Deborah (Complete Oratorio)

"The performance is good...The finest singing comes from the warrior Barak, in the voice of a countertenor new to me, the American Lawrence Zazzo, who has a big, intact tone that may even convince the anti-falsettists in the crowd. Almost as good are bass Jelle Draijer as his father and Ewa Wolak as the evil Commander of the enemy forces, Sisera. Wolak has a rich, dark sound (not unlike her countrywoman, Ewa Podles), fine exclamatory powers, and good coloratura technique. Jael, the hero-despite-herself, is sung by Natacha Ducret...And Deborah, the Hebrew Judge, is nobly done by Elisabeth Scholl... Martini and his energetic forces, with exciting string and harpsichord attacks underpinning the more warlike utterances, are a definite plus in this live recording... The set has some competition: Robert King leads a good reading on Hyperion...but it's a bit proper and it sounds like it was taped in a stairwell or tile bathroom. This present one--at less than half the price, by the way--is the one to own."
- Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com, March 25, 2002

"The music is often glorious, above all the eight-part choruses where Handel unleashes his unique mastery of massed choral forces... This new recording, taken from a concert performance, has its attractions, notably some shapely solo singing from Elisabeth Scholl, agile and graceful in the title role, and countertenor Lawrence Zazzo as the Israelite warrior Barak."
- Richard Wigmore, BBC Music Magazine, April 2002

"There is much to admire in Martini's spirited performance...I was particularly struck by Lawrence Zazzo, who portrays with panache the Hebrew hero whose role was written for the castrato Senesino...I hope we will be hearing a lot more of him...It is important to have these new champions of Handel's still-underappreciated oratorios."
- Barker, American Record Guide July/August 2002

Georg Friedrich Händel, later more generally known under the English forms of name that he assumed in London, George Frideric Handel, was born in Halle in 1685, the son of a successful barber-surgeon and his much younger, second wife. His father opposed his son's early musical ambitions and after his father's death Handel duly entered the University in Halle in 1702 as a student of law, as his father had insisted. He was able to seize the chance of employment as organist at the Calvinist Cathedral the following month, holding the position for a year, until his departure for Hamburg, to work there at the opera, at first as a violinist and then as harpsichordist and composer, contributing in the latter capacity to the Italian operatic repertoire of the house. At the invitation of the son of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, he travelled, in 1706, to Italy, where he won considerable success during the next four years. Connections he had made in Venice, brought appointment in 1710 as Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover. From here he was granted immediate leave to fulfil a commission in London.

Handel's first opera for London was Rinaldo, with which he won general acclaim, and after little over a year in Hanover, he returned to England. It was here that he now established himself as a composer of Italian opera and of other forms of vocal and instrumental music, for which there was an eager audience, gradually achieving a dominant position in the musical life of the English capital. His involvement with Italian opera as a composer and organizer continued, eventually under the royal patronage of George I, Elector of Hanover, who had succeeded to the English throne in 1715, on the death of Queen Anne. By 1733, however, with the establishment of a rival opera company under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, there were obvious commercial difficulties.

While Handel's work in Italian opera continued, with a final opera to be staged in 1741, he increasingly turned his attention to a new English form, that of the oratorio. This had certain very practical advantages, in language, lack of the need for expensive spectacle and the increasing employment of native singers. The content of oratorios appealed to English Protestant susceptibilities, providing a winning synthesis of religion and entertainment, and offering no offence to those who had found operatic conventions ridiculous in a city with strong pre-existent dramatic traditions. Handel's first English oratorio, in 1732, was Esther, with a libretto based on Racine, followed, in 1733, by the biblical Deborah in March and in July Athalia, with a libretto by Samuel Humphreys, his earlier collaborator, derived from Racine and biblical sources.

The oratorio Deborah came at a difficult point in Handel's career. 1733 had seen the creation of a rival opera company, the Opera of the Nobility, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, eager to spite his sister and his father. The distinguished and troublesome castrato Senesino, a leading member of Handel's company, deserted the King's Theatre, taking with him most of the leading singers in what seemed to the contemporary press a desire to humiliate Handel. The latter sought an answer to his problems in the new oratorio Deborah, mounted with a hundred performers, including 25 singers, at the King's Theatre on 17th March 1733. Public hostility arose, however, in the attempt to double the ticket price to one guinea for the pit or a box, an initiative resisted by the subscribers. Whatever Handel's commercial losses on the season and on the new oratorio, which relied heavily on earlier works, he largely recouped them with Athalia in Oxford, which is said to have brought him £2000.

