Timur) and
the Aztec emperor Montezuma. (The latter is sometimes presented in
conjunction with his nemesis Cortez - as in operas by Vivaldi and Graun
- and sometimes at an earlier stage in his imagined life - as in PurcelPs
aforementioned The Indian queen, from 1695.)33 More recently, specialist
? which has a libretto by 1966 (excerpts, conducted by Decca CD 448977) and 1992
King Frederick the Great, of Richard Bonynge with Joan (complete, on two Capriccio
Prussia ? were released in Sutherland, re-released as CDs: 60032).
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 6i Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
34- For example, Lo:
'China-Mythen', Sala
di Felice: 'Delizie', and
Piemontese: 'Persia'.
35. See Reinhard Strohm:
The operas of Antonio
Vivaldi, 2 vols (Venice,
2008), vol.i, pp.286-307
and vol.2, pp.393-436.
Two recordings of Farnace
have been released:
they are conducted by,
respectively, Jordi Savall
(3 CDs, Alia Vox: AV9822)
and Massimiliano Carraro
(Nuova Era: 7213/14). The
Savall recording also includes
excerpts from a version by
Francesco Corselli (Madrid,
1739). La verit? in cimento is
superbly performed on Opus
ni/Na?ve OP 30365.
36. A recording conducted
by Alan Curtis is now
available as Deutsche
Grammophon Archiv
775996. The 1993 recording
of a 'work' by Vivaldi
entitled Monteiuma,
conducted by Jean-Claude
Malgoire, is (as the notes
clearly indicate) a pasticcio
that the conductor created
when the opera's music was
still thought lost; it melds the
libretto to music from other
works by Vivaldi.
37. Bachmann: 'From
Arabia's spicy shores',
PP-3-4.
38. Whaples mentions, for
example, Handel's Orlando
(after Ariosto) briefly, but
only its title character, as
a comparative instance of
how irrational behavior
was portrayed at the time
{Exoticism, pp. 189?90).
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scholars have surveyed in more detail the operatic portrayals of such locales
as Persia and China.34 Fortunately, the opera lover can now - thanks to CDs
- marvel at, and ponder, such types as the devious, easily enraged Eastern
females in Vivaldi's La verit? in cimento (1720, set in a sultan's harem of no
particular era) and his Farnace (1727, faintly based upon Pharnaces II, who
was king of Pontus - a region near the Black Sea - in the first century BC).35
Vivaldi's Mote^uma (Venice, 1733) ? long thought lost ? has finally been
revived and much discussed.36 And to all these operas about more or less
historical figures in the East, the aforementioned Arabist Peter Bachmann,
in an insightful essay on Handel's 'Oriental' libretti, adds the many operas
derived (however freely) from the epic 16th-century poems of Ariosto and
Tasso that drew together and embellished further the legends associated
with the Crusades and other struggles between Christians and Muslims (e.g.
the Spain-based Saracens).37
But, again, how much Otherness does it take to render a work 'exotic' in
effect or attitude? Whaples, interested primarily in tracking the echoes, in
musical works, of the published reports and transcriptions of foreign musics,
simply leaves undiscussed nearly all the surviving operas on the topics just
mentioned.38 Understandably, she has even less interest in the ones for which
no music has reached us, despite what their libretti and other evidence might
reveal about their handling of questions of place and ethnic attributes. But
a work can characterise an exotic locale, group, or individual in some other,
substantive way than by imitating/invoking what was known or believed
about its native music. For instance, in Handel's Tamerlano (1724) the title
character's recurring cruelty, and the specific forms and wordings that it
takes, easily satisfy Betzwieser's criterion of 'ambience' and even of 'rites'.
(I am here taking that term in a broad sense to include purported cultural
practices, such as, in this case, government-sanctioned gang rape: see
discussion of that opera below.) The cruelty is inevitably emphasised in a
good performance by a singer who can bring the necessary vocal bite to the
part, as the brilliant young castrato Andrea Pacini surely did in the original
run of performances. Pacini created the role so successfully that Handel
soon wrote an extra aria for him to sing in a revival of Giulio Cesare, where
he played another Eastern tyrant, that of Cleopatra's brother Tolomeo -
the head-chopper and widow-attacker discussed earlier.
