A season of Handel operas, part 2: Alceste

La mort d'Alceste, ou l'Héroïsme de l'amour conjugal [The death of Alcestis] (detail) by Jean-François Pierre Peyron, 1785. Image credit: Louvre, Paris. Image source: Speakerty

Alceste (1750). Lauren Snouffer (Calliope), Aaron Sheehan (Apollo), with Leandra Ramm (soloist) and Jeffrey Fields (Charon). Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, Peter Whelan, conductor. Herbst Theater, San Francisco, 7 March 2025.

When Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra announced that Handel's Alceste would be performed this spring, I was a little puzzled. I was familiar with two other operas based on Euripides' tragedy: Lully's of 1694, with a libretto by Philippe Quinault, and Gluck's of 1767, with a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. But what was this mystery work by Handel, and why had I never heard of it?

The work did not appear in any of the opera reference works on my shelves, nor in the table of contents of Winton Dean's definitive Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (Oxford, 1959). Checking Dean's chapter on The Choice of Hercules (1751), though, I soon learned the reason that Alceste is not better known: it had never been performed in Handel's lifetime, and most of the music had been repurposed for The Choice of Hercules.

George Frideric Handel by Thomas Hudson, 1749–1750. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Handel had composed the music as interludes for a play by the poet and novelist Tobias Smollett based on Euripides' Alcestis. Following the conventions of masques such as Henry Purcell's King Arthur (1691) and The Fairy Queen (1692), none of the main characters of Smollett's play—King Admetus, who has been summoned by Death; Alcestis, his devoted wife who chooses to die in his place; and Hercules, the hero who rescues her from the underworld and restores her to life and to her husband—have singing roles in Handel's work. Instead, Alceste features the muse Calliope, the god Apollo, and the Stygian ferryman Charon, who comment on the play's action. The word book for Handel's interludes was not written by Smollett, but most likely by Thomas Morell, the librettist for several of Handel's earlier and later oratorios.

The masque was commissioned by John Rich, who had produced The Beggar's Opera (1728), John Gay's ballad opera satirizing his former collaborator Handel (see Part 1 on Acis and Galatea). However, shortly after the wildly successful run of The Beggar's Opera, Rich built the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where Handel's later operas and many of his oratorios were first publicly performed; Handel apparently bore no grudge.

John Rich, attributed to William Hogarth, ca. 1755–1761. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The play and music were ready by early January 1750, but the masque was never performed: Rich cancelled the production. According to notes made by Morell, Rich made this decision because the music was "too good [i.e., difficult] for [his] Performers." This is unlikely to be the true explanation. The singers included the soprano Cecilia Young (Mrs. Thomas Arne), her sister, the contralto Esther Young, tenor Thomas Lowe and bass Gustavus Waltz, all experienced singers who performed in other Handel works. More likely, the expense of mounting a full-length play together with musical interludes and dances proved too great, and Rich decided to cut his losses.

As a result, Alceste is little known and rarely performed or recorded. Which is a shame, because it contains some very appealing music. Here is Calliope's "Gentle Morpheus, son of night," performed by soprano Lucy Crowe with the Early Opera Company conducted by Christian Curnyn:

https://youtu.be/NYZCPr9bM-A

Gentle Morpheus, son of night, Hither speed thy airy flight! And his weary senses steep In the balmy dew of sleep. That when bright Aurora's beams Glad the world with golden streams, He, like Phoebus, blithe and gay, May re-taste the healthful day.

The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performance made a strong case for the viability of Alceste in concert. It has some rousing choral numbers and virtuoso showcases for the soloists. Lauren Snouffer brought a bright soprano and fluency in coloratura to the role of Calliope, and the ever-reliable Aaron Sheehan his flexible and pleasing tenor to the role of Apollo. 

The Philharmonia Chorale directed by Valérie Sainte-Agathe made a substantial contribution to the success of the performance, not only with its usual superb unison and intonation, but also by supplying two soloists: the mezzo-soprano Leandra Ramm for the air "Triumph, Hymen, in the pair," and the baritone Jeffrey Fields in Charon's "Ye fleeting shades, I come / To fix your final doom" (which, although lyrically very different, bears a passing musical resemblance to Polyphemus' "Ruddier than the cherry" from Acis and Galatea). 

Guest conductor Peter Whelan led an energetic and cohesive performance of Alceste and the opening Concerto Grosso in G major Op. 6 No. 1. On top of flawlessly coordinating soloists, orchestra and chorus, he was a charming host for the evening. The PBO is currently searching for a music director to replace Richard Egarr, who resigned last June after just four seasons (his predecessor, Nicholas McGegan, spent 35 years in the role). On the evidence of Whelan's audition, he made a strong case not only for Alceste but for his candidacy.

Next time: Giulio Cesare performed by The English Concert

Last time: Acis and Galatea performed by American Bach Soloists

A season of Handel operas, part 1: Acis and Galatea

Polyphème surprenant Acis et Galatée (Polyphemus surprising Acis and Galatea) [detail] by Auguste Ottin, 1863. Fontaine Médicis, Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris. Image credit: Daniel Stockman, CC BY-SA 2.0. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

This year marks the 340th anniversary of Handel's birth. Either by plan or coincidence, in addition to the annual Messiah concerts, welcome as they are, this season has featured some non-perennial Handel vocal works. Over the next several posts I will be covering recent concert performances of three Handel operas, starting with:

Acis and Galatea (1718/1739). Nola Richardson (Galatea), James Reese (Acis), Douglas Ray Williams (Polyphemus), Michael Jankosky (Damon), Agnes Vojtkó (Corydon). American Bach Soloists, Jeffrey Thomas, artistic director and conductor. St Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco, 23 February 2025.

In Every Valley: Handel's Messiah, I wrote about how Handel's career composing and staging Italian operas in London came to an end after 30 years. It had begun in 1711 with Rinaldo and had reached several artistic peaks between the mid-1720s and the mid-1730s. But by the end of the 1730s audiences and financial support were dwindling, and with the failure of Deidamia in 1741, Handel finally had to accept that he could no longer continue to produce opera seria.

George Frideric Handel, attributed to Balthasar Denner, 1726–1728. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 1976

But his career writing Italian opera had almost ended 25 years earlier, in 1717, thanks to an argument within the royal family. Had Handel stopped writing Italian opera then, today we would not have many of his greatest masterpieces; I'll be discussing one of them, Giulio Cesare (1724), as the third performance covered in this post series.

