To Petrea
Preface
For the past months I have been fortunate to be able to combine two of my passions, classical music and English literature. In my search for a topic for this dissertation, I was guided by my preference for Baroque music. Last year’s being the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death as well as the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth inspired me to choose two of the English operas of these composers. Although this dissertation deals chiefly with the textual parts of the operas, I have included recordings of both works, because the music and the text are intertwined. As the result of months of research, both Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas have become special to me.
I am grateful to Prof. Dr Alasdair MacDonald, for his supervision, ideas, enthusiasm and advice. I would like to thank my friends and family for their support throughout the last months. And finally, I want to thank Lútsen for his dedication and support.
Ilse Snippe Groningen, January 2010
3
Contents
Preface 3
Introduction 5
Chapter 1 – The genre of the libretto 7
Chapter 2 – Dido and Aeneas 12
Chapter 3 – Acis and Galatea 29
Conclusion 47
Appendices
Appendix I – Libretto of Dido and Aeneas 51
Appendix II – Libretto of Acis and Galatea 60
Bibliography 67
Introduction
In the Neoclassic period literary men were inspired by the epic poems by writers from classical antiquity. Poets renewed their interest and admiration for the writers of ancient Greece and Rome and started to imitate their style and subjects in their own writing. This resulted not only in drama and lyrics with classical subjects, but also in many musical adaptations of ancient literature. Throughout Europe, most notably in Italy, France, Germany and England, many operas were composed based, often, on classical myths or legends. This dissertation seeks to explore in what ways the epic poetry of Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of Dido and Aeneas, and Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the myth of Acis and Galatea, were adapted for the libretti of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas and Georg Friedrich Handel’s Acis and Galatea.
The first chapter deals with the genre of the libretto. I discuss a few different types of the libretto, of which several examples are given. Classical literature was an important inspiration on dramatists and librettists in the neoclassic period. The chapter focuses the adaptation of an ancient poem or myth into a Baroque libretto.
The story of Dido and Aeneas has always been a popular myth and it has not failed to attract attention from critics. For several centuries scholars have researched the opera and have written about it. Countless books and articles on this topic are the result.
This does not mean, however, that there is consensus among experts about how Dido and Aeneas should be interpreted. Some scholars believe it to be a political allegory while other critics argue that it should be seen as a cautionary tale meant for the girls at the school where the opera was first performed. In chapter two the opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell is discussed. The changes the librettist, Nahum Tate, made to the original story in Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, had important consequences for the interpretation.
The first part of the chapter deals with the librettist and gives general information about the libretto of Dido and Aeneas, whereas the second part analyses the libretto in combination with Handel's music. This chapter attempts to show that Dido and Aeneas should be interpreted as a cautionary tale for young girls at the end of the seventeenth century.
The third chapter discusses G. F. Handel’s opera Acis and Galatea. The librettist, John Gay, chose a small passage from Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which he magnified into an opera libretto. Although less has been written about Acis and Galatea than about Dido and Aeneas, many critics have already researched Handel’s opera. To the best of my knowledge, however, the two operas have never been studied alongside.
Again, the first part of the chapter will focus on the librettist and on general information about the opera’s libretto. The second part discusses the libretto in detail and in combination with Handel’s music.
1 The genre of the libretto
In this chapter the genre of the libretto will be discussed. This will provide a literary context for the next two chapters, which will focus on the analysis of two Baroque libretti based on classical stories.
Originally, the Italian word libretto (literally translated “little book”) only referred to the book’s physical existence. Now the term is also used to describe the literary content of an opera.1 Since the middle of the eighteenth century the term libretto has been current in England.2 Together with the composer’s score, the libretto forms the basis for an opera performance. Other elements, such as costumes, acting and scenery, finalise the mood of the performance. The first libretto that was published is Rinuccini’s Dafne (1600, first performed in 1598), set by Peri. For several centuries the only purpose of the published libretto was to provide the text and the list of characters for those attending an opera. One would be able to read it during the performance, for the lights were not dimmed. Extant copies of these published libretti provide a valuable source of information for researchers, for they generally give, until approximately the beginning of the twentieth century, information about the production, the size and constitution of the orchestra, the names of the composer, poet and singers (which allows scholars to study their careers and mobility, for example), the choreographers and dancers. The libretti, therefore, are valuable not only as objects of study themselves, but they enable scholars to research the histories and repertories of opera houses, local customs and many other aspects of particular operas or the opera in general.3 Since the 1950s there has been an enormous growth in libretto studies, or librettistics. The term libretto is not only used to refer to operas, it is also applied to describe the content of an oratorio. The oratorio is, similar to the opera, based on dramatic, narrative and contemplative elements. The role of the chorus has always been more emphasised in the oratorio than in the opera. This is largely caused by the fact that an oratorio lacks costumes, scenery or action. Therefore,
1 Trowell, par. 1.
2 Warrack and Chalmers, par. 1.
3 Macnutt, par. 2.
the chorus often has a descriptive or commentatory role. Oratorios tend to take religious subjects, e.g. Handel’s The Messiah (1742).
Considered as a literary genre, the libretto has often evoked more contempt than praise. The most obvious cause of difficulty is the inability to see beyond the words on the page. It is unjust to consider only the libretto of an opera, for the words are inextricably linked with the music. There have been people who have claimed that either the text or the music were most important in an opera. The scholar Ludovico Muratori, for example, stated in the early eighteenth-century that aria verses were “parole non necessarie” (unnecessary words). On the other hand, the French author Victor Hugo expressed envy towards composer Verdi, who had composed Rigoletto (based on Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse), for the “power and unique resources of the operatic medium.”4 Amidst all the negative criticism on the libretto as a literary genre, it is worth knowing that for the first two centuries of the genre’s existence, i.e. the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, almost all the commentary was made by literary men. It is only since the nineteenth century, when composers such as Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz engaged in public debate, that people with musical skills as well as literary ones entered regularly into the public discussion. It is not surprising that almost all opera critics were from the literary world. An opera score was rarely published (at all or in its entirety), thus making it virtually impossible to study them. Therefore, critics had only the libretto to work form. In addition, performance reviews, in the modern sense, did not yet exist. As a result, criticism focussed solely on the libretti of operas.
The negative criticism on libretti was not necessarily misplaced, however. Quite early in the seventeenth century it was recognised that the musical form of the opera combined with the increased difficulty of distinguishing words in a large theatre designed for musical performances, demanded brevity and simple sentences from the librettist.
