On the Vicissitudes of Handel’s Operatic Time: A Meditation

Abstract

The two standard components of opera seria, recitative and aria, are conventionally understood as portraying two contrasting modes of dramatic discourse: action and contemplation. Alternating between the two, operatic plot and character unfold. Recitative is relied upon to move the action along in a business-like manner, while the emotional content of the drama is entrusted to aria. My interest here is in exploring the ways this dichotomy influences the sense of the passing of time in the operas—the ways in which shifts between one mode of expression and the other affect our perception of time’s progress. Roughly corresponding to speech and thought, action and contemplation are signaled by two different kinds of poetry, open-ended versi sciolti and self-contained rhymed stanzas, which conventionally inspire contrasting musical treatment. The narrative pace of action requires the flexibility of a continuous, neutral, transparent music. Reflective introspection, on the other hand, finds a more natural vehicle in music that is more sustained, formal, and self-contained, music that can develop an idea, and come to a conclusion. Whereas recitative music unfolds along with the text, at the same rate the words are spoken, aria music is regulated not by natural or verisimilar textual syntax but by its own musical laws of form and coherence. Indeed, aria text can be rendered insignificant by its subservience to those musical laws. In an aria setting, text is usually repeated—often many times—fragmented by melismas, taken apart line by line and possibly never reassembled. Treated in this way, a text can lose its semantic as well as syntactic meaning; repetition and fragmentation can reduce it to virtual incoherence. Words are thus severed from their narrative significance, as the music-dominated aria runs counter to the narrative line, cutting across and disrupting its progress.