Opera was (and is) extraordinarily expensive, and between 1714 and 1717 the Italian opera company in London flourished under the joint patronage of King George I and his son George Augustus, the Prince of Wales. But in 1717, tensions mounted between father and son. An opposition faction began to form around the Prince of Wales, who, in comparison to his father, was relatively popular. Joint patronage of the opera ceased.

Handel was placed in a delicate position. He relied on George I's patronage and supplied music for court and state occasions; that summer he had written the Water Music for a river excursion by the king. At the same time, he could not afford to alienate the Prince of Wales, who was roughly Handel's age and would one day be king. Rather than attending either the king's or the prince's court, by early August 1717 Handel was staying at Cannons, an estate outside London owned by James Brydges, Baron (later Duke of) Chandos.

The Right Hon[oura]ble. James, Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount Chandos of Wilton in Herefordshire, Lord Chandos of Sudley in Glocestershire & Governor of ye Turky Company [i.e., the Levant Company]. Mezzotint by John Simon, published by John Smith, after a Michael Dahl portrait of 1719. National Portrait Gallery NPG D19048

Brydges had three major advantages: he was not active politically, and so associating with him would not offend either king or prince; he was an enthusiastic arts patron, not only of Handel but of the writers John Arbuthnot, John Gay, John Hughes and Alexander Pope; and he had a household musical establishment consisting of about a dozen musicians and four to six male singers (augmented with additional performers for special occasions).

No payments are recorded to Handel in the existing household accounts, and Brydges already had a Master of Music, Johann Pepusch. In his biography of Handel, Donald Burrows suggests that he stayed at Cannons "possibly. . .as an honoured guest rather than as a 'serving musician.'" [1] Even though Handel was a guest, composing and performing were undoubtedly a part of the reciprocal guest-host relationship: more than a dozen new works were first performed at Cannons while he was in residence.

Unknown man, formerly identified as John Gay, attributed to Sir Godfrey Kneller, Baronet, before 1723(?). Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 622

The poets sharing Brydges' patronage were strong opponents of Italian opera, the genre that had brought Handel to London. (Gay and Pepusch would go on a decade later to savagely satirize Italian opera in The Beggar's Opera (1728), for which some of Handel's music was borrowed.) Ever adaptable, all the vocal works Handel composed at Cannons had English words: eleven sacred anthems drawn from the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate's New Version of the Psalms (1696); the oratorio Esther (1718) to a libretto likely by Arbuthnot and Pope; and the pastoral opera Acis and Galatea (1718) to a libretto primarily by Gay with additions by Pope and Hughes, adapted from the text of John Dryden's The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea (1717).

Gay's text for Acis and Galatea draws on Ovid's Metamorphoses for its swiftly-moving tragedy: the shepherd Acis and the nymph Galatea love one another, but the jealous Cyclops Polyphemus kills Acis by crushing him with a boulder.

"Help, Galatea, help, ye parent gods, / And take me dying to your deep abodes." Acis and Galatea, etching and engraving by William Dean Taylor after Richard Cook, c. 1814–1822. Image source: Sanders of Oxford Antique Prints & Maps

The sorrowing Galatea turns Acis' blood into a "gentle murm'ring stream," and Acis himself into its god.

Handel filled the work with beautiful pastoral melodies, and the words "pleasure," "delight," "desire," and "love" recur throughout—as in Acis' Act I air "Love in her eyes sits playing," performed by Paul Agnew accompanied by Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie:

https://youtu.be/pF615Bo5I0I

But Handel also effectively dramatized the moments of conflict. In an extraordinary trio in Act II, Polyphemus violently interrupts Acis and Galatea's love duet "The flocks shall leave the mountains" with interjections of his jealousy and anger: "Torture! Fury! Rage! Despair! I cannot, cannot bear!" The excerpt below is from the brilliant Boston Early Music Festival production with Aaron Sheehan as Acis/Lord Chandos, Teresa Wakim as Galatea/Lady Chandos, and Douglas Williams as Polyphemus/Alexander Pope:

https://youtu.be/uFID8HjhQw4

The cast of the 1718 version requires only five soloists (in 1739 Handel revised the work to reduce the number of soloists to four). The part of Galatea was sung by a soprano hired for the occasion, since Brydges' regular group of singers included no women. Burrows makes the case that the soprano who sang in the first performance was probably Margherita de l'Epine, who had performed in three of Handel's London operas and who married Pepusch, Brydges' Master of Music, around 1718.

Galatea is given some of Handel's loveliest music, as in the air "Heart, the seat of soft delight," here performed by Teresa Wakim accompanied by the Boston Early Music Festival Vocal & Chamber Ensembles directed by Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs:

https://youtu.be/sATWpLlyxvw

The modest forces required to perform Acis and Galatea, its compact story (about 90 minutes from start to finish), and the beauty of its music ensured the work's continued popularity. It became the most-performed of Handel's works during his lifetime, and it is still regularly staged (we've seen it four times in the past two decades).

Polyphème surprenant Acis et Galatée (Polyphemus surprising Acis and Galatea) by Auguste Ottin, 1863. Fontaine Médicis, Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris. Image source: Pinterest

The concert performance of Acis and Galatea that we attended in San Francisco fully brought out the delightful qualities of its music. As is common practice, the version Jeffrey Thomas presented with American Bach Soloists was a combination of elements from the 1718 version and Handel's 1739 and 1742 revisions. Although the version we heard did not exactly correspond to what any 18th-century audience would have heard—it probably came closest to the version heard in 1742 as a part of Handel's Dublin season—Handel himself frequently altered his works to match the forces at his disposal and, no doubt, his artistic preferences.

As in 1739, the work was divided into two acts, rather than being presented in six continuous scenes as it was originally. As in 1739, Acis' fellow shepherd Damon (Michael Jankosky) also sang the air originally given to the shepherd Corydon, "Would you gain the tender creature," though fortunately Damon remained a tenor (1718) instead of becoming a boy soprano (1739). 

"Would you gain the tender creature" performed by Zachary Wilder, accompanied by the Boston Early Music Festival players:

https://youtu.be/zhBygMHmWic

As in 1739, the part of Corydon was cast with a female alto (Agnes Vojtkó) who, alas, only sings in the choruses. And as in 1739, a chorus was appended to Acis and Galatea's duet "Happy we" at the end of the first part.

