Company founded to support the performance of operas by Händel in London
This article is about the company founded to support the performance of operas by Händel in London. For the music conservatoire in London, see Royal Academy of Music.
The Royal Academy of Music was a company founded in February 1719, during George Frideric Handel's residence atCannons, by a group of aristocrats to secure themselves a constant supply of opera seria. It is not connected to the London conservatoire with the same name, which was founded in 1822.
It commissioned large numbers of new operas from three of the leading composers in Europe: Handel, Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini.[1] The Academy took the legal form of a joint-stock corporation under letters patent issued by George I of Great Britain for a term of 21 years with a governor, a deputy governor and at least fifteen directors.[2] The (first) Royal Academy lasted for only nine seasons instead of twenty-one, but both the New or Second Academy and the Opera of the Nobility seem to have operated under its Royal Charter until the expiry of the original term.[3]
Handel was appointed as Master of the orchestra responsible not only for engaging soloists but also for adapting operas from abroad and for providing possible libretti for his own use, generally provided from Italy.[4]
The duke of Newcastle (left) and the Earl of Lincoln, brothers-in-law as painted by Godfrey Kneller, c.1721.
The capital of £10,000 was divided into 50 shares of £200 each. Sixty-three people initially subscribed for shares.[6] The issue was rapidly oversubscribed: several took more than one share: Lord Burlington subscribed £1000.[7]Otto Erich Deutsch printed a list of 63 names, a later list by Charles Burney carried 73 names. The extra ten were perhaps those admitted at the directors' meetings on 30 November and 2 December 1719. This would give a total capital of £17,600.[8]
On 14 May 1719 Handel was ordered by the Lord Chamberlain and governor of the corporation, the Duke of Newcastle, to look for new singers.[13] Handel travelled to Dresden to attend the newly built opera house. He saw Teofane by Antonio Lotti, composed for the wedding of August III of Poland, and engaged leading members of the cast on behalf of the Royal Academy of Music. In April 1720 the Academy began producing operas.[14] The orchestra consisted of seventeen violins, two violas, four cellos, two double basses, four oboes, three bassoons, a theorbo and a trumpet.
The brothers Prospero and Pietro Castrucci as well as Johan Helmich Roman and John Jones were violinists.[15] Bononcini was a cellist, he and Handel presumably accompanied the recitatives in all the operas.[16]Filippo Amadei, one of the composers of Muzio Scevola, also played cello, Pietro Giuseppe Sandoni, who would soon marry Francesca Cuzzoni, was the second harpsichord player. John Baptist Grano was the trumpeter, John Festing played oboe; Charles Frederick Weideman was the flautist and oboist and is also known from his appearance in The Enraged Musician.
A caricature of Margherita Durastanti, drawn while she was prima donna at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, between 1709 and 1712.Senesino, c.1720, engaged by the Academy for as long as possible.
Extravagant fees were offered to entice the best performers from Italy. For Margherita Durastanti in the role of Radamisto, Handel wrote one of his favourite arias, Ombra cara di mia sposa. The great singers who were to be the brightest stars of the Royal Academy during the next few years, such as the castratoSenesino and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, had not yet arrived in London. Senesino had obligations to fulfill and arrived in September 1720, accompanied by a group of outstanding singers: the castrato Matteo Berselli, the soprano Maddalena Salvai and the bass Giuseppe Boschi.
Handel used the libretto of Teofane for his Ottone, with Cuzzoni as prima donna. It became his most successful opera in the years of the Academy. In 1724 and 1725 Handel wrote several masterpieces: Giulio Cesare, (1724) with many da capo arias that became famous, and Anastasia Robinson as Cornelia. Not a castrato but a tenor, Francesco Borosini, sang the leading role of Bajazet in Handel's most powerfully tragic opera Tamerlano (also 1724). Insisting on adding the death of Bajazet he had a direct role in shaping the climax of the work.[6]Charles Burney called the prison scene's "Chi di voi" in Rodelinda (1725) "one of the finest pathetic airs that can be found in all [Handel's] works."[17] Eventually Bononcini was dismissed, and went into private service, Robinson retired and Joseph Goupy may have been employed as a scene-painter.
