Georg Friedrich Haendel

George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) was a German-born British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music. He received critical musical training in Halle, Hamburg and Italy before settling in London (1712) and becoming a naturalised British subject in 1727. By then he was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.

Scipione was the eighth of the full-length operas Handel composed for the Royal Academy of Music, the London promoters of Italian opera at the King's Theatre. Even for a composer famed for the speed with which he composed, it was written in considerable haste. According to Handel's librettist, Paolo Antonio Rolli, it was composed in only three weeks, with Handel completing the score just ten days before the opening night, March 12, 1726. Handel had good reason to be in such a hurry. It had been his intention to open the season with Alessandro, composed as a showpiece to display the talents of three of the greatest singers of the day, the castrato Senesino, and the rival sopranos, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, newly engaged by the Royal Academy. When it became obvious Bordoni would not arrive in England in time, Handel, obviously feeling he needed a new opera with which to open the season, turned to Scipione.

Rolli's text, cast in the usual three acts, is based on an earlier libretto by Antonio Salvi, Publio Cornelio Scipione (1704). In keeping with many of the operas Handel composed during this period, the plot has a historical context, in this instance the capture of the Spanish port of Cartagena by the young Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio in 209 B.C. The opera opens with the famous March that accompanies Scipio's triumphant entry into the city, but the subsequent plot is centered around his love for Berenice (soprano), a captured princess. Berenice, however is already betrothed to the prince Luceius (a role taken by Senesino in the first performances), who disguises himself as a Roman in a vain attempt to rescue her. After much misunderstanding and imbroglio, Luceius is revealed as Berenice's lover. Scipio, true to the magnanimous character of opera seria heroes, renounces his claim to Berenice. Most commentators agree that Scipione shows signs of the haste with which it was written, the Handel authority Winton Dean suggesting that, with the exception of Floridante of 1721, it is the weakest of all his Royal Academy operas. Nevertheless, it contains some fine music particularly in Act II, where the drama reaches a peak in the confrontation between Scipio and Luceius, and Berenice's avowal of constancy articulated in her aria "Scoglio d'immota fronte." The scoring is lightweight, largely being restricted to strings with a pair of flutes included in one aria and two recorders in another. Although the opera achieved a respectable initial run of 13 performances, it was revived by Handel only once, in 1730, when the composer made extensive alterations.

Although originally written for Brass, Woodwinds & Strings, I created this arrangement for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).