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Note from the Director
Tonight’s performance draws upon the tradition in English musical theatre of masque and anti-masque. The masque, an early combination of dance, music, and costume, usually involved some kind of moral or allegorical sentiment. It was often preceded by a grotesque dance or pantomime (the anti-masque) that introduced chaos which could be remedied by the ensuing allegory. We have found that there is perhaps a root in common between the masque and the 1960’s television Sit-Com (or maybe we find it convenient to think so), and especially with 1960’s films as exemplified by the many beach blanket movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Their pastoral scenes and nascient sexual discovery resembles that of the nymphs and shepherds so prevalent in 17th and 18th century pasticcios and pastorales. Youth gives way to disappointment, then to death. Eternally renewing youth is the saving balm. There’s a monster that upsets Arcadia and sends things spinning. Horrible scenes are somehow dissolved back into the eternity of the meadow - in this case, the beach.
We also found as we developed our production that a love triangle is quite often in fact a circle. Round and round we go, each character spinning within him/herself as well as within the broader circle of friends. This spinning becomes more volatile when our young characters try to understand what is happening to them as they pass from childhood to adulthood. Can the process be stopped? Do we really have to pass through?
Acis and Damon are in love. Acis and Galatea are in love. Damon wants their play to continue eternally. Galatea wants to grow up with Acis. Even Polyphemus who, in our production, has had his youth ripped away by having to experience the horrors of war, wants to turn the wheel back. He wants to reclaim his love and youth but cannot. He is in a rage that he is unable to quiet, no matter what he does. Even when he briefly finds himself again it cannot last. Galatea is not his. He destroys Acis and is in turn destroyed.
The 1960’s produced some of the early strong steps toward the renewal of interest in period performance practice for 17th and 18th century music. Handel was and is a prime point in this resurgence. Thus, we find it fitting that this period of history, which gave so much to what is now a flourishing field, should be reflected in tonight’s production.
Keeping “One Eye” on Acis
The nice thing, from my perspective, about an opera as delightful and accessible as Handel’s Acis and Galatea is that little need be said by way of introduction. From the start Handel moves in familiar territory both musically and poetically. We can take a moment to focus on a few highlights from the score and also to set the work in its historical position. But beyond that, it is best experienced directly. And for tonight’s audience the hindrances a completely entertaining theatrical experience are few: the music is memorable, the stage and staging are beautiful to behold, and translations are not necessary. A complete libretto has been included if you choose to follow along in that way.
Discussions of English musical theater in the 17th and 18th centuries often get mired in terminology. Debates raged then and now over the proper classification of the “new stage music” being inspired by Italian models: opera, serenata, masque, oratorio and pastoral being just a few. The differences are more theoretical than real, and we will do our best to avoid such distractions. Call it what you will, Handel’s Acis and Galatea is surely one of the first and most successful extended secular music dramas in the English language.
He had already worked with the Acis legend when he wrote a more intimate chamber opera Aci, Galatea e Poliferm in Italy in 1708. That work provided both structural guidance as well as thematic material to Handel’s longer, English version we hear this evening. But the real motivating force behind the new 1718 Acis was literary. England’s post-Renaissance literati felt a certain reverence for the classical idyll typified in the works of Theocritus, Longus, and Ovid. Three prestigious humanists had a hand in penning the libretto: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and mainly John Gay, librettist of the wildly successful Beggar’s Opera. The challenge was to create an engaging depiction of untrammeled nature and naïve love tinged by the tragic. Their libretto for Acis contains the core of the Ovidian story (related in Metamorphoses XIII, 750ff.): the love of Acis and Galatea for each other, the unrequited love of Polyphemus for Galatea, and finally the death and transcendence of Acis. Gay’s crucial innovation was to develop the character of Acis so that his stoning death at the hands of Polyphemus becomes more dramatically important. Whereas Ovid spends a majority of his text speaking through the voice of the Cyclops, Gay et al. delay the monster’s appearance all the way until the start of the second act. They also introduce a shepherd companion (Damon) who further “fleshes out” the persona of Acis and represents the impulse to never leave “the pleasure of the plains.”
Elevated poetry and idealism suited the intellectuals, but Handel knew that the masses would be unmoved by pastoral artifice. Pastoral is deception, and Handel needed to find a human connection. One means, which takes a page from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, was to enhance the role of the chorus into something akin to classical tragedy. The expressive power of such an approach can be heard in the masterful choral beginning to Act II, “Wretched lovers,” filled with delicious chord changes, biting dissonance, and a perfect hand-off from chorus to strings at the moment they deliver their fateful message: “No joy shall last.”
