L'accademia reale di musica, Londra (1719-1728)

Speranza

Handel by Francis Kyte, from the National Portrait Gallery (London)

Her Majesty's Theatre on Haymarket (London) by William Capon

"L'accademia reale di musica" (the Royal Academy of Music) was a company founded on February 15, 1719, during Giorgio Frideric Handel's residence at Cannons, by a group of English aristocrats to secure themselves a constant supply of baroque opera or opera seria.

It is not connected to the London conservatoire with the same name, which was founded in 1822.

"L'accademia reale di musica" commissioned large numbers of new operas from three of the leading composers in Europe:

Handel
Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini.

The "Accademia" took the legal form of a joint-stock corporation under letters patent issued by King George I of Great Britain for a term of 21 years with a governor, a deputy governor and at least fifteen directors.

The first Royal Academy lasted for only nine seasons (instead of twenty-one).

However, the New (or Second) Academy _and_ the Opera of the Nobility SEEM to have operated under the Royal Charter of "L'accademia reale di musica" until the expiry of the original term.

1719
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  1740

Strictly:

1719
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1728

Handel was appointed as Master of the orchestra responsible not only for engaging soloists but also for adapting d from abroad and for providing possible libretti for his own use, generally provided from Italy.^[4]
Initially the librettist Paolo Antonio Rolli was the Italian secretary of the Academy ^[5] and to be replaced by Nicola Francesco Haym within a few years.

Contents  [hide]  1 The subscribers 2 Directors 3 Musicians 4 Operas and singers 5 The New or Second Academy 6 Sources 7 See also 8 Notes 9 External links

[edit] The subscribers

The duke of Newcastle (left) and the Earl of Lincoln, brothers-in-law as painted by Godfrey Kneller, ca. 1721.

The capital of ₤10,000 was divided in 50 shares of ₤200 each. Sixty-three people initially subscribed for shares.^[6] The issue was rapidly oversubscribed: several took more than one share: Lord Burlington subscribed ₤1000.^[7] Otto Erich Deutsch printed a list of 63 names, a later list by Charles Burney carried 73 names. The extra ten were perhaps those admitted at the directors' meetings on 30 November and 2 December 1719. This would give a total capital of ₤17,600.^[8]
The first twelve and main subscribers listed, were the Lord Chamberlain Duke of Kent appointed as governor but never on duty as such, followed by the Duke of Newcastle as governor, the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Portland, the Duke of Manchester the deputy governor, the Duke of Chandos, the Duke of Montrose, the Earl of Sunderland, the Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Berkeley, the Earl of Burlington, the Earl of Litchfield and the Earl of Lincoln.
In 1723 the Academy paid a dividend of seven percent. It was the only dividend they ever paid.^[6]

[edit] Directors

John Vanbrugh and Colonel John Blathwayt, noted for his musical talents ^[9] who had studied harpsichord under Alessandro Scarlatti, seem to have been the only two competent directors.^[10][11] Other directors were Lord Bingley, Mr James Bruce, Mr Benjamin Mildmay, 1st Earl FitzWalter, Mr Bryan Fairfax, Mr George Harrison, Mr (Thomas?) Smith, Mr Francis Whitworth (A brother of Charles Whitworth), Doctor John Arbuthnot, Mr John James Heidegger, the Duke of Queensbury, the Earl of Stair, the Earl of Waldegrave, Lord Chetwind, Lord Stanhope, Thomas Coke of Norfolk, Conyers Darcy, Brigadier-General Dormer, Colonel O'Hara, Brigadier-General Hunter, William Poultney and Major-General Wade.^[12]

[edit] Musicians

On May 14, 1719 Handel was ordered by Lord Chamberlain and governor of the corporation, the Duke of Newcastle, to look for new singers.^[13] Handel travelled to Dresden to attend the newly built opera. He saw Teofane by Antonio Lotti, composed for the wedding of August III of Poland, and engaged the cast on behalf of the Royal Academy of Music. In April 1720 the Academy began producing operas.^[14] The orchestra consisted of seventeen violins, two violas, four cellos, two double basses, four oboes, three bassoons, a theorbo and a trumpet.
The brothers Prospera and Pietro Castrucci as well as Johan Helmich Roman and John Jones were violinist.^[15] Bononcini was a cellist, he and Handel presumably accompanied the recitatives in all the operas.^[16] Filippo Amadei, one of the composers of Muzio Scevola, also played cello, Pietro Giuseppe Sandoni, who would soon marry Francesca Cuzzoni, was the second harpsichord player. John Baptist Grano was the trumpeter, John Festing played oboe; Charles Frederick Weideman was the flautist and oboist and is also known from his appearance in The Enraged Musician.
The first opera staged by the Academy was Numitore composed by Giuseppe Porta, the second was Radamisto by Handel and the third Narciso by Domenico Scarlatti.

