Every year the city of Halle, birthplace of George Frideric Handel, organizes an international conference alongside its festival dedicated to the maestro, the Händel-Festspiel. In keeping with the theme of this year’s festival, ‘Frischer Wind: Der junge Händel in Italien’ (Fresh Wind: The Young Handel in Italy), the conference focused on Italian texts set to music by Handel and his contacts with Italian literature and lyricists. Indeed, at the age of twenty, Handel embarked on a journey to Italy, where he would reside for a period of five years (from about June 1705 to September 1710). Through interaction with other artists and the invaluable support of patrons, he refined his craft, developing a deep understanding of Italian vocal art.

The conference was inaugurated with the presentation of the seventh Handel Research Prize. It was awarded to Joe Lockwood (Newcastle University) in recognition of his excellent dissertation ‘The Performance and Reception of Handel’s Music in Revolutionary North America’. The study shows for the first time how intensively the music of Handel was used to articulate and reinforce political positions within the conflicts of the American War of Independence. His current Leverhulme project at Newcastle, entitled ‘Handel’s Global Afterlives’, aims to broaden this perspective by examining the reception of Handel’s music in the second half of the eighteenth century in the contexts of colonial India, the Caribbean, Italy and Austria. Lockwood presented a sample of his research in a paper entitled ‘Zadok the Priest, the “Hallelulah” Chorus and the Imperial Soundscape in Boston on the Brink of Revolution’. The New World premiere of Zadok the Priest (hwv258) took place in Boston in 1772, during a period that has often been regarded as a brief interlude of calm within Boston’s tumultuous pre-revolutionary decade. Lockwood demonstrated how this particular work by Handel, the musician of the British King, initially brought together the rival factions that would soon take up arms against each other, and then became a more explicit point of conflict between Boston’s factions.

The majority of the first afternoon was dedicated to independent papers. Graydon Beeks (Pomona College) initiated the discussion with a paper on the enigmatic ‘Overtures to be plaied before the first lesson’, alluded to in a letter written by James Brydges to Dr John Arbuthnot in the year 1717. This reference has long puzzled scholars, engendering debate about the nature of these ‘overtures’ and whether Handel ever completed them. Until now, the proposed hypotheses have chiefly encompassed the corpus of instrumental chamber music. Graydon Beeks has expanded the spectrum of possibilities to include keyboard works. He advanced an innovative hypothesis, positing that an error had been committed by the secretary of Brydges in transcribing the word ‘overture’ instead of ‘voluntary’ – in other words, the traditional English piece of music, usually for organ, which is played as part of a church service, usually as a prelude or postlude. This possibility gives rise to a number of questions, not least whether Handel ‘composed’ these pieces at all, given his talent for improvisation.

Subsequently, Donald Burrows (The Open University) delivered a paper on the circumstances of Handel’s performances at the Foundling Hospital. In particular, he furnished information regarding the chapel where the performances took place, which has since been demolished. These are among the most thoroughly documented events in Handel’s life and career, with institutional minutes, payment lists for performers and also relevant references in contemporary letters and diaries, together with musical evidence from the score and partbooks for Messiah. Despite the fact that these materials have been the subject of several publications, recent re-examination has prompted new reflections on some practical aspects of performance (the sixth and final volume of George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, compiled and edited by Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe and Anthony Hicks, is currently in preparation).

John H. Roberts (University of California Berkeley) examined the intricate and enigmatic narrative surrounding Handel’s Brockes Passion. The writings of Johann Mattheson offer valuable insights into the composer’s career, though their reliability is questionable. The concise account that he provided on page 96 of his Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte (Hamburg, 1740) concerning the Brockes Passion (hwv48) has significantly influenced the prevailing understanding of its origins and performance. However, a meticulous examination unveils the limitations in Mattheson’s reliability and the persistence of unfounded assumptions. In re-examining the history of hwv48, Roberts addressed the following matters: why Handel composed it after moving to England; the circumstances of its first performance; and the reasons for the existence of several distinct versions of the work.

Colin Timms (University of Birmingham) unravelled the subtleties of those musical forms that fall between recitative and aria. Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century settings of Italian texts usually consist of a number of recitatives followed by arias, a pattern characteristic of Italian cantatas, serenatas, operas and oratorios. However, this pattern is subject to disruption when a passage of recitative text is set in the style of an aria, sometimes identified by the word ‘arioso’ or ‘arietta’. This paper examined such passages in Handel’s settings of Italian texts and advanced the argument that the term ‘cavata’ should be more widely recognized and used by scholars and editors concerned with his music.

To bring this first day to a close, Valentina Codognotto (Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler, Berlin) gave a presentation on the Monteverdi Digital Text Edition. This initiative offers digital support to facilitate the understanding and interpretation of Italian texts set to music by Claudio Monteverdi (www.monteverdi-dte.com). As well as the critical edition, it offers a diplomatic edition and the original literary source. The critical edition is enriched with historical and linguistic notes designed to make the texts more accessible to contemporary readers. Users will also have access to tools to help them master the pronunciation of texts, such as the marking of tonic accents and phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as clear, comprehensible audio playback. Participants then had the opportunity to take part in a guided tour of the exhibition ‘Händel in Rom’, on the upper floors of the Händel-Haus.