However, elements of the original 1718 version were also retained. In Act II the air "Cease, beauty, to be suing" by Polyphemus, and the choral part of Galatea's "Must I my Acis still bemoan," were performed (they were cut in 1739). And the ABS orchestra did not include violas, which were only added to the score in 1739. [2]

Acis was ardently sung by tenor James Reese, while his love-rival Polyphemus was commandingly performed by bass-baritone Douglas Ray Williams. Williams is a veteran in the role: he sang it in the Acis and Galatea we saw at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2011, and in the danced Mark Morris version in 2014.

The great revelation for us was soprano Nola Richardson, who sang Galatea with a gorgeous timbre, accuracy of intonation, and in her bird-imitation airs "Hush, ye pretty warbling quire" and "As when the dove laments her love," fleetness of coloratura. Jeffrey Thomas, a former singer himself, always finds excellent vocalists, and we will be watching for Richardson's future appearances in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

Nola Richardson, soprano. Image credit: Suzanne Vinnik. Image source: Schwalbe and Partners

The scholar and critic Stanley Sadie wrote that "Acis and Galatea represents the high point of pastoral opera in England, indeed anywhere," and praised "the elegance and the sensual force of Handel's music in the first act and the elegiac power of that in the second." [3] The ABS concert performance fully confirmed those views.

Next time: Alceste (1750)

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1. Donald Burrows, The Master Musicians: Handel, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 81. 
2. Differences between the 1718, 1732, 1739 and 1742 versions are discussed in detail in Peter Holman, "The 1739 Acis and Galatea," The Handel Friends, 1 May 2016.
3. Stanley Sadie, "Acis and Galatea," in The Grove Book of Operas, Second Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, revised edition edited by Laura Macy. Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 2. 
   

Every Valley: Handel's Messiah

George Frideric Handel by Philip Mercier, c. 1730. Image credit: Händel-Haus, Halle. Image source: All About Handel

Today is the 283rd anniversary of the première of Handel's Messiah in Dublin on 13 April 1742. The story of Messiah's composition in just three weeks, the notorious adulteress who sang in its first performance, which took place during Holy Week, and the circumstances that brought her together with Handel in Dublin, are vividly retold in Charles King's Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel's Messiah (Doubleday, 2024).

In 1741 Handel was facing a crisis. In the winter season he had witnessed the failure of his Italian opera, Deidamia, which had received only three performances before being ignominiously pulled from the stage. Handel had composed opera seria in London for 30 years; indeed, it had been the reason he had relocated there. But Deidamia would be his final Italian opera.

At this low point, two serendipitous events provided Handel with an opportunity to change his fortunes. First, he received a new libretto from his cantankerous collaborator Charles Jennens, who had previously provided the word books for the English-language oratorios Saul (1739) and L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (The Active Man, the Pensive Man, and the Moderate Man, 1740). Jennens wrote to his friend Edward Holdsworth on 10 July 1741 about the new work, "I hope he will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition will excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other Subject. The Subject is Messiah." [1]

Charles Jennens by Thomas Hudson, c. 1740s. Image credit: Handel Hendrix House. Image source: ArtFund.org

The second serendipitous event was an invitation to put on a season of music in Dublin, at a concert hall newly established in Fishamble Street by William Neale and the Charitable Musick Society. The invitation was probably extended and negotiated by William Cavendish, the 3rd Duke of Devonshire and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Handel began composing Messiah on 22 August, suggesting that he had received the Dublin invitation shortly before. He worked rapidly, drafting all the music by 12 September, just three weeks later, and then finishing the "filled-in" score by 14 September. Jennens later complained to Holdsworth that Handel had composed the music "in great hast[e], tho' he said he would be a year about it." [2]

The finished score of Messiah was clearly intended to suit whatever musical forces might be available in Dublin, a city only one-fifth the size of London. The score called only for strings, trumpets and tympani, a chorus, and for as few as four solo singers: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Handel's autograph score of the final measures of the Hallelujah Chorus, dated "September 6, 1741." Image credit: British Library R.M.20.f.2. Image source: The Handel Institute

After spending the late summer and early fall composing Messiah and, to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, the oratorio Samson, Handel left for Dublin, arriving on 18 November. Jennens wrote to Holdsworth, "I heard with great pleasure. . .that Handel had set the Oratorio of Messiah; but it was some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing it here he was gone into Ireland with it." [3]

On 29 December Handel wrote to Jennens from Dublin,

I am emboldened, Sir, by the generous Concern You please to take in relation to my affairs, to give You an Account of the Success I have met here. The Nobility did me the Honour to make amongst themselves a Subscription for 6 Nights, which did fill a Room of 600 Persons, so that I needed not sell one single Ticket at the Door, and without Vanity the Performance was received with a general Approbation. Sig[no]ra [Christina] Avo[g]lio, which I brought with me from London pleases extraordinary. . .as for the Instruments they are really excellent, Mr. [Matthew] Dubourgh [Master of the King's Musick in Ireland] being at the head of them, and the Musick sounds delightfully in this charming Room. . .They propose already to have some more Performances, when the 6 Nights of the Subscription are over. . .so that I shall be oblig'd to make my Stay longer than I thought. [4]

The first concert in the subscription series, a performance of L'Allegro, had taken place on 23 December. The series continued over the next month with a repeat performance of L'Allegro, followed by two performances of Acis and Galatea with Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, and it concluded with two performances of the oratorio Esther on 3 and 10 February. By then a second six-concert subscription series had been organized, with Alexander's Feast following on 17 February and repeated on 2 March, with weekly concerts continuing through the end of the month and an extra one added on 7 April. [5]

The second performance of Alexander's Feast had originally been scheduled for 24 February, but had to be postponed due to the illness of one of the singers, Susannah Cibber.

Susannah Cibber, by Thomas Hudson, c. 1740s. Image credit: National Portrait Gallery NPG 4526. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In the winter of 1742 Mrs. Cibber had turned 28. For a decade she had been one of the leading actresses in London, and had come to Dublin in part to escape harassment by her husband, the actor Theophilus Cibber.

She had married Theophilus, who was a decade older than she was, in 1734. It was not a love-match, but one arranged by her father for her professional advancement: Theophilus was the son of Colley Cibber, the actor, playwright, and poet laureate, and had taken over the management of his company. In 1737 the abusive and spendthrift Theophilus had borrowed money from a rich gentleman, William Sloper, and in lieu of paying him back had coerced Susannah into sleeping with him. The three were soon living in a ménage à trois in a series of houses rented by Sloper.

