Libretto by Thomas Morell
First performance: Covent Garden, London, February 26, 1752

Cast:
Jephtha (tenor)
Iphis, Jephtha's daughter (soprano)
Hamor, Iphis's fiancé (countertenor)
Zebel, Jephtha's half-brother (bass)
Storgè, Jephtha's wife (mezzo)
Angel (soprano)

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

Handel's last oratorio -- and last major work -- sets the biblical story of Jephtha from the book of Judges.  Before leading the Israelites into battle, Jephtha makes a vow to God that, if he is victorious, he will sacrifice the first living creature that he sees on returning to his fields.  As he returns in triumph, his daughter, his only child, runs out to greet him and becomes that "creature" that he has vowed to sacrifice. 

It is a wrenching drama, as well as a work that comes from a devastating time in the composer's life.  Handel began work on this great oratorio on January 21 of 1751 but, after several weeks, his eyesight was failing, and, in the midst of writing the celebrated chorus, "How dark, o Lord, are Thy decrees," he penned a poignant note in the score:  "Reached here on 13 Febr. 1751, unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye."  He saw doctors and visited watering places at Bath and Cheltenham for his health and by mid-June felt well enough to resume work, but he struggled.  His writing in the autograph score is shaky, and he eventually went competely blind in his left eye.  On completing the score, he wrote the date, August 30, as was his custom, but, perhaps because of his failing health, he added "age 66."

The premiere of Jephtha took place at Covent Garden on February 26 of the following year.   Despite being now blind in one eye and gradually losing the sight in his other eye, Handel was able to conduct the performance.  The work was a success and was repeated twice that season.  It was then revived, with some alteration, in three more seasons during Handel's lifetime. 

In the seven years that remained to him, the blind master is said to have still played organ concertos during performances of his oratorios, but he no longer directed the ensemble.  Charles Burney reported that he was "always much disturbed and agitated" during the aria "Total eclipse" in Samson, in which the hero has gone blind:

"The recollection that Handel had set this air to music, with the view of the blind composer then sitting by the organ, affected the audience so forcibly, that many persons present were moved even to tears."

He composed little during these last years, the few "new" works that derived from this time being largely assembled by others from his earlier music. 

The libretto for Jephtha was written by Thomas Morell, who had provided Handel with libretti for several of his previous oratorios.  Morell took some freedoms with the biblical story.  He adapted some of his material from an earlier Jephtha oratorio by Maurice Greene, added the characters of Hamor and Jephtha's wife Storgè,  and inserted lines by Milton, Pope, Addison and others within his own text.  Most significantly, though, he altered the ending.  In the original story, Jephtha's daughter (unnamed in the bible) goes for two months to the mountains to mourn her fate and then returns to be sacrificed and lamented.  But Morell gives it a more Christian bent:  an angel descends to announce that Iphis is to live "dedicated to God in pure and virgin state forever."  The tragedy of the Old Testament story is thus turned into joyous praise of a merciful God.  

Handel's last two oratorios, Theodora and Jephtha, are both deeply religious works dealing with life and death, but it seems here as if the composer's focus is somewhat different from that of his librettist.  Handel does not make as much of the angel's intervention and the happy ending as one might expect.  It is a scene that some writers have felt is anticlimactic and weakens the drama, and indeed, it does not appear to have been part of Handel's original conception but a scene that he added afterwards.  Nor does he make a musical highlight of Jephtha's rash vow that sets the drama in motion.  Rather, he focuses on the human suffering caused by the vow.  His characterizations are vivid.  Through the music, Jephtha evolves from brash warrior to horrified father to a man who humbly accepts fate;  his daughter's childlike innocence evolves into stoic acceptance; and the horror and rage of Jephtha's wife Storgè are palpable.   In a brilliant quartet near the end of Act II ("O spare your daughter"), each character expresses different thoughts about the impending catastrophe.

The inevitability of fate is also a focus.  The chorus, which is only occasionally an actor in the drama, is more often a spectator, and, like a Greek chorus, it comments poignantly on the action and states the moral themes.  This happens most memorably in the chorus that ends Act II.   Here Handel appears to have changed Morell's "What God ordains is right" to Alexander Pope's more powerful statement, "Whatever is, is right."  One cannot help recalling that this chorus, which begins "How dark, o Lord, are Thy decrees," was the one during which Handel had to lay down his pen because of his growing blindness.

Orchestration Chart

© Boston Baroque 2020

Boston Baroque Performances

Jephtha

March 8 & 10, 2019
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Soloists:
Nicholas Phan - Jephtha
Ava Pine - Iphis
Ann Quintero - Storgè
Randall McMahon Scotting - Hamor
Dashon Burton - Zebel
Sonja Tenglad - Angel

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