Part I

Scene I: Isaiah’s prophecy of salvation
Sinfonia (overture)
Comfort ye (tenor recitative)
Every valley (tenor aria)
And the glory of the Lord (chorus)

Scene 2: The coming judgment
Thus saith the Lord (bass recitative)
But who may abide the day of his coming (alto aria)
And He shall purify (chorus)

Scene 3: The prophecy of Christ’s birth
Behold, a virgin shall conceive (alto recitative)
O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion (alto aria and chorus)
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth (bass recitative)
The people that walked in darkness (bass aria)
For unto us a child is born (chorus)

Scene 4: The annunciation to the shepherds
Pifa (“Pastoral Symphony”)
There were shepherds abiding in the field (soprano recitative)
And lo, the angel of the Lord (soprano recitative)
And the angel said unto them (soprano recitative)
And suddenly there was with the angel (soprano recitative)
Glory to God (chorus)

Scene 5: Christ’s healing and redemption
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion (soprano aria)
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened (alto recitative)
He shall feed His flock like a shepherd (soprano and alto duet)
His yoke is easy, and His burthen is light (chorus)

Messiah as Opera: a wolf in sheep’s clothing

As Handel did, I come from the world of opera and cannot help but look at Messiah in any other way than as a masterpiece of musical drama. Handel, at the top of his game and with skills developed over almost a half century in the opera house, wrote this sublime musical drama, though without many three-dimensional characters and with very little action. Drama comes from a Greek word meaning action, and Messiah is notoriously lacking in explicit stage action.

In a rehearsal room, stage directors continually ask, “Who are you? What is your objective? Where have you come from and where are you going? How are you going to achieve your goals?” Surprisingly, Messiah is very easy to decipher. Who are you? The Messiah, the anointed one. What is your objective? To save mankind. But is there drama? Is there “action?” Much of Messiah is philosophical thought and reporting about things that had happened—but that are not necessarily happening now. Can history be dramatized? Is there inherent drama in the philosophy?

Charles Jennens (1700-1773), the librettist of Messiah, was a very close personal friend and supporter of Handel; wealthy and intelligent, he was a “non-juror” who had sworn an oath to James II and accepted William and Mary as Regent, but not as King. He was also interested in primitive Christianity, a movement dedicated to restoring the church to the early apostolic church and, central to Messiah, he was an anti-Deist. Deists were believers in God, but embraced the Enlightenment and rejected the supernatural, miraculous aspects of the Bible, attributing them rather to human action or the natural workings of science. The libretto for Messiah is a manifesto for miraculous intervention.

Jennens collaborated as librettist with Handel on several major works: Saul, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and others. His libretto for Handel shows a man both intimately acquainted with the gospel and with a keen sense of narrative and drama. The libretto (printed in this program with Jennen’s scene divisions and commentary) is laid out as an opera libretto, with scenes and locations: some very concrete (shepherds in a field); others much more obtuse and abstract: “A Thanksgiving for the Defeat of Death.” At this point in our oratorio, the words become the protagonist and carry the action, and the philosophical ideas themselves become alive and participate in a Platonic dialogue, very similar to Monteverdi’s l’incoronazione di Poppea where Seneca and Nero debate their differing points of view with logic and rhetorical panache.

Baroque opera is all about variety. Ancient philosophers defined three types of music: religious (sacred and mystical), chamber (nuanced and subtle), and theatrical (filled with variety to keep an audience that was filled with orange sellers, beer sellers, ladies of the night and rakes, interested and involved). Handel was a master of varying the mood, the tempo, the dynamic, the keys to enhance the drama. In the theater, librettists juxtaposed scenes to enhance the variety: a bright ballroom preceding a dark dungeon scene; a small inner room preceding an expansive formal garden—all of these transformations done in “the twinkling of an eye” with the amazing Baroque theater machinery. Oratorio preserved this roller-coaster structure.

