A pasticcio, as opposed to a pastiche, was a common way for overworked 18th century composers to create ‘new’ works by assembling different arias or movements from their own compositions or sometimes from those of others – a little along the ‘greatest hits’ principle. (For a more scholarly description of pasticcii see this essay by Bernard Labadie.) But such was the charming opening concert of the London Handel Festival’s autumn season in St George’s last Thursday – Stephen Pettit’s Dinner with Handel.
The story went like this. Fine baritone – and chef – Gustavus Waltz had been engaged by Handel both as a singer and as a chef. But while the opportunities to cook had been legion, Handel had been less generous with his offers of singing parts. So a frustrated Waltz decides to hold his master to account by arranging a dinner party to which he would invite an old friend, blue stocking Mary Pendarves, paired with the diva Francesca Cuzzoni with whom Handel had fallen out – ‘she was too old to sing his operas’. The third guest was the composer Johann Christoph Pepusch with whom Handel had also fallen out over Pepusch’s arrangement of the music for John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera the success of which was seriously eclipsing that of Handel’s own Italian operas. A potentially explosive gathering – especially as the party had been thrust upon an unwilling Handel. However, it provided the opportunity for some excellent spicy recitatives, composed by Cambridge Handel Opera Company’s Julian Perkins, and the airing of some of Handels’ juiciest arias performed with great brio by the assembled ‘guests’.
After a good deal of mudslinging – and some splendidly decorated singing by the luscious, if slightly passé diva Cuzzoni – the guests flounce out leaving Waltz to explain his actions to a fuming Handel. Several glasses of fine wine later a humbled Handel promises Waltz an escape from the kitchen onto the stage and all is resolved in best Handelian ensemble fashion.
It was a delightful concept and performed with much verve and mastery by Jonathan Brown as Waltz, James Laing as Handel, William Wallace as Pepusch, Ellie Neate as Francesca Cuzzoni and Judy Louie Brown as Mary Pendarves. St George’s was possibly not the ideal venue as it was hard to see the dinner table squeezed into the aisle. Ideally, also, the piece would also have been accompanied either by surtitles or a copy of the libretto as I fear that a good deal of the fun may have been missed by the audience who, good though the singers’ diction was, could not always catch the full force of the insults! So let us hope that it will get a revival in the not too distant future.
Meanwhile, the autumn season has many other delights to offer:
- Handel in Letters (6th October) and Handel’s Christmas Party (15th December) at the Handel Hendrix House.
- At St George’s, Handel and the New Society (what was to become the Royal Society of Musicians) on 3rd November and the LHF’s annual outing of the Messiah on 3rd December.
For full details and to book see here.
Back in Highgate…
There are still a very few seats left for Good Evening Mr Sax with Gerard McChrystal and Willam Godfree on Wednesday (30th). Book here.
And on 4th October:
Jazz singer songwriter Immy Churchill at the Highgate Society lunchtime concert. Book here.
27th October. The Voices of San Lazzaro with Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti
Songs by Orlando di Lasso, Settimia Caccini, Claudio Monteverdi, Barbara Strozzi and Tarquinio Merula will intertwine with Armenian traditional songs and melodies. Plus wine and supper.
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