Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Handel: Jephtha

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Many of George Frideric Handel's oratorios were premiered during Lent. On this the fifth and last Sunday in Lent I will present for a third time on the airwaves Handel's last full length composition, Jephtha. In 1752 it was a struggle for Handel to complete writing the music. His eyesight was giving out and he went completely blind immediately thereafter. (True, even in blindness, he wrote another oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, in 1757, but its score was assembled with the assistance of colleagues and came from preexisting music.) 

Jephtha is a lyric tragedy derived from the Old Testament Book of Judges. Jephtha, the Israelite military hero, must sacrifice his daughter Iphis to the Lord as a consequence of his bargain with God, who grants him victory. The story has its parallels in the Greek legends about Idomeneus and Agamemnon. In Thomas Morell's libretto for Jephtha, Iphis' death sentence is commuted because of the 18th century public's demand for a happy ending. Jehovah shows His mercy and Handel gets to end the oratorio, as usual, with a rousing "Halleluyah!" chorus.

I have presented Jephtha twice before, first on Sunday, March 11, 1997, working from a CD reissue of a 1979 Decca/London recording. Neville Marriner led his own chamber orchestra, The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with an all-English lineup of choristers and vocal soloists. That English orchestral Academy is not a "period instrument" ensemble, but the Academy for Ancient Music of Berlin certainly is. Marcus Creed directed those "period" players, plus the RIAS Chamber Chorus and a mostly British cast of solo singers. The 1994 Berlin Classics CD release of Jephtha was broadcast on Sunday, November 2, 2014. The broadcast was intended to promote an upcoming local performance of the oratorio making use of a new performing edition of Handel's score prepared by Ken Nott, resident musicologist of the Hartt School. The Hartt Collegium and Hartt Chamber Choir took part in the concert.

Today you will hear the latest recording of Jephtha released under the British CORO record label in 2014. Harry Christophers directs the period instrumentalists and chorus of The Sixteen, with six British vocal soloists. On this Lenten Sunday your "lyric theater" program participates in Marathon 2016, this station's annual week of intensive on-air fundraising. Periodically during the course of the afternoon's presentation I will be going on mic to urge you opera lovers to phone in your pledges of financial support to the Sunday opera program and indeed to the entire weeklong lineup of classical programming on WWUH. You faithful listeners have never failed to help us meet of even exceed our fundraising goals in Marathons past, so I thank you in advance for your generosity.