Handel was in a curious way the perfect person to ignite English opera. For native English composers had little or no experience with Italian opera, and the Italians refused to adapt their talents to the English language. Having worked both in Rome and London, this “wandering minstrel” could merge what he had learned in each country: character is king, that recitative carries the action while arias need to be formal moments for personal reflection; that there is a role for learned counterpoint even in the effortless realm of Arcadia. The Italian style comes through in the brilliant opening Sinfonia. An unrelentling, ingratiating rhythmic ride punctuated at times by pastoral woodwinds. Modulation and sequence keep the movement bristling along straight into a striking deceptive cadence, which in an instant wrenches us out of the joyful bustle of the hills into the human arena of recitative. But there is no text here, no singer, just a symbolic, plaintive solo line for shepherd’s pipe (i.e., oboe). That is just enough description to whet the appetite, perhaps, and Handel’s score is full of such attention to detail - as I hope you will discover.
Acis and Galatea caused something of a minor sensation from the very start. Its success was a double-edge sword: on the one hand, Handel’s stock rose immensely in his newly adopted home (London) and laid the seed for the subsequent flourishing of English opera; but on the other hand, the money to be made from pirated, often crudely altered editions of Acis was too much for some persons to resist. Handel constantly encountered bastardized productions of Acis and, eventually, he stepped in to produce authorized revivals of the work during the 1730s. Even these, however, were carried along by the winds of changing fashion: the 1732 production, for instance, was billed as an “oratorio” (essentially an unstaged opera) with only four arias and three choruses in English - the rest being sung in Italian! Reprisals continued over the next few years as Handel gradually moved farther and farther away from the tight, pristine, consistent pastoral that he had written in 1718. It wasn’t until the mid 20th century that his original English Acis and Galatea score was resurrected.
Acis and Galatea Libretto:
- ACT I -
1. Sinfonia
2. Chorus
Oh, the pleasure of the plains!
Happy nymphs and happy swains,
Harmless, merry, free and gay,
Dance and sport the hours away.
For us the zephyr blows,
For us distills the dew,
For us unfolds the rose,
And flow'rs display their hue.
For us the winters rain,
For us the summers shine,
Spring swells for us the grain,
And autumn bleeds the wine.
Oh, the pleasure. . . da capo.
3. Accompagnato
Galatea
Ye verdant plains and woody mountains,
Purling streams and bubbling fountains,
Ye painted glories of the field,
Vain are the pleasures which ye yield;
Too thin the shadow of the grove,
Too faint the gales, to cool my love.
4. Air
Galatea
Hush, ye pretty warbling quire!
Your thrilling strains
Awake my pains,
And kindle fierce desire.
Cease your song, and take your flight,
Bring back my Acis to my sight!
Hush. . . da capo
5. Air
Acis
Where shall I seek the charming fair?
Direct the way, kind genius of the mountains!
O tell me, if you saw my dear!
Seeks she the grove, or bathes in crystal fountains?
Where. . . da capo
6. Recitative
Damon
Stay, shepherd, stay!
See, how thy flocks in yonder valley stray!
What means this melancholy air?
No more thy tuneful pipe we hear.
7. Air
Damon
Shepherd, what art thou pursuing?
Heedless running to thy ruin;
Share our joy, our pleasure share,
Leave thy passion till tomorrow,
Let the day be free from sorrow,
Free from love, and free from care!
Shepherd. . . da capo
8. Recitative
Acis
Lo, here my love, turn, Galatea, hither turn thy eyes!
See, at thy feet the longing Acis lies.
9. Air
Acis
Love in her eyes sits playing,
And sheds delicious death;
Love on her lips is straying,
And warbling in her breath!
Love on her breast sits panting
And swells with soft desire;
No grace, no charm is wanting,
To set the heart on fire.
Love in her eyes. . . da capo
10. Recitative
Galatea
Oh, didst thou know the pains of absent love,
Acis would ne'er from Galatea rove.
11. Air
Galatea
As when the dove
Laments her love,
All on the naked spray;
When he returns,
No more she mourns,
But loves the live-long day.
Billing, cooing,
Panting, wooing,
Melting murmurs fill the grove,
Melting murmurs, lasting love.
As when. . . da capo
12. Duet and 13. Chorus
Galatea, Acis
Happy we!
What joys I feel!
What charms I see
Of all youths/nymphs thou dearest boy/brightest fair!
Thou all my bliss, thou all my joy!
Happy. . . da capo
- ACT II -
14. Chorus
Wretched lovers! Fate has past
This sad decree: no joy shall last.
Wretched lovers, quit your dream!
Behold the monster Polypheme!
See what ample strides he takes!
The mountain nods, the forest shakes;
The waves run frighten'd to the shores:
Hark, how the thund'ring giant roars!
15. Accompagnato
Polyphemus
I rage — I melt — I burn!
