A Trio of Handel Creations in Time for the Holidays

We continue to reap the benefits of the 1985 Handel tricentennial, a genuinely meaningful birthday celebration in that it inspired unprecedented scholarly examination of that composer’s works while uncovering and displaying unjustly neglected music rather than merely repeating the familiar.

And Handel has remained a high priority for the recording industry, as witness the recent appearance of three of his grandest creations, in their finest recorded representations to date.

First, “Giulio Cesare”--arguably the composer’s greatest stage work, and whose score and plotting give the lie to the widely held notion that opera was a staid and static form between Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” and the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy.

“Giulio Cesare” has it all--spectacle, subtle scenes of personal revelation, sex, double-dealing, violence. Its finely honed plot--the stage-smart libretto is by Nicola Haym--deals with Cleopatra’s love for Julius Caesar and her successful attempt to wrest the throne of Egypt from her creepy brother, Ptolemy.

In the first recorded attempt to come to grips with the problems of casting, text and drama created by Handel and Haym in this long, complex and (potentially) vastly rewarding work, Rene Jacobs, directing the excellent period players of Camerata Koln from the harpsichord, has assembled a strong cast (Harmonia Mundi 901 385, three CDs).

A young mezzo from Atlanta, Jennifer Larmore, is brilliant if somewhat hard-voiced in her punching out of the title role’s tortuous fioritura . Her characterization of the noble Roman is convincing despite the ever-present difficulties with trouser roles (the part was created for the alto castrato Senesino).

Barbara Schlick as Cleopatra is hardly the sex kitten of Beverly Sills’ star-making turn in the otherwise grotesque New York Opera production of three decades ago. Schlick makes her points inferentially, with regal elegance.

There is an exquisite contribution as well from the honey-voiced mezzo Bernarda Fink as Cornelia, while the agile countertenor, Derek Lee Ragin, avoids caricaturing the vile Tolomeo (Ptolemy).

Jacobs, while obviously in love with Handel’s luscious orchestration, feels the need to enhance it with some overly fancy continuo licks, and he does have a tendency to hammer away at every downbeat. Better that than touch-me-not gentility.

The oratorio “Saul” dates from 1738, when the now-thoroughly Anglicized Handel was disenchanted with the politics of operatic production. The dark, inward-looking nature of “Saul”--its thrilling purely orchestral numbers notwithstanding--doesn’t invite popular acceptance.

Then too the title role is so brief, with not a single true aria, that the casual listener may wonder why Handel didn’t name his oratorio after David or Michal, whose parts are longer and technically more demanding.

But Saul is the focus of the drama: a Boris Godunov-like figure, tortured, envious, self-doubting yet hugely commanding--characteristics Handel (and librettist Charles Jennens of “Messiah” fame) expose in swift, harmonically pungent strokes rather than with extended expository numbers.

In a performance in which John Eliot Gardiner stylishly leads his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists (Philips 426 265, three CDs), Saul is sung with brooding intensity and a rock-solid basso by Alastair Miles.

David is taken, again most affectingly, by Derek Lee Ragin, and there are well-sung, if too gently characterized, contributions from Lynne Dawson as Michal and Donna Brown as Merab.

By contrast yet again, the opera “Orlando,” written in 1732, eight years after “Giulio Cesare” and six years before “Saul,” is a fantasy whose dopiness disappears under the spell of Handel’s inspiration. Particularly noteworthy is the title character’s spectacularly complex, archoperatic mad scene--written for the same Senesino who created the role of Giulio Cesare--that ends Act II.

Anyone who attended the memorable concert performance of “Orlando” at Ambassador Auditorium a couple of seasons back is unlikely to pass up the recorded version (L’Oiseau-Lyre 430 845, three CDs) with a cast nearly duplicating that heard in Pasadena:

Christopher Hogwood directs the Academy of Ancient Music, with James Bowman as Orlando, David Thomas as the wizard Zoroastro (a foretaste of Mozart’s Sarastro in philosophy as well as name), Emma Kirkby as the treacly Dorinda, Catherine Robbin as the noble Medoro and one singer not heard at Ambassador, Arleen Auger--in superb voice--as the Queen of Cathay with the unlikely name Angelica.

For inadvertent comic relief, the curious listener is directed to the travesty conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt makes of another of Handel’s oratorio masterpieces, “Theodora” (Teldec 46447, two CDs). In addition to imposing wholesale cuts, Harnoncourt conducts with a lethal blunt instrument, thumping out the basses with a weightiness suitable to Shostakovich.

And, with the exception of the lovely Roberta Alexander in the title role, the largely Teutonic cast and chorus make a delirious hash of an English text that, no matter how sappy, deserves to be understood.

Wait for the McGegan-Philharmonia Baroque complete edition of “Theodora,” to be issued by Harmonia Mundi next year.