Dopo notte atra e funesta:
Handel’s “Ariodante”: A forerunner of Gothic novel?
Angela Fodale
Translated by Adriano Murelli
Abstract
Georg Friedrich Handel’s opera Ariodante was composed and first performed
in London in 1735, almost thirty years before Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto (1764) was published. Still, this opera can be seen as an earlier
example of Gothic novel.
The libretto is inspired to Ginevra’s Scottish episode in Ludovico Ariosto’s
poem Orlando furioso (1532) and anticipates the two main settings of Gothic
novel, Italy and Scotland, with their castles and ruins. Ginevra, daughter of
the King of Scotland, is in love with Ariodante and rejects Polinesso’s love.
Polinesso wants to take revenge on the couple and forces Ginevra’s lady
companion to dress like the princess. Ariodante sees the false Ginevra letting
Polinesso into the princess’s rooms; he thinks that Ginevra betrays him and
goes away to commit suicide. After many peripeteias, Ariodante comes back
to the court to prove Ginevra’s innocence and defeat Polinesso.
All elements of the classic Gothic novel are present: the young woman, her
lover (the hero) and the villain, who lubriciously threatens the young woman
and tries to kill the hero; the double, the dream and the mirror, with all their
pre-psychoanalytical connections; the setting of the action (castles, woods,
ancient ruins).
Still, it’s in the music that the Gothic element finds its full expression: more
frequently than in any other of Handel’s operas, in Ariodante the classical
form of da capo aria is broken, forced, interrupted; additionally, Ginevra’s
and Ariodante’s arias are mostly in minor keys: the choice of adopting “dark”
tonalities may be regarded as representing lack of certitudes, a typical feature
of Gothic novel. Instead, the only character who systematically sings in
“bright” major keys is Polinesso, the villain.
Both the plot and the atmosphere created by the composer make Ariodante a
significant forerunner of Gothic novel, which certainly requires careful
investigation.
Key Words: Handel, Opera, Eighteenth Century.
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1.
Handel’s Ariodante
Gothic novel is one of the few literary genres for which a precise
date of birth can be set: 1764, when Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
appeared. However,
a craving for the darker emotions, an imaginative attraction
to decay, ruin, disorder, and death, a fear of the false order
imposed upon the mind and society by the fixed value
systems of a rigid neoclassicism all contributed to the
outbreak of a gothic impulse before Walpole […]. Subtle
and subdued at first, eighteenth-century Gothicism was one
tributary of the general revolt against rational structures
that would later coalesce into the mighty stream of
Romanticism at the end of the century. […] Gothic voices
can be heard quite distinctly in the morbid lines of the
Graveyard poets of the 1740’s and 1750’s, but the
emotional tremors of a buried Gothicism may be detected
even earlier in the century in some unexpected places.1
One of these “unexpected places” can be found in opera, a genre
that is not commonly regarded as occupying a forerunning position in literary
streams, because it rather follows patterns already existing in theatre and
literature. By contrast, Handel’s Ariodante displays all features of Gothic
novel, good thirty years in advance. Ariodante was composed in 1734:
Handel adapted a libretto by Antonio Salvi, which was inspired to Ariosto’s
Orlando furioso and dated back to 1708. The opera was represented on
January 8th, 1735 at Covent Garden. It may be useful to mention that Walpole
and Handel knew of each other: in his correspondence, Walpole mentions his
admiration for Handel’s operas; in turn, the political vicissitudes of the
government of Sir Robert Walpole, Horace’s father, had a strong impact on
the composer’s activity2.
2.
