Tag Archives: COVID-19

Relationships during Covid-19

The Handel Seminar Continues, , ,

Handel blog 15*

Forgive me, please forgive me

From Katherine:  I recently heard from a much younger friend about her difficulty in maintaining a good relationship with her longtime boyfriend during this pandemic.  I can imagine all kinds of scenarios that are especially stressful—all the way from people isolated all by themselves to families overwhelmed by too many people in too little space.  My friend’s situation was one in which just the two of them were suddenly spending a lot more time together.  Tempers flared, old jealousies reemerged, bad habits aggravated—you get the picture.  Believe it or not, I thought of one of Handel’s operas that I recommended she watch—both as a diversion and as a kind of couple’s advice.  Remember our discussion of Handel’s Partenope?   You can order a DVD of the production we saw here.

Let me quote what Ross said about it:  “Maybe part of the reason Handel was compelled to put on this opera was that he appreciated the advantage that having a loyal partner could bring.  After all, at the close of the opera, the four main characters all seem to have learned something about what makes a marriage relationship good.  Maybe Handel was resigned to enjoying such a relationship vicariously—through the lives of his dramatic characters.” (p. 321) As I recall, Forella jumped in to tease Ross about unexpectedly promoting the virtues of marriage, or something like that.  What’s the story, Ross?

From Ross:  Well, you know the dust had hardly settled on my marriage’s demise.  What can you expect?  But I still believe what I said then.  It is a good opera, and the production we saw was great—although I do agree with some of the reviewers who complain about the filming for the DVD.  Still, Handel really did give each of the characters arias that honed in on the problems of love relationships.  My favorite aria was “Ch’io parta” where the hero asks, “must I part?  I go, but leave with you my heart.”   A great song, even in Italian. Here is Philippe Jaroussky singing it in concert. I liked this lighter opera better than the ones that emphasized some sort of serious historical issue.  Handel would have been a good musical theater composer—like Richard Rogers—don’t you think?

From Alison: Yes, “Ch’io parta” is a wonderful aria.  There were several other really good arias in that opera.  What I find interesting about that particular aria is that its music was recently cast in a pastiche opera—The Enchanted Island—as a song expressing an amazingly effective plea for forgiveness at the end of the drama.  Prospero sings, “Forgive me, please forgive me.”  You can see more about the Met production here.  Actually more than half of the songs used in that pastiche were from various Handel operas.  You can see the list of arias here. The creator of the opera, Jeremy Sams, said that he found Handel’s works the best source for the songs he included in his pastiche.  Handel’s arias seem to really work as love songs. 

From CD:  Indeed they do.  And I loved they way they included Handel’s “Zadok, the Priest” when Placido Domingo entered as the god Neptune.  But best of all, in my opinion, was the song that took the Handel aria “Pena tiranna” from Amadigi di Gaula and rewrote the words as “We like to wrestle destiny.” Prospero sings, “Seeking forgiveness, hoping for harmony, I have sown discord where there was none. Heartbreak and discord where there was none. . . . What have I wrought here, ah, what have I done?” You can read the full libretto of this new English language pastiche here. 

From Katherine:  I think I will watch that Met production of The Enchanted Island again—and tell my friend about it as well.  But it is well worth going back to Handel’s Partenope for some lessons on how to manage relationships during this time of coronavirus.  I think his characters in the opera learn that what is needed is patience, empathy, forgiveness, and a little playfulness.  Handel—the self-help writer.  Stay well, everyone.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

The Plague and COVID-19

Boxes in the Basement,

Handel Blog 1*

From Katherine: As we have all been ordered to “shelter in place,” Forella has asked me to resurrect the Handel Seminar—only this time as a blog. I no longer have Benfey here to help with the technology, so you will have to be patient with my poor skills in getting this blog going. Angela had suggested we simply meet electronically through an app called Zoom, but Forella said, with her vision nearly gone, she would rather have the option of pondering written texts that Angela could read to her. We all have time on our hands, so the reading and writing shouldn’t be a burden. I assume our posts will be short in any case.

So, let me start with what I consider one of the most relevant or timely lines in The Handel Letters—a reference to the Plague in one of Ross’s introductory comments. Ross warned us that he was “likely to ruminate on Handel’s views on death and suffering.” This gloomy theme, Ross claimed, was important in our consideration of Handel because Handel’s German hometown, Halle, “had lost half of its population to the plague just a few years before Handel was born. His father was a surgeon. Handel must have encountered death and misery even before losing his father at age twelve.” (p. 122). So Handel was like what some are now calling Generation C in our own time—children born just as the coronavirus sweeps across the globe. Handel’s childhood was no doubt effected by the devastation caused by those last years of the Great Plague in Europe.

From Ross: Well, yes, I remember that I was curious about why much of Handel’s music was so deep and heartfelt. I think he must have internalized some of the heartache people felt as they lost friends and family members—probably some of the heartache he himself came to feel as he heard stories of the many losses in his hometown and throughout the rest of Europe. They always say misery makes a good artist. Personally, I’m hoping we don’t have to face anything as horrible as the plague. Science must be giving us better answers now. I’m sorry they had to suffer from the plague in Handel’s time, and I’m sorry we have to suffer from this virus today. I don’t really think we need dark times to produce great artists.

From Katherine: We can only hope.  Time will tell, I suppose. Actually some of the music we associate with times of pestilence is not heavy but instead light or humorous, even children’s songs. Do you all remember “Ach, du lieber Augustine?” It was a song about a musician who supposedly died during the Great Plague but played music from his grave and was saved.  The song was created in Austria, based on the legend, right about the time Handel was born. Here is a modern performance of it. Enjoy here  Or, for a children’s version, Augustine for children

We’ll take up some more thoughts on this and other themes next time.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation. As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points. And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant. Find The Handel Letters.