<<  -- 6 --  Robert Hugill    HANDEL'S SINGERS

Two years after Strada joined Handel's company, another remarkable singer appeared. The bass, Antonio Montagnana made his début in London in 1731 at the Kings Theatre in a revival of Tamerlano. Montagnana first comes to notice in Italy in 1730 singing operas by Porpora of whom he was supposed to be a pupil. For the revival of Tamerlano, as he often did in revivals, Handel trimmed the recitative to the bone but inserted a splendid new aria for the minor bass role of Leone. Though the aria was simply an elaboration of one from Riccardo Primo it enabled Handel to show off his splendid new bass, with a remarkable two octave range. Montagnana would sing eleven roles for Handel over the next two years. Handel took great advantage of Montagnana's splendid range and in revivals expanded the bass parts to suit the singer's capabilities. In Ezio, Montagnana created the role of Varo which included an amazing leap of a twelfth and exploited the vocal agility and wide tonal range of the bass voice in a way that Handel had not been able to do since Rinaldo; in his arias for Montagnana, Handel was able to free the solo bass voice from its dependence on the bass line of the aria. This series of performances culminated in the première of Orlando in which Montagnana created the role of the magician Zoroastro. For once a bass was not just a father or a general -- Zoroastro is the controlling genius of the whole opera and has four fine arias. To do this, Handel and his anonymous librettist jettisoned the sub-plot from the original libretto (L'Orlando ovvera la Gelosa Pazzia which was originally written for Domenico Scarlatti in 1711) and created an entirely new character for Montagnana. The opera was only a modest success, but one listener reported that Montagnana sang with the voice of a cannon. The original sub-plot had to be removed because it involved a Scottish prince, Zerbino, in love with a princess. Convention prevented a bass like Montagnana from playing a heroic role in an opera seria, which only goes to show how remarkable William Savage's presence in Imeneo really was.

Montagnana was also another of the singers to whom Handel entrusted roles in his fledgling oratorio. Besides singing in the London performances of Acis and Galatea and Esther, Montagnana created the role of Abner in Athalia, a role Handel wrote specially for him. Though Handel did mount performances of his oratorios in a mixture of English and Italian, Montagnana was one of the singers who did sing in English. Speaking of the performance of Esther sung by the castrato Senesino, Anna Strada, the contralto Francesca Bertolli and Montagnana, one anonymous listener said they 'made rare work with the English Tongue you would have sworn it had been Welch'.

But this good relationship with Handel was not to last. Montagnana was one of the group who went off to join the Opera of the Nobility. Any sympathy we might have with Montagnana's desire to rejoin his old teacher, Porpora, is dispelled by the anonymous pamphlet Harmony in Uproar published in 1734, which accuses Montagnana of breaking a formal contract in order to join the Opera of the Nobility. He sang in all their seasons, a total of fifteen operas by Porpora, Hasse, Veracini and Bononcini.

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