[MUSIC] Now we come to Handel and opera. As we said, Handel first came to London in 1710 to make money composing and producing opera. The kind of opera, then really the only kind of opera that dominated the stage of Europe at this time, called opera seria. Opera seria literally, serious opera, was just that. It was very serious. Having as a plot contained in the libretto. A story of Greek or Roman kings and queens, or gods or goddesses, or larger than life heroes from antiquity. In other words, it was high end subject matter, and that's what the nobility, or the upper crust of the day, liked to see on stage. Mirror images of themselves. And of course because opera had started in Italy all opera seria was composed to a libretto written in Italian. A literary person wrote the story, the libretto and then a musician, the composer set it to music. Wrote the score. Opera seria was usually in three acts, and it was long, usually about three hours, including intermissions. Handel's first opera seria for London was Rinaldo of 1711, about the loves of a mythical classical figure of that name. It was first performed in a London theater with a long history. The theater was first built in 1705 in the Haymarket section of London. It was called the Queen's Theatre because a Queen then reigned. Then with the advent of George I, Hendel's boss, it was called the King's Theatre. And now it's called Her Majesty's Theatre. Here we see various views of this venerable theater over the centuries. From Handel's Day in the upper left, to a performance in the 19th century in the bottom left, to how it looks today. The shell never really changed but the inside and outside were continually refurbished. And by coincidence it was here that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera was premiered in 1986. Which went on to become of course the most popular of all musicals. More than 130 million people have seen it live. So From Handel's Rinaldo, to Phantom of the Opera. Anyway, like all baroque opera seria, Rinaldo was made up of a succession of recitatives and arias. And among the arias, the most famous has proved to be one sung by Rinaldo. Lascia chi'o pianga. Let me weep in my cruel faith. Let's have a listen to it. But a word before we do. As mentioned before baroque opera is for the high born. The nobility. And to be high born in a baroque opera you had to have a high voice. Whether male or female. The hero or the heroine had to have a high voice. Either a soprano or a castrato. The tenor, the high natural male voice, the tenor hero really didn't step on to the operatic stage until later, not really until the 19th century. So in Handel's Rinaldo, the role of Rinaldo was sung by a castrato, but because castratos are in short supply these days, indeed non-existent, Rinaldo was usually sung by a male falsettist. And that's what we're going to hear here. In fact we're going to hear and extraordinary falsettist, the Frenchman Philippe Jaroussky. When I first heard this voice, I couldn't believe it. It had a purity, a clarity, and an accuracy of pitch that I thought were astonishing, at least to me. As one opera critic has said Jaroussky has the sound of an angel, but the technique, the technical accuracy of the devil. Let's give a listen to this very special voice, the French falsettist Philippe Jaroussky. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] am I picked for freedom. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] a very slow triple meter. Coming back to the opening phrase. [MUSIC] Cruel fate. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC] Now in this period, in the Baroque period, composers tended to write arias in something called da capo form. Well, da capo simply means take it from the head. So what you would have is a piece in two sections. An A section. Then a B section in which the key changed, here we'll see it change to minor and the mood changed. So we have an A section, a B section, then the composer would simply write in da capo take it from the top, and you'd go all the way back to the beginning. Now that seems to be anti dramatic, it seems the stopper slowed down the drummer. But it does give the soloist a chance to reprise a lovely melody and to add some vocal ornamentation which was part and parcel of the Baroque process in this period. So let's go on now, we're just going to continue with the B section. Shifting to minor the B section of this da capo aria. [MUSIC] >> And here we enter the B section. [FOREIGN] >> Tempo increases, gets faster. You can hear the shift to minor. >> [FOREIGN] >> Something about my internal conflict rages and in my suffering I pray for mercy. >> [MUSIC] >> There's the word pieta, mercy. And back to the A section. We've gone back to the head. And you can hear the singer begin to introduce