Solomon (oratorio)

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Solomon is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel. It uses a biblical text by an unknown author. The music was composed in 1748 and the first performance took place in London in 1749.

The birth of English Oratorio is a fascinating story of commercial and social circumstances generating a remarkable flight of imagination on Handel’s part. By 1737 commercial opera in London was in a bad way. Audiences had tired of it – highly stylised, in a foreign language, riddled with scandal and the excesses of its popular stars (plus ça change….!). Two rival companies competed with each other, and with ballad opera in English. In April Handel had a stroke, interrupting composition and performance despite a miraculously swift recovery. His financial future looked bleak. To compound all this, Queen Caroline’s death in November closed theatres for six weeks of national mourning.

In such circumstances, Handel reverted to oratorio in which he had already proved himself with Athalia (1733). He first revived the 1731 Esther, a ‘Sacred Story…. and in English’, and then continued the series of Old Testament dramas which occupied him until his death in 1759. They proved immensely successful: they needed no ‘word-book’ translation as they were in English; the stories were laudably biblical despite the sensationalised dramatisations of their librettos; arias were no less striking than those of opera; and, spared the need to memorise either music or action, a chorus became affordable.

Some of Handel’s oratorios are powerfully operatic – several have been effectively staged. In Solomon, by contrast, two relatively static displays of pomp and pageantry frame more dramatic action as Solomon’s dispenses judgement. Handel wrote it during the early summer of 1748 and performed it first on March 17, 1749, at Covent Garden.

In Part I Handel and his (unknown) librettist display an idealised image of Solomon’s court. The first chorus opens strikingly with a spare unison, gradually expanding to a huge double choir in dialogue. After a majestic Grave, the second chorus breaks out into cleverly spaced imitative entries, expressing ‘distant nations’ in what Winton Dean has aptly described as ‘a sort of chain reaction stretching to infinity’. Zadok’s description of the inauguration of Solomon’s newly-built temple begins in dry recitative and then is bathed in string chords – an operatic convention which the knowing audience would associate with heightened tension.

Solomon was a mezzo-soprano, the highly-acclaimed Caterina Galli, sustaining the operatic convention of casting heroic characters as high voices and less concerned about gender than pitch. Solomon begins in accompanied recitative, with extended orchestral contributions, adding solemnity to the inauguration of his newly-built temple. His first aria takes us into another world, that of nature, and prepares the way for the extended love-scene with his Queen, (no mention here of the Old Testament description of his 700 wives and 300 concubines!). Her response is wonderfully characterised as she positively dances ‘to ascend the nuptial bed’. The lovers engage in a besotted duet, differentiated by text while unified by musical line. A delicate cavatina – she has no time for a da capo – reveals a charmingly lyrical simplicity to the queen’s character before the chorus guard their privacy; ‘May no rash intruder’ is a remarkable evocation not only in word-painting – the soft-breathing zephyrs, the lulling nightingales – but of breathtakingly simple yet subtle music.

The opening chorus of Act II is in the grandest manner – Handel has saved up trumpets, horns and timpani until now, and broadens the pace throughout. Solomon declares his commitment to God; an attendant Levite showers Solomon with compliments. The contrasting characters and human dilemma presented by the two harlots, both laying claim to a new-born child, are deeply moving, expressed through a striking breach of the recitative/aria convention: the true mother puts her case, against an anxious, hesitant accompaniment, chains of poignant appealing suspensions, and a gradual move from minor to more confident major – at which point her aria is interrupted by her rival. The subsequent ensemble is a stroke of genius – the false mother in hysterical fury, the real one calmer, more pleading, while Solomon adds a third, contrasting element of considered justice. The effect is all the greater as the real mother has the last word before violins carry her desperate pleas on through the final ritornello. Solomon’s decision, that the child should be cut in two and shared, generates more fine characterisation – the hysterically unstable rhythms of the false mother, the broken-hearted grief of the real one and her change of mood, Rissoluto, as she proposes to surrender the child. After Solomon’s judgement, the pace slows, though there is a moment of magic in the mother’s ‘Beneath the vine’, promising peace in a pastoral Arcadia.

After Act III’s arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon displays the splendour of his court. He presents a masque in her honour, excuse for four strikingly contrasted choruses. The first smilingly extols Music, with oboes and doubled violas enriching the texture. The second is a military tattoo, with trumpets, drums and two choirs facing up to each other in mock-battle. Within a moment, the mood changes to a depiction of ‘hopeless love.., death.., wild despair’ – the Masque inviting successive exhibitions of unconnected themes. Finally, an imaginary tempest gives way to ‘calm again’. The remainder of the final Act is given over to arias of mutual congratulation before a fine chorus of praise, capitalising again on the exceptionally expanded orchestra. Handel’s score had a further chorus, ‘the work of a tired brain’ (Dean); the re-ordering provides a spectacular conclusion.