The arrangement backfired on Theophilus when Susannah fell in love with Sloper. Soon afterwards she became pregnant by him, and tried to leave Theophilus. He abducted her, but after her rescue by her brother Thomas Arne, Theophilus sued Sloper. He accused him of "Assaulting, Ravishing, and Carnally knowing" his wife and demanded £5000 in damages. A jury, hearing testimony about how Theophilus had connived in the situation for his own gain, awarded him a nominal £10. After Susannah gave birth to a daughter in 1739, Theophilus sued Sloper again, this time for £10,000; he was awarded £500. Still, Susannah was generally seen as her husband's victim; she and Sloper would remain together for the rest of her life.

Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, In the Character of a Fine Gentleman (date unknown). Image source: Folger Shakespeare Library ART File C567.7 no.1

In 1741 these events were still fresh in the public mind, and by travelling to Dublin Mrs. Cibber, like Handel, was looking for a break from the London scene. She was appearing in plays at the Aungier Street Theater when Handel asked her to join his group of singers for the second subscription series. Although she had performed before in Handel works, she could not read music and did not have a powerful voice. But as Charles Burney, who knew Mrs. Cibber personally, later wrote in his General History of Music, "by a natural pathos, and perfect conception of the words, she often penetrated the heart, when others, with infinitely greater voice and skill, could only reach the ear. . .[She] captivated every hearer of sensibility by her native sweetness of voice and powers of expression." [6]

Including the extra concert on 7 April, Handel's second subscription series ended just four days before Palm Sunday. He must have begun planning for the first public performance of Messiah shortly after Mrs. Cibber joined his company. Rehearsals would have had to begin well in advance, since she needed to learn her part by ear. 

Her presence among the performers also raised another issue. The dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin was Jonathan Swift. In January he had forbidden church singers and musicians "to assist at a Club of Fiddlers in Fishamble Street," and ordered the punishment of "such vicars as shall ever appear there, as Songsters, Fidlers, Pipers, Trumpeters, Drummers, Drummajors, or in any Sonal Quality, according to the Flagitious aggravations of their respective Disobedience, Rebellion, Perfidy & Ingratitude." [7]

Jonathan Swift by Francis Bindon, c. 1735. Image credit: National Portrait Gallery NPG 5319. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

If Swift was outraged by the church musicians performing in Handel's concert series, what would he think of Mrs. Cibber's participation, particularly in a performance of Messiah during Holy Week? The word book of the new oratorio was Jennens' compilation of excerpts from the King James Bible and Apocrypha about the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. It would be shocking enough to have an actress, even a married one, sing those words from the stage; Mrs. Cibber's eyebrow-raising sexual history would make it even more scandalous.

However, Handel was used to managing difficult personalities. He recruited allies, likely including Swift's Irish publisher George Faulkner, to plead with the dean. He also appealed to Swift's conscience by arranging that the performance of Messiah would benefit charitable causes. Dean Swift relented: on 27 March an announcement was printed in Faulkner's Dublin Journal that the performance would be held "for the relief of the Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer's Hospital in Stephen's Green, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inns Quay," and that it would involve "the Gentlemen of the Choirs of both Cathedrals," St. Patrick's and Christ Church. [8]

A public rehearsal on the Friday before Palm Sunday stoked excitement for the première on Tuesday 13 April. So many tickets were sold, more than 700 for a room deigned to hold 600, that a notice was published in Faulkner's Dublin Journal: "The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request the Favour of the ladies not to come with Hoops this day to the Musick Hall in Fishamble Street. The Gentlemen are desired to come without their swords." [9] The performance started around noon.

Word book of Messiah, Dublin 1742. Image source: Foundling Museum

The first aria after the opening chorus in Part 2 had been given to Mrs. Cibber. The text of "He was despisèd" comes from the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, but it has been read in the Christian tradition as a prophecy of the experience of Jesus during his arrest, trials, condemnation, and the Stations of the Cross, events that would be commemorated in just a few days' time. Clearly Handel was relying on Mrs. Cibber's expressiveness and her ability to move her listeners through her "natural pathos." Here is my favorite version, performed by Anne Sofie von Otter accompanied by the English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock:

https://youtu.be/1iAb5pyEQi0

Dr. Patrick Delany, rector of St Werburgh’s Church and chancellor of both St. Patrick's and Christ Church, was so profoundly moved by Mrs. Cibber's performance of this aria that at its conclusion he called out to the stage, "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven!" [10]

In Faulkner's Dublin Journal an anonymous reviewer wrote, "On Tuesday last Mr. Handel's Sacred Grand Oratorio, the MESSIAH, was performed in the New Musick-Hall in Fishamble-street; the best Judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of Musick. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crouded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestick and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear." [11]

And Edward Synge, Bishop of Elphin, wrote, "As Mr. Handel in his oratorio's greatly excells all other Composers I am acquainted with, so in the famous one, called the Messiah, he seems to have excell'd himself. The whole is beyond any thing I had a notion of till I Read and heard it. It seems to be a Species of Musick different from any other, and this is particularly remarkable of it, That tho' the Composition is very Masterly & artificial [in the sense of "displaying special art or skill"], yet the Harmony is so great and open, as to please all who have Ears & will hear, learned & unlearn'd." [12]

Handel went on to write a dozen more oratorios, and to cement his place as the most beloved English-language composer of all time. It was as an oratorio composer that he was remembered for another two and a half centuries, until his operas began to be revived and their musical riches rediscovered in the 20th century. But nearly three centuries after its première, Messiah remains Handel's most-performed composition.

King's Every Valley (small quibble: Handel set these words as "Ev'ry Valley," although I can see why that was not chosen as the title) covers the slow establishment of Messiah as an annual tradition, something that took another decade, and the fates of many of the participants in the première. It also connects the wealth of Handel's patrons and of Handel himself to the slave trade carried on by the South Sea Company. It's thoroughly researched and compellingly written, although readers unfamiliar with Handel and Messiah may not immediately understand each time King introduces and discusses at length persons whose connection to Messiah is only made fully apparent later on.

There are many books about Messiah; those by Donald Burrows (Cambridge, 1991) and Richard Luckett (Harcourt Brace, 1992) are especially recommendable, and Winton Dean's magisterial Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (Oxford, 1959) remains an essential source for researchers. But King's account, clearly originating in his deep affection for the work, is well-deserving of a place next to them on the shelf.

