Rinaldo: “Lascia ch’io pianga” (arr. harp and strings)

Composer: HANDEL, George Frideric
  • Rinaldo was Handel’s first opera presented in London. 1 It premiered Feb. 24, 1711, was a huge hit and had 15 performances that season. It featured a scenario by theater manager/impresario Aaron Hill which was translated into Italian verse by librettist Giacomo Rossi.2
  • Hill created the scenario to encourage a wide variety of music and spectacular staging.3
    • Hill wanted to “afford the Musick scope to vary and display its Excellence and fill the Eye with more delightful Prospects” than any earlier Italian opera in London.
    • Among the spectacular scenic and practical effects that made Rindalo a hit was an elaborate set featuring a jewel-encrusted palace upon mountains surrounded by spirits. At one point, the mountains move and engulf the heroes: “The mountain opens up and swallows ’em up, with Thunder, Lightning, and amazing Noises.”4

“Mr. Hendel, the Orpheus of our century, while composing the music scarce gave me time to write, and to my great wonder I saw an entire Opera put to music by that surprising genius, with the greatest degree of perfection, in only two weeks.”

Giacomo Rossi, Handel’s librettist for Rinaldo 5

Actually Handel recycled many of his earlier works for Rinaldo, but still.
  • Story: Rinaldo is based on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, a tale of the First Crusade. It takes place outside Jerusalem during a siege, but much of the scenery is fantastic and full of magical characters. In the opera, crusading knight Rinaldo must rescue his fiancée Almirena from the clutches of Armida, a sorceress (who rides a dragon-drawn chariot).6
  • This number: “Lascia ch’io pianga” is Almirena’s act 2 aria, in which she begs to be set free from the sorceress Almida’s enchanted palace. 7

Sources

  1. Donald Burrows, Handel, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), xv.
  2. Anthony Hicks, “Handel [Händel, Hendel], George Frideric,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 18, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040060.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Quote from Aaron Hill’s scenario for Rinaldo, quoted in Christine Gerrard, Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector, 1685-1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 35.
  5. Quoted in Christine Gerrard, Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector, 1685-1750(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 32.
  6. Anthony Hicks, “Rinaldo,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed October 18, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000004199.
  7. Ibid.

Cut IDs

12408, 21518