Gothic characters
In his book In the Circles of Fear and Desire, William Patrick Day
argues that all Gothic stories display one and the same plot: the protagonist is
dragged into a Gothic underworld, where movement is circular and action is
useless, «a world where the Self dissolves and disintegrates, attacking itself
as an Other; from this underworld the protagonist may be released […] but he
or she cannot escape»3. The title of Handel’s opera, Ariodante, seems to
designate the male character as the protagonist; however, from a dramatic
perspective, Ginevra is far more prominent. The first act begins with a nearly
idyllic situation: Ginevra is the beloved only daughter of the King of
Scotland, she is in love with the knight Ariodante, who loves her too, she
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lives in a palace with luxurious rooms and a beautiful garden. The only
disturbing element is constituted by Polinesso’s insistent attentions. In the
second act Ginevra’s descent to the underworld begins: her fiancé is believed
to be dead, she is accused of shamelessness, repudiated by her father and
condemned to death; even when she sleeps she cannot relax, as she is haunted
by songes funestes. For Ariodante too the second act is sort of a nightmare: as
he believes to see Ginevra betraying him, he decides to commit suicide. Only
in the third act does the main difference between the two characters emerge,
thus confirming that Ginevra is the real protagonist. Other than in Ariosto,
Ariodante discovers Polinesso’s intrigues and Ginevra’s innocence already in
the first scene of the third act. So, he knows all elements which will lead to
the happy end of the opera. Instead, Ginevra remains in prison and is
tormented by anguish and uncertainty until the last scene. What is more, she
fears that her condition may get even worse, since her only hope of being
saved resides in the victory of her enemy Polinesso. This makes Ginevra a
real Gothic heroine: she must face an unknown threaten and a mysterious
accusation. Her father does not want to see her any more, although she does
not know what she is accused of; she is not asked to justify herself as only
other people can prove her innocence.
Just like Ginevra is the typical heroine of a Gothic novel, Polinesso
represents the typical villain – much more than in Orlando furioso:
I portrayed Polinesso, Duke of Albany, as an explicitly evil
character, and let him act out of interest and ambition, not out
of love, so the Audience is less stricken by the horror of his
death and the Virtue of the other Characters stands out more4.
Polinesso seems to be possessed by a pure love for evil and pursues the aim
of completely eliminating not only Ginevra and Ariodante’s happiness but
also the happiness of anyone coming in touch with him. Salvi maintains that
he doesn’t want the audience to feel dread, yet he portrays Polinesso as a
tangible incarnation of evil.
Finally there is Ariodante, whose task is to release Ginevra from the
underworld, from where she cannot escape.
3.
Gothic elements: the double, the dream and the mirror
At the beginning of the opera Ginevra sits in front of a mirror and pretties
herself for Ariodante (in the previous versions of the libretto this detail is
absent). Beside her stands Dalinda, her lady companion, who will later on be
seduced by Polinesso, disguise herself as Ginevra and take over her name. It
seems as if Ginevra’s own Doppelgänger came out of the mirror. Only at the
end of the opera, when it is revealed that Dalinda, and not Ginevra, had let
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Polinesso in the princess’s rooms at night, the natural order is re-established,
the Doppelgänger exorcized and Ginevra takes control of her mind again.
In Ariodante we find further instances of doubling: the couple
Ginevra/Dalinda is doubled by the couple formed by Ariodante and his
brother Lurcanio. At the end of the opera Ariodante marries Ginevra and
Lurcanio marries Dalinda. So, Dalinda and Lurcanio are respectively
Ginevra’s and Ariodante’s alter ego. In fact, Lurcanio wants to take revenge
for Ariodante’s (supposed) death, challenges Polinesso to a duel and kills
him. And when the two brothers are one in front of the other (but Ariodante
is concealed under the armour!) the duel does not take place. From James
Hogg’s Memoirs of a justified sinner to Stevenson’s The Master of
Ballantrae and Conrad’s The Duel, the duel – often to be fought against one’s
own brother – crucially represents the conflict with one’s double. In turn,
Polinesso is the negative double of both brothers: he is loved by Belinda and
wants to win Ginevra’s heart. Whereas the opposition Ariodante vs. Lurcanio
can be solved with no conflicts, the opposition Ariodante/Lurcanio vs.
Polinesso, i.e. Good vs. Evil, cannot be overcome.