Image source: Bookshop.org

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1. Quoted in Donald Burrows, Handel, in Stanley Sadie, ed., The Master Musicians, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 259.
2. Quoted in David Vickers, Messiah (HWV 56) "A Sacred Oratorio." GFHandel.org
3. Quoted in Burrows, Handel, p. 260.
4. Quoted in Burrows, Handel, pp. 262–263.
5. Dates of the subscription series concerts taken from W. H. Grattan Flood, "Fishamble St. Music Hall, Dublin, from 1741 to 1777." Sammelbände Der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, vol. 14, no. 1, 1912, pp. 51–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/929446.
6. Charles Burney, A General History of Music, Volume the Second, Dover Publications, 1957, pp. 899, 1003. Reprint of 1935 edition edited by Frank Mercer and published by G.T. Foulis & Co., 1935, prepared from the second edition, 1789.
7. Quoted in Charles King, Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel's Messiah, Doubleday, 2024, p. 199.
8. Quoted in King, Every Valley, pp. 201–202. The involvement of the church choirmen meant that the date of the première had to be shifted from 12 April, Holy Monday, to the next day.
9. Stanford University. Handel Reference Database: 1742.
10. Jonathan Bardon, "The Singer Saved by Handel's Messiah," Irish Daily Mail, 21 December 2015. https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-daily-mail/20151221/281698318705097
11. Stanford University. Handel Reference Database: 1742.
12. Stanford University. Handel Reference Database: 1742.
    

Suggested reading: The first ten weeks edition

Protestors march in New York City on 5 April 2025. Image source: Associated Press

Yesterday hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered across the country to oppose the actions of the new administration. Its first ten weeks have been a spectacle of cruelty, crudity, corruption and mendacity that have exceeded, if that's the word, even my abysmal expectations. The attempted destruction of government services and vital data relating to health, education, social benefit programs, scientific research, environmental protection, worker and consumer safety, and financial fraud; the suppression of free speech, the arrest and deportation of legal immigrants for constitutionally-protected activities, and attacks on schools and academic freedom; the rampant self-dealing and conflicts of interest; the exposure of highly sensitive personal data; the defiance of court orders; the list could go on, and on.

This edition of "Suggested reading" takes a look at the current administration, our historical amnesia, and the state of our politics:

1. "From comedy to brutality," Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, 13 March 2025.

   In the days surrounding his inauguration, He Who Shall Not Be Named offered to buy Greenland from Denmark (and told reporters that he would not rule out seizing it by military force), suggested that he would annex Canada as "the 51st state," threatened to invade Panama to reassert U.S. control of the Canal, and proclaimed that the U.S. would "own" Gaza and resettle its population.

   You might think that these ideas were unique to the considerable idiosyncrasies of the current occupier of the White House. However, as Fintan O'Toole reveals in the New York Review of Books, all of these schemes have long and often ignoble histories:

• Greenland: After the U.S. Civil War, Secretary of State William Seward requested "A Report on the Resources of Greenland and Iceland," which was issued in 1868. The U.S. had just purchased Alaska from Russia, and Seward was contemplating a similar deal with Denmark for Greenland and Iceland (but nothing came of it).

  

  Arctic Boundary as defined by the Arctic Research and Policy Act (modified by geographic labels). Map author: Allison Gaylord. Image source: US Arctic Research Commission

  And after World War II, during which the U.S. military occupied Greenland to deny its use to Germany, President Harry Truman approached Denmark with an offer to buy it (but nothing came of it). Eighty years later the U.S. still operates a major military base there, now called Pituffik Space Base.

  Greenland is actually closer to Moscow (2390 miles) than to Washington, DC (2620 miles), and closer to Copenhagen (1860 miles) than to the nearest location in the U.S.: Madawaska, a town at the northernmost tip of Maine just across the St. John River from Edmundston, New Brunswick, Canada (1930 miles). [1]

  In short, whoever should have sovereignty over Greenland, geography would suggest that it isn't the U.S. A wild idea: perhaps the people who live there should govern themselves, and control Greenland's mineral and other resources? But as we know from many contexts, some discussed below, when you are occupying increasingly desirable real estate it is money, power, and violence that usually decide the outcome.

• Canada: From its very inception as a nation, the U.S. has had territorial designs on its northern neighbor. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the War of American Independence, the U.S. demanded and received all of the territory of the British Province of Quebec south of the Great Lakes; today, that territory comprises the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, as well as eastern Minnesota, western Pennsylvania, and about half of New York. In 1787, the Articles of Confederation contained a clause admitting the rest of British Canada as a state if it voted to join the former colonies (it didn't).

  

  The thirteen original colonies in 1774 (detail), McConnell Map Co., 1919. Image source: Library of Congress

  During the War of 1812 the U.S. invaded Canada in a campaign to capture Montreal, the key to the rest of Quebec; the invading forces were defeated almost as soon as they crossed the border. But the dream didn't die; in the late 19th century William Seward, Henry Adams, and the poet Walt Whitman, among many others, envisaged a United States that encompassed Canada. HWSNBN's annexation plan is just the latest irruption of this idea—probably one of the very few ideas he shares with Walt Whitman.

• Panama owes its existence to U.S. intervention. In 1903, the U.S. encouraged Panama, then a province of Colombia, to declare independence, and then immediately bought the rights to the land through which the Panama Canal would be carved. By happy coincidence, the Panamanian representative in the negotiations also worked for the French company that had been given a concession to build the canal across the isthmus. The deal included a $10 million payment to the Panamanian government plus annual rent of $250,000; $40 million went to the French company for the land rights.

  

  "The Coup d'Etat," by Charles G. Bush, New York World, 8 November 1903. Image source: The Age of Revolutions

  As historian Justin J. Masucci writes on the website The Age of Revolutions, "Panama granted the U.S. the right to build and operate an inter-ocean canal and also gave the U.S. de facto sovereignty over a ten mile-wide territory around the canal in perpetuity — in effect creating a U.S. colony in Panama." Panama remained a client state of the U.S. until the 1960s. It didn't gain jurisdiction over the Canal Zone until 1979, or control of the canal itself until 31 December 1999.

  

  Panama Canal and Canal Zone. Image source: Project Gutenberg

  Under the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaty that eventually turned control of the canal over to Panama, the U.S. retained the right to militarily defend the neutrality of the canal. However, it pledged to "abstain. . .from any intervention in the internal affairs of the Republic of Panama." [2] But just a dozen years after the signing of the treaty, U.S. armed forces invaded Panama to depose and take prisoner its leader Manuel Noriega and re-establish a U.S.-friendly government.
  