Senesino, circa 1720, engaged by the Academy for as long as possible

[edit] Operas and singers

Extravagant fees were offered to entice the best performers from Italy. For the Margherita Durastanti in the role of Radamisto, Handel wrote one of his favourite arias, Ombra cara di mia sposa. The great singers who were to be the brightest stars of the Royal Academy during the next few years, such as the castrato Senesino and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, had not yet arrived in London. Senesino had obligations to fulfill and arrived in September 1720, accompanied by a group of outstanding singers: the castrato Matteo Berselli, the soprano Maddalena Salvai and the bass Giuseppe Boschi.
Handel used the libretto of Teofane for his Ottone, with Cuzzoni as prima donna. It became his most successful opera in the years of the Academy. In 1724 and 1725 Handel wrote several masterpieces: Giulio Cesare with many da capo arias that made him so famous and Anastasia Robinson as Cornelia. Not a castrato but a tenor, Francesco Borosini, sang the leading role of Bajazet in Handel's most powerfully tragic opera Tamerlano. Insisting on adding the death of Bajazet he had a direct role in shaping the climax of the work.^[6] Charles Burney called the prison scene's "Chi di voi" in Rodelinda "one of the finest pathetic airs that can be found in all [Handel's] works."^{[citation needed]} In between Bononcini was dismissed, and went into private service, Robinson retired and Joseph Goupy may have been employed as a scene-painter.
Scipio, starring Cuzzoni, was performed as a stopgap. For Siroe Handel used for the first time a libretto originally by Pietro Metastasio. In Alessandro and Admeto the prima donna Faustina Bordoni appeared together with Cuzzoni. It must have been difficult for the two rival queens to collaborate after their fight on stage at the King’s Theatre and the abandonment of the performance of Astianatte, an opera by Giovanni Bononcini.
The death of George I caused the performance of Riccardo Primo to be postponed until the next season and prompted both librettist Paolo Rolli and composer to make significant changes to their work. They decided to give the patriotic drum a good thump by adding gratuitous references to British valour, justice and power.^[17] In 1728 John Gay's The Beggar's Opera premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the longest run in theatre history up to that time. It marked the beginning of a change in London musical taste and fashion, away from Italian opera in favor of something less highbrow, more home-grown, and more easily intelligible.^[18] The 1727-28 season boasted three new operas, but in 1729 the directors agreed to suspend activity after losing money. Not Handel, he had been the only one on their paylist. He immediately started a New or Second Academy of Music.
The Royal Academy produced 461 performances, 235 were works by Handel: 13 operas. Eight operas were by Bononcini (114 performances) and seven operas by Ariosti (54 performances).^[19]

[edit] The New or Second Academy

Sosarme

In 1729 Handel became joint manager of the King's Theatre with the Swiss aristocrat John James Heidegger. Handel travelled to Italy to engage seven new singers. In Bologna he met with Owen Swiny, a former theatre manager from London. Back home he composed seven more operas, but the public did not come to listen to his music but to hear the singers.^[20] On his way back he visited his mother and probably met with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, sent by his father, as the story goes. Johann Sebastian Bach, working only 20 miles away in Köthen, arrived too late to meet with his famous colleague, who had left earlier that day.^[21] Back in London Handel produced Ezio, an expensive disaster. Charles Burney ranked the score of his next opera Sosarme among his most pleasing; Dean states the opera does more honour to Handel as a musician than as a dramatist.^[22] Handel composed Partenope, Poro, and Orlando, but the public stayed away after the scandals between the singers, the bad and unreal librettos in Italian, and stardom. In the long run Handel failed to compete with the Opera of the Nobility, who had engaged musicians such as Johann Adolf Hasse, Nicolo Porpora and the famous castrato Farinelli.
Frederick, Prince of Wales and the anti-German faction of the English nobility who backed the Opera of Nobility sought to gain ground against the German court by attacking the foreigener Handel, little concerned about the paradoxy of the situation: the nationalistic faction fought with the weapon of the foreign Italian opera and summoned the aid of foreigners such as Hasse, himself an Italianized German like Handel.^[23]
Handel had composed about 30 operas for the Royal Academy.^[24] and moved his productions to Covent Garden. The Opera of the Nobility took over the King's Theatre.
The Academy survived until 1734, after it encountered many difficulties: arguments between Handel and his singers, the dismissal of Paolo Rolli after quarrels with the directors, disagreement between the directors themselves, about the employment of new singers and squabbles on stage, but for all the Academy's problems, its success was enormous.^[25]