In Gothic novels, dream is a recurrent element, for different reasons:
the process of writing does not follow realistic, but dreamlike rules (Gothic
novels “appear to be like the manifest content of a dream and, like dreams,
they are perfectly constructed stories); dream is often the real or fictional
element that gives the impulse to the beginning of the narration; finally,
dream is a device that is often resorted to and is related to the topic of
double5. As Corti argues, the textual play of successive mise-en-abyme is a
nearly institutional feature of fantastic narration: shorter stories are inserted
within the frame of the main narration. It is not a case that Jean BelleminNoël, a great theorist of this genre, considers “effet de miroir” as an essential
component of fantastic narrations6.
At the end of the second act, Ginevra falls asleep and dreams: her
visions (interpreted by ballet dancer) are first pleasant, then distressing.
Ginevra’s story can be related to Much Ado About Nothing: Ginevra falls
asleep in the moment of greatest sorrow, just like Hero faints and is taken for
dead.
4.
Gothic settings
Gothic novel has two typical settings: Italy (The Castle of Otranto,
The Monk, several of Ann Radcliffe’s novels) and Scotland (Memoirs of a
justified sinner, Scott’s, Conan Doyle’s and Stevenson’s stories). Ariodante
takes place in Scotland; however, due to its Ariostian origins, it draws on an
Italian model (intricate plots7, dreams, folly, castles, knights), which is
among the forerunners of Gothic novels. Be it set in Italy or in Scotland, the
scenery of Gothic novels is characterized by the presence of a building with
an imposing appearance, usually a half-abandoned castle.
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We find a set of frantic characters restrained and enclosed by
some version of a mighty and mysterious building beneath
which there is a sort of hell or “long labyrinth of darkness”, to
use Walpole’s own phrase. […] one of the indispensable
conditions of the novel of terror is architectural insularity; the
Gothic building possesses the human characters, surrounds
them with filial secrets, identity crises, and lethal
predicaments within its walls, and finally determines their
salvation or destruction by spectacular means.8
Ariodante, too, takes place in a castle, and Ginevra never comes out of it: her
range of action reaches no further than its garden. In the first act we see the
most embellished and comfortable parts of the castle: Ginevra’s room and the
garden. In the second act the scenery is more distressing: first the garden in
the moonlight with ancient ruins and a secret door leading to Ginevra’s room
(as one sees, the secret passage too can be added to the list of Gothic topoi
attested in this opera), then a gallery in the King’s palace (we are no more in
the private part of the palace, but in the grand and overawing public one).
Finally, the last act is set in a wood, presumably in the deep of a less
frequented wood, if we think that Ariodante is hiding in it and Polinesso’s
soldiers want to kill Dalinda there; then, the scenery changes again to the
garden, later to the enclosure where the duel takes place, to a room in the
palace where Ginevra is imprisoned, and finally to the royal hall. Particular
attention need to be paid to the first scene of the second act: the stage
direction contains elements that appear neither in Ariosto nor in Salvi’s
libretto set to music by Pollarolo. Only in Handel’s libretto do we find two
specifically romantic features, i.e. the moonlight and the ruins (Ariosto only
speaks of uninhabited houses, V, 42, 46, 50).
5.
Gothic music
So, the characters of this opera have the same features as those of
Gothic novel; additionally, they act within a “Gothic” setting and the plot of
the story shows typical devices of Gothic novel (dreams, double, duel). Most
interesting, music itself describes a world at the opposite side of classical 18th
century serenity: it is a Gothic world, dominated by
a desire to displace reason and to surrender one’s self-control
to something larger and rationally incomprehensible. In an age
grown too dependent upon the force of reason, the Gothic
counterforces […] could be expected to erupt with great
power. Walpole explained the inevitability of a Gothic
upheaval in the Preface to the second edition of The Castle of
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Otranto as a torrent of repressed feelings bursting through the
barriers of reason wherever “the great resources of fancy have
been dammed up by a strict adherence to the common life”9.
