Program Book

Thursday, April 21st and Friday, April 22nd 2022 at 7:30PM, Sunday, April 24th, 2022 at 3PM
Calderwood Studio at GBH, Boston, MA

> The Program
> Program Notes & Synopsis by Martin Pearlman
> Boston Baroque Orchestra
> Production Team

Boston Baroque
Martin Pearlman, Music Director

Cast, in order of appearance:

Amadigi di Gaula, knight, in love with Oriana — Anthony Roth Costanzo
Dardano, prince of Thrace — Daniela Mack
Melissa, sorceress, in love with Amadigi — Amanda Forsythe
Oriana, daughter of the King of the fortunate isles — Camille Ortiz

Martin Pearlman, conductor
Louisa Muller, stage director

Lead production sponsorship by two long-term friends of Boston Baroque
Sponsorship of livestream director Matthew Principe by Tee Taggart & Jack Turner
Livestream production sponsorship by Peter Wender
Season sponsorships of concertmaster Christina Day Martinson and of Health & Safety by Julian Bullitt

Boston Baroque is grateful to the members of its Opera Guild for their generous support of our commitment to keeping Baroque and Classical opera thriving in Boston.

Program Notes by Music Director Martin Pearlman

Why is Handel's Amadigi di Gaula (Amadis of Gaul) so rarely heard?  Written not long after Handel had settled in England, it is a youthful, exuberantly inventive work, full of love, magic and brilliant arias.  The great historian Charles Burney, writing later in the century, called it "a production in which there is more invention, variety, and good composition than in any one of the musical dramas of Handel which I have yet carefully and critically examined."  Whether it is due to its small cast, the fact that it has only high voices or some other reason, Amadigi is produced much less frequently than most other works of this caliber.

The opera originally opened on May 25, 1715 at the King's Theatre in London in a production that was full of spectacle and magical effects.  The Daily Courant warned ticket buyers about all the stage machinery:  "whereas there is a great many Scenes and Machines to be mov'd in this Opera, which cannot be done if Persons should stand upon the Stage (where they could not be without Danger), it is therefore hop'd no Body, even the Subscribers, will take it Ill that they must be deny'd Entrance on the Stage."

Amadigi was a triumph and helped cement Handel's reputation with the London public, which still remembered the sensation of his opera Rinaldo written some four years earlier.  With these two operas alternating in the repertory, the season was a great success.  The king himself attended several performances, and Handel earned enough to be able to invest £500 in the speculative frenzy of the South Sea Company (on which he made a good return on his money before the bubble burst).

Amadigi was brought back in the 1716 season and yet again in the following season, when it was once more in the repertory with Rinaldo.  But then it disappeared.  Handel never revived it, although he did adapt some of its music for use in later works.  Aside from some performances in Germany over the next few seasons, the opera was not heard again for over 200 years.

Handel's unknown librettist -- there are several candidates, but none is certain -- adapted the story of Amadigi from earlier models.  Derived originally from a medieval Spanish epic, the subject had been set as an opera by Lully, whose Amadis de Gaule (1684) presented a rather different version of the story from the one in Handel's setting.  The immediate source of Handel's libretto was a five-act tragédie-lyrique set to music by the French composer André Destouches.  His Amadis de Grèce (1699) replaced the original evil magicians with Melissa, a character out of Ariosto's epic Orlando furioso, and created a story close to the one that Handel used.  Destouches's opera was revived at the Paris Opéra only a few years before Handel wrote his own Amadigi.

Here, as in many other works, Handel's music seems less inspired by the magic in the story than by the emotions of his characters.  His most inventive musical ideas and unusual orchestrations tend to be reserved for moments of deep despair or great joy, rather than for magical transformations and spells.  Amadigi's beautiful soliloquy at the fountain of truth, the extraordinary orchestration of Dardano's lament in Act II, or Melissa's brilliant rage aria at the end of that act tell us a great deal about these characters.  Through the music, we develop some sympathy even for the evil sorceress Melissa.

