Oratorio in three parts. In the brief half-year period from August 14, 1736, to January 27, 1737, Georg Friedrich Handel achieved an unprecedented level of productivity in his opera compositions, creating three operas. Additionally, in March 1737, he also composed a largely new oratorio titled “Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità” (“The Triumph of Time and Truth”) HWV 46b. The libretto of this oratorio closely corresponds to that of the oratorio “La Bellezza ravveduta nel trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” (“Beauty Reconciled in the Triumph of Time and Enlightenment”) HWV 46a written in 1707. With “La Bellezza ravveduta”, Handel composed an allegorical and particularly dramatic oratorio right at the beginning of his oratorio compositions. In this work, there is no chorus inclined towards reflection. Not only do the four allegorical figures, Bellezza (Beauty), Piacere (Pleasure), Tempo (Time), and Disinganno (Enlightenment), listen to each other and react to the ideas presented by the others, but this prevailing dramatic principle of dispute is also found in the recitatives.
In 1737, when reworking the oratorio material as “Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità”, Handel approached the task pragmatically. He needed a new non-dramatic work to fulfill the evening’s program for his audience at the Covent Garden Theatre during the fasting season when theatrical performances were prohibited. Although he had excellent Italian vocal soloists, notorious for their pronunciation in Handel’s English oratorios and who naturally preferred singing in Italian, Handel found a solution. It was evident to Handel that, in response to the ban on performances of his Italian operas during the fasting season of 1737, he should promptly create a new oratorio in the Italian language but following the three-part “English” oratorio form that he had developed in “Esther” HWV 50b in 1732. Unlike in Rome in 1707, he had access to a chorus in London in 1737, and the English oratorio, with its substantial choral sections, a preference for concert-like rather than dramatic composition, and frequent inclusion of organ concertos loosely related to the narrative, was already established.
The new volume of the HHA includes the original version of the 1737 premiere as well as all the surviving early and later versions (the latter being exceptional highlights) of individual musical pieces from “Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità”.
- ISMN: 9790006575596 (M006575596)