That can be no reason for poor poetry, however.5 In English-speaking countries, more so than in others, both critics and audiences have often reacted negatively to the conventions and language of opera libretti. This can partly be explained by the unusually rich and popular tradition of spoken drama (not to mention lyric poetry or dialogue in novels).6 It
4 Trowell, section 3, par.1.
5 Idem., section 3, par. 11.
6 Idem.
is possible that people went to the theatre with false expectations. Brian Trowell points out that “it is no accident that the completely successful Shakespeare operas were composed to foreign-language librettos, in which the thoughts could be presented more trenchantly and clearly and in more modern language.”7
It was not uncommon for stage plays to be adapted into a libretto. Moreover, there were remarkably few libretti that were not adaptations. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (1791) is an example of an original libretto, with text by Emanuel Schikaneder. No independent stage play or other work served as the basis for this opera. Operas that were adaptations of other works were not always well received. When, in the seventeenth century, librettists turned to classical literature, history and myth, the church authorities feared a return to paganism and they tried to impose censorship on the libretti that were published.
The church authorities were not successful, however, and both neoclassic dramatists and librettists exploited the same ancient subjects. Librettists preferred adapting an already existing play about the classics into a libretto rather than creating their own libretto from classical literature.8 Plays by the French dramatist Jean Racine (1639-1699) were often transformed into an opera libretto, for example. Racine had had a thorough classical education and all but one of his tragedies were based on Greek and Roman history or mythology.9 Pierre and Thomas Corneille’s works as well as other dramatists’ plays were also used to turn into libretti. A very successful adaptation of an English play was Arrigo Boito’s libretto Otello (1887) set to music by Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901). This libretto was based William Shakespeare’s famous play Othello, or the Moor of Venice (1603). In 1847, Verdi also composed an opera for another well-known Shakespeare play, Macbeth.
He had a life-long veneration for the Elizabethan playwright and readily approved of Boito’s plan to set Othello to music. Every character that was in Shakespeare’s play also appeared in Verdi’s opera. There was no real need to shorten these stage plays when turning them into a libretto; these plays were written for a performance of several hours at most. Macbeth and Otello were not the only Shakespeare plays Verdi wrote operas for.
An earlier attempt to compose an opera based on Shakespeare's King Lear had led to
7 Idem.
8 Idem., section 5, par. 4.
9 Stonehouse, par. 1.
nothing. Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff (1889), was based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and the first and second part of Henry IV by Shakespeare.
It is not surprising that librettists preferred to adapt a play or an epic poem from classical antiquity into a libretto, rather than create a wholly original story. Firstly, there were several neoclassic dramatists who wrote plays about the classics. To adapt one of those into a libretto meant less work for the librettist than creating an entirely new work.
Furthermore, one had to be able to read Latin or Greek in order to do that. Secondly, using a story that was already known provided several advantages for the librettists. The theatre audiences would already have associations with mythological stories or a well- known novel, for example. This made it unnecessary to re-create them on stage in time- consuming descriptions and explanations.10 As Andrea Maffei observed, the librettist
“must construct miniature dramas which the lens of music will magnify.”11
When in the eighteenth century Samuel Richardson’s novels became popular, e.g.
Pamela (1740), librettists started to exploit the novel. Naturally, these stories had to be compressed for an opera performance, which resulted in the loss of many details and minor story lines. Due to limited time, some episodes vanished (although sometimes these were adapted into separate operas) and, often interesting, minor characters were removed. As a result, in order to make a libretto adaptation of a novel, elaborate plots were highly simplified. Librettists focussed on the most important parts of the story, which were often emotional or narrative high points. The elaborate historical research done for Waverley by Walter Scott (1771-1832), for instance, would only survive in costumes and painted canvasses on the stage, not in the libretto. The dialogue of the lower classes in the novel was translated into a foreign language, which erased the effect.
As a result, Walter Scott’s expectations of opera were low. After seeing a performance of Ivanhoe, based on his 1819 novel, in Paris in 1826, he stated: “it was superbly got up ...
but it was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled, and the dialogue, in part, nonsense.”12
Libretti based on classical literature suffered the same fate. Here too, stories had to be curtailed. Epic poems were simply too long to be adapted wholly into a libretto. In
10 Trowell, section 6, par. 1.
11 Quoted in Trowell, section 6, par. 1.
12 Trowell, section 5, par. 5
this light, “[the] art [of the librettist] is one of compression.”13 Here too, librettists compressed the elaborate plots and omitted the minor characters in order to focus on the main aspect, which often was a love interest.14 An example of this is Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas (libretto by Nahum Tate). Whereas in Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid several references are made to other Books, none of these references are found in the opera. The plot was kept simple and every act revolves around the two main characters and their tragic love affair. This opera will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. Another possibility for adapting classical literature into a libretto was, of course, to select a small passage from a lengthy work to focus on. In essence, this is what John Gay did, when he wrote the libretto for Georg Friedrich Handel’s Acis and Galatea. The story of Acis and Galatea is discussed only briefly at the end of Book XIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Handel, however, composed a one-and-a-half-hour opera for it. This opera will be the focus of chapter three.
13 Idem., section 6, par. 1.
14 Idem.
2 Dido and Aeneas
The aim of this chapter is to analyse how Virgil’s story of Dido and Aeneas, as described in Book IV of The Aeneid, was adapted for Nahum Tate’s libretto of the seventeenth- century English opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. The first section focuses on the librettist, Nahum Tate; in the second part the differences between Virgil’s epic poem and the libretto are discussed as well as the artistic effects caused by these differences.
2.1 The librettist and his libretto
The story of Dido and Aeneas appeared as an episode in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid.15 Ever since classical antiquity the love between the Carthaginian Queen and Aeneas has been the most popular part of the poem. Many retellings, translations and adaptations have been made of this particular part of The Aeneid. The most well-known translation of the Aeneid is probably that of John Dryden. Towards the end of seventeenth century, the Irish poet Nahum Tate and the English composer Henry Purcell were inspired to transform the story into the English opera Dido and Aeneas (1689). Its librettist Nahum Tate (1652-1715) was one of the most important adaptors of Shakespeare plays and other Elizabethan works of drama during the Restoration period.16 In 1692 he was appointed Poet Laureate of England, which he remained till his death in 1715. 17 More than one hundred of his works were published.
This shows that Tate was by no means an insignificant poet; however, his reputation was, and perhaps still is, more famous than his writings. That some of his contemporaries were not impressed by his work is made clear in their own publications.
In “The Book-Worm” Thomas Parnell (1679-1718), a friend of Jonathan Swift (1667- 1745) and Alexander Pope (1688-1744), expresses his dislike for Tate’s and Shadwell’s
15 Publius Vergilius Maro, in English usually called Virgil (70 B.C. – 19 B.C.), worked on the Aeneid from approximately 29 B.C. till his death in 19 B.C. The Aeneid has been regarded the masterpiece of Roman literature ever since. Virgil, xxvii.
16 Spencer, 7.
17 In 1689 William III and Mary II dismissed John Dryden as Poet Laureate of England and appointed Thomas Shadwell. After his death in 1692, Nahum Tate was appointed Poet Laureate.
poetry. In the poem the book-worm is sacrificed on an altar made of books by Homer, Virgil and Tasso. The worm is killed, after Parnell’s toast to poets. The “sacred” altar must be cleansed, however, after the worm’s death and Parnell asks for Nahum Tate’s and Thomas Shadwell’s (1642-1692) poetry to do that.