If we are to look for uncommon elements in Ariodante, we may cite
the frequent use of solely instrumental music, which often accompanies
ballets. Instrumental music is not used in uncommon situations: it recurs in
scenes where something is celebrated, and here the choir intervenes too (in
the first and third act), and in “infernal scenes”, here a dream scene. In
baroque opera recitative mimetically adheres to spoken language and
represents the “logical” element. In turn, arias express feelings rather than
reason: they combine words and music, but the latter prevails. In this sense,
instrumental music, which is fully deprived of words, symbolizes an escape
from rationality. Here, it is not a case that instrumental music is used in order
to show Ginevra’s unconscious by means of a dream.
It is even more interesting to see how the main musical form of 18th
century music, da capo aria, is constantly manipulated. First of all, it needs to
be mentioned that da capo aria alternate with arioso, a musical form similar
to a monologue which is placed in dramatically relevant moments. Arioso is
close to recitative, although it is a melodic form and has no internal divisions.
By contrast, da capo aria consists of an A-section followed by a shorter Bsection with a reduced number of instruments; then, the A-section is repeated
with some variations carried out by the singer (A’). Operas composed in this
period usually contain one or two ariosos, about twenty da capo arias and
only one or two duets (also following the form of da capo aria). In Ariodante
we observe a higher frequency of ariosos and duets along with a constant
manipulation of da capo arias.
The first instance of this manipulation is to be seen in the duet
Ariodante-Ginevra “Prendi, da questa mano” (first act). Here, the repetition
of the A-section is interrupted by the entrance of the king: this musically
mirrors the change in the scene. Handel’s realistic choice is in sheer contrast
with all previous musical realizations of Salvi’s libretto – at least as far as we
know (for instance, we still don’t have the musical score of the first version
by Giacomo Antonio Perti)10.
In the third act there are three instances of manipulation. The first
one occurs at the very beginning of this act, when Ariodante sings: “Numi,
lasciarmi vivere / per darmi mille morti / è questa la pietà?”: there, he is
interrupted by Dalinda. In the musical score this piece is named “Sinfonia”:
however, the instrumental part is extremely short, then Ariodante starts
singing, so this piece is actually an aria. As it does not present any internal
divisions, it may be classified as arioso. Still, the vocal line and the meter
(ariosos are usually composed by two octosyllables rather than three
septenaries) contrast with this interpretation. It may more convincingly be
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argued that this piece represents the A-section of an aria, interrupted – as it
actually happens on the stage – by Dalinda’s cries: this would reveal a
parallel with the duet in the first act. In baroque opera it often happens that an
aria is interrupted by an external event, usually the entrance of a character;
however, it is quite uncommon that this device occurs more than once in the
same opera.
In the middle of the third act we are faced with another ambiguous
piece: Ginevra’s aria “Sì, morrò, ma l’onor mio” begins with a Largo phrase
followed by an Allegro section. Is this a da capo aria interrupted after an
unusually short A-section and an overgrown B-section? Or should the Largo
rather be considered as an appendix of the preceding recitative, so that the
Allegro section is an A-section which is then interrupted? Or again, is the
Largo to be seen as a short arioso (it is composed by two octosyllables, the
typical meter of ariosos) immediately followed by the A-section of an aria
which has a text consisting of a single hendecasyllable? Actually, it is not
clear at all why Ginevra stops singing – does she faint or does she exit all of a
sudden?
By contrast, the last instance of an interrupted da capo aria is quite
clear: Ginevra is in prison and begins singing her aria “Manca, o Dio, la mia
costanza / mentre ha fine il mio dolor! / Né mi resta la speranza / di morir…”.
Here, the A-section is interrupted: Ariodante and the king enter the scene,
followed by the royal cortege sounding trumpets, and set Ginevra free, thus
acknowledging her innocence.
So, we are faced with four instances of an interrupted aria: here, the
form of da capo aria is somewhat manipulated. It must be noticed that in no
one of this instances does the interruption foreshadow a negative turn in the
plot; on the contrary, all instances have to do with Ginevra and Ariodante,
whereas Polinesso’s arias always pattern with the classical form. Hence, it
may be argued that this breaking of the classical form has a positive
connotation.