  Panama City is conveniently located next to the Pacific entrance of the canal. Any U.S. military invasion of the Canal Zone would inevitably involve its capture and the replacement of Panama's leaders, extending a long legacy of U.S. dominance of the country.

• Gaza: While rhetorically disapproving of Israeli settlement on Palestinian lands as an impediment to a two-state solution, the U.S. government has continued to provide an uninterrupted flow of weapons to Israeli governments. [3] According to the Council on Foreign Relations, since the end of World War II, Israel has been the single largest recipient of U.S. military aid by a factor of two. [4]
  
  Aid has continued to flow since the Oslo Accords in 1993 as the number of Israeli settlements and "outposts" has more than doubled, as the number of West Bank settlers has increased by more than four times to nearly half a million, and as the number of settlers in East Jerusalem has grown to nearly a quarter of a million. [5]

  

  Settler population growth in the West Bank, 1993–2023. Image source: Peace Now

  U.S. aid has provided direct and indirect support for this expansion.

  

  U.S. military and economic aid to Israel since 1970. Source: Council on Foreign Relations

  And during the Israeli government's assault on Gaza in 2024 U.S. military aid more than quadrupled from 2023 levels, to $12.5 billion. That assault has resulted in an estimated death toll to date of over 50,000 men, women and children. The weapons and munitions that resulted in this death and destruction are largely supplied by the U.S. [6] 

  And not only munitions: the Israeli military uses AI and cloud computing services supplied by Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon. According to an article by the Associated Press, "An Israeli intelligence officer told the AP that AI has been used to help pinpoint all targets in the past three years." These, then, must include the "pinpointing" of a car being driven by Hoda Hijazi. Her mother and her three daughters, Rimas, 14, Taline, 12, and Liane, 10, were killed, and later falsely claimed by the Israeli military to have been "Hamas targets." [7] Medical facilities and personnel and aid workers have also been targeted.

  

  Gaza in March 2024. Image source: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East

  So HWSNBN's open endorsement of the forcible relocation of the Palestinian population of Gaza does not seem to many Palestinians to be a radical departure from decades of implicit U.S. policy. The mildest term for such an action is "ethnic cleansing" (implying that the existing population is filth that needs to be swept away), which came into use during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The UN Commission of Experts stated that such actions "constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes. Furthermore, such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention." [8]

  

  Palestinians walk amid the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, 14 March 2025. Image credit: Jehad Alshrafi/AP. Image source: NPR

  On 26 February, The Guardian reported that HWSNBN had posted a "bizarre AI-generated video" on his social media site depicting Gaza as a luxury seaside resort, or as he called it in a 4 February press conference, "the Riviera of the Middle East":

  Words fail.

2. "An Expanding Vision of America," Nicole Eustace, New York Review of Books, 27 March 2025.

   Of course, dispossession and genocide were foundational acts of the U.S. itself. As Nicole Eustace writes in her NYRB article,

   . . .at each point in the development of the political economy of the British colonies and the United States, exploitation of Native peoples, expropriation of Native land, and extraction of Native resources fueled Euro-American advancement.

   I have some disagreement with the way this statement is framed. First, it seems to anachronistically attribute to Native peoples a capitalistic ownership model of land and natural resources. Second, the phrase "exploitation of Native peoples" obfuscates how deadly the encounters between settlers and Native peoples were.

   

   California's indigenous history: Native people of this place. Image source: Digital Humanities at Santa Clara University

   Taking the state I live in as an example, in 1849 it's estimated that there were 150,000 Native people living in California. Drawing on Benjamin Madley's An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (Yale University Press, 2016), Eustace points out that this population had already been decimated: these were "survivors of the first waves of colonialism in the area, tens of thousands of Native people having died in and around Spanish mission towns after their first establishment in 1769." By 1870, after two decades of murder, starvation, disease, and the seizure and privatization of the land, the estimated Native population was reduced by 80%, to 30,000. Over that same period the settler population grew from around 95,000 to over half a million. [9]
   
   Today, people who claim at least some continental American or Alaskan native ancestry make up 3.6% of the California population, a lower percentage than the estimated 5.4% of 1870. The three California counties with the lowest percentage of people with native ancestry are in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. [10] The Native peoples of California, as with others discussed in this post, had the misfortune to occupy land that other, more powerful people wanted.

3. "A Self Divided," Laura Marsh, New York Review of Books, 27 March 2025.

   The appalling spectacle of our current politics may be partially understood through reference to a study conducted at the University of Virginia in 2014. As Laura Marsh explains in the NYRB, the researchers

   asked participants to spend six to fifteen minutes alone in a room without cell phones, laptops, or books. All they had to do was think. Sixty percent reported difficulty, and nearly half found the experience unenjoyable.
   
   In a follow-up study, the researchers added a twist: participants were given the chance to experience a negative sensation—a mild electric shock—during the quiet time. Sixty-seven percent of the men and 25 percent of the women in the study decided to take it. "Simply being alone with their own thoughts" was a deeply unappealing prospect for many people, the researchers found; they would "rather do an unpleasant activity than no activity at all."

   Two-thirds of the college-age American men in this study would rather give themselves an electric shock than be "alone with their own thoughts" for as little as six minutes.

   In The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource (Penguin Press, 2025), journalist Chris Hayes points to this study as a way to explain why many people spend a majority of their free time scrolling on their phones. As Marsh writes,

   The smartphone offers distraction so readily and abundantly that it's possible to spend hours every day skipping from tab to tab [app to app?], or from video to video, without enjoying a moment of it—often, in fact, feeling somewhat drained and diminished.

   For social media addicts, "the idea of facing the normal flow of time is unbearably depressing," the journalist Richard Seymour wrote in The Twittering Machine (2019). Or as the tech critic Max Read has put it, "The actual point of 'screen time' is the time part—the hours it allows you to numbly burn up."

   

   Image source: OpenAccessGovernment.org

   Hayes contrasts the social media model with the old television model. Decades ago TV producers needed to create programming that would hold your attention for 30 to 60 minutes at a time, or longer: I remember in the early 1970s regularly watching, along with my whole family, the entire three-hour Saturday night CBS lineup of All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. A little later on I would follow this with the local 11 o'clock news and then switch to NBC for two new shows, Saturday Night Live (three Saturdays a month) or Weekend (one Saturday a month). The idea was to root you to the spot to provide a reliable audience for advertisers.