[edit] Sources

• Dean, W. & J.M. Knapp (1995) Handel's operas 1704-1726. Revised Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-816441-6
• Dean, W. (2006) “Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741”, (The Boydell Press). Woodbridge. ISBN 1-84383-268-2
• Dean, W. (1993) "Handel's Sosarme, a Puzzle Opera". In: Essays on Opera. Oxford University Press. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-816384-3.
• Deutsch, O.E. (1955), Handel: A Documentary Biography. W.W. Norton & Company Inc Publishers. New York. Reprint 1974, Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-70624-5
• Bukofzer, M.F. (1948) Music in the Baroque Era. From Monteverdi to Bach. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London, Toronto, Melbourne. Reprint 1983. ISBN 0-460-03431-6.
• Handel, A Celebration of his life and times, 1685-1759. Edited by Jacob Simon. Published by the National Portrait Gallery, London. ISBN 0-904017-68-0

[edit] See also

• Handel House Museum

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Dean, W. & J.M. Knapp (1995) Handel's operas 1704-1726, p. 298.
2. ^ "Handel Reference Database 1719". Ichriss.ccarh.org. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
3. ^ Dean, W. (2006) “Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741”, pp. 125, 274, 399.
4. ^ "Essays on Handel and Italian opera by Reinhard Strohm". Books.google.nl. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
5. ^ "The life of Handel by Victor Schoelcher". Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
6. ^ ^{a b c} "Features: Handel and the Royal Academy". PlaybillArts. 2004-12-01. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
7. ^ James Lees-Milne, The Earls of Creation 1962:96
8. ^ Dean, W. & J.M. Knapp (1995) Handel's operas 1704-1726, p. 300.
9. ^ "Handel: tercentenary collection by Stanley Sadie,Anthony Hicks". Books.google.nl. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
10. ^ The birth of the orchestra: history of an institution, 1650-1815 by John Spitzer,Neal Zaslaw [1]
11. ^ "Portrait of Blathwayt". Artchive.com. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
12. ^ Deutsch, O.E. (1955), p. 96, 123.
13. ^ Deutsch, O.E. (1955), Handel: A Documentary Biography. London: Adams and Charles Black Limited, p. 89.
14. ^ "Books - Lindgren 13 (1): 75 - The Opera Quarterly". Oq.oxfordjournals.org. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
15. ^ Grano, John Baptist and Ginger, John. Handel's trumpeter: the diary of John Grano, p. 13-14. Pendragon Press, 1998. [2]
16. ^ Dean, W. & M. Knapp, p. 307.
17. ^ Dean, W. (2006) Handel's Operas 1726-1741, p. 67.
18. ^ "George Frideric Handel: his story from Germany to England". Baroquemusic.org. Retrieved 2013-02-02. 
19. ^ Dean, W. & M. Knapp, p. 308-309.
20. ^ [3]^{[dead link]}
21. ^ Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1802) Über Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke, p. 63 (reprint 1950).
22. ^ Dean, W. (2006) “Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741”, p. 215 (The Boydell Press); Winton Dean: "Handel's Sosarme, a Puzzle Opera", in: Essays on Opera ISBN 0-19-816384-3.
23. ^ Bukofzer, M.F. (1948) Music in the Baroque Era. From Monteverdi to Bach, p. 325. Reprint 1983. ISBN 0-460-03431-6
24. ^ See the List of operas by Handel, numbers 12 till 42.
25. ^ Handel, A Celebration of his life and times, p. 111.

[edit] External links

• Handel Reference Database (in progress)
• Jstor.org 3207146
• Jstor.org 735336

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