The feeble god has stabb'd me to the heart.
Thou trusty pine,
Prop of my godlike steps, I lay thee by!
Bring me a hundred reeds of decent growth
To make a pipe for my capacious mouth;
In soft enchanting accents let me breathe
Sweet Galatea's beauty, and my love.
16. Air
Polyphemus
O ruddier than the cherry,
O sweeter than the berry,
O nymph more bright
Than moonshine night,
Like kidlings blithe and merry.
Ripe as the melting cluster,
No lily has such lustre;
Yet hard to tame
As raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster!
O ruddier. . . da capo
17. Recitative
Polyphemus
Whither, fairest, art thou running,
Still my warm embraces shunning?
Galatea
The lion calls not to his prey,
Nor bids the wolf the lambkin stay.
Polyphemus
Thee, Polyphemus, great as Jove,
Calls to empire and to love,
To his palace in the rock,
To his dairy, to his flock,
To the grape of purple hue,
To the plum of glossy blue,
Wildings, which expecting stand,
Proud to be gather'd by thy hand.
Galatea
Of infant limbs to make my food,
And swill full draughts of human blood!
Go, monster, bid some other guest!
I loathe the host, I loathe the feast.
18. Air
Polyphemus
Cease to beauty to be suing,
Ever whining love disdaining.
Let the brave their aims pursuing,
Still be conqu'ring not complaining.
Cease. . . da capo
19. Air
Damon
Would you gain the tender creature,
Softly, gently, kindly treat her:
Suff'ring is the lover's part.
Beauty by constraint possessing
You enjoy but half the blessing,
Lifeless charms without the heart.
Would you. . . da capo
20. Recitative
Acis
His hideous love provokes my rage.
Weak as I am, I must engage!
Inspir'd with thy victorious charms,
The god of love will lend his arms.
21. Air
Acis
Love sounds th'alarm,
And fear is a-flying!
When beauty's the prize,
What mortal fears dying?
In defence of my treasure,
I'd bleed at each vein;
Without her no pleasure,
For life is a pain.
Love sounds. . . da capo
22. Air
Damon
Consider, fond shepherd,
How fleeting's the pleasure,
That flatters our hopes
In pursuit of the fair!
The joys that attend it,
By moments we measure,
But life is too little
To measure our care.
Consider. . . da capo
23. Recitative
Galatea
Cease, oh cease, thou gentle youth,
Trust my constancy and truth,
Trust my truth and pow'rs above,
The pow'rs propitious still to love!
24. Trio
Galatea & Acis
The flocks shall leave the mountains,
The woods the turtle dove,
The nymphs forsake the fountains,
Ere I forsake my love!
Polyphemus
Torture! fury! rage! despair!
I cannot, cannot bear!
Galatea & Acis
Not show'rs to larks so pleasing,
Nor sunshine to the bee,
Not sleep to toil so easing,
As these dear smiles to me.
Polyphemus
Fly swift, thou massy ruin, fly!
Die, presumptuous Acis, die!
25. Accompagnato
Acis
Help, Galatea! Help, ye parent gods!
And take me dying to your deep abodes.
26. Chorus
Mourn, all ye muses! Weep, all ye swains!
Tune, tune your reeds to doleful strains!
Groans, cries and howlings fill the neighb'ring shore:
Ah, the gentle Acis is no more!
27. Solo & Chorus
Galatea
Must I my Acis still bemoan,
Inglorious crush'd beneath that stone?
Chorus
Cease, Galatea, cease to grieve!
Bewail not whom thou canst relieve.
Galatea
Must the lovely charming youth
Die for his constancy and truth?
Chorus
Cease, Galatea, cease to grieve!
Bewail not whom thou canst relieve;
Call forth thy pow'r, employ thy art,
The goddess soon can heal thy smart.
Galatea
Say what comfort can you find?
For dark despair o'erclouds my mind.
Chorus
To kindred gods the youth return,
Through verdant plains to roll his urn.
28. Recitative
Galatea
'Tis done! Thus I exert my pow'r divine;
Be thou immortal, though thou art not mine!
29. Air
Galatea
Heart, the seat of soft delight,
Be thou now a fountain bright!
Purple be no more thy blood,
Glide thou like a crystal flood.
Rock, thy hollow womb disclose!
The bubbling fountain, lo! it flows;
Through the plains he joys to rove,
Murm'ring still his gentle love.
30. Chorus
Galatea, dry thy tears,
Acis now a god appears!
See how he rears him from his bed,
See the wreath that binds his head.
Hail! thou gentle murm'ring stream,
Shepherds' pleasure, muses' theme!
Through the plains still joy to rove,
Murm'ring still thy gentle love.
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