Output details

Handel’s Words. BBC Radio 3, produced by Clive Portbury, broadcast 16/4/09 and 17/12/09.

‘Handel’s Words’ was researched, written and performed as episode 4 for the BBC series ‘The Great and Good Mr Handel’, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death (the other contributors were the world-leading Handel scholars Susan Aspden, Donald Burrows, Ellen T. Harris and Jonathan Keates). The programme explores Handel’s ability to respond to the dramatic potential of his texts, to represent musically the moments of action and emotion, passion and revelation that make his operas and oratorios so powerful. It also contends that Handel’s librettists have been underestimated in their ability to create coherent dramatic scripts. There are three sections: on the opera Rodelinda and the oratorios Saul and Jephtha. The script draws on fifteen years of research into Handel’s operas and oratorios, developing work either previously scripted for the BBC or published in print. The main sources for the earlier research are: ‘Celebrity, Scandal and Opera Genius: Handel’s Rodelinda and the Royal Academy’, for BBC Radio 3, produced by Freya Mitchell, broadcast 6/5/06; ‘"How Dark are Thy Decrees": The Sources of Handel’s Jephtha’, scripted interlude for BBC Radio 3 Prom production, produced by Anthony Sellors, broadcast 1/9/97; and ‘Artful Anthology: The Use of Literary Sources for Handel’s Jephtha’ in The Musical Quarterly, Summer 2002 Volume 86, Number 2 (OUP, 2004) pp.349-62. All Alsop’s Handel research is available online in ‘Derek Alsop’s Handel Archive’ (drderekalsophandel.blogspot.co.uk). There is a unifying theme to this research: Handel scholars have adopted a musicological perspective on the libretti which rather neglects the literary conventions and practices of the early eighteenth century. [NOTE: a BBC recording of the programme (on a BBC CD) is available to the panel.]