But hold, before I close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean.
Oh had I S[hadwe]ll’s second bays, Or T[ate]! Thy pert and humble lays!
(Ye fair, forgive when I vow I never missed your works till now)
(ll. 75-80).
In addition, Pope writes about several varieties of barren poets in his Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot and states that “nine such Poets ma[k]e a Tate.”18 Writers of later generations proved critical of Tate as well. Sir Walter Scott, for instance, considered Nahum Tate
“one of those second-rate bards, who, by dint of pleonasm and expletive, can find smooth lines if any one will supply them with ideas.”19 Romantic critics disapproved strongly of Tate’s adaptations of Shakespeare and by 1850 the term “Tatefication” had been coined to refer to the debasement of great literary works. Nevertheless, Amy Reed argues, Tate
“must be regarded as influential at the end of the [seventeenth] century, because of his public position as laureate after Shadwell, and because the miscellaneous character of his literary activities brought him into contact with so many other writers.”20
Of all the writers in post-Restoration London’s literary scene, John Dryden was one of the most prominent literary figures. After Tate’s arrival in London, some time after graduating from Trinity College Dublin in 1672 and before publishing his first poem in 1676, he soon started making friends in literary circles. In 1677 a book of verses by him was published, entitled Poems. It contained sixty-nine short poems. The book was dedicated to Dr Walter Needham of Charterhouse. Charterhouse was, and still is, a public
18 Spencer, 13.
19 Quoted in Spencer, 14.
20 Reed, 66.
school founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611. Today the school stands in Godalming Surrey, but in the seventeenth century it was located in London. Dr Needham was appointed physician at Charterhouse in 1672. Dr Needham had been a classmate of Dryden both at Westminster School and at Trinity College Cambridge.21 The two men were also both members of the Royal Society. It is possible that Tate was introduced to Dryden through Dr Needham. Dryden was Tate’s senior by twenty-one years and he proved a great influence on Tate for a few years. Tate’s first play, Brutus of Alba (1678), suggests the example of Dryden’s play All for Love. Dryden’s play had premièred the end of the previous year and in it he had abandoned the rhymed couplet.22 Tate’s Brutus of Alba was written in blank verse instead of rhyme. Tate’s choice of a Roman subject was after Dryden’s example too; Dryden’s All for Love was partly derived from Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra (1606). Dryden would also write a prologue for Tate’s next play, The Loyal General (1680), and a preface for Tate’s translation of three of Ovid’s Epistles. During their acquaintance Tate must have met many of Dryden’s literary friends: the Earl of Mulgrave, Laurence Hyde, Sir George Etherege, the Earl of Roscommon, Thomas Southerne, Henry Dickinson, John Oldham, Thomas Creech, Nat Lee, and others.23 Tate’s most important acquaintance of this period was, however, Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex (1643-1706). He was patron to Dryden and Tate, but to many others as well, e.g. Thomas Shadwell and Thomas D’Urfey.
Furthermore, it was Dorset as lord chamberlain who recommended first Shadwell and later Tate as poets laureate.24 Amongst Tate’s acquaintances were not only poets and people from the literary scene; he had befriended several musicians as well. The most prominent of the latter was John Playford (1623-1686), who was the leading music publisher of the time. Henry Purcell and Purcell’s mentor John Blow (1649-1708) were amongst his acquaintances as well. Blow was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and both Purcell’s predecessor and successor as organist at Westminster Abbey.25 Blow’s opera Venus and Adonis (c. 1683) is said to have had great influence on Dido and
21 Spencer, 23.
22 Scott-Thomas, 254.
23 Spencer, 24. This group of people is discussed in The Works of John Dryden, gen. ed. Edward N.
Hooker and H.T. Swedenberg, Jr. (Berkeley, 1956), vol. I, 320.
24 Spencer, 24.
25 Idem., 28.
Aeneas. Research has shown that Venus and Adonis was performed at Priest’s school for young gentlewomen in Chelsea in 1684. This is the same school at which Dido and Aeneas was first performed. Moreover, Blow’s opera is the earliest surviving English opera, which makes it very likely that Henry Purcell took it as his model for Dido and Aeneas.26
Dido and Aeneas was originally written for a school in Chelsea run by Josias Priest. The opera consists of a prologue, of which the music is lost, three acts and an epilogue. The prologue was an introductory scene to the opera, which could have varying purposes. Originally, the prologue was used by librettists to make known the raison d’être of the opera. When opera as a new genre gradually became accepted, justificatory prologues were no longer necessary. Slowly, the prologue’s function as introduction to an opera would become superfluous, due to the programme or libretto issued for the performance.27 The first performance of Dido and Aeneas was in 1689, probably in celebration of the coronation of William and Mary, “judging by the French-style allegorical Prologue which clearly refers to the events of their ascension with much emphasis on their equality.”28 Allusions in both the prologue and the epilogue suggest that the première took place in springtime. In the prologue Phoebus and Venus represent William and Mary. The allegory stops, however, when the opera itself begins. It would have been offensive for Dido and Aeneas to represent Mary and William, during any part of the monarchs reign. All the parts were originally written for soprano, with the exception of Aeneas, and it is likely that those parts were performed by the girls at Priest’s school. Josias Priest was a dancing master, who was responsible for designing the dances for several of the “semi-operas”29 produced by the professional stage.30 Dances take a prominent position in Dido and Aeneas, as they did in many performances of the period. It is generally assumed that Josias Priest was responsible for the dances in Dido
26 Price, “Venus and Adonis (i)”, par. 3.
27 Carter, paragraphs 2, 3 and 4.
28 Spencer, 28. There is an ongoing debate about the date of Tate’s original libretto and the occasion on which it was first performed. Consequently, scholars’ opinions differ widely on the interpretation of Dido and Aeneas.
29 “Semi-opera.” The term semi-operas is used to refer to a type of English Restoration drama in which there were extensive musical episodes, performed only by subsidiary characters. An example would be King Arthur by Henry Purcell and John Dryden (1691). In the early eighteenth century the semi-operas came to be superseded by Italian opera.
30 Spencer, ix.
and Aeneas, but the evidence is not conclusive. Unfortunately, none of Priest's choreographies for the stage survive.31 Tate’s libretto is concluded with an epilogue written by Thomas D’Urfey. The epilogue was read out by Lady Dorothy Burk at the première.32 In December 1689 the epilogue was published in D’Urfey’s collection of New Poems. The libretto of Dido and Aeneas is included in appendix I of this dissertation.