Unfortunately, the small-statured, oddly mustachioed mezzo-soprano
Monica Bacelli - on a widely distributed DVD - does not fully convey the
horrid power of Handel's Mongol tyrant. More generally, the impact of a
character's national or ethnic identity will vary with the observer and with
the details of the given production (sets, costumes, gestures, etc.), especially
in cases where it is not much emphasised in the three relatively more stable
components of an opera: its words, music, and essential stage action.
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39- Cited in Winton Dean:
Handel's operas, 1326?41
(Woodbridge, 2006), p.235.
40. Castrati, despite modern
day hesitations and surmises,
were often seen as intensely
sexual and even, in a sense,
(young-)manly. See Roger
Freitas: 'The eroticism of
emasculation: confronting
the Baroque body of the
castrato', in Journal of
Musicology vol.20 (2003),
pp.196?249. For engravings
of Farinelli, including
Hogarth's, which emphasise
the castrato's 'conquests',
see Daniel Heartz: 'Farinelli
revisited', in Early Music
vol.18 (1990), pp.430-43
(pp.438-39, pl.7), and
discussion in Katherine
Bergeron: 'The castrato
as history', in Cambridge
Opera JournalVol.8 (1996),
pp. 167-84.
41. The Tiepolo is in the
Stanza dell'Orlando furioso,
Villa Valmarana (Vicenza,
Italy); the Boucher, at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York City).
42. Ludovico Ariosto,
trans. William Stewart Rose,
edd. Stewart A. Baker &
A. Bartlett Giamatti: Orlando
furioso (New York, 1968),
p. 186 (canto 18, stanza 166).
'Occhi avea neri, e chioma
crespa d'oro:/Angel parea
di quei del sommo coro
[literally: an angel like
those in the highest choir]'
? Ludovico Ariosto, ed.
Lanfranco Caretti: Orlando
furioso (Milan, 1963), p.450.
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Still, if one is on the lookout for marks of national or ethnic identity,
one notices them plainly enough. In Handel's Orlando (1733) there is
surely an ounce, at least, of dramatic relevance in the separate national
identities that are indicated for the royal and ever-faithful lovers Angelica
and Medoro. The descriptor 'Queen of Cathay' ? i.e. northern China ?
renders Angelica powerful and important. Orlando promptly fights to win
her love, neglecting in the process his heaven-ordained military mission.
(The preface in the original printed libretto pointed out that Ariosto's poem
was 'universally known' and that therefore no detailed plot summary was
needed.)39 The opera's Angelica even has recourse to some of the magical
powers that Ariosto ascribes to her. Thus, she is no mere earthly queen, and
certainly not just another aristocratic European 'lovely lady'. In her case, to
be foreign is to have superhuman powers. True, Angelica was given blond
hair by many 17th- and 18th-century painters (and perhaps by the costumer
for this opera's first production in 1733). But a sorceress from China can
take any shape ? even any hair colour ? that will help her attain her selfish
goals.
Similarly, in the cast list Medoro is labelled an 'African prince'. What
exactly did and does that mean? The young man turns out to be a sensitive,
relatively gentle soul discovering romance for the first time and thus a foil,
of sorts, for the Carolingian warrior Orlando. (At the opera's premiere,
Medoro was sung by a female, a fact that further suggests something less
than manly maturity, whereas Orlando was sung by the great castrato of the
age, Senesino, known for his thrilling delivery.)40 Might this characterisation
echo impressions of sub-Saharan regions, where people lived in a youthful
state of near-undress, close to nature, and open to unspoiled love? After all,
in a 1763 painting by Boucher, Medoro is draped in leopard skins. (Just to
confuse things, in a Tiepolo painting of 1757 he lounges in a very attractive
jacket whose cut looks rather 'mandarin'-like but whose material ? deerskin,
apparently ? might rather suggest Native America. He also has feathers in
his hair.)41
Or does Africa mean North Africa, making Medoro a Muslim? In the
Quinault libretto that Handel's librettist here was adapting {Roland, set by
Lully in 1685), M?dor specifically is Muslim and is said to come from the Nile
(presumably Egypt or Nubia, i.e. today's Sudan). The early 16th-century
Italian poet Ariosto, who invented Medoro in the first place, clearly made
him Muslim but also, like Angelica, no mere earthly creature. Rather, the
poet's young Muslim warrior seems a poetic vision in an Early Renaissance
painting (again, with blond hair): '[He had] crisp hair [...] of gold, and jet
black eyes/And seemed an angel lighted from the skies.42
At the very least, it is worth naming Medoro's ethnic/national identity,
perhaps in order to help us notice how thoroughly the end of the opera
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200Cf 63
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 64 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
43- For example, Strohm's
otherwise important and
fascinating study, 'Comic
traditions in Handel's
Orlando', in his Essays,
pp.249-69; or Ellen T.
