Story and representation in Handel's operas

This project investigates the relationship between story and representation in Handel's operas, examining the "voices" or "personae" that convey an opera's story to the audience, and exploring the representational "modes" by which these various personae communicate. Taking into account operas from throughout Handel's career, I examine in particular detail the Royal Academy operas Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, and Rodelinda , and the epic-based Rinaldo, Orlando, Ariodante, and Alcina. I draw upon primary source materials that illuminate the composition and reception of these operas, as well as modern critical theories of opera, drama, and literature, considering the correspondence between specific compositional techniques---including Handel's adherence to or departure from opera seria conventions---and the ways in which an opera's expressive voices emerge and recede from one moment to the next.;Part I focuses upon dramatic representation, exploring the varying degrees to which Handel's stories are conveyed mimetically. I identify three representational "discontinuities" inherent in opera seria dramaturgy---the discontinuities of voice, time, and expression---and devote a chapter to each. First, I examine the problematic correspondence in opera seria between the singer and the character she ostensibly represents, investigating the ways in which Handel's characters sometimes bridge this representational "gap." I then explore fluctuations in the passage of time in the opera seria scene, again considering Handel's methods for lessening mimetic discontinuity. Finally, I discuss the significance in Handel's operas of "phenomenal" arias, i.e., songs heard as such not only by the audience, but by the characters within the story as well.;Part II focuses upon the "para-dramatic" voices that contribute to the representation of a Handelian opera. First, I investigate the orchestra's role as a vocal "surrogate," whether standing in for human characters, flora, fauna, or inanimate entities. Here, I devote special attention to arias involving nightingales. I then move farther afield from the realm of mimetic representation, exploring first the capacity of the orchestra to offer "choric" commentary, and then discussing the ways in which the voices of composer, librettist, and singer can come to the fore during the course of an opera's enactment.