2.2 The opera Dido and Aeneas compared to Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid
Many scholars have observed differences between Tate’s libretto of Dido and Aeneas and the original in Virgil’s Aeneid. One of the differences between the two texts is the renaming of characters present in both versions of the story; adding characters to the original and omitting others are examples of the other changes that Tate made. These changes, however, are not uncommon in literature. In Christopher Marlowe’s play Dido Queene of Carthage (1594), for instance, there are several characters who do not appear in Virgil’s Book IV. The characters Ganimed, Achates, Ilioneus, Cloanthes and Sergestus do not appear in the fourth book of the Aeneid, but they do in Dido Queene of Carthage.
Nahum Tate changed the original list of characters for Book IV as well. The first lines of the opera are sung by a character named Belinda. She has replaced Anna, Dido’s sister in Virgil's text. Although their relationship is not made explicit in the list of dramatis personae, it may be assumed that Tate thought of Belinda as someone close to Dido.
Belinda essentially plays the same role as Anna in The Aeneid. Both women persuade Dido to fall in love with Aeneas and both women are present when Dido dies. Her importance is made clear by the fact that she is named; Dido’s servants are simply called
“two women.” This makes it unlikely that Belinda is Dido’s servant. At the very least, Belinda should be regarded as Dido’s confidante. The character of Belinda could not have been left out completely for a very practical reason. Whereas in a written text there is no difference between a character’s thoughts and dialogue that takes place between several characters – it is all written on the page –, on stage there is a difference, obviously. Therefore, the easiest manner to make thoughts and inner concerns clear is to
31 Thorp, par. 1.
32 The epilogue was printed in D’Urfey’s New Poems, published circa November 1689 (Term Catalogues).
have two characters discuss them. Through Dido’s dialogue with her confidante Belinda, the audience can hear what thoughts both women have. It seems logical that Belinda is not exactly the same person as Anna, otherwise Tate would not have had any reason to change the name. It is possible that Tate left out all family ties to focus solely on the two main characters.
Apart from changing the name of Dido's confidante, Tate also replaced characters with completely different ones. The goddesses Juno and Venus are replaced by several witches in the libretto. In The Aeneid the two deities negotiate about the futures of Aeneas and Dido, which makes it evident that people in classical antiquity believed they had little control over their own lives. This belief was certainly outdated at the end of the seventeenth century, as reason, as opposed to unquestioned religion, became more and more important in England. The seventeenth century in England was one of great political, religious and cultural reform, especially after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the reign of Charles II there was an “emphasis on science and secular political philosophy at the expense of theological disquisition and religious enthusiasm.”33 The founding of the Royal Society only a few months after the Restoration and the choice of their motto “Nullius in verba,”34 exemplified this change in attitude.
Apart from the growing importance of reason in England, there is another aspect which probably influenced Tate to replace the goddesses with witches. Late seventeenth-century audiences would be very familiar with the witches who appeared in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (1606). This is the most obvious source for the witches. Macbeth was revived soon after the Restoration and usually performed in William Davenant’s (1606-1668) adaptation. Davenant was largely responsible for bringing the staging techniques used at Court before the Restoration into the public theatres. This made it possible, for instance, for the witches in Macbeth to fly.35 Most Purcell scholars believe that Tate’s introduction of the witches has to do with Restoration beliefs that “witches could be real people,” of whom audiences had seen three examples in Macbeth (1663).36 Furthermore, incantation
33 Hibbert, 142.
34 The motto dates back to 1663 and means, roughly translated, “Take nobody’s word for it”. The Latin words are taken from Horace’s Epistles I.i, 1.13-14 “Ac ne forte roges, quo me duce, quo lare tuter/ Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri.” C.T. Carr translated it: “You shall not ask for whom I fight/ Nor in what school my peace I find; / I say no master has the right/ To swear me to obedience blind.”
35 “Macbeth,” par. 3.
36 Schmalfeldt, 600.
scenes were not uncommon in Restoration operas, e.g. in Matthew Locke’s Psyche (1675). Non-operatic works contained sorcery as well. The many footnotes of Thomas Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches (1682) even referred to standard works of witchcraft to validate the play’s incantations.37
Replacing the two goddesses with witches in the opera has a significant effect. At the beginning of Act II the witches sing of their hate for Dido and their intention to ruin her:
The Queen of Carthage, whom we hate, As we do all in prosperous State.
E’re Sun set, shall most wretched prove, Deprived of Fame, of Life and Love.
This is all the explanation the sorceresses give for their destructive plans. Throughout the opera it is made abundantly clear that the witches mean to do harm. The chorus perhaps gives the most concise summary of the witches and their intentions: “Destruction[‘s] our delight, delight our greatest Sorrow, / Elisas dyes to Night, and Carthage flames to Morrow” (Act III). Through the lack of a personal reason for wanting to ruin Dido and the general wicked image created of the witches, one gets the feeling that Dido’s fall is unjust and undeserved. The aim in Book IV of The Aeneid is not to make one sympathise with the Carthaginian queen. The title of that work leaves no doubts as to who the main figure of the story is. Dido’s fall is the consequence of interference of the gods. Aeneas’s fate is to travel to Italy and found Rome. Juno accuses Venus, however, of making Dido fall in love with Aeneas to prevent Juno’s city, Carthage, from finishing its buildings and defences. Dido is so in love with Aeneas that she forgets about her people and her public responsibilities. As a result,
work on the half-built towers is closed down; the men
of Carthage have laid off drilling, or building the wharves and vital defences of their town; the unfinished works are idle
37 Walkling, 552.
Great frowning walls, head-in-air cranes, all at a standstill.
(Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 86-89).
Juno proposes to arrange a marriage between the two lovers “to seal a lasting peace” (ll.
99-100). Venus realises Juno only proposes this marriage to prevent Aeneas from founding Rome. After Rome’s founding, there would be wars between Carthage and Rome – the famous Punic Wars. In these wars, Carthage would eventually be defeated and utterly destroyed by Rome. Dido’s fall at the end of the Book foreshadows the fall of Carthage. The passage in the beginning of Book IV shows that in The Aeneid Dido’s unhappiness is caused by the plans of two goddesses who are concerned about a much larger scheme. Dido in the opera Dido and Aeneas is brought to a fall through the witches’ plan, which is aimed directly at her. Consequently, the effect of replacing the goddesses with the witches is to make the audience sympathise with Dido. It must be mentioned that it was not uncommon in the Restoration period to identify witches with Roman Catholicism, since witches were associated with superstition and superstition was linked to Roman Catholicism. The witches in Dido and Aeneas could therefore also be explained as representing a Papist threat. In 1689, when the opera premièred, the Protestant William of Orange and Mary II reigned over England as a result of the Glorious Revolution of the year before. Mary’s Catholic father, James II, had fled to France. Several scholars believe that the entire opera should be seen as a political allegory, in which Aeneas stands for James II and Dido for England.38 In late seventeenth-century England Roman Catholicism was thought to pose a threat to peace and stability in England. James’s predecessor, his brother Charles II, was Protestant;
James converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1670s, however. “After 1676 James was completely committed to the Catholic faith.”39 Hysteria over the Popish Plot, allegedly to kill Charles II in order to have James succeed him, broke out in 1678. Members of Parliament of both houses tried to prevent James’s succession to the throne. Charles failed to produce legitimate (Protestant) children, which fed speculations of a Popish Plot.