Harris: Handel and the
pastoral tradition (London,
1980), pp.227-31; cf. Dean:
Handel s, pp.235?55.
44. The pre-performance
speaker at the Glimmerglass
performances even made a
point of this (supposed) lack
of foreignness in the roles,
attributing it to the express
intentions of Handel and his
librettist.
45. Julie Anne Sadie may
be overestimating Medoro's
Africanness, in her review
of a recording of Lully's
opera on the same topic,
Roland o? 1685: 'To give
the opera relevance to the
louis-quatorzien agenda,
the story is fine-tuned so
that the Queen of Cathay's
great love is a follower of an
African king (weeks before
the premi?re in 1685, the
French navy had bombarded
Algiers)' ? Gramophone
(August 2004), p.74.
46. A remarkable recording
conducted by John Eliot
Gardiner is on Erato
ECD88220. The libretto is
by Nicola Francesco Haym
(after a previous libretto by
Count Agostino Piovene,
1711).
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departs from Ariosto: Orlando goes mad (as in Ariosto) after learning of
Angelica's and Medoro's love for one another but is restored to reason by the
magician Zoroastro. (The latter character was invented for this particular
London libretto. His name ? and magic powers ? give him more specific
exotic implications: namely, Persian ones.) After the opera ends, Orlando
presumably will run off to fight the Moors, as the equivalent character did in
the Lully-Quinault Roland and would, later, in Haydn's 1782 opera Orlando
paladino. One clue: a statue of Mars (god of war) upon an altar with flames
appears at the moment that Handel's Orlando regains his sanity. But, before
the hero takes up sword again, he blesses the loving couple, and all three
join with the shepherdess Dorinda in a concluding song to love and glory
that has clearly left Ariosto and the titanic religio-geo-political struggles of
the Middle Ages far behind.
The possible relevance ? or contradictoriness ? of Angelica's Chineseness
(including her shape-shifting qualities) and Medoro's Africanness/
Muslimness has gone largely unbreathed, not only by previous students of
musical exoticism (as already noted more generally about Italian-language
Baroque opera) but by many Handel specialists as well.43 Performers and
opera houses tend to fall in line. There was no hint of foreignness in the
portrayal (and costumes) of either of these characters at the otherwise
splendid performances at Glimmerglass Opera Festival in summer 2003.
The Queen of Cathay was consistently attired in an early 19th-century
burgundy ball gown, as if she were Natasha in War and peace or one of the
grander young women in a Jane Austen novel. 44
Tamerlano/ face-off of two Muslim monarchs
I do not mean to propose that one go to the opposite extreme and over
emphasise the Otherness in Orlando (a work that, as I said, is a limited case
? except for the magician Zoroastro).45 There are Handel operas in which
Otherness cuts deep into the fabric of the work. The most striking and
extreme of these is the aforementioned Tamerlano, based ? however freely
? on somewhat more recent and less purely mythical events and characters
in the history of the Middle East.46 Tamerlano gives primary attention
to the intertwined stories of three characters who are Muslims (and two
who are Greek Christians). The historical character behind the title role,
Tamburlaine (1336-1405; he is also known as Tamerlane and Timur the
Lame) was the great Turko-Mongolian conqueror, who had taken part
in the campaigns of Genghis Khan's son Chagatai and whose own realm
eventually extended from India and Russia ? his troops occupied Moscow
for a year ? to the Mediterranean. Beyazid I (1354?1403; called Bajazete in
the opera) was the fourth of the early sultans of the Ottoman Empire. In
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47- Irene and the other
(likely) Christian character,
the Greek prince Andronico,
are unknown to history, but
some details about them are
far from fanciful. Andronico
may stand for Byzantine
co-emperor John VII, who
sent an offer of submission
to Timur (as did the sultan
of Egypt). As for Irene of
Trebizond, Trabzon is in
northeastern Turkey, near the
Black Sea. (See also n.57.)
