Athalia (Handel)

"Athalia" (HWV 52) is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, his third in this genre. The structural and rhetorical achievements in Athalia project a dramatic concept that may be unique in Handel's output. Commissioned in 1733 for the Publick Act in Oxford, a commencement ceremony of the local colleges one of which had offered Handel an honorary doctorate. The story is based on that of the Biblical queen Athaliah.

Oxford was then a center of nationalist and Jacobite sentiment and Athalia was composed in the midst of a controversy about Handel's advocacy of Italian opera and may have been a pragmatic reaction to this: Handel bowed to English musical taste by writing an oratorio, a genre with which he had had two previous successes.

It was first performed on 10 July 1733 at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, conducted by Handel himself. [http://www.andreas-praefcke.de/carthalia/uk/uk_oxford_sheldonian.htm]

He may have chosen Jean Racine's "Athalie" as the basis for his libretto because of Jacobite allusions in its plot. Athalia, as presented in the Bible, was a tyrannical usurper who was finally overthrown, whereupon a hidden prince took his rightful throne - a theme obviously capable of a Jacobite interpretation. Handel uses rhetorical planning and symbols to reinstate many ideas of Racine's that are lost in Humphreys's libretto.

The tonal plan of the oratorio hinges on key associations with rhetorical significance. Handel's musical treatment echoes the original play's division into five parts, the characters' psychological duality and their polarization in pairs, and the acceleration of the dramatic pace towards the end.

The rhetorical and structural coherence of "Athalia" effects specific interpretive choices for performance. It also reveals a musical and dramatic form that anticipates the operas of Gluck and Mozart. It may represent a particular and persuasive example of the influence of French aesthetics on Handel.

Dramatis personae

* Athalia, Baalite Queen of Judah and Daughter of Jezebel (soprano)
* Josabeth, Wife of Joad (soprano)
* Joas, King of Judah (boy soprano)
* Joad, High Priest (alto)
* Mathan, Priest of Baal, formerly a Jewish Priest (tenor)
* Abner, Captain of the Jewish Forces (bass)
* Chorus of Young Virgins
* Chorus of Israelites
* Chorus of Priests and Levites
* Chorus of Attendants
* Chorus of Sidonian Priests

ummary

E-book

[http://mdz1.bib-bvb.de/~db/0001/bsb00016731/images/ Score] of "Athalia" (ed. Friedrich Chrysander, Leipzig 1859)

External links

* Full-text [http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/athalia.htm libretto] hosted by Stanford University.

References

*Tellez, Carmen Helena, "Musical Form and Dramatic Concept in Handel's Athalia", Doctor of Music, Indiana University, 1989. Dissertation Number: DA9135209(author)