When in 1685 Charles died, his brother James succeeded him. If we wish to see Dido and
38 Andrew R. Walking’s article “Political Allegory in Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas” is an informative article based on the assumption that the opera is indeed a political allegory.
39 Speck, par. 25.
Aeneas as a political allegory, Aeneas would have to be regarded as James, who flees England and abandons the English people (Dido) under influence of Roman Catholicism, represented by the witches in the opera. Walkling states that “[Dido’s] fate lies ultimately in the hands of mortals who hold positions of power over her but who use that power in a manner that is injurious to her welfare, rather than promoting the peace and tranquility that she desires.”40
In addition to these replaced characters, Tate also gave a voice to some characters who had very insignificant roles in the original. The sailors are the most striking example of this. Whereas none of them speak in Book IV of The Aeneid, they have a whole song in Dido and Aeneas at the beginning of Act III. Tate’s choice to write this song may be explained by a practical reason. At Priest’s school, where the première took place in 1689, there were simply more girls than there were parts in Virgil’s original story. By writing a Sailors Song, Tate ensured that all the girls would have a role in the opera.
Scholars debate over Tate alteration as well. The main question of that debate is: why has Tate written it? It is not in Virgil's original text. Apart from this song, the sailors do not have any lines in the opera and they use their one opportunity to confirm the prejudice that sailors have women in every city they go to. Their song shows no honourable intentions:
Come away, fellow Saylors your Anchors be weighing.
Time and Tide will admit no delaying.
Take a Bouze short leave of your Nymphs on the Shore,
And Silence their Morning, (mourning)
VVith Vows of returning.
But never intending to Visit them more.
(Act III).
Purcell emphasises the lies of the sailors by repeating the word “never” in the last line several times. At the same time, the notion of desertion is touched upon; this is a preparation for Aeneas’s departure. The merry tune of this song shows that the sailors are
40 Walkling, 555.
certainly willing to leave Carthage and suggests that this is not the first time they behaved in this manner. The attitude of the group of sailors - of which Aeneas is the leader - combined with Aeneas’s promise of staying in Act I of the opera - although the audience knows he will leave - suggests that Aeneas’s intentions might not have been completely honourable. The suggestion that Aeneas may have taken advantage of Dido adds to the notion of the sympathetic Dido.
The plot of Nahum Tate’s libretto is simplified as compared to the plot of Book IV of The Aeneid. This includes leaving out certain themes, e.g. parental ties. These are important in Virgil’s text, but Tate leaves them out almost completely. At the very beginning of Book IV, Anna tries to persuade Dido to cease her celibate life: “You are dearer to me than the light of day. / Must you go on wasting your youth in mourning and solitude, / Never to know the blessings of love, the delight of children?” (Virgil, trans.
Day Lewis: IV, 31-33). After she has fallen in love, Dido holds Aeneas’s son Ascanius in her lap to assuage the passion she must not speak of. Juno accuses Venus of making Dido fall in love with Aeneas. Juno says: “A praiseworthy feat, I must say, a fine achievement you’ve brought off, / You and your boy” (Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 93-94). A person’s identity is partly defined by one’s parentage, e.g. king Iarbas, Dido’s slighted lover, is introduced in Book IV as: “He, the son of Ammon by a ravished African nymph” (Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, line 198). King Iarbas gives Dido land when she first arrives of the African shore. He wants to marry Dido, but she refuses him. When Iarbas learns that Dido is with Aeneas, he angrily appeals to Jupiter, who sends his messenger Mercury to remind Aeneas of his fate. The witches conjure up a spirit, in the opera Dido and Aeneas, and the latter tells Aeneas to leave Dido and go to Italy. Parental ties are important throughout Book IV. When Aeneas tells Dido he must leave her, she speaks
If even I might have conceived a child by you before You went away, a little Aeneas to play in the palace
And, in spite of all this, to remind me of you by his looks, oh then I should not feel so utterly finished and desolate.
(Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 327-330).
These parental bonds are almost not mentioned in the libretto of Dido and Aeneas. By replacing Anna with Belinda, Tate leaves out a family tie that is important in Virgil’s text. Leaving out this connection makes the Carthaginian queen without family, which makes her, symbolically, alone. Also, without family ties to complicate the story, the focus is completely on Aeneas and Dido.
Tate also decided to omit certain striking elements of the plot. In Book IV of The Aeneid, Dido’s and Aeneas’s argument before Aeneas’s departure is very intense; Dido accuses Aeneas of wanting to leave her secretly, she blames him for the loss of her reputation of faithfulness, and she tells him he is the reason several tribes are hostile towards the Carthaginians. Virgil has Dido curse Aeneas after he has told her he must leave. A furious Dido speaks:
I only hope that, if the just spirits have any power,
Marooned on some mid-sea rock you may drink the full cup of agony And often cry out for Dido. I’ll dog you, from far, with the death-fires;
And when cold death has parted my soul from my body, my spectre Will be wherever you are. You shall pay for the evil you’ve done me.
The tale of your punishment will come to me down in the shades.
(Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 382-387).
In Tate’s libretto all this is left out. The focus is solely on what happens between Dido and Aeneas in Carthage. The queen concludes with:
That is my last prayer. I pour it out, with my lifeblood.
Let you, my Tyrians, sharpen your hatred upon his children And all their seed for ever: send this as a present to
My ghost. Between my people and his, no love, no alliance! […]
I call down a feud between them and us to the last generation!
(Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 610-629).
In Book VI of The Aeneid, Aeneas meets Dido once more in the Underworld. She has not forgiven him and she turns away from Aeneas at the excuses he makes. Omitting Dido’s curse from his libretto is one of Tate’s devices in creating an image of a sympathetic Dido. Virgil depicts her as an overly emotional, irrational, and occasionally, hysterical woman. Virgil’s image of Aeneas is much more heroic: he is the son of a goddess, chosen to found a new empire on the Hesperian shore. Although occasionally distracted, he has a clear purpose, which is to found Rome. Many changes between the original text and the libretto are made to create another image of the Carthaginian queen. Dido and Aeneas, consequently, serves another purpose altogether than Book IV of The Aeneid.
When, in the opera, Dido learns of Aeneas’s departure, she reproaches him for being a deceitful man, for breaking his promise made in Act I. He said to her: “Aeneas has no Fate but you. / Let Dido Smile and I’le defie / The Feeble stroke of Destiny.” Dido tells him she wants him to leave her so that she can die and although he then offers to stay, she resolutely sends him away: “For ‘tis enough what e’re you now decree, / That you had once a thought of leaving me” (Act III). At the end of their duet, Dido dismisses Aeneas with a strong “Away, away”.