This Irene is presumably
a Byzantine Christian: for
one thing, Trabzon did not
get annexed to the Ottoman
Empire until a few decades
after Bayazid's death in
captivity; for another, the
name Irene resonates with
that of the wife of Byzantine
Emperor Alexander I
Comnenus (her dates are
1066?1120) and also with that
of an eighth-century Irene,
who ruled - ruthlessly, in
fact ? as Byzantine Emperor
and was then named a Greek
saint for having restored the
use of icons.
48. See my 'A broader view
of musical exoticism', in
Journal of Musicology vol.24
(2007), pp.477-521 (esp.
pp.500-06), or my Musical
exoticism, pp.89?97.
49. In 1723, Orlandini's
Nerone attained some success
in Germany, in an adaption
(in German) by Mattheson.
Other cases include various
Spanish and Germans
(noblemen, military leaders)
who demonstrate greater
steadfastness or other high
principles than certain
Romans in an opera's
cast. An example is the
highly principled Spaniard
Luceio, in Scipione nelle
Spagne (Ketterer: Ancient,
pp.86?105). Zeno's libretto
was commissioned for
performance in Barcelona in
171 o (composer unknown)
? hence the virtuous
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1391 he laid siege to Constantinople but finally yielded to Christian forces in
1398, only to be captured by Tamburlaine. It is at this point in the defeated
sultan's story that Handel's opera begins. The librettist gave Bajazete a
daughter, Asteria, as part of the tangled web of love, hatred, unfaithfulness,
and so on. (Tamerlano desires Asteria, though he is betrothed to Irene, the
princess of Trebizond.)47
Tamerlano's two Eastern monarchs are pointedly contrasting. This is
not in itself unusual: Western prose accounts and dramatisations tended
to tilt a pair of portrayals of rulers or military leaders (from whatever
locations) in starkly opposite directions from each other, in order to build
narrative tension and/or construct a clear moral schema. A particularly
clear example comes from a parallel genre to opera: the English dramatic
oratorio. In Handel's Belsha^ar (1745), tne l^e character - the hateful,
sybaritic Babylonian tyrant who ends up seeing the fateful 'handwriting
on the wall' ? is contrasted with the high-minded and generous Cyrus of
Persia.48 In Piovene's libretto Nerone (1721, with music by Orlandini), the
young Armenian prince Tiridate tries ? in vain, as it turns out ? to help
some upright Romans thwart the excesses of their own emperor, Nero.49 In
Tiridate's critique of Nero we may see echoes of the Noble Savage concept
that dominated many portrayals of 'less civilised' societies during the 17th
and 18th centuries (as in Rameau's Les Indes galantes of 1735?36).
Returning to Tamerlano and its title figure Tamburlaine, we should note
that several generations of playwrights and librettists had already made (as
one of them put it) 'free use ' of various 'fables' that emphasised - in personal,
hence dramatisable ways - the Tartar emperor's cruelty to Beyazid (such as
'making use of him as a Footstool to mount his Horse ').5? Nicholas Rowe 's
spoken drama Tamerlane (1702, and much performed in England for some
years after) had turned the great Mongol into what has been called a 'calm
philosophical prince',51 leading some scholars to propose that, in Rowe's
play, 'the noble Tamerlane represents [King] William [III], the ranting
Spaniard ? but was re tribes ? Ketterer: Ancient, 51. Dean & Knapp: Handel's
set to music seven times pp.132-49. operas, p.531.
thereafter for performances
in other countries. (Those 50. Preface by Agostin 52. From summary
later composers included Piovene (to his Tamerlano of the Rowe play in
Alessandro Scarlatti, libretto of 1711, set Anthony Hicks: ' Tamerlano
Caldara and Albinoni.) three times by Francesco [by Handel]', Grove
A prominent instance of a Gasparini, the latter two music online. The Piovene
heroic German character in using the new title Bajaiet libretto itself has been
operas by Handel and others or Bajalette), as adapted, parsed for possible
is Arminio (i.e., Hermann); presumably by Haym, allegorical reference to
Arminio is an incarnation of to precede his Piovene the Hapsburg victory in
liberty because he blocked derived libretto for Italy: see Kurt Markstrom:
the invading Romans in Handel's Tamerlano ? Dean ' Tamerlano [by Francesco
9 AD from conquering & Knapp: Handel's operas, Gasparini]', Grove music
the lands of the Germanic p.532. online.