In February 1726 Handel revived his Ottone, which had been spectacularly successful at its first performances in 1723 and was again a hit at its revival, with a London newspaper reporting
Handel had the satisfaction of seeing an Old Opera of his not only fill the House, which had not been done for some time, but above three hundred turn'd away for want of room.[18]
As the newspaper notes, full houses were by no means a regular occurrence by that time, and the directors of the Royal Academy of Music decided to increase audiences' interest by bringing another celebrated international opera star, Italian soprano Faustina Bordoni, to join established London favourites Francesca Cuzzoni and the star castrato Senesino in the company's performances. Many opera companies in Italy featured two leading ladies in one opera and Faustina (as she was known) and Cuzzoni had appeared together in opera performances in various European cities with no trouble; there is no indication that there was any bad feeling or ill-will between the two of them prior to their London joint appearances.[18][19]
The three stars, Bordoni, Cuzzoni and Senesino commanded astronomical fees, making much more money from the opera seasons than Handel did.[20] The opera company would have been aware that the story of the two princesses in love with Alexander the Great chosen for the two prima donnas' first joint appearance in Handel's Alessandro was familiar to London audiences through a tragedy by Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great, first performed in 1677 and often revived and it may be that they were encouraging the idea that the two singers were rivals.[19] One of the agents who had arranged Faustina's appearances in London, Owen Swiny, explicitly warned against the choice of libretto as likely to cause "disorder" in a letter to the directors of the Royal Academy of Music, imploring them:
...never to consent to any thing that can put the Academy into disorder, as it must, certainly, if what I hear … is put in Execution: I mean the opera of Alexander the great; where there is to be a Struggle between the Rival Queen’s, for a Superiority.[21]
The performances of Alessandro went off with no signs of animosity between Bordoni and Cuzzoni or their respective supporters, but it was not very long after that tension between the two erupted. As 18th century musicologist Charles Burney observed about the Cuzzoni / Faustina rivalry:
it seems impossible for two singers of equal merit to tread the stage a parte eguale, as for two people to ride on the same horse, without one being behind.[22]
Handel's next opera, Admeto, again with roles for both sopranos, was well-received and had nineteen performances in its initial run, a mark of success for those times.[23]
Many audience members were extremely enthusiastic about the singers. At the conclusion of one of Cuzzoni's arias at a performance of the original run, a man in the gallery called out "Damn her: she has got a nest of nightingales in her belly".[24]
However, some members of the London audience had become fiercely partisan in favouring either Bordoni or Cuzzoni and disliking the other and at the performance of Admeto on 4 April 1727 with members of the royal family present, elements of the audience were extremely unruly, hissing and interrupting the performance with cat-calls when the "rival" to their favourite was performing, causing public scandal. Cuzzoni issued a public apology to the royal family through one of her supporters:
...Cuzzoni had been publicly told...she was to be hissed off the stage on Tuesday; she was in such concern at this, that she had a great mind not to sing, but I...positively ordered her not to quit the stage, but let them do what they would...and she owns now that if she had not had that order she would have quitted the stage when they cat-called her to such a degree in one song, that she was not heard one note, which provoked the people that liked her so much, that they were not able to get the better of their resentment, but would not suffer the Faustina to speak afterwards.[24]
These sort of disturbances continued however, climaxing that June in a performance at the Academy of an opera by Giovanni Bononcini, Astianatte. With royalty again present in the person of the Princess of Wales, Cuzzoni and Faustina were onstage together and members of the audience who were supporters of one of the prima donnas were loudly protesting and hissing whenever the other one sang. Actual fist fights broke out in the audience between rival groups of "fans" and Cuzzoni and Faustina stopped singing, began trading insults and finally came to blows onstage and had to be dragged apart.[20][21][25]The British Journal of 10 June reported:
On Tuesday-night last, a great disturbance happened at the Opera, occasioned by the Partisans of the Two Celebrated Rival Ladies, Cuzzoni and Faustina. The Contention at first was only carried on by Hissing on one side, and Clapping on the other; but proceeded at length to Catcalls, and other great Indecencies: And notwithstanding the Princess Caroline was present, no Regards were of force to restrain the Rudeness of the Opponents....(the two singers) pull'd each others' coiffs (hair)...it is certainly an apparent Shame that two such well-bred ladies should call each other Bitch and Whore, should Scold and Fight like any Billingsgates (fishmongers).[20]
The performance was abandoned, creating an enormous scandal reported gleefully in newspapers and pamphlets, satirised in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera of 1728, and tainting the entire reputation of Italian opera in London with disrepute in the eyes of many.[26] The most popular account of the onstage fight between the two prima donnas was The Devil To Pay at St. James's: Or, A Full And True Account of a Most Horrible And Bloody Battle Between Madam Faustina And Madam Cuzzoni, Etc, an anonymous poem in rhyming couplets.[27]
Despite this fiasco, both ladies continued to appear together onstage in several more operas presented by the Academy, among them Siroe by Handel, the first time he used a libretto originally by Pietro Metastasio.
