Programs · Episode

HANDEL: Agrippina

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, March 19, 2022 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

Handel's Italian operas made him the toast of London long before his famous English oratorios caught the public's ear. Agrippina is named for Nero's shrewd and savvy mother, without whom the infamous emperor could never have fiddled while Rome burned. The drama is widely considered Handel's first great opera, and we'll hear it in three recordings, led by renowned Handel interpreters René Jacobs, John Eliot Gardiner, and Nicholas McGegan.

FEATURED RECORDINGS:

René Jacobs, conductor

Academy for Ancient Music, Berlin

CAST: Alexandrina Pendatchanska (Agrippina); Jennifer Rivera (Nerone); Sunhae Im (Poppea); Bejun Mehta (Ottone); Marcos Fink (Claudius); Neal Davies (Pallante); Dominique Visse (Narciso); Daniel Schmutzhard (Lesbo)

(Harmonia Mundi 902088)

Nicholas McGegan, conductor

Capella Savaria

CAST: Sally Bradshaw (Agrippina); Wendy Hill (Nero); Lisa Saffer (soprano); Drew Minter (Ottone); Nicholas Isherwood (Claudius); Michael Dean (Pallante); Ralf Popken (Narciso); Béla Szilágyi (Lesbo)

(Harmonia Mundi 907063)

John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

English Baroque Soloists

CAST: Della Jones (Agrippina); Derek Lee Ragin (Nero); Donna Brown (Poppea); Michael Chance (Ottone); Alastair Miles (Claudius); George Mosley (Pallante); Jonathan Peter Kenny (Narciso); Julian Clarkson (Lesbo)

(Philips 4758285)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

George Frideric Handel spent much of his long and successful operatic career writing Italian operas for eager, English audiences in London. But that's not where he made his first splash in the opera house.

Handel was born in Halle, Germany, and wrote his first operas in Hamburg. But at the time, Italy was the place for opera, and that's where Handel wound up on his way to England. He started out in Florence, in 1707, where he wrote an opera called Rodrigo. Then he moved on to Venice, where he composed Agrippina, a sort of odd-ball comedy widely regarded as his first, true operatic masterpiece.

A quick look at the cast of characters in Agrippina would suggest anything but a comic opera. The story is set in ancient Rome, and its lineup includes the emperor Claudius, along with the whole raft of plotters and schemers who surrounded him.

Agrippina was Claudius' fourth wife, and the sister of the infamous emperor Caligula, who preceded Claudius. Agrippina was also the mother of another emperor, Nero, now famous for his alleged fireside fiddling. And Nero took the throne only after Claudius was assassinated — in a poisoning for which many blame Agrippina herself.

Still, Handel took these familiar characters, with all their sinister baggage, and created an opera in which the constant conniving seems so over that top that it really can't be taken seriously — or at least not quite. He also blessed it with some of his finest music, stirring up a fascinating, underlying tension that keeps the story compelling, yet never truly blunts the opera's overall, satirical impact.

On At the Opera, host Lisa Simeone presents the best from Handel's Agrippina while exploring three different recordings of the opera, each featuring a conductor and ensemble famous for interpretations of Baroque music, and Handel's music in particular: Nicholas McGegan, with Capella Savaria; John Eliot Gardiner, with the English Baroque Soloists; and René Jacobs, with the Academy for Ancient Music in Berlin.

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