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200C) 65
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66 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
53- Bachmann: 'From
Arabia's spicy shores',
pp. 13-14.
54. One may note that the
libretto calls slaves' quarters
a seraglio, i.e. harem/
haram. This is a careful
and accurate detail of local
colour. The Turkish word
haram simply meant 'separate
living quarters'. A palace
could well have had one for
male servants, distinct from
the women's haram that
was an object of perpetual
fascination for Europeans.
55. Dean & Knapp:
Handel's operas, p.5 51. What
Tamerlano cynically calls
his own 'generous' (c?rtese)
behaviour toward Bajazete
is rightly held suspect by
the latter in act 3, scene 7.
Bachmann proposes, briefly
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Bajazet Louis XIV.52 As for the libretto given to Handel, some scholars
have argued that it makes Tamerlano a fairly standard 18th-century operatic
type: the tyrant (whether Eastern or Western) who is denounced as 'barbaric'
by other characters and is finally, according to the concept discussed earlier,
brought to see the error of his ways.53 In fact, though, Handel's librettist
kept enough of the traditional 'fables' to remind us forcefully, again and
again, that what we are watching is not located anywhere near England.
Indeed, those fables can turn an audience 's stomach. When Asteria refuses
to hand a poisoned cup to her father Bajazete, Tamerlano orders that she be
taken to the servants' quarters {al seraglio de9 schiavi) and thrown as 'prey'
to ? which presumably means raped by ? the 'servant rabble' there {sia
alia turba servile concessa in preda). Tamerlano even plans to force Bajazete
to watch, though the latter dies before all these degrading horrors can be
accomplished.54 Dean and Knapp have plentiful reason to describe Handel's
Tamerlano as 'a specialist in mental cruelty, threats, and blackmail, with
the serpentine attributes of the oriental despot'.55 (Refreshingly, the point,
almost unimaginable to the specialists on musical exoticism, seems obvious
and unquestionable to these Handel experts. Still, as with Giulio Cesare, one
is not entirely clear whether the two scholars themselves were, in the 1980s,
endorsing ? inadvertently or even intentionally ? the very stereotype that
they were describing.)
Tamerlano's viciousness is reflected in what Anthony Hicks terms the
'spiky brilliance' of the arias that Handel gives him.56 It is also expressed
at least as powerfully in certain moments of the drama that make much use
of dramatic recitative, notably the throne-room scene, the supper-table
scene (in which Tamerlano utters his most specific threats), and the finale.
In the latter, Bajazete dies with agonizing slowness, as Tamerlano sits and
witnesses. Only then does the tyrant reverse course and do something right:
he frees Asteria to marry Andronico, the G reek-Christian prince, and names
the latter Byzantine emperor.57 Tamerlano is famous for being Handel's sole
opera to end in tragedy (only slightly moderated by the late-hour pairing up
of lovers), and we blame the tragedy entirely on one person, Tamerlano.
Indeed, our impression of the Mongol chief's viciousness, throughout the
opera, is intensified by the music that his victims sing: pained laments, and
ventings of righteous anger. And, after all, since two of these four victims -
Bajazete and Asteria - are (like Tamerlano) Muslim, the point seems made,
in good Enlightenment manner ? and elegantly, without preaching ? that
but plausibly, that Bajazete 'boundless pride ' ('From 57? There were four
embodies (in part, one Arabia's spicy shores', p. 13). Byzantine emperors named
assumes) a different aspect of Andronico, but all earlier
the contemporary 'image of 56. Hicks: ' Tamerlano', Grove than the time period of this
the Oriental ruler]', namely music online. opera.
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58. Crete and its main city,
Candia ? from the name
Khandak, given it by its
Saracen founders ? had been
gained by Venice from the
Byzantines in the Fourth
Crusade. The War of Candia
cost tens of thousands of
Venetian and Turkish lives.
The Turks then held Crete
until 1898, when they turned
it over to the Greeks, who
promptly renamed its main
city Ir?kleion, after the god
Hercules.
