Volume 35, Number 4 · March 17, 1988
Let Handel Be Handel
By Philip Gossett
Handel's Operas: 1704–1726
by Winton Dean, by John Merrill Knapp
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 751 pp., $59.95
Eighteenth-century Italian opera seria, once considered a theatrical form of small interest to modern audiences, is proving far more durable than even music historians might have suspected. Within the past few years operas by Handel and Vivaldi have been performed with considerable success not only by state-supported theaters in Europe whose box-office receipts are less nervously scrutinized than those in the United States, but also by the major houses in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, and San Francisco, not to mention by numerous regional companies and university theaters. Nor has the recording industry lagged behind. Whether in versions insisting on 'original instruments' and 'authentic' style or those more willing to compromise with a modern sound ideal, recorded Baroque opera, both Italian and French, is more widely available than ever before.
Review, 3032 words
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