Search - George Frederick Handel, Fabio Bonizzoni, La Risonanza :: George Frideric Handel: Aminta e Fillide

Handel Sacks Rome

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 11/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The 'Eternal City' was unlike any other in the world at the beginning of the 18th Century. A population of fewer than 20,000 people lived amid the overbearing ruins of the ancient Rome, with its 4,000,000 ghosts. Built into and sometimes from the marble of ancient Rome were the baroque palaces of the princes of the catholic Church, buildings of unrivaled opulence and extravagance, together with the conventual fortresses of the cloistered nuns and monks who made up at least half of the total populace. The highest rungs of the social pyramid were occupied by the aristocratic families that supplied the majority of the Cardinals and Papal Ministers who ruled both the splendor and the stagnation of Rome. These were the patrons for whom Scarlatti, Corelli, and others wrote their sacred oratorios and their secular cantatas.



Many of the most aesthetically sensitive aristocrats of wealth and of the Church were banded together in the great Arcadian Academy, essentially the overwrought apotheosis of the devotional confraternities organized in the Counter-reformation era by Philip Neri and other intellectual mystics. The Arcadian Academy assembled in the private parks and gardens of the city to discuss the nature of Love - the essential unity of Eros/Cupid with the Divine Bambino Jesus - and to 'appreciate' the commissioned music of the finest composers of the catholic world. One such composer, the young "Saxon" Georg Friedrich Händel, soon became a favorite. The two large-scale pastoral cantatas recorded here were commissioned by the Marquis Ruspoli, brother of a Cardinal, perhaps for the midsummer Christmas festivities of the Arcadian Academy.



There's little doubt that the ambience of the Arcadian Academic was homo-erotically charged. The pastoral poetry is laden with secret messages and mystical 'affinities.' The lengthy notes that accompany this CD discretely open the curtains on the question of Handel's sexuality, a question that I find of no importance whatsoever for the appreciation of his music, but of some historical interest in grappling with the otherwise inexplicable persistence of the vogue for 'arcadian' pastoral imagery throughout the 18th C. No doubt the rosy-faced young Saxon provoked a variety of admirations in that utterly rarified world of spiritual intensity and sensual depravity.



One abiding image of the ripest pastoral eroticism was the "bella ostinata", the reluctant Beauty ever in flight from an importunate lover. The archetype was on display in Rome; the exuberant Bernini sculpture of Daphne fleeing the embraces of Apollo. Handel's duet cantata Aminta e Fillide tells a similar story; Fillide flees from Aminta, but Aminta sings to her so fervently that she yields. The two roles were originally sung by women of the Ruspoli household rather than the usual castrati, causing something of a scandal (and does the popularity of castrati seem slightly more explicable once you consider the identity of its patrons?); on this dazzling recording by La Risonanza, they are sung by Maria Grazia Schiavo and Nuria Rial, whose skills must be equal to anything Handel himself heard, judging by the fluency with which they perform his most intricate passages. Even in his Roman youth, Handel was quick to appropriate musical ideas and melodies from other composers. In Aminta, he borrowed from his Hamburg colleague Reinhard Keiser, and he built entire arias around melodies of Venetian and South Italian dances. Fillide's first aria, Fiamma bella, is a charming ländler waltz, quite a surprise in a work from the first decade of the 18th Century. The pastoral aura of Amita e Fillide is more convincingly expressive of rustic joys than any other cantata I'm familiar with.



The sparkling violin obbligatos and the elegant continuo realization of La Risonanza is also as good as you'll ever hear.



Handel knew what jewels of melody he'd included in these Italian cantatas, and he raided his own treasure chest repeatedly to fill out his later operas and oratorios in England. With this recording, and with the earlier three volumes of their massive project of performing all of Handel's Italian cantatas, La Risonanza is proving one and forever that the Roman Handel, even if he'd perished in a shipwreck before ever setting foot in England, was already one of the greatest composers of the greatest century of music."

Fillide, Agrippina, Reinhart Keiser and other Arcadians.

Anna Shlimovich | Boston, MA United States | 05/21/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have listened to these series of CDs referring to Il caro Sassone (as Handel was called in Italy) time in Rome, and while listening to this one, I was stunned by one melody - it sounded as "Ogni vento" from Agrippina! But I knew it was not - and it made me read more and made marvelous discoveries, some of which I list here.



Handel enjoyed patronage of several important persons in Rome, the main patron being Marquis Ruspoli, for whom he had composed the cantata "Aminta e Fillide (Arresta il Passo)" - an "erotic chamber piece, slow and developing softly with great sweetness". Apart from traditional interpretations, one is quite interesting, that is a homo-erotic flirting on the part of Roman cardinals in order to obtain the favor of the young Handel. Also this piece can be interpreted as a "ludic diologue" between Marquis Ruspoli (alias Amintas - a shepherd) and the composer (alias Phyllis - nymph). In this cantata Handel got the closest to the aesthetics of the Arcadians, i.e. the group of scholars and poets that had founded the Accademia degli Arcadi in 1690.



Arcadians would gather in the most idyllic locations, such as Orti Farnesiani, the gardens of the Farnese on the Palatine, in the park of Palazzo Corsini, which belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, and finally in the garden of the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli in the via Merulana. Handel was at the center of Arcadian society a little after his arrival in Rome in 1706.



On 14 July 1708, Aminta e Fillide was first performed there. The Marquis Ruspoli was particularly pleased with the role of Fillide (Phyllis), which Handel wrote for the prima donna of the house, Margherita Durastanti, a mezzo-soprano. The role of Aminta was assigned to another female singer, a high soprano - Anna Maria di Piedz; thus the part of the nymph was lower than that of the shepherd!



The most memorable piece is "Fiamma bella" which strikes the listener familiar with "Ogni vento" from Agrippina (1709 Permier in Venice, a year after the cantata). But what is the most astonishing, that it turns out that Handel borrowed this melody from his teacher Reinhard Keiser, a composer from Hamburg!!!



Well, that last discovery is absolutely amazing, since Reinhard Keiser was a man of dubious reputation in intimate affairs, and although he sired a daughter who had become a famous singer, his adventures were such that his biographer resorted to "modesty and discretion" when failing to give more details on this side of the Keiser's life. This alludes to the aforementioned idea that perhaps Handel and Keiser were also playing Aminta e Fillide, when young Handel was a musician in Keiser's orchestra in Hamburg.



A year after the first performance of Aminta e Fillide in Rome, Margherita Durastante sang "Ogni vento" in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo (now Teatro Malibran) on 26 December 1709. It was a great success and since then the opera with this immortal tune is being performed around the world.



One other great aria from the same cantata, Aminta e Fillide, is "Se vago rio", track #10 on this CD - it is a melody to the rythm of siciliana, and Handel uses here a popular Venetian dance form - Vilota - which is accompanied by plucked instruments. What is amazing that Pedrillo' Romanze in Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail sounds almost the same.



Also it was interesting to learn that Il caro Sassone lived in Marquis Ruspolo Palazzo, now called Palazzo Pecci-Blunt; it enjoys a splendid location at Piazza d'Aracoeli, near Il Campidoglio. I knew from wandering in the rooms of Palazzo Doria-Pamphili that he was provided hospitality there - a fact which the current owners and the descendants present with great pride; and it was a pleasure to add another address that hosted the composer; next time in Rome it would be a marvel to visit.



Finally, about this recording, I found it of excellent quality, and the singing is perfect; I very much enjoyed the voices of both Nuria Rial (Fillide) and Maria Grazia Schiavo (Aminta). The orchestra is also playing with great delicacy. I highly recommend this CD to Handelians and sophisticated music lovers.

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