Example 1: the end of Dido and Aeneas’ duet. Dido sends Aeneas away after he has offered to stay.
As is clear from example one, Dido sings her final notes accompanied only by a chord played by the instruments. There is nothing to district the listener from what is happening at that moment. The duet of Aeneas and Dido, which develops into a contest almost about Aeneas’s stay or departure, is passionately ended by Dido.
The plot for the queen’s final moments has been altered by Tate as well. Although Dido dies at the end of both Virgil's Book IV and the opera, there are great differences between her death in Virgil’s epic poem and her death in Tate’s libretto. Virgil is much more explicit about her death than Nahum Tate is. At the end of Book IV Dido climbs on a pyre where Aeneas’s clothes and sword are placed. She speaks her last words and then throws herself on the sword. Her attendants “could see the blood spouting up over the blade, and her hands spattered” (Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 664-665). Anna hurries towards Dido, climbs the pyre and takes her sister in her lap. Dido cannot die, however, until a lock of her hair is cut off.41 The almighty Juno sends down the goddess Iris, who clips a lock of Dido’s hair, “Then all warmth went at once, the life was lost in air”
(Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, line 705). In Dido and Aeneas the queen’s death is more mysterious. At the end of the climactic scene, the world-famous Dido’s lament, the queen passes away. In Belinda’s company, she sings her final words:
Thy hand Belinda, - darkness shades me, On thy Bosom let me rest,
More I wou’d but Death invades me.
Death is now a Welcome Guest.
When I am laid in Earth [may] my wrongs Create.
No trouble in thy Breast,
Remember me, but ah! Forget my Fate.
Tate gives no details of Dido’s death; it is not even explicitly said that Dido dies. Purcell completes this scene with his music. The air ends in the same manner in which it started:
with dissonant chords. In the final six bars of the air, the descending notes and the dissonant, melancholy tune represents that which is not seen on stage, Dido’s death.
During the final chorus, Cupids “with drooping wings” scatter roses on Dido’s tomb.
The two different endings of the story of Dido and Aeneas have different artistic effects. The manner of Dido’s death is important. In The Aeneid it is clear Dido takes her
41 When an animal was to be sacrificed, a lock of its hair was cut off. This marked the animal for death.
In The Aeneid Virgil imagines Proserpine, Queen of Hades, doing the same for dying men and women.
This is a poetic invention, not reality. Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, line 416.
own life, but she does not do so in Dido and Aeneas. In the opera she dies of a broken heart, for which Aeneas’s departure is the cause. The main focus of Purcell’s work is, more so than in Virgil, the love affair between Aeneas and Dido. Their marriage is not disputed by Aeneas in the opera, whereas in The Aeneid Aeneas objects to the idea of their being married. He states: “I did not look to make off from here / In secret – do not suppose it; nor did I offer you marriage / At any time or consent to be bound by a marriage contract” (Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 337-339). Furthermore, he gives a lengthy explanation for his departure. These nuances are all left out in the libretto, which makes Aeneas appear much less sympathetic than in The Aeneid.
Virgil’s Book IV ends with Dido’s death, but the final lines of the opera are sung in a chorus in which Dido’s qualities are praised: “Soft and Gentle as her Heart”. By the time the opera’s last notes are played, Aeneas has been off stage for almost ten minutes and the complete focus has been on the dying queen. Whereas Virgil leaves it to his readers to decide what to think of Dido’s death, Tate has the final chorus lament her passing. Purcell’s musical setting for this last scene, especially for Dido’s lament, makes it intensely dramatic. As shown in example two, the lamento “is built on a five-bar ground bass [in] a descending chromatic tetrachord.”42
Example 2: the first five bars of Dido’s Lament in which the bass descends in chromatic tetrachords.
This was not new, and was, in fact, very common in contemporary Venetian opera.
Purcell, however, did not compose a cliché, due to “the soft, four-part string accompaniment, the miraculous avoidance of cadences in expected places … and the
42 Price, par. 14.
final ritornello43 during which [Dido] dies.”44 The result is one of the best known opera airs about a tragic love-death in which “pathos without sentimentality” is reached.45
Tate’s libretto has often been criticised for its poor poetry and easy rhymes. Virgil indeed has a different style altogether. In The Aeneid he weaves many metaphors into his text, whereas Nahum Tate predominantly uses straightforward rhymes in his libretto.
Also, Virgil describes the characters’ clothes in detail. At the hunting party, Dido is dressed in “a Phoenician habit, piped with bright-coloured braid: / Her quiver is gold, her hair bound up with a golden clasp, / a brooch of gold fastens the waist of her brilliant dress” (Virgil, trans. Day Lewis: IV, 135-137). Tate’s libretto lacks such descriptions of clothes; the audience would see the characters on stage and therefore a description was not necessary. Furthermore, Tate has chosen to work with a theme in his libretto which Virgil touches upon only slightly in Book IV: hunt. Apart from the literal hunt on animals, there is also a symbolical hunt; Aeneas tries to win Dido’s heart. This is clear from Act I where Aeneas and Belinda successfully try to persuade Dido to give in to her love for Aeneas. Aeneas gives several reasons for the match, both romantic and practical ones: “If not for mine, for Empires sake, / Some pity on your Lover take.” Other than in The Aeneid, Aeneas actively pursues Dido. Belinda brings back the theme of hunt when the queen and her guests are hunting. In her aria Belinda refers to the goddess of hunt, Diana. The second woman elaborates on this and she tells the story of Diana and Actaeon:
Oft she Visits this Loved Mountain, Oft she bathes her in this Fountain.
Here Acteon met his Fate, Pursued by his own Hounds, And after Mortal Wounds.
Discovered, discovered too late.
43 “In seventeenth-century operas and cantatas, the term came to be applied to the short instrumental conclusion added to an aria or other type of song. Sometimes the ritornello also occurred at the beginning.“ Cochrane, par. 2.
44 Price, par. 14
45 Idem, par. 14
The tragic story of Diana and Actaeon is not mentioned in Book IV of The Aeneid.
Actaeon’s love for the goddess Diana is a tragic love, similar to Dido’s love for Aeneas.
Aeneas continues the theme in his following recitative. The sexual connotation is clear:
Behold upon my bending Spear, A Monsters Head stands bleeding.
VVith Tushes far exceeding, These did Venus Huntsman Tear.
At this point the storm breaks out and the two lovers seek shelter in the same cave.
In the libretto there are several references to gods and goddesses. The legend of Diana and Actaeon is the most significant. In the myth, the hunter Actaeon inadvertently sees the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathe. Diana catches him watching her and she turns him into a stag. Actaeon’s own hounds do not recognise him anymore and devour him.46 The theme of hunt is important for this text on several levels: firstly, there is the hunt for love and Aeneas’s hunt for Dido. Secondly, one could argue that on a meta-level there was a pursuit as well. Tate’s objective was to write a neoclassic text. It appears, however, that he only used an ancient subject, which he adapted to the taste of his time.
