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According to the music historian Charles Burney, who knew him well, \u2018Handel\u2019s look was somewhat heavy and sour, but when he did smile it was his sire the sun bursting<\/span> out of a black cloud\u2019. Across Handel\u2019s music, <\/span>is there anything to rival the sunburst that is Part I of Acis and Galatea<\/i>, composed in 1718 for the pleasure-loving house guests of James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, and soon to be Duke of Chandos? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Brydges had acquired an eye-watering fortune (by <\/span>nefarious means) and was now remodelling <\/span>his out-of-London estate at Cannons, Middlesex, where the Parish Church (for which Handel composed the Chandos Anthems<\/i>) had been given an Italianate makeover, and the house itself restyled as a Palladian villa complete with terraced gardens boasting ostriches, flamingos, storks, macaws and, above all, a fountain. Leafy Edgware today might struggle to resemble the paradise envisaged by Brydges, but if ever a place deserved its gilding of bespoke musical Arcadia it was surely Cannons. <\/span><\/p>\n With Italian opera in abeyance and feuding between King George\u00a0I and\u00a0 <\/span>the Prince of Wales (the future George II) making it politic for Handel to keep out of the crossfire, the prospect of tackling the story of Acis and Galatea away from London must have appealed. And in fact he\u2019d already dipped into Ovid\u2019s Metamorphoses <\/i>a decade earlier, concocting Aci, Galatea e Polifemo<\/i> as part of the Neapolitan wedding celebrations for the Duke of Alvito.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple tale, simply told by Ovid \u2013 as, indeed, it is by Handel, but with what sophistication! The shepherd Acis is in love with the sea-nymph Galatea, and for the whole of Part I they are deliriously happy or moping when apart. Cue a big black cloud. The cyclops Polyphemus is also smitten with Galatea and, provoked by jealousy, crushes Acis under a boulder. Happily, sea nymphs have special powers and Acis is granted immortality, transformed by Galatea into a gushing fountain. To turn Ovid\u2019s mythical tale into an English libretto, Handel was fortunate to secure a cabinet of literary talents headed by John Gay \u2013 born in the same year as Handel, incidentally \u2013 and Alexander Pope.<\/span><\/p>\n How to categorise the piece? Variously called a serenata, pastoral, masque, cantata, oratorio and opera, perhaps its least problematic designation is the endearingly straightforward \u2018Mr Handel\u2019s Music\u2019. And just as the Chandos Anthems<\/i> had, of necessity, been fashioned for a somewhat unusual line-up thanks to the vagaries of Brydges\u2019s musical retinue, so too Acis<\/i>. At Handel\u2019s <\/span>disposal were five singers <\/span>(doubling up as soloists and chorus), a scant handful of strings, two oboes (doubling as recorders) and a harpsichord \u2013 though by the time of the performance a double bass seems to have been procured, plus a sopranino recorder, whose obligato <\/i>contrast with Polyphemus\u2019s bass produces a Shostakovich-like juxtaposition.<\/span><\/p>\n Beyond those forces, we know little about that first performance. It would be satisfying to think that it took place appropriately al fresco and proximate to Brydges\u2019s handsome water feature. In any event, \u2018Mr Handel\u2019s Music\u2019 surfaced again for a London benefit in 1731 and was given twice the following year by Thomas Arne (not the composer of \u2018Rule, Britannia!\u2019, but his father of that name, according to some scholars) \u2013 provoking Handel into a supersized riposte conflating parts of the earlier Italian serenata and the <\/span>Cannons piece into a bilingual <\/span>three-acts extravaganza. Finally, in 1739 he reverted to the purely English Acis<\/i>, adding a concluding chorus to the \u2018Happy we!\u2019 duet that ends Part I on such a high \u2013 and embossed it with a carillon for extra alluring bling. Published in 1743, Acis<\/i> went on to muster <\/span>more than 100 performances over Handel\u2019s <\/span>lifetime, and Mozart subsequently brought the scoring \u2018up-to-date\u2019 for Viennese tastes. In the 1820s, Mendelssohn \u2013 in a spot of plea-bargaining to facilitate his revival of Bach\u2019s St Matthew Passion<\/i> with the Berlin Singakademie \u2013 expanded the orchestration even further and included an ophicleide-like corno inglese di basso<\/i> to shadow the hapless Polyphemus.