Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, of 1707, was Handel’s first oratorio; in its third and final incarnation 50 years later it was to be his last. It has all the hallmarks of the finest music of his Italian years – tremendous verve, originality of invention, freshness: its relative neglect is due first to its rather slender allegorical text (by Benedetto Pamphili) and secondly to its lack of choral music.
It calls for four soloists, representing Beauty (the central character, whose conversion is the work’s main topic), Pleasure, Time and Truth (here translated as Disillusion: ie Non-Illusion, therefore Truth). This is the work that Handel gave in Rome with Corelli leading the band, where his overture allegedly provoked the Italian master into saying ‘My dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand’, and Handel obliged by substituting an Italian overture: but Corelli can hardly have been unfamiliar with French music and was surely just twitting the serious young northerner. It is also the work in which Handel in effect invented the organ concerto, with the ‘Sonata’ in Part 1, seemingly the first piece for solo organ and orchestra. The Handelian will find it, Hamlet-like, full of quotations; in it Handel drew on some of the music of his German years, and it served in turn as a quarry for many later works, including Agrippina and Rinaldo.
This new version is done with prodigious energy and with rather rapid tempos. Stepner takes 142 minutes over it, Minkowski (not exactly noted for deliberation) 139, Alessandrini 133. The young Italianate Handel can readily take these fast tempos, generally speaking, but here and there the music would have profited from being allowed more time to unfold. Two of Time’s arias (at the end of Part 1 and the middle of Part 2) are made to sound scrambled by the hurried tempos, as too is Pleasure’s final one. There is some oddly mannered playing in certain numbers: the bump on every first beat in ‘Lascia la spina’ (an earlier version of ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’), for example, is uncomfortable. But the rhythms do have plenty of spring and vitality, and the players, and the singers too, usually cope.
The star is undoubtedly Deborah York, as Beauty, whose bright, diamantine tone and incisive articulation, not to mention her agility (there is marvellous duetting with oboe in her second aria and, at some pace, with violin in her third), serve well. Her expressive singing in ‘Io sperai’, with obbligato oboe and continuo bassoon, is one of the high points, and her elevated singing towards the close, where Beauty is won over – beginning with the lovely slow aria ‘Voglio cangiar desio’ and ending with her final number with solo violin, ‘Tu del ciel’ – makes a moving climax.
I also enjoyed Pleasure, Gemma Bertagnolli, whose gentle, warm voice and easy delivery come over particularly happily in her aria with organ obbligato and the charming one that opens Part 2. Her rewritten, ‘ornamented’ passage-work in the da capo of her final aria is regrettable. Sara Mingardo provides some beautifully placed, measured singing in the arias for Truth; this is a neat and distinguished performance, refined in style and technique. Alessandrini’s organ accompaniment in her first aria, by the way, is an object lesson in musicianly continuo accompaniment. Nicholas Sears sings Time’s music attractively and with style although sometimes tested by the tempos; and he is particularly alert to the sense of the recitatives.
This is certainly the most dramatic of the three versions of Il trionfo in the catalogue. If the Minkowski set lacks some of the excitement of this new one, it is also a more balanced account, with the cool and poised Isabelle Poulenard in the central role and John Elwes admirable as Time. The version recorded at Aston Magna in 1999 under Daniel Stepner (which escaped review in these pages) provides a rather more sober view; Sharon Baker gives a warm and graceful account of Beauty’s music and Dominique Labelle sings Pleasure with some charm. That, however, is a bilingual performance, with the recitatives in English: a rather curious idea, to my mind. I should add that another recent issue, under Johannes Carlos Martini (Naxos) is largely a different work, Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verita, Handel’s choral version of 1737