As a working musician, one sees the birth of oratorio from the musician’s standpoint. During Lent, theatrical
performance was forbidden; however, if one moved into the church, into the Oratory, one could keep doing the same work, just calling it by another name: choosing subjects from sacred texts. Early oratorio even had stage directions (Cavalieri’s Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo, acknowledged as one of the first oratorios, has very specific stage directions for the singers), and many were performed with sets and costumes: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Italian Baroque operas had very little chorus participation. Due to a desire to save money for the principal singers and the stupendous scenic effects, often the chorus was populated with employees involved in other aspects of the production—such as scene-shifters, wardrobe people, and ticket takers—who came together once or twice an evening and sang a very simple chorus. With the oratorio, Handel was able to write for sophisticated professional choristers. With Messiah, he surpassed himself, making the chorus a protagonist and the mirror to the audience: The chorus becomes “we the people,” and we step into the drama as actors alongside the other principal actors: When the chorus sings “For unto us a child is born,” it is our salvation at stake.

All of Handel’s principals were cast from the world of the theater and they were cast by type, just like an
MGM movie: The soprano was the virgin, the angel; the alto the mother; the wronged woman; the tenor was
the Evangelist and the hero, and the bass was the Old Testament prophet, the stern father. Handel’s early
performers included John Beard, the great heroic tenor, without whom many of Handel’s great Oratorios would not have been written. Beard was equally popular in opera, light comedy and music-theater; he later became the proprietor of Covent Garden, inherited from his father-in-law. In later performances Handel had Guadagni, the great castrato, who was as famed for his acting as his singing, having studied with the great David Garrick, the inventor of modern stagecraft. Guadagni was pivotal in the reform opera movement initiated by Gluck. For the premiere performance in Dublin, Handel had a favorite, the notorious leading lady Susanna Cibber (also a favorite leading lady of Garrick). Her husband had recently sued her for divorce. The judge imposed damages of only one pound for such a beloved and great artist, whom he saw as married to an unloving, conniving, manipulating theater manager. At the premiere of Messiah, after her performance of “He was despised,” a Dublin clergyman leapt to his feet, proclaiming: “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!” These were actor-singers whose intention was to move the audience with all the techniques learned in the theater, and who sang from the heart.

Simultaneously at the beginning of the 18th century in England, there arose a style of preaching, different from an earlier plainer, more sedate style. The previous style was built on clarity: communicating with your audience and a subdued, serious but clear delivery. The new style, favored by Dissenters, Methodists and other more progressive groups, urged speakers to speak from heart: “On all Occasions let the Thing you are to speak be deeply imprinted on your own Heart. And when you are sensibly touch’d yourself, you will easily touch others, by adjusting your Voice to every Passion which you feel” (John Wesley, 1703-1791). This is advice very familiar to every actor.

A singer being capable of as many different vocal colors as the human heart is capable of emotions: Handel provided each singer in Messiah a panoply of varied arias in which to deploy their far-ranging gifts; he tapped the music of the spheres with a deep conviction of music as science. The orchestra always paints the dramatic scene as so clearly denoted in Jennen’s libretto: The choice of key, dance form, melodic shape, and rhythmic and rhetorical gesture all surprise and delight.

But a Handel opera is never just a succession of musical numbers to showcase the divas, but a dramatic train ride, sometimes speeding, sometimes slowing to admire the scenery, but irrevocably and pulsatingly pulling you to your destination: salvation and eternal life. His engine is fueled by Baroque dance, storytelling declamation, and the English choral anthem, brought to its peak by Purcell before being crowned by Handel. His rather astounding triumvirate of French dance, the theater and the church pulsate with variety and the possibility of surprise and wonder. Change is the important theatrical law, and Handel continually amazes us with his varied response to the text and his sense of structure and “Spannung” (suspense or “pull”), all displayed with far-ranging variety.

Handel said that he wrote Messiah not only to entertain, but rather to make one better; however, to teach one must entertain. Handel was proud of his knowledge of the Bible, and although private in his personal life and beliefs, in Messiah he clearly spoke from the heart and knew intimately the power of the drama to incite similar passions in his audience. He used his skills to promulgate his deeply held beliefs in the guise of theatrical variety and delights. Enjoy the ride, become better and become one with the music of the spheres.

—Program Note by Gary Thor Wedow