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Singer's Blueprints - C. Steven LaRue. Handel and His Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720–1728. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1995. 213 pp.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
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References
1 Pope, Alexander, The Dunciad in Four Books (London, 1742), Book IV, ed. Sutherland, James, The Poems of Alexander Pope, V (London, 1945, 3rd edn rpt. 1965), 345–7Google Scholar
2 The translation in the original libretto, Admeto, Re di Tessaglia (London, 1727), reads: Yes, my life, my loveliest Dear, Thus I grasp and clasp thee here Close to my panting Heart.Google ScholarHarris, Ellen T., ed., The Librettos of Handel's Operas, 13 vols. (New York, 1989), V, 155.Google Scholar
3 Senesino, for instance, as LaRue notes (p. 115). One of Senesino's ‘vocal strengths’, the motto opening (p. 111), is also typical of Durastanti (p. 140).Google Scholar
4 Milhous's, Judith review of Handel and His Singers in Notes, 53 (1996), 458.Google Scholar
5 For example: ‘Ferite, uccidete’ should not occur in the Lalli-Gasparini column of Table 4.1 (p. 85); ‘Se vive in te’ in Table 4.1 becomes ‘Se teco vive’ in Table 5.1 (p. 109) with no explanation; in discussion of Cuzzoni's and Faustina's roles in Alessandro (pp. 145ff.), we only learn who played which character in Table 7.4 (p. 160); LaRue's own article (cited p. 133 n. 10) is not included in the bibliography. LaRue does not adhere to his policy on footnoting textual sources (p. 14); Mattheson's quote on pastoral, given in a footnote (p. 170 n. 22), is repeated in the text (p. 178); material on page 91 is repeated verbatim on page 108; the index does not include secondary sources, and a sampling of other references reveals lacunae.Google Scholar
6 Three figures, three tables and nine musical examples take up approximately 28 of the 63 pages in this chapter.Google Scholar
7 Dean, Winton and Knapp, John Merrill, Handel's Operas, 1704–1726 (Oxford, 1987, rev. edn 1995).Google Scholar
8 Strohm, Reinhard, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 102.Google Scholar
9 Pope's note, The Dunciad, ed. Sutherland, , 345.Google Scholar
10 See, for example, Dean and Knapp, Handel's Operas, 8.Google Scholar
11 Pope, Alexander, Gay, John, Swift, Jonathan, The Memoirs of Scriblerus (London, 1714);Google Scholarcited in Fox, Christopher, Locke and the Scriblerians: Identity and Consciousness in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 1–2.Google Scholar
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18 Existing studies of the impact of contemporary performing conventions on opera tend to deal more with the physical than the psychological. See, for example, Solomon, Nicholas, ‘Signs of the Times: A Look at Late 18th-Century Gesturing’, Early Music, 17 (1989), 551–62;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHeartz, Daniel, ‘From Garrick to Gluck: The Reform of Theatre and Opera in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 94 (1967–1968), 111–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Burrows, , Handel, 110.Google Scholar
20 Feldman, Martha, ‘Magic Mirrors and the Seria Stage: Thoughts toward a Ritual View’, fournal of the American Musicological Society, 48 (1995), 423–84, especially 460–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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