It is a common assumption that baroque opera is tonally ‘blind’, as it
contains no tonal macrostructures. This is not the case with Ariodante: the
opera starts with a G-minor ouverture followed by a G-major aria, and ends
in G-major. In the middle of the opera, the aria “Scherza infida”, constituting
the climax of desperation for Ariodante, is in G minor; the climax of
desperation for Ginevra, at the end of the second act, is in E minor, the
relative minor of G major. So, it cannot be questioned that G is the basic
tonality of the whole opera. And it is perhaps not a case that the libretto is
pervaded by the ‘sun-night’ opposition and references to eyes and sight, with
a particular insistence on the topic of appearances that can be deceiving.
Reversing traditional imagery, the coming of the night coincides with
greatest happiness, whereas the coming of the day is most painful. See for
instance the King’s aria, 26b: “Più contento e più felice / regno al mondo il
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sol cadente / dall’occaso non mirò. / Né più afflitto e più infelice / mai di
questo il sol nascente / regno al mondo ritrovò”. Now, it may be observed
that one of the features of Gothic novel is a perspective reversal: what is
comfortable and familiar turns into a source of obscure fear.
That this is more than a chance coincidence is confirmed by another
reversal. The arias sung by the main characters Ginevra and Ariodante are
often in minor keys or ‘darkened’ by many flats (G minor, C minor, E minor,
D minor, F minor). This does not really surprise: these tonalities express the
characters’ own desperations. In turn, Polinesso, the worst character,
systematically sings in “bright” major keys. Though quite astonishing, this
may be related to the typically Gothic reversal of good and evil, light and
darkness. So, the aria “Coperta la frode” is in C major; “Spero per voi sì sì” is
in F major; “Se l’inganno sortisce felice” is in the relative minor of C major,
A minor; “Dover, giustizia, onor” is in D major.11 The last aria appears to be
an answer to Dalinda’s previous aria “Neghittosi, or voi che fate?”, in which
she wishes the gods would kill the traitor with a flash of lightning, so as to
prove that justice exists. Polinesso’s and Dalinda’s arias are also related for
what concerns their tonalities (Dalinda’s aria is in B minor with B-section in
D major).
The choice of ‘simple’ tonalities for Polinesso’s arias has nothing to
do with any vocal limitations of the singer who first performed this role, as it
may be seen if the other roles that Handel wrote for Maria Caterina Negri are
taken into consideration. Thus, it is a conscious stylistic choice aiming to
underline Polinesso’s hypocrisy. Still, the way Handel uses tonalities in these
arias is not trivial at all, because it reveals the complexity of this character.
Charles Burney, Handel’s contemporary, noticed that in the aria “Spero per
voi” the composer was «more licentious in the use of discords than usual»12.
To conclude, I will compare Ariodante with the Receipt for a
Modern Romance provided sixty years later by an anonymous Anti-Ghost
from Philadelphia. Even if there are no skeletons or ghosts in white, even if
labyrinths are to be found rather inside the characters than in the scenery,
Ariodante proves to be a forerunner of Gothic novel:
Take a haunted castle; pull down part of it, and allow the
grass to grow on the battlements, and provide the owls and
bats uninterrupted habitations among the ruins. […] Convey
to this castle a young lady […]. Make her dreadfully
terrified […], but dreadfully impatient to behold the reality.
Convey her, perhaps on the second night of her arrival,
through a trap-door, and from the trap-door to a flight of
steps down-wards, and from a flight of steps to a
subterraneous passage, and from a subterraneous passage, to
a door that is shut, and from that to a door that is open, and
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from that to a cell, and from that to a chapel, and from a
chapel back to a subterraneous passage again; here present
either a skeleton with a living face, or a living body with a
head of a skeleton or a ghost all in white, and a groan from a
distant part of a cavern, or the shake of a cold hand, or a suit
of armour moving […]. Let this be repeated for some nights
in succession, and after the lady has been dissolved to a jelly
with her fears, let her be delivered to a man of her heart, and
married13.
