Exactly so.  Bononcini's name (and music) have gone entirely unmentioned in the discussion - and you'll scrat-about in vain for recordings of any of the music that was rated Handel's greatest rival at the time.  Bononcini's "Opera Of The Aristocracy" proved the fickleness of the London public, and an absurd judgemental streak which has, however, surfaced in the messages above.

I'm unconvinced by stagings of Handel's oratorios.  Poetry the texts may be - drama they aren't.  Drama requires well-formed and credible characters, placed in a sequence of situations which challenge their beliefs and abilities (pace Dario Fo amongst many others).  Handel was the master of the operatic genre, and as both a composer, and moreover as an impresario with a financial interest in the box-office success of his work, took particular care in securing well-crafted libretti.  For example, when he already had a good libretto for TAMERLANO in his hands, one of the soloists for the piece arrived from Italy with a different version of the Tamerlane story....  Handel read it assidusouly, found material he liked greatly, and worked day-and-night to make changes in his own work that would incorporate this material (even though the piece was already in rehearsal and an opening night announced).

Handel was more than aware of the genre difference between opera and oratorio - a difference which is certainly not so blurred as the "staging Handel's oratorios" pundits would have you believe.  We discussed the THEODORA production here before, but not really in any depth.  It's impossible to believe in the goody-goody Cultists of Theodora - because they never have any action (in the libretto) in which their "goodness" is manifested.  Instead they gawp around "looking Holy", trying to do that impossible* thing - displaying character traits without any outlet for doing so.  However, fair play to Sellars - he isn't one-sided, and the outrageous overacting that goes into the chorus's appearance as the Drunken Court Of Diocletian's Procurator  is equally unbelievable. ("ah, beer cans - they must be evil johnnies, eh, what?").  The antipathy between two groups of people you don't care a whit for is a poor start to a drama, and the plight of Theodora in her woefully static imprisonment makes an appeal to the heart which sadly falls into the category of maudlin sentimentality.  (My thumb began to hover over the FF button from this point onwards).  The last scene with the lethal injection is a rather cheap trick.  The reason it doesn't work for me, is because none of them are believable at any stage - because there is so little action in which the characters can be manifested.  (Croft tries his darndest, and they're all straining to do a good job in impossible circumstances).  I later listened to the entire piece again with the screen turned off, and enjoyed it rather more - as an ORATORIO it's a successful work, in a fine performance (although I still lean towards the McCreesh recording).  THEODORA is a work of reflection, not of action.  Handel perfectly finds that reflective mood in his score, and clearly never intended the work to be staged.

I'd really question whether there was ever an artistic basis for staging the work, and whether it wasn't commercial concerns, and the British public's unstaunchable appetite for Handel's religious works that dictated the choice of repertoire here?  It's hardly as though there's a shortage of Handel operas to perform...  nor those of his more talented contemporaries such as Hasse, or indeed - since I've been challenged on it - Telemann, and more pertinently Vivaldi.

There is, however, a streak of the British public whose views we can see above - who despise opera. They can, however, be won over to Oratorio, because they believe that genre to be shorn of all of the vile and detestable traits found in operas (such as "opera hats" (c) Mumbly).  You'll excuse my cynicism in suggesting that Glyndebourne were very well aware of this when staging Theodora, and Bach's B-Minor Mass.  Nothing's quite so profitable as religious fervour - just ask Jimmy Swaggart 

* Brook proved the impossibility of this with his "Theatre Of Cruelty" experiments at the RSC - the conclusions of which are regarded as authoratative for mainstream theatre.

Reiner, you left out the Coke cans...

Despite Reiner's fine presentation of the case to the contrary I do remain a big fan of Peter Sellars' staging. (Which I don't say just for the sake of argument, rather just so that no one coming along here might be put off the idea of investigating it.) I can't say anything against Reiner's concrete objections, only that they don't stop it being for me an effective theatrical experience. It's easy to call the lethal injection scene a cheap trick but unlike many cheap tricks it does at least spring from the text ('Streams of pleasure ever flowing'... OK, groan if you like but it worked for me).

Certainly there's not quite a useful amount of characterisation and general action to be had in most of the Handel oratorios. On the other hand for me there's really not that much in most of the operas either and the oratorios at least benefit from the absence of certain staging conventions, as well as from a more direct relationship with the language as Richard points out. (I do find Tamerlano very much an exception among the operas... on the other hand for me the oratorios have even more exceptions!) And also on the other hand I think nowadays it's not too much either to ask either a director to make sense of moments where the plot doesn't move (goodness knows da capo arias have enough of that!) or to ask an audience to acccept some gloriously reflective music. Ultimately the experience needs to have dramatic pacing whether it's staged or not - and I personally find that more in the more dramatic of Handel's oratorios (Belshazzar, Hercules, Theodora) than in any operas I know before, well, Mozart.

Not completely - I was just waiting for the offer of a "bung" from the Coca-Cola Corp for product-placement of their product in my exegesis    But I see your email got to them first... 

I can see that HERCULES might make a slightly better stage work - "Where shall I fly?/See, see they come" is a clear escapee from the opera-house, and decades ahead of its time 

I ought to disclose my latent fear that if Handel's oratorios become staged regularly, this opens the stage door to the swirling vortex of Victorian faux-piety that includes Mendelssohn's ELIJAH, reaching a low-water mark with Parry's "The Soul's Ransom", and finally gurgles down the plughole with Stainer's "The Crucifixion" 

McGegan seems to have recorded it barely earlier than that (1989); no idea if anyone else pipped him to it. There certainly wouldn't be any excuse for it. I do remember an old vocal score of it in that charming old English typeset style which might suggest it made it to performance some time. Various bits were marked 'it is suggested that this be omitted' or 'this is usually omitted' or some such. 'Dread the fruits of Christian folly' was one such. Absurd to leave that out, on characterisation grounds if nothing else.

It wasn't all that successful in Handel's day, alas.


Thanks to wiki once again.

Cool!

http://mdz10.bib-bvb.de/~db/0001/bsb00016734/images/index.html?seite=1

You've no doubt already noticed that Valens is expressly called 'President' in the libretto. If that isn't giving Peter Sellars an open goal I don't know what is. 

The 'Two Harlots' of Solomon become 'Two Women' in some editions if I remember right...

So are you saying Handel was as popular in the 70's as he is now? I think not! It was the rise of the authentic movement that raised Handel during the 80s and especially the 90s. The old Germanic school made a mockery of Handel before that.

They did indeed: Judas Maccabaeus became Wilhelmus von Nassauen (only one of several Nazified versions of this work, which were all performed with some "success") and Israel in Egypt became Mongolensturm.