   The social media model is compared to playing a slot machine, "where the experience of a new stimulus every few seconds feels more important than the outcome of the bet." Hayes writes,

   What will hold people's attention? [Social media companies] don't have to have an answer. They can simply throw a million little interruptions at us, track which ones grab our attention, and then repeat those.

   HWSNBN is a master of using repeated distraction to grab attention. As Marsh notes,

   He has often drawn attention in ways that make him look reckless or cruel or untrustworthy. . .[but] the next day (or the next hour) brings a new story, another wave of attention, and another, and another. The news cycle becomes a blur in which individual incidents are hazy and only the unifying theme—wall-to-wall coverage of [HWSNBN]—sticks out.

   As Antonia Hitchens writes in the London Review of Books ("At CPAC," 20 March), in 2018 former HWSNBN strategist Steve Bannon called this technique "flooding the zone." As he put it, "If you're always consumed by the next outrage, you can't look closely at the last one."
   
   Of course, HWSNBN also has the advantage of almost universal name recognition from his "decades as a fixture of the tabloid press and a television personality"—combining the advantages of old and new media. HWSNBN is the first social media president; others must inexorably follow.
   
   Our 21st-century technological innovations are ironically returning us to the late 19th century, when the main features of our politics were cynical and corrupt party loyalty and grotesque smear campaigns, and when our economy was dominated by exploitative robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and Leland Stanford. It was a time of extreme anti-labor violence, inequality, anti-immigrant actions, and ideological conformity. Marx wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Only this time around no one other than the crew of billionaires, ideologues, enablers and toadies surrounding HWSNBN is laughing.

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1. Air distances calculated from Greenland's geographical center on the Distance.to website.
2. "Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal," U.S. Department of State Archive.
3. The only exceptions I've found: in 1982 the Reagan Administration refused to provide cluster bombs to Israel after they were used against civilians; in 1991 the Bush Administration delayed a $10 billion loan package for four months when Israel's government would not pledge not to use the aid to build more settlements; and in 2024 the Biden Administration paused a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs because similar munitions had been dropped on Gaza, causing many civilian deaths.
4. Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow, U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts. Council on Foreign Relations, 13 November 2024.
5. Peace Now Settlement Watch, 30 Years After Oslo – The data that shows how the settlements proliferated following the Oslo Accords, September 2023.
6. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Anas Baba, and Daniel Estrin, Palestinian deaths in Gaza rise above 50,000 as Israel expands its military campaign, NPR, 25 March 2025.
7. Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick and Garance Burke, "As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies," Associated Press, 18 February 2025.
   
8. Ethnic Cleansing, Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes, United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. Note to idiots and trolls: my reportage of these facts does not imply support of Hamas.
9. Oakland Museum of California. Resource 6-1a: California Population by Ethnic Groups, 1790-1880.
10. U.S. Census Bureau. California 2020 census.

Lise Davidsen in recital

Lise Davidsen accompanied by Malcolm Martineau at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, Tuesday 4 February 2025.
Presented by Cal Performances. Photo credit: Katie Ravas for Drew Alitzer Photography. Image source: KQED.org

In July 2015, at age 28, the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen was catapulted into opera-world fame by winning the first prize, the Birgit Nilsson prize for singing Strauss or Wagner, and an audience award at Plácido Domingo's Operalia vocal competition at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. A month later she went on to win first prize and two other prizes in the Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo.

Peter Katona, who at the time had been the casting director of the Royal Opera House for 30 years, was quoted in Opera magazine as saying, "She could be the next Kirsten Flagstad." [1] By almost universal consensus, Flagstad is considered to be the greatest dramatic soprano in history. Dramatic sopranos require the vocal power to sing over a 100-piece orchestra playing fortissimo, the stamina to perform at a high emotional pitch throughout a four-hour-long opera, and the musicality to sing the heavier roles of Strauss and especially Wagner while retaining accuracy of intonation and beauty of tone, without straining or screaming to be heard. No pressure, then.

Here is Davidsen's prize-winning performance of Elisabeth's "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder" (Dear hall, I greet you once again) from Wagner's Tannhäuser in the finals of the Queen Sonja competition on 21 August 2015:

https://youtu.be/U9TofuLQOuk?t=4

Impressive as this video is, in the intervening decade Davidsen's low- and mid-range have taken on a fuller, darker timbre. Her voice in that range is now even richer and more opulent, while her high notes can ring out with an almost shocking power. Her Cal Performances recital with the great accompanist Malcolm Martineau displayed all of these vocal strengths, as well as her ability to mesmerize an audience with her soft singing, attentiveness to words, and communicative artistry.

The recital opened with a group of three songs to German texts by Davidsen's countryman Edvard Grieg. From the first song, "Dereinst, Gedanke mein," it was clear that we were in for a very special evening indeed. Here is her 2021 recording of this song, accompanied by Leif Ove Andsnes. No recording, of course, can capture the full resonance and sheer lusciousness of a voice like hers heard in person:

https://youtu.be/3TonfA2SsKY

Dereinst, Gedanke mein (Emanuel Geibel)	One day, my thoughts
Dereinst, Gedanke mein, Wirst ruhig sein. Läßt Liebesglut Dich still nicht werden, In kühler Erden, Da schläfst du gut, Dort ohne Lieb' Und ohne Pein Wirst ruhig sein. Was du im Leben Nicht hast gefunden, Wenn es entschwunden, Wird's dir gegeben, Dann ohne Wunden Und ohne Pein Wirst ruhig sein.	One day, my thoughts, You will find peace. If love's passion disturbs your repose, In the cool earth You will sleep deeply: Without love And without pain You will find peace. What in life You have not found When it is ended Will be given to you; Then without wounds And without pain You will find peace.

This song also introduced a somber mood of love's suffering and anguish which threaded through Davidsen's selections, twinned with the theme of love's joys.

Following the Grieg set were arias from three operas, all expressing a longing for death: Dido's lament "Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me" from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Elisabeth's "Tu che le vanità conoscesti del mondo" (You who knew the vanities of the world) from Verdi's Don Carlo, and Ariadne's "Es gibt ein Reich" (There is a kingdom) from Strauss's Ariadne aux Naxos. Together they displayed Davidsen's vocal and dramatic range as the characters pass through sorrow, grief, regret, remembered joy, resignation, and resolve. As well as having a gorgeous voice, Davidsen showed herself to be a magnificent vocal actor. The Purcell in particular was immensely moving, and at the climax her "Remember me!" rang out powerfully.

