Handel's Faithful Shepherd
Post categories: Suzanne Aspden
| 10:24 UK time, Thursday, 5 February 2009
Handel's compositional output demonstrates a tremendous versatility. At least in part this appears to have been deliberate: the 1712 (this week's opera broadcast on Thursday and Friday afternoons) is in stark contrast to his first London opera, , which we heard last week. Il pastor fido is a gentle pastoral tale, with the inevitable entanglements of (temporarily) thwarted lovers, derived from G. B. Guarini's much older play of the same name (c.1584).
As with other classics of Italian literature, it was a story already well known in England: the London audiences would have had a chance to see it staged just the previous year, when Pastor Fido; or, The Faithful Shepherd. Acted all by Women was performed at Greenwich. In fact, the opera may have been a bit of a pot boiler for a company in financial difficulty, and without a star castrato (Nicolini had gone): one commentator tersely noted that 'The Scene represented only ye Country of . ye Habits were old. - ye Opera short.' Its seven performances apparently were not played to full houses.
Handel's setting of the story may also reflect the problematic status of the opera company at the time. Il pastor fido is quite different in style to Rinaldo, with relatively short and simple arias (appropriate to the pastoral character) predominating, and with orchestral scoring on the light side. Handel also borrowed a good deal from earlier work: listen out in particular for Mirtillo's beautiful 'Caro amor' in Act II, neatly adapted from Mary Magdalene's 'Ferma l'ali' in La Resurrezione.
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