The Royal Academy of Music collapsed at the end of the 1728 – 29 season, partly due to the huge fees paid to the star singers, and Cuzzoni and Faustina both left London for engagements in continental Europe. Handel started a new opera company with a new prima donna, Anna Strada. One of Handel's librettists, Paolo Rolli, wrote in a letter (the original is in Italian) that Handel said that Strada "sings better than the two who have left us, because one of them (Faustina) never pleased him at all and he would like to forget the other (Cuzzoni)."[28]
The death of George I caused the performance of Riccardo Primo to be postponed until the next season and prompted both librettist Paolo Rolli and composer to make significant changes to their work. They decided to give the patriotic drum a good thump by adding gratuitous references to British valour, justice and power.[29] In 1728 John Gay's The Beggar's Opera premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the longest run in theatre history up to that time. It marked the beginning of a change in London musical taste and fashion, away from Italian opera in favour of something less highbrow, more home-grown, and more easily intelligible.[30] The 1727–28 season boasted three new operas, but in 1729 the directors agreed to suspend activity after losing money. Not Handel, he had been the only one on their pay list. He immediately started a New or Second Academy of Music.
The Royal Academy produced 461 performances, 235 were works by Handel: 13 operas. Eight operas were by Bononcini (114 performances) and seven operas by Ariosti (54 performances).[31]
In 1729 Handel became joint manager of the King's Theatre with the Swiss aristocrat John James Heidegger. Handel travelled to Italy to engage seven new singers. In Bologna he met with Owen Swiny, a former theatre manager from London. Back home he composed seven more operas.[32] On his way back he visited his mother and probably met with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, sent by his father, as the story goes. Johann Sebastian Bach, working only 20 miles away in Köthen, arrived too late to meet with his famous colleague, who had left earlier that day.[33] Back in London Handel produced Ezio, an expensive disaster. Charles Burney ranked the score of his next opera Sosarme among his most pleasing; Dean states the opera does more honour to Handel as a musician than as a dramatist.[34] Handel composed Partenope, Poro, and Orlando, but with mixed success with the public. In the long run Handel failed to compete with the Opera of the Nobility, who had engaged musicians such as Johann Adolf Hasse, Nicolo Porpora and the famous castrato Farinelli.
Frederick, Prince of Wales and the anti-German faction of the English nobility who backed the Opera of Nobility sought to gain ground against the German court by attacking the foreigner Handel, little concerned about the paradox of the situation: the nationalistic faction fought with the weapon of the foreign Italian opera and summoned the aid of foreigners such as Hasse, himself an Italianized German like Handel.[35]
Handel had composed about 30 operas for the Royal Academy.[36] and moved his productions to Covent Garden. The Opera of the Nobility took over the King's Theatre.
The Academy survived until 1734, after which it encountered many difficulties: arguments between Handel and his singers, the dismissal of Paolo Rolli after quarrels with the directors, disagreement between the directors themselves, about the employment of new singers and squabbles on stage, but for all the Academy's problems, its success was enormous.[37]
Dean, W. (2006) “Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741”, (The Boydell Press). Woodbridge. ISBN1-84383-268-2
Dean, W. (1993) "Handel's Sosarme, a Puzzle Opera". In: Essays on Opera. Oxford University Press. Oxford. ISBN0-19-816384-3.
Deutsch, O.E. (1955), Handel: A Documentary Biography. W.W. Norton & Company Inc Publishers. New York. Reprint 1974, Da Capo Press. ISBN0-306-70624-5
Bukofzer, M.F. (1948) Music in the Baroque Era. From Monteverdi to Bach. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London, Toronto, Melbourne. Reprint 1983. ISBN0-460-03431-6.
Handel, A Celebration of his life and times, 1685–1759. Edited by Jacob Simon. Published by the National Portrait Gallery, London. ISBN0-904017-68-0
Related Research Articles
Francesco Bernardi, known as Senesino, was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto ; pronounced [ˈdʒuːljo ˈtʃeːzare in eˈdʒitto, - ˈtʃɛː-]; HWV 17), commonly known as Giulio Cesare, is a dramma per musica in three acts composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio (1676). The opera was a success at its first performances, was frequently revived by Handel in his subsequent opera seasons and is now one of the most often performed Baroque operas.
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Francesca Cuzzoni was an Italian operatic soprano of the Baroque era.
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Radamisto is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, based on L'amor tirannico, o Zenobia by Domenico Lalli and Zenobia by Matteo Noris. It was Handel's first opera for the Royal Academy of Music. The opera's plot is loosely based on incidents from Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome.