Elements of Virgil’s poem which were specific to classical antiquity, e.g. sacrifices for the gods and goddesses, were left out. Tate does not achieve the same level of poetry as Virgil. Moreover, it does not seem to have been his intention. Due to the insertion of new scenes and speeches, e.g. the sailors’ song and Aeneas’s sexually loaded recitative in the grove scene, Tate creates a less elevated style than Virgil’s style in The Aeneid. The aims of the two texts differ as well. Whereas in Virgil’s poem the purpose is to relate the experiences of Aeneas, the goal of Dido and Aeneas is to show the tragedy of Dido’s death. It is clear that, unlike in the Aeneid, Dido is the central figure of the opera and it is Aeneas’s departure that causes her grief and death. The character of Aeneas is underdeveloped, due to the main focus on Dido. Aeneas even lacks a proper aria in which more of his character and intentions might have been learned. Undoubtedly, this was Tate design, for Dido is the key figure. Aeneas is raised high in the beginning of the opera; he
46 Ovid, The Metamorphoses: Book III
is described as a “hero” repeatedly and both his valour and charms are praised. This only makes Aeneas’s fall greater when it is clear he will leave Dido. After such high expectations, Dido’s tragic end evokes even more sympathy.
The next chapter of this dissertation discusses another English opera, Acis and Galatea, which was based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In addition to Dido and Aeneas, this will provide another example of the transformation of a classic story into a Baroque opera.
3 Acis and Galatea
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse in what ways Ovid’s story of Acis and Galatea, as described in book XIII of The Metamorphoses, was adapted for Gay’s libretto of the opera Acis and Galatea. Particular attention is paid to the text in relation to Handel’s music as well as to differences between Ovid’s text and the libretto. The first section focuses on John Gay, the librettist.
3.1 The librettist and his libretto
The libretto of the opera Acis and Galatea (HWV 49, 1718) by Georg Friedrich Handel was written by the English poet and playwright John Gay (1685-1732). Gay was born into a respectable family in Barnstaple, Devon. The Gays were prominent in trade as well as in civic and religious affairs. When Gay was nine years old his mother died and scarcely one year later his father passed away on his son’s tenth birthday.47 He was left to the care of an uncle, who sent him to the local grammar school. Gay was taught so well at this school that he kept a love for the classics the rest of his life. This was due to his first schoolmaster, William Rayner, who was “highly skilled in languages, attentive and consistent in the performance of his duties, and remarkable for strict discipline.”48 The translations Gay later made of Ovid’s Metamorphoses account for his continued interest in the classics. This translation was published in 1719, titled Ovid in Masquerade: being a burlesque upon the xiiith Book of his Metamorphoses, containing the celebrated speeches of Ajax and Ulysses. His second schoolmaster, Robert Luck, made a lasting impression on Gay through his enthusiasm for drama. Soon after Luck succeeded William Rayner, he introduced school plays at the grammar school, usually performed in Latin. Interestingly, Luck would often insert his own musical verses into these plays. He would also write his own prologues and epilogues, which made the plays look more local
47 Nokes, 28.
48 Quoted in Nokes, 29.
and topical. In this respect, Gay's best known work, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), certainly seems influenced by his former schoolmaster.
Just before his eighteenth birthday Gay left Devon and went to London as an apprentice to a silk-mercer. Whilst in London, Gay sought the acquaintance of authors and he started writing himself. At the age of twenty-three he had his first poem, which was in praise of wine, published anonymously.49 Gay found his first literary employment with the British Apollo. This was a “question-and-answer journal designed to cater for the tastes of London’s self-improving middle classes.”50 The journal appeared three times a week and there was a large group of men writing articles for it. Occasionally, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, would contribute as well. Even though his work at British Apollo had been his first position as a writer, Gay wanted a nobler literary career and he published his pamphlet The Present State of Wit (1711). In it he flattered well known authors such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift, who might have been able to assist his literary career. In the same year Gay would, most likely, have first met Handel (1685-1759). The founder of British Apollo, Aaron Hill, managed to persuade the newly arrived Handel to compose his first London opera, Rinaldo. As in every European court and capital (except Paris), Italian operas were very much in vogue in London at the time. Handel was certainly familiar with Italian opera, for he had composed two before he came to Britain. In October 1707 his first Italian opera premièred as Vincer se stesso è il maggior vittoria; today it is known as Rodrigo. His second Italian opera, Agrippina, opened the carnival season in Venice in 1709. Agrippina was so popular with the international audience in Venice that Handel’s reputation was at once established. The successful performance of Agrippina also provided him with several influential contacts, among whom were probably Prince Ernst Georg of Hanover, brother of the elector (the future King George I of Britain) and the Duke of Manchester (the English ambassador). Both men may have issued invitations for Handel to visit their countries.51
Rinaldo was composed in a fortnight and premièred in February 1711.52 It was based on parts of Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1581), a poem
49 Warner, 8.
50 Nokes, 54.
51 Hicks, section 3, paragraphs 2 and 5.
52 Nokes, 77.
relating the historic events of the first crusade to liberate Jerusalem. Tasso (1544-1595) was one of the most popular poets at the end of the sixteenth century in Italy. His Gerusalemme liberata competed with Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando furioso (1509) for the most popular work of the century. Both poems were a source of inspiration to many composers in later centuries. After Rinaldo, Handel would write Orlando (1733), Alcina (1735) and Ariodante (1735); three operas which were all based on Ariosto’s poem. For Rinaldo, Hill insisted on spectacle on the stage, the main aspect he felt lacked in previous performances of Italian opera. Rinaldo certainly proved to be spectacular; in the first act a character moves through the air in a “chariot drawn by two huge dragons, out of whose mouths issue fire and smoke.” The second act provides two mermaids singing an underwater-duet and the third offers waterfalls, “thunder, lightning and amazing noises.”53 It is likely that John Gay met Handel for the first time in this period and that Rinaldo was Gay’s first direct experience with (Italian) opera.
In 1712 he found his first patron, the Duchess of Monmouth. Gay left her in 1714, however, when Jonathan Swift helped to get him employment in the household of Lord Clarendon. By then, Gay had established a reputation which grew steadily. Only a year later, he left Lord Clarendon as well and the young Earl of Burlington became his patron.
The third Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) was not only patron to Gay, but to many artists, including painters, architects, composers and opera-singers. The architect William Kent (1685-1748) stood under Burlington’s patronage, for example, as well as the Italian painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741), Flemish sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1693-1770) and German-born composer Georg Friedrich Handel. His protégés would have met frequently at Burlington House in the years that followed.54. Handel and Gay became well acquainted at the Earl’s house, for Handel lived there on and off from 1710 to 1717. Handel divided his time between London and Hanover, where he held the post of court conductor. This post of Kapellmeister had been appointed to him by George, Elector of Hanover in 1710. After Queen Anne’s death in 1714, George became the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.