59. Ellen Rosand: Opera
in ijth-century Venice: the
creation of a genre (Berkeley,
1991), pp. 144-45 (adapted by
the present author). Vivaldi's
Biblical oratorio Juditha
triumphans (1716, in which
Judith murders the Assyrian
general Holofernes) was
even explicitly described,
on the title page of its first
edition, as a 'sacred military
oratorio in these times of
war'. The reference is to
Venice's battles against
the Ottoman Empire
over control of various
Mediterranean islands and
ports, 1714-18. On Venice,
the Ottomans, and opera
a few generations later,
see Melania Bucciarelli:
'Venice and the East:
operatic readings of Tasso's
Armida in early eighteenth
century Venice', in Melania
Bucciarelli & Berta Joncus,
edd.: Music as social and
cultural practice: essays in
honour of Reinhard Strohm
(Woodbridge, 2007),
pp.232-49.
60. See some instances
cited in Smith: Handel's
oratorios, pp.361?63 nn.8?9,
and further scholarly
doubts (e.g. by Robert
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kindness and personal integrity ? 'reason and [inner] beauty', to adapt some
words from the highly principled and determined Christian princess Irene
(act 2, scene 6) - can be found in many corners of the globe.
Reception by Handel's contemporaries
A further word should be said about the mystery of how 17th- and early
18th-century audiences may have 'read' non-European characters - or
even European ones. Scholars have proposed a variety of possible political
allegories in one or another oratorio or opera by Handel, such as that the
given work targets or praises a duke or duchess, or warns a specific military
commander.
This would hardly be unprecedented. It is easily demonstrable that, in
Italian operas of the several generations before Handel, an 'ancient Rome'
plot often commented on current-day political considerations, including
European involvement with distant peoples. In Venetian operas, in particular,
prefaces to the published librettos and/or prologues sung by Venus, Peace,
and other mythological and allegorical figures referred explicitly, or in
barely disguised fashion, to the lengthy War of Candia. (This was the war in
which Venice, over the period of a near quarter-century, from 1645to 1669,
sought - unsuccessfully, in the end - to fend off Ottoman conquest of one
of its longtime strategic possessions, the island of Crete.)58 In the prologue
to Er silla (1648), Venus - the goddess of Cyprus, another crucial possession
of Venice - invokes the Venetian city-state and its (unseen) military men:
'Heroic guests, [...] you alone restrain the unleashed fury of the barbarian
world. [...] I will terrify the [Muslim] tyrant [who is illegitimately sitting]
on the throne of Byzantium [and I will do this] with great-hearted pride,
invincible and holy, from a floating and shining city.'59 There are similar
examples of references to current-day geopolitical struggles in prologues to
Lully's Alces te and other French operas.
But dramatic works by Handel do not send such frank and unequivocal
messages about current-day politics (in part because they were written for
commercial theatres, and amidst great ongoing contention about who the
rightful ruler of the country should be). Allegorical explanations that have
been proposed by one scholar for a given Handel work end up being criticised
by another as too ingenious by half or else as not adequately informed by the
historical particulars.60 Worse, explanations of this sort tend to be proposed
as if they were the sole correct one; to the extent that each explanation is
persuasive on its own merits, they threaten simply to cancel each other out.
Hume) summarised and, to ' "O ravishing delight": Cambridge Opera Journal
some extent, countered, in the politics of pleasure in vol.i5(2oo3),pp.i5-3i
Amanda Eubanks Winkler: The Judgment of Paris', in (bibliography in i5n).
THE MUSICAL TIMES Winter 200C) 67
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 68 Alien adventures: exoticism in Italian-language Baroque opera
6i. Curtis Price: 'English
traditions in Handel's
Rinaldo , in Stanley
Sadie & Anthony Hicks,
edd.: Handel tercentenary
collection (Ann Arbor, 1987),
pp.120-36.
62. On more basic pro
and anti-Whig debates
about Italian opera, see
Paul Monod: 'The politics
of Handel's early London
operas, 1711?1718', m Journal
of Interdisciplinary History
vol.36 no.3 (Winter 2006),
pp.445-72.
63. Hicks: 'Noble piece',
p. 14.
64. Elizabeth Carter to
Catherine Talbot, 2 April
1745, in Winton Dean:
Handel's dramatic oratorios
and masques (London, 1959),
P-455
65. Harris: 'With eyes',
pp.434-45.