<\/span><\/p>\n Though seemingly unpretentious, Acis and Galatea<\/i> was a major milestone in Handel\u2019s output. A seasoned composer of Italian operas, he was now unwittingly honing his skills in setting English on an extended scale that would stand him in good stead when Italian opera finally yielded to English oratorio. And the constraints imposed by the unusual forces avaiable at Cannons challenged his imagination with profoundly liberating results. Acis, Galatea and even Polyphemus are not just creatures of myth, but arguably real people with real and powerful emotions. If we don\u2019t thrill to \u2018the pleasure of the plains\u2019 or feel something of Polyphemus\u2019s pain even as we laugh at his impossible ambition, we\u2019re missing the essence of the humanity with which <\/span>Handel imbues every note. Far from merely <\/span>a modest country house entertainment, it\u2019s actually one of his most perfectly achieved and quietly audacious creations.<\/span><\/p>\n Jeremy Pound<\/a> named Acis and Galatea <\/i>one of the best pieces of pastoral music ever<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Christian Curnyn <\/span>(director)<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Early Opera Company<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Chandos CHSA 0404(2)<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Although Handel tinkered with the score, there\u2019s something about the directness and intimacy of the pared-back original that blossoms so beguilingly when appropriate forces are deployed. Adrian Boult recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra, Joan Sutherland and Peter Pears in the mid 1960s, and as the taste for something lighter grew, so chamber orchestras such as Neville Marriner\u2019s Academy of St Martin in the Fields stepped up to the plate. But that same year, (1978), John Eliot Gardiner and the period instruments of his newly formed English Baroque Soloists offered a historically informed alternative, and since then Acis<\/i> has never looked back \u2013 revelling in the fruity sound of baroque oboes, the piercing piquancy of the sopranino recorder and a style of singing that that engages directly with one of the finest librettos Handel ever set.<\/span><\/p>\n Latest into the fray is Christian Curnyn\u2019s Early Opera Company, and against strong competition this 2017 account snatches the crown. Not entirely surprisingly so \u2013 their Handelian credentials have long been rehearsed on stage and in the recording studio, and Curnyn \u2018speaks Handel\u2019 with a penetrating fluency and naturalness. The scale is essentially that of the Cannons first performance, but with six rather than four violins, the addition of a theorbo to enrich the continuo, and \u2013 why wouldn\u2019t you! \u2013 the addition of the later choral afterthought to the duet \u2018Happy we!\u2019, here crackling with joy unconfined. <\/span><\/p>\n Curnyn\u2019s pacing is lively \u2013 in the Sinfonia, whose chortling oboes hang on for dear life, some might say \u2018excitable\u2019 \u2013 and there isn\u2019t a weak link in the casting. Lucy Crowe was born to sing Galatea: melismas float; kittenish sensuality propels \u2018Happy we!\u2019; numb simplicity seals the vulnerability of \u2018Must I my Acis still bemoan\u2019; and, swaddled amid murmuring recorders, her final aria ravishes. Allan Clayton\u2019s impetuous, hot-headed Acis similarly compels, and \u2018Love sounds the <\/span>alarm\u2019 marches to battle with a momentum <\/span>that encourages a certain swaggering braggadocio. But tender lyricism is never wanting, and how affectingly he dies, Curnyn nurturing an almost Purcellian pathos at the end of the ensuing chorus. Neal Davies brings stentorian heft and presence to Polyphemus\u2019s rages and gaucheries (though Matthew Brook in John Butt\u2019s recording\u00a0 fleshes him out with even more lurid relish). Curnyn\u2019s, in short, is a performance that leaves you savouring every note\u2026 and then some!<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is the story behind Acis and Galatea<\/em>?<\/span><\/h2>\n
Is Acis and Galatea <\/em>an opera?<\/span><\/h2>\n
The best recordings of Acis and Galatea<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n