ornamentation. >> [MUSIC] >> And then the final singing of this phrase. >> [MUSIC] >> All ornamentation. >> [MUSIC] >> So what did you think of that voice, that falsetto's voice? I find it captivating, but not everyone does. What do you think? Send me an email. But like that voice or not, that's what the audience of Handel's day paid its money for, paid to hear. Beautiful music and a high male voice. So this singing by Philippe Jaroussky was a modern rendition of an opera by Handel. But, let's use a bit of imagination to pretend we're back in Handel's day, listening to a production of Rinaldo in the Queen's Theatre. A few years back, a movie called Farinelli, did just that, tried to give us a sense of what opera was like when the castrato reigned supreme back in Handel's day. They created an imaginary stage and an imaginary voice, an imaginary castrato voice. They actually synthesized electronically the voice of a female soprano and a male falsettist to come up with something approximating a baroque castrato voice. Let's watch a scene of this cinematic creation of Handel's Let Me Languish. >> [FOREIGN] >> So here we are in the B section of this da capo aria, the same aria that we just heard. You can hear the pitch is higher. >> [FOREIGN] >> Now the bass will slide down, back to the A section. >> [FOREIGN] >> Imitation. He, of course, is lip syncing but it's still a lovely sound. >> [MUSIC] >> Okay, so get ready now as he begins to fold some notes and pushes for extreme amount of time. >> [FOREIGN] >> Or perhaps a bit over the top. But there is much truth to this scene. The castratis were renowned for their capacity for long held pitches. Maybe because of their bigger frame, or the fact that they were using chest voice. I'm really not sure. But this ability to extend the duration of the pitches was part of the wow factor of the castrato. Anyway, with his opera, Rinaldo, Handel had a hit and gradually got more adventuresome. Producing not just one occasional opera but an entire season of opera, and he did so by means of a grand commercial scheme. He set up what we in the U.S. would call a private equity. A privately held stock company. Wealthy, knowledgeable individuals with an appreciation of art were invited to contribute money to buy a share of the company, in this case an opera company. And thereby, pay for a series of operas each year. The venture was called the Royal Academy of Music. It wasn't so much an academy in the sense it was a school. But it was royal in the sense that the king and queen were investors. Partners bought shares of the company and they shared in the profits or the losses each year. This was capitalism in early 18th century London, where capitalism in the west really got its start. Well, Handel ran this opera company. He chose the theater, he chose the singers, he set the pay scale for all the employees, he composed the music, and he rehearsed and conducted all the performances. Sometimes he enjoyed great artistic and financial success and sometimes he didn't. His most successful opera was Julius Caesar of 1724 based on an episode in the life of Caesar in which he pursues and defeats his rival Pompey in Egypt, but Queen Cleopatra, in turn, conquers Caesar. Or at least the heart of Caesar. Through her beauty and through her music. Let's hear a bit of the central aria V'adoro, Vadoro Pupille during which Cleopatra attempts to capture the heart to seduce Caesar again through the beauty of the music. We'll hear only a bit of V'adoro Pupille. We'll pick it up with the return to the A section of our da capo form. >> [FOREIGN] >> So because we are back in the A section, we are, of course, hearing the great beautiful [INAUDIBLE]. >> [FOREIGN] >> And to make this music even more beautiful, Handel has required that two orchestras accompany the singer here. One is on stage, and one is in the pit. >> [FOREIGN] >> And as you can see, Cleopatra is doing everything possible, physically and vocally to seduce Caesar, who rests upon the stage. >> [FOREIGN] >> Well, Handel intended to write in his opera, the most sensual, maybe the most sensational music possible so as to attract and hold an audience. But as beautiful as Handel's music often was, and we heard beautiful music here. It sometimes wasn't enough to hold his audience. And this kind of opera was hugely expensive to produce. The annual salary of the leading castrato would have been about $500,000, roughly, in the money of today. And this was just one singer in the cast. Anyway, in most years Handel's opera company actually lost money, and in 1729 it went bankrupt, a victim of high expenses and changing fashions. Handel and the listening public gradually turned away from opera and to a more middle class. A more populus genre of music, oratorio. And that's where we too now turn.
