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    Handel's Bestiary: In Search of Animals in Handel's Operas
    Handel's Bestiary: In Search of Animals in Handel's Operas
    Handel's Bestiary: In Search of Animals in Handel's Operas
    Ebook198 pages1 hour

    Handel's Bestiary: In Search of Animals in Handel's Operas

    By Donna Leon and Michael Sowa

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The New York Times–bestselling author delivers “a real tour de force” celebrating the fauna in Handel’s operas—with original illustrations by Michael Sowa (News—Austria).
     
    When acclaimed novelist Donna Leon is not conjuring up tales of crime and corruption in Venice—or appreciating its delicious cuisine—she revels in music. And for Leon, that usually means the work of her favorite composer, George Frideric Handel.
     
    Over the years, Leon has noticed that the great musician filled his operas with arias that make reference to animals. Rich in symbolism, the perceived virtues and vices of the lion, bee, nightingale, snake, elephant, and tiger, among others, resonate in his works.
     
    Here, Leon draws on her love of Handel and her expertise in medieval bestiaries, illustrated collections of animal stories, to assemble a one of her own—twelve chapters that trace twelve animals through history, mythology, and the Handel arias they inhabit. Each exploration is joined by whimsical original illustrations by German painter Michael Sowa.
     
    A fascinating, utterly original book that is “as clever as it is entertaining,” Handel’s Bestiary springs to life with Leon’s knowledge, passion, and wit (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung—Germany).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9780802195616
    Handel's Bestiary: In Search of Animals in Handel's Operas

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    • 4/5
      This was a fun read, but the real joy is in listening to the fantastic recording that accompanies it. The three and a half star rating is a compromise between the 4-star music CD and the 3-star writing. Leon's style, while entertaining, is a bit too self-consciously tongue-in-cheek for my taste.

    Book preview

    Handel's Bestiary - Donna Leon

    Handel’s Bestiary

    ALSO BY DONNA LEON

    Death at La Fenice

    Death in a Strange Country

    Dressed for Death

    Death and Judgment

    Acqua Alta

    Quietly in Their Sleep

    A Noble Radiance

    Fatal Remedies

    Friends in High Places

    A Sea of Troubles

    Willful Behaviour

    Uniform Justice

    Doctored Evidence

    Blood from a Stone

    Through a Glass, Darkly

    Suffer the Little Children

    The Girl of His Dreams

    About Face

    A Question of Belief

    Brunetti’s Cookbook

    Drawing Conclusions

    Donna Leon

    Handel’s Bestiary

    In Search of Animals

    in Handel’s Operas

    Illustrated by

    Michael Sowa

    Music by George Frideric Handel with

    Alan Curtis

    conducting Il Complesso Barocco

    Copyright © 2010 by Diogenes Verlag AG Zürich

    CD Copyright © + 2010 by Il Complesso Barocco

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or permissions@groveatlantic.com

    Published simultaneously in Canada

    Printed in the United States of America

    FIRST EDITION

    eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9561-6

    Atlantic Monthly Press

    an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

    841 Broadway

    New York, NY 10003

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    www.groveatlantic.com

    11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Contents

    Foreword

    Lion

    Snake

    Nightingale

    Bee

    Silver Dove

    Tiger

    Frogs

    Elephant

    Moth

    Stag

    Phoenix

    Turtle Dove

    Sources

    ›Il Complesso Barocco‹ List of Musicians and CD

    Foreword

    Subtract the motor. Cancel it from your consciousness: switch it off, as it were. Then take a new look at the world, or – better said – take a look at the way the world was before so much of it was changed by the arrival of the motor and all it brought along with it. Suddenly the order of importance given to certain things will change. Who needs oil? Where can I find a good riding horse?

    One of the first recalibrations that the absence of the motor demands is a re-shifting of the order of creation that will allow animals to return to their former importance. The muscle power of man, made pretty much redundant by the arrival of the machine, will still be inferior to that of an ox, and his ability to move quickly from place to place will again depend upon the speed of the horse. Not only did animals supply muscle power, but their ownership and husbandry was one of the principal bases of wealth, and thus power, in the pre-industrial world.

    Returning to former times will also cause us to lose access to those sources that today provide us with information about the world we live in – the printed book, films, television, the internet – and leave us once again dependent upon the means which informed past ages of the world around them: oral tradition, legend, and manuscript. The importance of the role played by animals in these sources cannot be overstated.

    Man lived with animals and around animals, and thus their abilities and habits were the stuff of common knowledge and of common reference. Folk tales were filled with their antics, their cunning, and their sense of independence, and much moral instruction was based upon their observed – or imputed - behavior. Leftovers of this come down in the English-speaking world in expressions like Cunning as a fox, Brave as a lion, Dirty as a pig, Wily as a serpent.

    The attributes which common wisdom linked to various animals were often based upon direct observation: foxes are cunning, and lions are brave, and a mother tiger will defend her young at any cost. But much was based on other sources, among which – at least in Europe – was the Bible, which probably explains the bad reputation of the snake, who is really quite a helpful chap, gobbling up insects and vermin. Much received wisdom about animals also filtered down from the Natural History of Pliny the Elder and the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, as well as from that great historian, Herodotus.

    Information – well, what passed for information – about animals also had a way of slipping in from other cultures and from sketches and verbal accounts brought back from travelers in foreign lands. Thus the pictorial representation of animals which had been described but never seen displayed a certain inventiveness. A manuscript from Northern France (ca. 1300) pictures what is meant to be an elephant but which actually looks like a friendly dog with pig tusks, from between which emerges something that looks like a cross between a walrus horn and a vacuum cleaner. In one later bestiary, a painting of what is often said to be a sloth, might just as easily be a curly-haired mouse with inordinately large feet. These early manuscripts also contain an inventive menagerie of dragons and demons, sirens and centaurs, as well as griffons and unicorns. There are also ox-headed Saint Lukes and sheep-headed pastors.

    Strangely enough, only a century later artists other than the ones who illustrated the Bestiaries were even then painting, sketching, and drawing perfect pictures of animals and birds, accurate to the most minute detail. The Biblioteca Civica of Bergamo possesses the notebook of Giovannino de Grassi with drawings of birds and animals so real that they seem only perched on the page, ready to fly off into reality. Or consider for a moment all of those perfectly rendered dogs sitting under the tables where Christ is eating the last supper or noblemen are feasting. But the business of the Bestiary was to teach, not to render an accurate pictorial record, and the craftsmen who illustrated them were a world away in talent from the artists who were in the process of opening Europe’s eyes.

    Man is an imaginative creature who delights in making connections between the real world and a higher world. Thus the perceived virtues and vices of animals are often made to resonate in the human sphere to serve as examples from which moral lessons can be drawn to the edification and improvement of fallen mankind. Mickey Mouse did not conquer the world because he is a fool; Goofy’s name is not an accident.

    Though this tradition is Medieval and pre-Medieval, certainly these habits of thought and association filtered down into the Eighteenth Century to become part and parcel of the mental baggage of writers, poets, and – of concern here – opera librettists. The qualities attributed to animals served, and still serve, as a sort of moral shorthand, and so reference to a lion in an aria would summon with it the courage that is traditionally attributed to that animal, the noblest of them all. To fill an aria about a snake with sibilant words and then to set it to a sinuous rhythm would enforce the association with the chief enemy

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