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Curtis Price helpfully argues that 'this very ambiguity' in a musico
dramatic work may reflect the specific messiness of the political situation at
that time and place.61 For example, the attempts by the Stuarts at unseating
Queen Anne found many supporters not only among Catholics but also
among Tory Anglicans. One wonders what happened when individuals
with such views attended, say, Handel's first great operatic success in
London, Rinaldo (1711). Here the two main Muslim characters (the sorceress
Armida, Queen of Damascus; and Argante, King of Jerusalem) are - more
vociferously than Bajazete and Tamerlano - anti-Christian in attitude and
behaviour. As much for religious as ethnic reasons, they are essentially
defanged and purged by the end of the opera: converted to Christianity,
they also agree to marry each other and, presumably, cease their sexual
side-adventures. Some of the aforementioned anti-Whig theatregoers may
well have imagined the Catholic pretender to the English throne (James
Francis Edward Stuart) as being represented by the Christian hero Rinaldo
rather than by (as Whig-leaning audience members might have chosen) the
Muslim villain Argante.62
Anthony Hicks proposes ? with regard to oratorios such as Belshanar,
but the point is just as valid for opera ? that Handel 'may not even have
been aware of [...] [a given librettist's] doctrinal [and political] subtexts'.63
If so, this is surely all the more true of members of the audience. Some must
have taken the drama at face value and asked no further questions. Some
may have ventured only to draw moral instruction about proper (Christian?
English?) behaviour, as in this letter about Bels/ia^ar from one woman in
the audience to a friend:
There is a chorus of Babylonians deriding Cyrus from their walls that has the best
expression of scornful laughter imaginable. Another of the Jews, where the name,
Jehovah, is introduced first with a moment's silence, and then with a full swell of music
so solemn, that I think it is the most striking lesson against common genteel swearing I
ever met with. 4
And still others may have connected a given work's characters and situations
to specifically political events of their day but interpreted the characters and
situations (as suggested earlier) in light of their own personal convictions and
partisan commitments. To return specifically to opera, Ellen T. Harris draws
attention to one documentable instance of a politicised audience reaction
to events in a Handel opera. During the fourth performance of Floridante
(1721), when the tyrannical onstage king is deposed and put in chains to
make way for the rightful heir, there erupted 'very great and unreasonable
[i.e. disproportionate] clapping, in the presence of great ones [i.e. important
aristocrats or royalty].' Scholars have generated three vastly different political
readings of this particular audience response, and none of them (as Harris
shows) seems either clearly correct or patently impossible.65
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66. See Curtis Price:
'Political allegory in late
seventeenth-century opera',
in Nigel Fortune, ed.: Music
and theatre: essays in honour
of Winton Dean (Cambridge,
1987)^.1-29.
67. Locke: Musical exoticism,
pp.43-71 (summarised in
Locke: 'Broader'). Those
pages lay out an approach
to the exotic in music -1
call it the 'All the Music in
Full Context' paradigm
? that can deal with more
musical works that evoke
an exotic Other (and more
passages in those works),
than the generally prevailing
approach, which I call
the 'Exotic Style Only'
paradigm.
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Perhaps the sober proposal of Curtis Price (mentioned earlier) provides
the most workable hypothesis. He posits that large-scale dramatic works of
the late 17th and early 18th centuries laid out middle-of-the-road, essen
tially ambiguous political positions. These works evoked issues, struck a
resonating note, helped get a discussion going or continue it - or, I would
add, got themselves talked about in connection with those larger issues.66 The
aim of a Handel Italian opera (or Handel oratorio) was to give pleasure,
provide food for thought, and raise enough favourable comment (and
exciting debate) that people would demand more performances. And we
should not forget the possibility that?by analogy to the Venetian operas,
with their frank allusions to the Ottomans?at least some audience members
in London did connect Eastern monarchs in Handel's and other operas of
the period with, say, the Mughal rulers or various Indian states with whom
the British were fighting, and making mercantile treaties, throughout the
eighteenth century.
Music historians often seek out examples of art serving politics (as in
the case of the Venetian and French operas mentioned earlier). In Handel's
Italian operas, the emphasis is somewhat the reverse: politics (and the
fascinations of distant regions, not least the Muslim and Hindu regions
currently being 'opened' to international commerce by the merchants and
soldiers of England) served the needs of art and commercial entertainment.
And the resulting works comprise some of the most distinguished examples
of what one might call 'musical exoticism without exotic musical style'.67
the musical times Winter 2009 69
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