Acis and Galatea (Handel)
Acis and Galatea is a musical work by George Frideric Handel with an English text by John Gay. The work has been variously described as a serenata, a masque, a pastoral or pastoral opera, a "little opera", an entertainment and by the New Grove Dictionary of Music as an oratorio. The work was originally devised as a one-act masque which premiered in 1718.
Handel later adapted the piece into a three-act serenata for the Italian opera troupe in London in 1732, which incorporated a number of songs from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, his 1708 setting of the same story to different music. He later adapted the original English work into a two-act work in 1739.
Acis and Galatea was the pinnacle of pastoral opera in England. Indeed, several writers, such as musicologist Stanley Sadie, consider it the greatest pastoral opera ever composed. As is typical of the genre, Acis and Galatea was written as a courtly entertainment about the simplicity of rural life and contains a significant amount of wit and self-parody. The secondary characters, Polyphemus and Damon, provide a significant amount of humor without diminishing the pathos of the tragedy of the primary characters, Acis and Galatea. The music of the first act is both elegant and sensual, while the final act takes on a more melancholy and plaintive tone. The opera was significantly influenced by the pastoral operas presented at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane during the early 18th century. Reinhard Keiser and Henry Purcell also served as influences, but overall the conception and execution of the work is wholly individual to Handel.
Acis and Galatea was by far Handel's most popular dramatic work and is his only stage work never to have left the opera repertory. The opera has been adapted numerous times since its premiere, with a notable arrangement being made by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1788. Handel never gave the work in the form in which it is generally heard today, since it contains music which, while by Handel, was never added by him.
Composition history
Handel composed the first version of Acis and Galatea while he was living at Cannons during 1717–1718. It was Handel’s first dramatic work in the English language and was clearly influenced by the English pastoral operas of Johann Ernst Galliard and Johann Christoph Pepusch, of whom the latter worked with Handel at Cannons. The work is set to a libretto by John Gay which is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, xiii, and there is some uncertainty as to whether he was the only author of the text. The structure of the writing indicates that the original work by Gay was intended for only three characters and that the text for more characters was added later, possibly by John Hughes or Alexander Pope whose writings were added to the work's text. The libretto also borrowed freely from John Dryden's English translation of Ovid published in 1717, The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea.Performance history
Acis and Galatea was first performed in the summer of 1718 at Cannons with local tradition holding that the work was performed outside on the terraces overlooking the garden. This is the period in which the gardens at Cannons were being extensively 'improved' with water features that included an impressive jet d'eau, and so the choice of Acis and Galatea at this time, given that the conclusion requires a fountain, seems particularly apt.It is not clear whether the original performance was staged, semi-staged, or performed as a concert work. The Cannons version included only five singers – a soprano, three tenors and a bass – who not only sang the principal roles but also served as the "chorus". This version contained the character of Coridon who was subsequently deleted from later versions. Aside from the aria "As when the dove," which is a reworking of "Amo Tirsi" from Handel's cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno, all of the music was original to this production. Perhaps the best-known arias from this piece are the bass solo: "I rage, I melt, I burn" and the tenor aria "Love in her eyes sits playing". The instrumental music for this first version was orchestrated for a minimum of seven players.
The opera was first published in 1722, and enjoyed a number of amateur performances in England from as early as 1719.
The work was not revived again professionally until 1731, when one performance was given in London without Handel’s involvement. The following year, a staged production of the work was put on by Thomas Arne and John Frederick Lampe at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. The production starred Thomas Mountier as Acis and Susannah Maria Cibber as Galatea. Arne advertised the work as "with all the Grand Chorus’s, Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations; being the first Time it ever was performed in a Theatrical Way’."
The Little Theatre's production was highly successful and Handel, somewhat annoyed by the way Arne had promoted the production, retaliated by adapting the work substantially into a three-act serenata. This revised version incorporated a significant amount of music from his cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, as well as other music from further Italian cantatas and his Italian operas. The arias "Un sospiretto" and "Come la rondinella" were adapted from his cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno. The revised version was performed in a concert format in 1732 by the Italian opera in London and, according to Handel, included "a great Number of the best Voices and Instruments". The work was advertised on posters saying the following, "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." Although successful, the three-act version was not as well received as Arne's production, as the mix of style and languages made the work oddly devised. Handel continued to make alterations to his 1732 version for successive performances up through 1741. He also gave performances of the original English work, adapting it into its two-act form in 1739.
Handel's two-act English version is the basis for the form of the work that is most often performed today, although modern productions typically use a different arrangement from the one that he himself actually devised. The work became Handel's most widely performed dramatic work during his lifetime, and has had a number of revivals in various forms, enjoying frequent performances throughout the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Notably in 1788, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart rescored the work for his then-patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten. In 2014, City Wall Productions revived the opera for the Festival of Chichester, restaging it in a 1920s manor house, highlighting the struggle between morality and class in the period.
Roles
The cast of the 1718 version is unknown.| Role | Voice type | Revised version, 10 June 1732 |
| Galatea | soprano | Anna Maria Strada del Pò |
| Acis | alto castrato | Francesco Bernardi, called "Senesino" |
| Polyphemus | bass | Antonio Montagnana |
| Cloris | soprano | Ann Turner Robinson |
| Eurilla | soprano | Mrs. Davis |
| Filli | alto | Anna Bagnolesi |
| Dorinda | alto | Francesca Bertolli |
| Silvio | tenor | Giovanni Battista Pinacci |