It may be heresy, but in these arias, as well as those from Wagner operas in the second half of the program, I missed the accompaniment of an orchestra. No piano transcription can capture the full sweep of the emotions conveyed in this music. This was not the fault of Davidsen's accompanist Malcolm Martineau, who supported her throughout the evening with playing both beautiful and (that rarest of gifts among accompanists) subtle.

The final song of the first half was a glowing account of Richard Strauss's "Befreit" (Released). Searching for a Davidsen performance of this song to share, I discovered that she has not yet recorded it in either its original piano version or its later orchestral version, oversights that I hope there are plans to remedy soon.

The second half of the program began with a group of four Schubert songs, beginning with "Der Tod und das Mädchen" and "Der Zwerg." Davidsen sang both songs effectively, but they are Schubert in the hyper-dramatic mode that I confess I do not favor. Even her artistry could not make the latter song, about a murderous dwarf (!), seem anything but excessively histrionic. These were followed by lovely renditions of two of Schubert's most deceptively simple melodies, "Du bist die Ruh" (You are my peace) and "Ellens Gesang III (Ave Maria)," which suspended time.

The final section of the recital was devoted to Wagner, starting with Elisabeth's death-prayer from Tannhäuser, "Allmächt'ge Jungfrau" (Almighty Virgin). Following after Schubert's "Ave Maria," it showed the careful thought Davidsen had put into the sequencing of her selections. This was followed by a ravishing "Der Engel" from the Wesendonck Lieder. Here is Davidsen's 2021 recording of the orchestral version with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder:

https://youtu.be/VpqD-aFdcGI

Der Engel (Mathilde Wesendonck)

The Angel

In der Kindheit frühen Tagen Hört ich oft von Engeln sagen, Die des Himmels hehre Wonne Tauschen mit der Erdensonne, Daß, wo bang ein Herz in Sorgen Schmachtet vor der Welt verborgen, Daß, wo still es will verbluten, Und vergehn in Tränenfluten, Daß, wo brünstig sein Gebet Einzig um Erlösung fleht, Da der Engel niederschwebt, Und es sanft gen Himmel hebt. Ja, es stieg auch mir ein Engel nieder, Und auf leuchtendem Gefieder Führt er, ferne jedem Schmerz, Meinen Geist nun himmelwärts!

In childhood's early days I often heard talk of angels, Who would exchange Heaven's bliss For the Earth's sunlight, So that, when a heart in sorrow Languishes hidden from the world, So that, when it wishes quietly to grieve, And melt away in a flood of tears, So that, when it prays fervently Only for release from life, Then the angel descends And gently raises it to Heaven. Yes, an angel has also descended to me, And on shining wings Bears aloft, far from every pain, My soul now heavenward!

Periodically throughout the recital Davidsen spoke directly and disarmingly to the audience, making the cavernous Zellerbach Hall seem like an intimate room. She announced that the final work in the program would be her first public performance of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Although it was the end of a long recital and, with just the piano as accompaniment, her voice was completely exposed, she showed no fatigue. Over the seven minutes of the aria she deftly employed both the richness of her lower range and her gleaming top notes to slowly build to a powerful emotional peak. Her interpretation will no doubt continue to develop, but hearing her essay this aria for the first time was a privilege I won't soon forget; with the full power of  a Wagnerian orchestra buoying her up on this flight of ecstasy, it would have been overwhelming. Davidsen has cancelled all of her engagements after mid-March because she is pregnant (with twins!), and so we will likely not see her Isolde on stage for another couple of years. We can only hope that it will not be that long before she is able to return to the recording studio.

After the final notes of Wagner's great aria faded into silence, the audience roared its appreciation in a lengthy ovation. Amazingly, after the marathon of the Liebestod, Davidsen and Martineau generously offered us an "extra": Wagner's "Schmerzen" (Anguish) from the Wesendonck Lieder, which brought the audience to its feet again.

In this memorable recital Lise Davidsen showed that she is not the next Kirsten Flagstad. She is herself, and that is quite enough.

"Schmerzen," with Mark Elder and the London Philharmonic:

https://youtu.be/MRru3QruKPQ

Schmerzen (Mathilde Wesendonck)

Anguish

Sonne, weinest jeden Abend Dir die schönen Augen rot, Wenn im Meeresspiegel badend Dich erreicht der frühe Tod; Doch erstehst in alter Pracht, Glorie der düstren Welt, Du am Morgen neu erwacht, Wie ein stolzer Siegesheld! Ach, wie sollte ich da klagen, Wie, mein Herz, so schwer dich sehn, Muß die Sonne selbst verzagen, Muß die Sonne untergehn? Und gebieret Tod nur Leben, Geben Schmerzen Wonne nur: O wie dank ich, daß gegeben Solche Schmerzen mir Natur!

Sun, every evening you weep Until your beautiful eyes turn red, When sinking into the sea's mirror You are touched by early death; Yet you rise again in your former splendor, Glory of the gloomy world, Each morning you reawaken, Like a proud victor! Ah, how can I lament, Why, my heart, do you ache so, When the sun itself must despair, When the sun itself must sink down? And if Death always gives birth to Life, And anguish always to bliss: I am thankful that Nature Has given me so much pain!

Update 16 February 2025: After publishing this post I learned that just four days before her Berkeley recital Davidsen had appeared as Ariadne in the final performance (of four) of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Staatsoper in Vienna. At short notice she had replaced Anna Netrebko, who withdrew because of illness. On Bachtrack, Mark Pullinger wrote of her "triumphant" performance on 28 January, "Lise Davidsen and Richard Strauss are a match made in heaven. Hers is a Rolls Royce soprano, luxuriously rich and powerful, filling the house. She rode the long gleaming lines of 'Es gibt ein Reich' with ease, a molten glow that I can still feel now. The final duet with [Michael] Spyres [as Bacchus] was sublime. . .An outstanding portrayal." For more on the production, please see "Lise auf Naxos: Davidsen makes a triumphant return to Vienna's Ariadne" on Bachtrack.

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1. Henrietta Bredin, "Competitive Instincts," Opera Vol. 66 No. 10, October 2015, p. 1387.