During the reign of George I, John Gay wrote poems, fables and plays, but today he is most remembered for The Beggar’s Opera. It was immensely popular; it had sixty-
53 Quoted in Nokes, 78.
54 Nokes, 43.
two performances during its first season, which was then unprecedented in the history of London theatre, and it would be performed every season for the rest of the century. Gay wrote the sequel, Polly, in the same year, but its performance was banned by the Lord Chamberlain. Polly premièred nearly fifty years after it was written, in 1777.55 Despite its ban, the libretto and songs were published in 1729. Due to the controversy of the ban, the piece sold very quickly. Shortly after Gay’s death in 1732 his opera Achilles was published. The piece is largely forgotten now. It was performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Its theme is an usual one: Achilles in petticoats. Both The Beggar’s Opera and Polly are ballad operas, in which dialogue is combined with popular tunes set to new words. The Scottish poet Allan Ramsay, who was Gay’s friend, had published his pastoral comedy The Gentle Shepherd in 1725. This play was based on two of his earlier poems and it contained four songs. After the immense success of The Beggar’s Opera Ramsay added eighteen Scottish airs to produce the ballad opera The Gentle Shepherd (1729), which proved to be one of the greatest ‘hits’ of the century.56
Unlike Polly and The Beggar’s Opera, Acis and Galatea was influenced by the genre of the English pastoral operas. Logically, pastoral drama had been an important element of influence on the pastoral opera. According to Ellen Harris, eighteenth-century pastoral drama should be characterised as “tragicomedy.” Whereas in classical antiquity comedy and tragedy were two opposing forms of drama, they were no longer so in the baroque era. “The major dramatic genre of the baroque era, and especially of opera [was]
tragicomedy,” which is a combination of the two.57 As will later become clear, Acis and Galatea combines the typical elements of the pastoral, i.e. shepherds and shepherdesses and wooing or courtship, with comical aspects.
The literary genre of the pastoral was established by the Greek Theocritus (c. 310- 250 B.C.) in his Idylls and elaborated by Virgil in his Eclogues. The pastoral expresses a longing for a past Golden Age or a remote Arcadia. The Golden Age, which from the Renaissance on was often compared to the Garden of Eden, refers to a peaceful and
55 Cook. Little in the libretto for Polly was politically sensitive; the Lord Chamberlain banned its performance on 12 December 1728 nevertheless. Gay’s libretto for The Beggar’s Opera, however, was associated with satire on the Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole and this most likely influenced the Lord Chamberlain to ban its sequel.
56 Baldwin and Wilson, par. 3.
57 Harris, 2.
harmonious world. The genre of the pastoral did not play a significant role during the Middle Ages. It revived, however, in the Renaissance. Even before the close of the fifteenth century, men had begun to write pastorals in Italian, as well as in Latin. In the sixteenth century pastorals were also being written in other modern languages, e.g.
English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Its huge popularity spread to other arts as well, such as the art of painting. Jacopo Sannazaro’s prose romance Arcadia (1504), for instance, inspired Venetian painters to develop the pastoral genre in painting.
In the seventeenth century the religious pastoral developed in Rome, most notably by Claude Lorrain (1600-1682).58 The pastoral was found to be a convenient form for a safer discussion of political or religious matters; allegory was frequently used in pastoral drama and poetry.59 The pastoral continued to be immensely popular until the middle of the eighteenth century. By then it had become “a literary plague in every European capital.”60 The pastoral appealed to people from all classes and situations in life. It offered an escape from reality into an idyllic and artificial life. Eventually, the eighteenth century began to favour a more realistic form of nature and rural life, anticipating the Romantic period. In The Gentle Shepherd, this change in preference began to be visible.
Ramsay wrote his work in the Pentlands vernacular, for example, introducing everyday language into his pastoral drama.61
Gay, too, objected to the artificiality of the pastoral, as will become clear later. It is not entirely certain, however, who chose the subject for Acis and Galatea. The choice of subject for the libretto might have been Handel’s rather than Gay's, for the story of Acis and Galatea had fascinated Handel for years. He had composed the short musical sketch Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo (1708) for a princely wedding in Naples. The three title characters appeared in Book XIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In 1717 Samuel Garth’s edition of the English translation of all fifteen books of The Metamorphoses had been published. Several authors, e.g. Dryden, Addison, Tate, Gay and Congreve, translated Latin into English verse. This edition proved to be one of the influential sources for Gay while he was writing the libretto for Acis and Galatea a year later. Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a popular work and many translations of (parts of) it were published
58 Langdon, par. 1.
59 Mustard, 165.
60 Quoted in Mustard, 165.
61 Scullion, par. 3.
in English. In 1567 Arthur Golding translated all fifteen books of The Metamorphoses, a version which was so well-liked that by 1612 eight editions had been published. From 1626 on, George Sandys’s translation of The Metamorphoses took over as the most used translation. His Ovid’s Metamorphoses Englished was published as many as twelve times. The last edition was published in 1690, twenty-seven years before Garth’s edition.
The première of Acis and Galatea was almost certainly at Cannons, the Edgware mansion of James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon (later Duke of Chandos). Not much is known about the première. As Cannons was a private residence, it seems likely that the setting was not elaborate. Nor was it strictly necessary, for there is no action in the opera, except for Polypheme throwing the rock at Acis near the end of the piece. The setting might be imagined as described in an advertisement for a 1732 performance of Acis and Galatea:
There will be no Action on the Stage, but the Scene will represent, in a Picturesque Manner, a rural Prospect, with Rocks, Groves, Fountains and Grotto’s; amongst which will be disposed a Chorus of Nymphs and Shepherds, Habits, and every other Decoration suited to the Subject.62
Handel had taken up residence at Cannons in the late summer of 1717, since his former patron, the Earl of Burlington, was travelling to the Continent in August.63 Brydges competed with the Earl of Burlington as the patron of musicians. The first had already hired the German composer Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667-1752) as his ‘director of music.’ Pepusch had spent nearly twenty years at the Prussian court where he was employed. In 1697 he settled in London, where he worked as a violinist and harpsichordist. In London he met John Hughes, the English poet and dramatist, with whom he later collaborated in several works. Although Pepusch wrote well over 100 violin sonatas, amongst other works, today he is best known for his overture of The Beggar’s Opera. By taking on Handel as his ‘resident composer’ it appears Brydges wanted to make Cannons a more prominent centre of music than Burlington House.
Handel composed many pieces while at Cannons, including the oratorio Esther (1718),
62 Sadie, par. 5
63 Baselt and Siegmund-Schultze, XIV.
