Amadigi Di Gaula - Composition History

Composition History

The identity of the librettist is not known for certain. Previous consensus had been that John Jacob Heidegger, who signed the dedication to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington was the author, but more recent research has indicated that the librettist was more likely to be Giacomo Rossi, with Nicola Francesco Haym as a more probable candidate. This libretto is an adaptation of a medieval Spanish knight-errantry epic Amadis de Gaula in which the King of Gaul educated in Scotland, falls in love with and eventually marries Oriana, daughter of the King of England.

David Kimbell compared in detail the treatments of the story by Handel and Destouches.

What Handel did interest was the emotions and the sufferings of the four characters. not the descriptive effects of his later “magic” operas. The sole preoccupation of each of the protagonists is to make the others fall in or out of love with them. Handel went deeper into their sentiments than he ever would again.

In Act II Amadigi addresses the Fountain of True Love in a long cavatina of the utmost sensuous beauty. This scene was famous originally for its spectacular effects. The “coup de theatre” then was the use of a real fountain spraying real water. The scene employed a large number of stage engineers and plumbers, among other things, that the following newspaper announcement appeared on the day of the premiere: “whereas there is a great many Scenes and Machines to be mov’d in this Opera, which cannot be done if persons should stand upon the Stage (where they could not be without Danger), it is therefore hop’d no Body, even the Subscribers, will take ill that they must be deny’d Entrance on the Stage.”

According to Winton Dean the quality of the score, especially the first two acts, is remarkably high, but it shows less careful organization than most of the later operas. He also states that the tonal design seems off balance. The conception of an opera as a coherent structural organism was slow to capture Handel's imagination.

The original manuscript of Amadigi has disappeared, along with ballet sections in the music. Only one edition of the libretto is known, dating from 1715. Two published editions of the opera exist, the Händelgesellschaft edition of 1874, and the first critical edition, by J. Merrill Knapp, which Bärenreiter published in 1971. Dean has examined the history of various manuscripts which contain alternative selections for the score.