Handel achieves a tremendous range of colors with relatively limited forces.  All the voices in this small cast are high voices, but they have different qualities that delineate their characters.  While the orchestral score makes beautiful use of the oboes, bassoon and recorders, there are no timpani and there is only a single trumpet.  Where we might expect two trumpets, the oboe plays the second part.  But what might seem like a limitation (perhaps for financial reasons) becomes, in Handel's hands, an interesting and unusual orchestral effect.

As always, Handel borrows ideas and even whole arias from some of his own earlier music and reuses some of this music in later pieces.  One major source of music for Amadigi is his opera Silla, which he had written two years earlier for a private occasion.  Since there is no record of that opera ever having been performed, it is not surprising that the young composer might have wanted to salvage and recycle some of the best music from that work.  Among the pieces originally written for this opera, we recognize in Amadigi's final aria the music that would soon become the popular hornpipe in the Water Music.

Synopsis

ACT I
Amadigi, a chivalrous knight, urges his friend Dardano, the Prince of Thrace, to find a way to escape the enchanted garden of the sorceress Melissa, where they have been held prisoner. Melissa has fallen in love with Amadigi, and Dardano rebukes him for not returning her love. The hero replies that he is in love with another beauty and then shows him a portrait of his beloved Oriana. A shocked Dardano recognizes in the picture the woman that he too loves. Concealing his rage, he goes to inform Melissa.
Amadigi invokes the darkness of night to aid his escape, but suddenly the sorceress appears. She tries to win Amadigi first by revealing her affections and then by threatening him. But Amadigi fearlessly refuses her. In a soliloquy, Melissa is torn between hatred and love.
Having learned that his beloved Oriana is imprisoned in a tower surrounded by flames, Amadigi rushes off to save her. At the tower, Dardano reveals to Amadigi that he is his rival for Oriana's affections, but Amadigi dismisses him and bravely walks through the flames to reach the tower. Dardano tries and fails to cross the fire himself. Oriana is saved, but not for long. Melissa commands her furies to abduct Oriana, as Amadigi laments his loss.

ACT II
As Amadigi wanders the land alone, he comes upon an enchanted fountain. He gazes into it and sees an image of Oriana caressing Dardano. In despair, he faints against a rock. Melissa leads in Oriana, who believes him to be dead. In her grief, she takes his sword to kill herself, but Amadigi awakens. Convinced that she has been unfaithful to him, he rejects her. Melissa seizes the opportunity to gain his affections, but, in their duet, he scornfully refuses her once again.

INTERMISSION

ACT II, continued
Dardano sings of his pain and torment, but Melissa has now conceived a plan make Dardano look like Amadigi so that he may seduce Oriana. Dardano agrees, but just when the plan seems to be going well, he sees Amadigi coming and goes to fight him. In the duel that follows, Dardano is killed. Foiled again, an angry Melissa threatens Oriana with everlasting torments. Oriana challenges Melissa to do her worst and is prepared to accept death. Melissa calls up the spirits of darkness to capture her rival.

ACT III
Amadigi and Oriana are led into Melissa's cave but refuse to renounce their love for one another. Melissa prepares to kill them but finds that something is stopping her. She calls on the ghost of Dardano to help her. His shade emerges from the underworld and declares that the gods are protecting the two lovers. Defeated, Melissa vows to kill herself. The heavens proclaim the end of the lovers' trials, and they are united in nuptial rites.

Boston Baroque Orchestra

The orchestra performs on period instruments.

Production Team

Stage Director
Louisa Muller

Projection Design
Ian Winters

Production Design
Christelle Matou

Lighting Design
Elaine Buckholtz

Livestream Director
Matthew Principe

Supertitles by ConcertCue

Georg Friedrich Händel AMADIGI HWV 11
Edited for the Hallische Händel Ausgabe by J. Merrill Knapp
Used by arrangement with European American Music Distributors Company, U.S. and Canadian agent for Baerenreiter-Verlag, publisher and copyright owner.