On the second morning, two German-language roundtables were held, both moderated by Wolfgang Hirschmann (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), focusing on Handel’s setting of Italian texts to music and the making of a critical edition. The first brought together Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford), Lorenzo Bianconi (Università di Bologna), Giuseppina La Face (Università di Bologna), Ulrich Leisinger (Universität Mozarteum Salzburg), Juliane Riepe (Stiftung Händel-Haus) and Dennis Ried (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg). The discussion addressed the possibilities and limitations involved in editing Handel’s Italian texts. The second roundtable brought together Strohm, Leisinger, Ried and Matthew Gardner (Hochschule für Künste Bremen) in order to consider the same questions about digital editions. For instance, participants explored the prospect of creating a digital Handel portal (DHP), which could contain a critically edited text edition, as in the Digital Mozart Edition. Such a project would serve to build upon the experiences of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and thereby ensure the ongoing sustainability of Handel research in Germany.

Luca della Libera (Conservatorio di Frosinone) spoke on several unpublished letters by Alessandro Melani, which are preserved in the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv in Hanover. The composer was presumably active from 1688 to 1703 as an agent of the Hanover court in Rome. His correspondence provides rich insights into Rome’s musical life, mentioning key figures like Scarlatti and Corelli, and highlights an important cultural link between Rome and Hanover, complementing previous research that has focused mainly on Venice.

Chiara Pellicia (Università di Firenze) delivered a paper on the chamber cantatas of Roman composer Tommaso Bernardo Gaffi (1667–1744), focusing on his poetic and musical choices. Gaffi was a highly regarded organist and oratorio composer, with influential patrons including the Colonna, Pamphilj, Ottoboni and Ruspoli families. He also had connections with other major composers in Rome. Handel most certainly met him during his period of residence in the ‘Eternal City’. Today, Gaffi’s oeuvre remains largely unexplored, particularly his chamber cantatas. Pellicia’s study offered an initial survey of the sources for these works.

Adriana De Feo (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) examined Handel’s ‘indirect encounter’ with Pietro Pariati’s poetry. In the 1730s Handel set two of Pariati’s librettos to music, Arianna in Creta (1734) and Giustino (1737), which he brought back from his trip to Italy in 1729. These were themselves adaptations of older librettos. De Feo drew parallels between the various versions in order to highlight the different layers of adaptation, thus revealing the entire rewriting process of an Italian libretto.

One of Handel’s earliest operas, Rodrigo (hwv5) – also known as Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria – was based on Francesco Silvani’s II duello d’Amore e di Vendetta. Its hero was the historical figure Rodrigo, the last Visigoth king of Spain. Maximiliano Seguera Sánchez (independent researcher, Amsterdam) focused on another libretto by Silvani, L’inganno innocente, whose central character is also named Rodrigo, but who this time is a fictional prince from Granada. This libretto was the subject of two quite different productions, the first in Venice, the second in Naples. These two productions demonstrate an evolution in Silvani’s dramaturgy, with Seguera Sánchez focusing particularly on the themes of naïve interactions, jealousy and erotic desire.

The second day of the conference concluded with a joint presentation by Caterina Pagnini and Gianluca Stefani (Università di Firenze). They examined the strategies of adaptation used in Handel’s operas when working from the libretto to the performance, using the examples of Rinaldo (1711) and Il Pastor fido (1712, 1734). Participants were then invited to visit the editorial office of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe to discuss the process of making a critical edition in greater detail with some members of the team.

The following morning, Federico Lanzellotti (Universität Basel) delivered a captivating presentation on the depiction of night in Handel’s Italian operas. This research constitutes part of his postdoctoral work within the ‘NightMuse’ project (The Night Side of Music: Towards a New Historiography of Musicking in Europe, 1500–1800), directed by Hanna Walsdorf at the Universität Basel and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Lanzellotti revealed that Handel’s drammi per musica offer multifaceted representations of night, with a range of different musical and scenic strategies. The composer and his librettists also addressed related topoi, such as real and metaphorical darkness, natural and artificial lightning, and sleep and dreams, both as a narrative device and as an expression of specific concepts and affects.

My paper (Yseult Martinez, independent scholar, Paris) reflected on two productions of Antonio Salvi’s libretto Berenice, Regina d’Egitto: the first set to music by Giacomo Antonio Perti for the Pratolino Theatre, which the young Handel undoubtedly saw performed at the Medici estate in 1709, and its subsequent adaptation by the latter for his London audience in 1737. I particularly emphasized the new dramatic conception of the title role as envisaged by Handel and his librettist.

The final session was devoted to a specific opera by Handel, Admeto re di Tessaglia. First, Wendy Heller (Princeton University) gave a paper focusing on the adaptation of its libretto, set to music by Handel in 1727, from an old seventeenth-century Venetian version (1669) that had been reworked for the court of Hanover (1679–1681). Heller is currently completing the critical edition of Admeto for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, and presented us with some of her findings. She explored the musical and dramatic consequences of a particular style of adaptation and the ways in which the retention of aria text and large sections of an earlier libretto necessarily affected not only Handel’s musical choices, but also the opera’s pacing and tone – all of which have consequences for modern staging of this rarely performed opera. With Mariateresa Dellaborra (Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Milan) being unable to attend, Heller kindly consented to read her paper on a revival of the aforementioned opera in 1754 – twenty-seven years after its premiere – which necessitated numerous substantial alterations. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the revisions made to the work, Dellaborra paid close attention to the role of the impresario overseeing its programming, Francesco Vanneschi, who was embroiled in a bitter controversy, as captured in two satirical librettos by Giuseppe Baretti.

These papers marked the conclusion of the conference, whereas the festival continued until 15 June. The theme for next year will centre on Handel’s heroes: ‘Mannsbilder: Helden, Herrscher, Herzensbrecher’ (Images of Men: Heroes, Rulers, Heartbreakers).