Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Volume XVII 2009
- Editorial Note
- The Founding and the Founder: Medievalism and the Legacy of Leslie J. Workman
- Medievalism: Its Linguistic History in Nineteenth-Century Britain
- Medievalism and Medieval Reception: A Terminological Question
- Medievalisms and Why They Matter
- Medievalism, Authority, and the Academy
- The Tropes of Medievalism
- Medievalism and the Middle Ages
- Medievalism from Here
- A Steam-Whistle Modernist?: Representations of King Alfred in Dickens's A Child's History of England and The Battle of Life
- Writing Medieval Women (and Men): Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter
- J. K. Rowling's Medieval Bestiary
- Seamus Heaney's Audio Beowulf: An Analysis of the Omissions
- The King's Phantom: Staging Majesty in Bale's Kynge Johan
- Rodelinda Goes Opera: The Lombard Queen's Journey from Medieval Backstage to Händel's “dramma per musica”
- The Ring of the Nibelung and the Nibelungenlied: Wagner's Ambiguous Relationship to a Source
- Notes on Contributors
- Previously published volumes
Rodelinda Goes Opera: The Lombard Queen's Journey from Medieval Backstage to Händel's “dramma per musica”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Volume XVII 2009
- Editorial Note
- The Founding and the Founder: Medievalism and the Legacy of Leslie J. Workman
- Medievalism: Its Linguistic History in Nineteenth-Century Britain
- Medievalism and Medieval Reception: A Terminological Question
- Medievalisms and Why They Matter
- Medievalism, Authority, and the Academy
- The Tropes of Medievalism
- Medievalism and the Middle Ages
- Medievalism from Here
- A Steam-Whistle Modernist?: Representations of King Alfred in Dickens's A Child's History of England and The Battle of Life
- Writing Medieval Women (and Men): Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter
- J. K. Rowling's Medieval Bestiary
- Seamus Heaney's Audio Beowulf: An Analysis of the Omissions
- The King's Phantom: Staging Majesty in Bale's Kynge Johan
- Rodelinda Goes Opera: The Lombard Queen's Journey from Medieval Backstage to Händel's “dramma per musica”
- The Ring of the Nibelung and the Nibelungenlied: Wagner's Ambiguous Relationship to a Source
- Notes on Contributors
- Previously published volumes
Summary
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759) composed forty operas, most of which belong to the quite formal and heroic genre of opere serie. These dramme per musica, as they are often called in their own libretti, catered to the political needs and aesthetic expectations of their aristocratic audiences, for they revolve around characters from the upper ranks of society. That is to say, they bring erotic impulses and the duties of … virtue into conflict with the dynamic intrigues of state actions, allow for the glorification of wisdom, responsibility, and modesty as the ideals of enlightened absolute monarchy, and exploit the dramaturgical concept of the proportional fall, the belief that the abrupt demise of a protagonist, as well as the vicissitudes of his or her life, affect the audience in direct relationship to his or her social prominence.
Opere serie particularly favor literary and historical figures who were renowned for having exhibited extraordinary virtue in difficult circumstances. Composers combed the past in search of protagonists who could unleash passionate arias that would morally edify the public as those figures endure severe trials and enjoy great triumphs. Of course, the composers often turned for such protagonists to the history and myths of Antiquity, but they did not entirely skip the Middle Ages, for at least a dozen opere serie by Händel, and many more by his contemporaries, were set during that period.
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- Information
- Studies in Medievalism XVIIDefining Medievalism(s), pp. 203 - 217Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009