HANDEL LARGO SERSE (XERXES) FROM AN OPERA
RADICAL SAYS - THIS PIECE IS USUALLY PLAYED AT FUNERALS BUT IN FACT ITS A COMEDY AND ABOUT A TREE.
I ALWAYS THINK OF A HUGE OAK TREE, I KNOW, GENTLY WAVING IN THE BREEZE, IN ALL ITS MAJESTY. BORN BEFORE ME AND WILL STILL BE LIVING AFTER ME, THE OAK HAS A PLACE IN THE HEARTS OF THE ENGLISH. OUR WOODEN SHIPS WERE MADE OF IT AND OUR FINEST FURNITURE.
YET ITS SO EASY TO GROW FROM AN ACORN.
SO DON'T BE SAD WHEN YOU HEAR THE "LARGO", THINK AGAIN AND TAKE PLEASURE FROM HANDEL'S PIECE OF MUSIC WRITTEN AS A COMEDY ABOUT A TREE.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Serse (Xerxes, HWV 40) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The libretto is adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694. Stampiglia's libretto was itself based on one by Nicolò Minato that was set by Francesco Cavalli in 1654. The opera is set in Persia in 480 BC and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia, though there is little in either the libretto or music that is relevant to that setting. Xerxes, originally sung by a castrato, is now generally performed by a mezzosoprano or countertenor.
The opening aria, "Ombra mai fù", sung by Xerxes to a tree (Platanus orientalis), is set to one of Handel's best-known melodies, and is often played in an orchestral arrangement, known as Handel's "largo" (despite being marked "larghetto" in the score).
Composition and premiere
In late 1737 the King's Theatre, London commissioned Handel to write two new operas. The first, Faramondo, was premiered on 3 January 1738. By this time, Handel had already begun work on Serse. The first act was composed between 26 December 1737 and 9 January 1738, the second was ready by 25 January, the third by 6 February, and Handel put the finishing touches to the score on 14 February. Serse was first performed at the King's Theatre, Haymarket on 15 April 1738.[1]
The first production was a complete failure.[2] The audience may have been confused by the innovative nature of the work. Unlike his other operas for London, Handel included comic (buffo) elements in Serse. Although this had been typical for 17th-century Venetian works such as Cavalli's original setting of the libretto, by the 1730s an opera seria was expected to be wholly serious, with no mixing of the genres of tragedy and comedy or high and low class characters. The musicologist Charles Burney later took Serse to task for violating decorum in this way, writing: "I have not been able to discover the author of the words of this drama: but it is one of the worst Handel ever set to Music: for besides feeble writing, there is a mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery in it, which Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio had banished from serios opera."[3] Another unusual aspect of Serse is the number of short, one-movement arias, when a typical opera seria of Handel's time was almost wholly made up of long, three-movement da capo arias. This feature particularly struck the Earl of Shaftesbury, who attended the premiere and admired the opera. He noted "the airs too, for brevity's sake, as the opera would otherwise be too long [,] fall without any recitativ' intervening from one into another[,] that tis difficult to understand till it comes by frequent hearing to be well known. My own judgment is that it is a capital opera notwithstanding tis called a ballad one."[4]
Later performance history
Serse disappeared from the stage for almost two hundred years. It enjoyed its first modern revival in Göttingen on 5 July 1924 in a version by Oscar Hagen. By 1926 this version had been staged at least 90 times in 15 German cities. Serse's success has continued. [5] According to Winton Dean, Serse is Handel's most popular opera with modern audiences after Giulio Cesare.[6] The very features which 18th-century listeners found so disconcerting - the shortness of the arias and the admixture of comedy - may account for its appeal to the 20th and the 21st centuries.[7]
A complete recording was made in 1979. A particularly highly acclaimed production, sung in English, was staged by the English National Opera in 1985, to mark the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth. Conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, it was directed by Nicholas Hytner, who also translated the libretto, and starred Ann Murray in the title role, with Valerie Masterson as Romilda, Christopher Robson as Arsamene, and Lesley Garrett as Atalanta.