During the following years Handel continued to develop the form of the oratorio, chiefly on biblical subjects but with an occasional excursion into the mythological. These works, with their Italianate melodies, strong choral writing and demonstrable dramatic sense, ensured their composer's continued popularity and dominance, particularly with the wider development of choral singing in the nineteenth century. Handel's most famous oratorio, Messiah, was first performed in 1742, his last, Jephtha, ten years later. While Messiah may be exceptional in its ambitious subject, most treat narratives derived from the Old Testament, well characterized by the composer's own descriptive title of them as sacred dramas.

Handel died in London in April 1759 and was buried, as he had requested, in Westminster Abbey. He was commemorated there three years later with an imaginative and slightly improbable monument by Louis François Roubiliac, who had provided, thirty years before, a statue of the composer in his night-cap and slippers as Apollo, for the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, an indication of his popular reputation. His funeral drew a crowd of some three thousand mourners, while posthumous Handel celebrations could muster a similar audience in the Abbey, with a proportionate number of performers.

The Libretto

The libretto of Deborah was devised by Samuel Humphreys, who was employed at the King's Theatre, where he supplied English translations for some of the Italian operas staged there. He helped in the revised version of the text of Esther for performance in 1732 and provided libretti for both Deborah and Athalia. Humphreys coupled poetic deficiencies with a poor dramatic sense. For Deborah he expanded the text drawn from the fourth chapter of the Book of Judges, developing the character of Abinoam, Barak's father, and the parts for the Canaanite Herald and the people of Israel. In rhyming couplets he gave the characters of the biblical narrative greater human motivation and provided exchanges between Deborah, Barak and their enemy Sisera, suggesting contemporary theological differences, at the climax of the action at the beginning of the Second Part. Jael is presented as an early associate of Deborah rather than as the wife of Heber the Kenite. Her aria starting Tyrant, now no more we dread thee and Barak's Low at her feet he bow'd, he fell are taken from the fifth chapter of the Book of Judges, the Song of Deborah, in which the latter celebrates the death of Sisera. The whole text was written in some haste to meet Handel's immediate needs.
- Keith Anderson

The Score

Deborah has been described as a pasticcio, largely relying, as it does, on elements of earlier compositions. These include, for example, the chorus Immortal Lord of earth and skies, which is taken from the Chandos Anthem O praise the Lord with one consent, written in 1717-18 and itself drawn from the Sonata of the solo cantata Tu fedel? tu constante?, written in Florence in 1706, with the necessary changes in text, key and instrumentation. Other sources include Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno of 1707, the Vespers psalm setting of Dixit Dominus in the same year, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo of 1708, the Brockes Passion of 1716, three of the Chandos Anthems and the 1713 Serenata for the Birthday of Queen Anne. Handel started work on the oratorio in January 1733 and completed the score on 21st February, leaving three weeks for the rehearsal of the work before its first performance. It seems to have received six performances in London in 1733, and formed part of the concerts give by Handel in July in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. It was revived in succeeding years and was last given in the composer's lifetime in 1756 at Covent Garden.

There is no definitive edition of the score of Deborah and the present performance relies first on the 1869 edition of the work by Friedrich Chrysander, collated with the editions of Bernd Baselt and Robert King, surviving manuscripts, contemporary copies and libretti from 1733 (London) and 1749 (Dublin). For the original Overture only the continuo part survives, identified by Anthony Hicks with the Grave and Allegro of the Overture to the Occasional Oratorio, HWV 62, and with the Menuett from the Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351. Following Robert King, the complete Overture to the Occasional Oratorio of 1746 has been used. Thanks are also due to Robert King for his help in dealing with the borrowed anthem choruses omitted by Chrysander and for putting at our disposal the orchestral material of his edition.

To the meticulous work of Bernd Baselt on the history of the oratorio we owe the two arias of Part I, Scene 4, Abinoam's Hateful man and the Herald's My vengeance awakes me, the first a parody of Piangi pur, ma non sperare from the opera Tolomeo, found in the score of the last performance in 1756, and the aria of the Herald is taken from Athalia, without change. Special thanks are due to Frau Annette Landgraf and Dr Michael Pacholke for the aria Cease, O Judah, cease thy mourning from the new edition of the oratorio Israel in Egypt. For the Grand Military Symphony that introduces Part III we have had recourse to the Martial Symphony in Belshazzar, with the Symphony — Allegro Postillons from the same oratorio. The Herald's Hark! Hark! His thunders round me roll is taken from Athalia and the Symphony before the final chorus is La Rejouissance from the Music for the Royal Fireworks.

In the use of continuo care has been taken to match the chosen instrumentation with the character of the singer and the dramatic circumstances. For Abinoam two harpsichords, cello and double bass are used, for Sisera one harpsichord, theorbo and bassoon, for the Herald one harpsichord, for the Chief Priest of the Israelites a solo theorbo and for the Priest of Baal organ (8' and 4') and double bass.
- Joachim Carlos Martini