Alessandro, is an opera composed by George Frideric Handel in 1726 for the Royal Academy of Music. Paolo Rolli's libretto is based on the story of Ortensio Mauro's La superbia d'Alessandro. This was the first time the famous singers Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni appeared together in one of Handel's operas. The original cast also included Francesco Bernardi who was known as Senesino.
Riccardo primo, re d'Inghilterra is an opera seria in three acts written by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music (1719). The Italian-language libretto was by Paolo Antonio Rolli, after Francesco Briani's Isacio tiranno, set by Antonio Lotti in 1710. Handel wrote the work for the Royal Academy's 1726–27 opera season, and also as homage to the newly crowned George II and the nation where Handel had just received citizenship.
Scipione, also called Publio Cornelio Scipione, is an opera seria in three acts, with music composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1726. The librettist was Paolo Antonio Rolli. Handel composed Scipione whilst in the middle of writing Alessandro. It is based on the life of the Roman general Scipio Africanus. Its slow march is the regimental march of the Grenadier Guards and is known for being played at London Metropolitan Police passing out ceremonies.
Tolomeo, re d'Egitto is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro. It was Handel's 13th and last opera for the Royal Academy of Music (1719) and was also the last of the operas he composed for the triumvirate of internationally renowned singers, the castrato Senesino and the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni.
Orlando is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the King's Theatre in London in 1733. The Italian libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and Ariodante. More an artistic than a popular success at its first performances, Orlando is today recognised as a masterpiece.
Ottone, re di Germania is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane. It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music (1719)'s fourth season and had its first performance on 12 January 1723 at the King's Theatre, Haymarket in London. Handel had assembled a cast of operatic superstars for this season and the opera became an enormous success.
Siroe, re di Persia, is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was his 12th opera for the Royal Academy of Music and was written for the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. The opera uses an Italian-language libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Metastasio's Siroe. Like many of Metastasio's libretti, it was also set by Handel's contemporaries, e.g. by Leonardo Vinci, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Adolph Hasse. Pasquale Errichelli's setting of the libretto premiered in the year of Handel's death.
Poro, re dell'Indie is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Alessandro nell'Indie by Metastasio, and based on Alexander the Great's encounter with Porus in 326 BC. The libretto had already been set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1729 and was used as the text for more than sixty operas throughout the 18th century.
Arianna in Creta is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Francis Colman from Pietro Pariati's Arianna e Teseo, a text previously set by Nicola Porpora in 1727 and Leonardo Leo in 1729.
Lotario is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Antonio Salvi's Adelaide.The opera was first given at the King's Theatre in London on 2 December 1729.
Muzio Scevola is an opera seria in three acts about Gaius Mucius Scaevola. The Italian-language libretto was by Paolo Antonio Rolli, adapted from a text by Silvio Stampiglia. The music for the first act was composed by Filippo Amadei, the second act by Giovanni Bononcini, and the third by George Frideric Handel. Collaborations of groups of composers were common in the 18th century, though this is the only one done in London. Bononcini had written the music for two earlier treatments of this story on his own, works dating from 1695 and 1710.
Faustina Bordoni was an Italian mezzo-soprano.
Margherita Durastanti was an Italian singer of the 18th century. Vocally, she is best described as a soprano, though later in her career her tessitura descended to that of a mezzo-soprano. First heard of professionally in Mantua in 1700–01, she later appeared in Bologna and Reggio Emilia (1710), Milan and Reggio (1713) and Florence (1715). Today she is particularly remembered for her association with the composer George Frideric Handel: indeed she enjoyed a longer personal association with the composer than any other musician.
Admeto, re di Tessaglia is a three-act opera written for the Royal Academy of Music with music composed by George Frideric Handel to an Italian-language libretto prepared by Nicola Francesco Haym. The story is partly based on Euripides' Alcestis. The opera's first performance was at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 31 January 1727. The original cast included Faustina Bordoni as Alcestis and Francesca Cuzzoni as Antigona, as Admeto was the second of the five operas that Handel composed to feature specifically these two prime donne of the day.
References
↑ Dean, W. & J.M. Knapp (1995) Handel's operas 1704–1726, p. 298.
↑ Burney, Charles (1789). F. Mercer (ed.). A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1935ed.). Oxford Publishing Company.
↑ Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1802) Über Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke, p. 63 (reprint 1950).
↑ Dean, W. (2006) "Handel's Operas, 1726–1741", p. 215 (The Boydell Press); Winton Dean: "Handel's Sosarme, a Puzzle Opera", in: Essays on Opera ISBN0-19-816384-3.
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