During the past summer, Cecilia Bartoli and the enthusiastic Musiciens du Prince-Monaco under the baton of Gianluca Capuano already offered a glimpse of this year’s staged Whitsun production, performing Piacere’s aria “Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa” from the oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Their concert, part of the series “Canto lirico”, enchanted audiences and reviewers alike with a “brilliant baroque spectacle” (Salzburger Nachrichten). “That was a touching moment, the point when the audience had truly forgotten the facemasks and the virus. It was a sacred moment. We were there together, we enjoyed making music together, listening to music together, crying and smiling together,” thus Cecilia Bartoli described her emotion on the Festival evening which first allowed her to return to the stage for live performances after months of silence.
After quarantine regulations forced Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists to cancel their sacred concert at the 2021 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, Cecilia Bartoli agreed to revive the concert programme from the summer of 2020, performing on Whitsunday, 23 May at 11 am at the Haus für Mozart. “What passion cannot music raise”, this aria from Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day also provides the title of the entire programme – a reference not only to the power of music, but also to the theme chosen by Cecilia Bartoli for the 2021 Whitsun Festival: after all, Handel’s ode was written in homage to Saint Cecily of Rome, the patron saint of (sacred) music.
After Handel had left his hometown of Halle in 1703 to dedicate himself entirely to opera, he soon realized that studies in Italy would be essential. Between 1706 and 1710, therefore, he lived in Italy. Most of this period of study he spent in Rome – under the patronage of influential dignitaries and noblemen – where opera performances, however, were banned. Thus, he sought to make a name for himself in church music. “It’s not that Handel learned how to compose Catholic music in Rome. Rather, the extrovert attitude of Catholic religious practice, which tends towards performance rather than argumentation, suited his artistic nature, present but not yet fully formed, his musical identity, still in statu nascendi; it gave him inspiration and also a kind of justification for the elements that constituted his musical sphere of ideas anyway, the confidence of having chosen the right path, and the experience of success with this music.” (Silke Leopold)
Success soon followed in Rome, but also later in London, the main focus of his activities, where he became a formidable impresario and presented his great operas, starting with Rinaldo in 1711 – which is where the melody of “Lascia la spina” reappears, in the lament of Rinaldo’s fiancée Almirena, here setting the text “Lascia ch’io pianga”.
While on the one hand, “musicians flocked to Italy to study music there and perfect their abilities” (Silke Leopold), on the other numerous Italian musicians sought promising positions in the North – this is also reflected in Cecilia Bartoli’s selection of arias. Handel’s Ariodante was a signature role of the castrato Giovanni Carestini, while Senesino shone in the role of Giulio Cesare and the alto castrato Nicolini in that of Amadigi. – The phenomenon which began in Italy spread all over Europe. “During the decades before the birth of opera, castrati were heard at academy performances and concert halls, in the palaces of the nobility and Roman bishops, and especially at the Cappella Sistina. Until the late 19th century, the church was the most important employer of the castrati.” (Jürgen Kesting)
Thus, Cecilia Bartoli presents a programme with multiple references to the world of the castrati and George Frideric Handel, both focuses of the last Whitsun Festival in 2019, and Rome, to which she pays homage in her 2021 programme.
Margarethe Lasinger
