The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage

Abstract

Suzanne Aspden. The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handels Operatic Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xv + 291 pp. $99.00 USD, £65 (hardback). ISBN 9781107033375.Competing actresses have recently been the subject of Felicity Nussbaums Rival Queens (2010), a title that refers to Nathaniel Lee's heroic tragedy Alexander the Great: or The Rival Queens (1677) which was associated with squabbles between actresses. Suzanne Aspden treats the subject of competing opera singers, employing Charles Burney's reference to operatic rivals Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni as "rival sirens." She explores the identities of the two singers through an analysis of the music and libretti written and adapted for them, and she examines the effect of their rivalry on the operas in which they were cast together. The cover illustration, a satirical image of the two women singing with the castrato Senesino, suggests the possibility of three rival sirens, and the castrate's professional relationship with the female duo is discussed in the final chapter. Handel scholars have emphasized the importance of the singer to the creative processes of librettist and composer of the fluid genre of opera seria. The chapters each focus on one or two operas, enabling the works to be understood in the context of London theatrical life. Aspden begins with a focus on the singer as actor, and concludes with a discussion of vocal style as an indicator of identity.Chapter 1 considers the concept of character in early eighteenth-century theatre and opera, noting the emphasis on representative types, the lack of psychological reality, and the merging of actor and stage role in the audience's perception. The different singing styles of Cuzzoni and Bordoni are compared, using musical illustrations to show how their music differed in relation to their operatic roles; Cuzzoni's arias were flowing and mournful, Bordoni's virtuosic. Evidence from previous roles sung by Cuzzoni challenges her stereotyping as the more feminine of the two women, and indicates that the women's personalities were not consistent with their typecasting. An early employment together was in Handel's Alessandro (1726), a libretto associated with female rivalry because of anecdotes about battles between actresses during performances of Lee's play on the same theme. Aspden notes the pairing of actresses as opposites in plays from the late seventeenth century, and suggests that the chaste-passive and the temperamental could be seen as two aspects of the whole female personality.Chapter 2 shows how in Handel's Rodelinda (1725) both roles of the rival women contain aspects of contrasted types of womanhood-unruly and virtuous-while these roles are clearly differentiated in Bononcinis Astianatte ( 1727), which was based on sources used by Racine and on Ambrose Philips' The Distrest Mother (1712). Aspden notes the pressure upon professional singers, as upon actors, to protect their virtuous private images, and quotes from satirical pamphlets which describe a confrontation between the rivals in Astianatte. Cuzzoni played a variety of roles which demonstrated her versatility, before Bordoni's arrival in London. Aspden compares these roles to those of the protagonists in the "she-tragedies" of the time, in which the tensions between the public and private were played out in the role. And as Rodelinda, Cuzzoni is both retiring virtuous widow, and self-confident queen. After Bordoni's arrival, Cuzzoni's roles tended to be more one-dimensional. Aspden finds parallels between the stage and acting techniques of spoken drama and of opera, suggesting that audiences would seek these parallels. She mentions in particular the "point," in which actors froze at climaxes in the drama, and suggests equivalent moments during or after an aria in opera. For example, at the end of Astianatte, Bordoni's character Ermione stands poised with a dagger in a dramatic moment which emphasizes the contrast between good and bad femininity, and which arguably provoked a riot. …