Giove in Argo is an Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

. The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 was written by Antonio Maria Lucchini

Antonio Maria Lucchini

Antonio Maria Lucchini or Luchini was an Italian librettist. His texts were set to music by Antonio Vivaldi, Baldassare Galuppi, Leonardo Vinci, and Rinaldo di Capua, among others.-Libretti:...

. It was first performed in King's Theatre

Her Majesty's Theatre

Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...

, Haymarket, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 1 May 1739.

History

The libretto by the Venetian poet Lucchini had been written for a setting by Antonio Lotti

Antonio Lotti

Antonio Lotti was an Italian composer of classical music.Lotti was born in Venice, although his father Matteo was Kapellmeister at Hanover at the time. In 1682, Lotti began studying with Lodovico Fuga and Giovanni Legrenzi, both of whom were employed at St Mark's Basilica, Venice's principal church...

 in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 in 1717. Handel might have heard Lotti's opera on his visit to Dresden in 1719, where the famous Senesino

Senesino

Senesino was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel.-Early life and career:...

 sang the part of Jupiter

Jupiter (mythology)

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....

. Probably Handel took a copy of the text to England and remembered it in 1739 when he was looking for a libretto for a short pasticcio

Pasticcio

In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic.-Etymology:The term is first attested in the...

opera with three female characters in it.

Handel brought several pasticci to the London stage. In most cases he adapted successful works of Italian composers for London, but he wrote three pasticci in which he re-used music from his own earlier works. They are the well known Oreste

Oreste

Oreste is an opera by George Frideric Handel in three acts. The libretto was anonymously adapted from Giangualberto Barlocci’s L’Oreste , which was in turn adapted from Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris....

, the little-known Alessandro Severo

Alessandro Severo

Alessandro Severo is an opera by George Frideric Handel composed in 1738. It is one of Handel's three pasticcio works, made up of the music and arias of his previous operas Giustino, Berenice and Arminio...

and the completely unknown Giove in Argo. In the latter opera he used, apart from music from his earlier works, some original compositions as well as two arias (sung by Iside) written by the Italian composer Francesco Araja

Francesco Araja

Francesco Domenico Araja was an Italian composer who spent 25 years in Russia and wrote at least 14 operas for the Russian Imperial Court including Tsefal i Prokris, the first opera written in the Russian language.-Biography:He was born and...

.

The opera failed in London and was abandoned after only two performances.

Performance history

For many years most of Giove in Argo was thought to have been lost until some old manuscripts were discovered containing a considerable number of the missing arias. However, most of the recitatives from the original work remain missing. This discovery enabled musicologist and composer John H. Roberts to assemble a performable opera out of the material that was supplemented partly with his own music composed in the style of Handel. A published edition of this score is due soon by the Complete Works Edition,.

The first modern performance of Giove in Argo occurred on 15 September 2006 in Bayreuth in the 18th century Margrave's Opera House

Markgräfliches Opernhaus

The Margravial Opera House or Margrave's Opera House is a Baroque opera house in the town of Bayreuth in Germany. It is one of Europe's few surviving theatres of the period and has been extensively restored. It was built between 1744 and 1748 by Joseph Saint-Pierre; the interior was designed by...

 in a complete and staged production by Concert Royal, Cologne and Collegium Cantorum Cologne, directed by Igor Folwill and conducted Thomas Gebhardt. The United States premiere of the work took place on April 29, 2008 in a concert format presented at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 with conductor Robert Bass

Robert Bass (conductor)

Robert H Bass was an American conductor who notably served as the music director of the Collegiate Chorale in New York City for almost three decades. Bass studied conducting at Mannes College The New School for Music under Richard Westenburg, who was the Collegiate Chorale's director at that time...

, the Orchestra of St. Luke's

Orchestra of St. Luke's

The Orchestra of St. Luke's is an American chamber orchestra based in New York City.It was founded in the summer of 1979 at the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah, New York....

, and the Collegiate Chorale

Collegiate Chorale

The Collegiate Chorale is a symphonic choir based in New York City, USA. It was founded in 1941 by Robert Shaw, who was later to found the professional Robert Shaw Chorale. The Collegiate Chorale continues to give several performances annually in Carnegie Hall and other major venues...

. Rufus Müller sang Giove and Elizabeth Futral

Elizabeth Futral

Elizabeth Futral is an American coloratura soprano who has won acclaim throughout the United States as well as in Europe, South America, and Japan....

 portrayed Calisto.

Roles

Role	Voice type Voice type A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...	Premiere cast, 1 May 1739 (Conductor Conducting Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble... : – )
Aretes, a shepherd, later discovered as Jupiter	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Gustavus Waltz Gustavus Waltz Gustavus Waltz was a bass opera singer who collaborated with Handel.Like Handel himself, Waltz was a naturalized Englishman, originally German, and is said to have worked for Handel as a cook. Their collaboration began in 1732. Waltz was a choral singer as well as a soloist.Waltz created roles in...
Isis, daughter of Inachus, betrothed to the King of Egypt, Osiris
Erastus, a shepherd, later discovered as Osiris, King of Egypt
Diana
Calisto, daughter of Lycaon
Lycaon, disguised as a shepherd, tyrant of Arcadia
Chorus of huntsmen, shepherds and nymphs

Recordings

• Giove in Argo (Tanya Aspelmeier, Theresa Nelles, Lisa Tjalve, Markus Auerbach, Benoit Haller; Concert Royal Köln, Kammerchor Würzburg; Conductor Thomas Gebhardt) CD 2007. Label: Musicaphon

External links

• "Bayreuth Baroque 2009" – First modern performance of Giove in Argo in Bayreuth (Germany)