Notes
1
F S Frank, The first Gothics. A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel, Garland Publishing, New York & London,
1987, p. xix.
2
C Hogwood, Georg Friedrich Händel, Edizioni Studio Tesi, Pordenone, 1991, p. 133 contains a satire in which Handel is
compared to Robert Walpole.
3
D H Richter, The Progress of Romance. Literary Historiography and the Gothic Novel, Ohio State University Press,
Columbus, 1996, p. 10.
4
A Salvi, Gentilissimo lettore, in A Salvi and C F Pollarolo, Ariodante. Partitura dell’opera in facsimile. Edizione del
libretto, Ricordi, Milano, 1986, p. LXXXVII.
5
Consider for instance The Castle of Otranto and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: both were written under the influence of a dream
and contain the topic of double. G Franci, La messa in scena del terrore. Il Romanzo Gotico inglese (Walpole, Beckford,
Lewis), Longo Editore, Ravenna, 19933, p. 14.
6
C Corti, ‘Il doppio come paradigma fantastico-gotico (testi di H. Walpole e W. Beckford)’ Il confronto letterario, VIII/16,
“Il doppio letterario nell’Ottocento europeo”, 1991, p. 320.
7
In Orlando furioso, only the final of Ginevra’s story takes place ‘live’; the rest of the story is told twice to Rinaldo. This is
a typical device of Gothic novel (cf. Hogg’s and Stevenson’s works).
8
Frank, p. xxiii.
9
Frank, p. xx.
10
O Termini, From Ariodante to Ariodante. “Ariodante” by Pollarolo (Venice, 1718), in Salvi - Pollarolo, p. XLVIII.
11
It may be interesting to compare these arias with the C-major/A-minor arias in Alcina. This opera is strictly related to
Ariodante, both because Handel composed it immediately after it and because it is based on the cantos of Orlando Furioso
immediately following those constituting the plot of Ariodante. In Alcina the two tonalities are used either when young,
sincere characters sing (cf. I, “Chi m’insegna il caro padre”, when Oberto is looking for his father), or when characters tell
the truth (I, “Sì, son quella”), sometimes unconsciously (II. “Ama, sospira”).
12
W Dean, Handel’s Operas 1726-1741, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2006, p. 295.
13
Anti-Ghost, A Receipt for a Modern Romance, «The Weekly Magazine», Philadelphia, 30 June 1798, n. 22, vol. II, p.
273, cit. in Franci, p. 10 s.
Bibliography
Corti, C., ‘Il doppio come paradigma fantastico-gotico (testi di H. Walpole e W. Beckford)’. Il confronto letterario, VIII/16,
“Il doppio letterario nell’Ottocento europeo”, 1991.
Dean, W., Handel’s Operas 1726-1741, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2006.
Franci, G., La messa in scena del terrore. Il Romanzo Gotico inglese (Walpole, Beckford, Lewis), Longo Editore, Ravenna,
19933
Frank, F. S., The first Gothics. A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel, Garland Publishing, New York & London,
1987
Hogwood, C., Georg Friedrich Händel, Edizioni Studio Tesi, Pordenone, 1991, p. 133 riporta una satira in cui Handel viene
assimilato a Robert Walpole.
Richter, D. H., The Progress of Romance. Literary Historiography and the Gothic Novel, Ohio State University Press,
Columbus, 1996, p. 10.
Salvi, A. and Pollarolo, C. F., Ariodante. Partitura dell’opera in facsimile. Edizione del libretto, Ricordi, Milano, 1986
Termini, O., From Ariodante to Ariodante. “Ariodante” by Pollarolo (Venice, 1718), in Salvi - Pollarolo.
Angela Fodale is attending a PhD program in musicology in Rome University “La Sapienza”. She is interested in opera and
literature and their relations.