Il caro Sassone
Halle was a modest-sized city just southwest of Berlin at the time of Georg Frideric Händel’s birth in 1685. Nominally a Prussian by political geography, Handel always considered himself a Saxon, and it was by this nickname – Il caro Sassone (the dear Saxon) – that he was often called by friends and admirers during his years outside German lands. Halle had seen better days by 1685, though for Handel it still provided opportunities for music instruction and employment, already beginning before his tenth birthday. Additionally, he would enroll for a short time at Halle’s university, founded only in 1694. While at school, Handel maintained a position as church organist and began seriously to cultivate his own compositions and a growing network of professional connections.

By the time Handel turned eighteen, it had become painfully clear that his talents would moulder in Halle’s provincial atmosphere. Passing up an offer from the royal court in Berlin – likely because Prussia maintained strict control over its servants – Handel instead settled as a free artist in Hamburg in July 1703. Hamburg, the principal North German port, offered a rich, cosmopolitan experience to young Handel. Significantly, the Hamburg Opera pulled together vocal elements from Protestant cantata traditions and imported aria-recitative and instrumental color from south of the Alps. Initially hired to play back-desk violin in the opera orchestra, this not-so-humble teenager soon asserted greater authority over musicians much his senior in years. He often took over musical direction from the keyboard, and within a short time was ready to bring forth his own works, starting with Almira and Nero in early 1705. These operas portended great things to come – and more specifically, they showed Handel’s easy adoption of the latest Italian style. Sadly, Hamburg was not able to retain Handel’s services. Political infighting at the opera and an uncertain line of succession to the top job fueled Handel’s desire to seek another home.

Around this time, Handel met a Tuscan prince visiting Hamburg, Gian Gastone de’ Medici. The two developed a fast friendship over shared musical interests. Medici praised the artistic riches of his native Florence, though Handel put little stock in such effusiveness. However, the prospect of a musical “Grand Tour” rekindled an urge Handel had nurtured for several years. Swayed by the prince’s warm invitation, Handel crossed the Alps in 1706 to arrive in the home of the Renaissance. These years (1706-1710) were decisive in Handel’s growth as an artist, and they laid a foundation for later triumphs in London.

When in Rome . . .
Based on meager evidence, historians believe that Handel moved around a bit at first, including stops in Florence and Venice. By January 1707 he had settled in Rome, where he would produce a series of masterful, mature works for both sacred and secular occasions. The Eternal City offered a composer numerous outlets for creativity. Spiritual center of the Western Christian world and home of the Pope, Rome also fostered a centuries-old tradition of secular musical academies supported by private wealth and boasting most of the city’s leading performers. Those competing realms actually supported diverging artistic trends. The Pope had placed a ban on opera in 1698, and it was not lifted until after Handel departed the region. Thus, musicians seeking significant support from religious figures, including many wealthy cardinals, would need to cultivate traditional sacred genres. Handel made his contribution by virtue of a brilliant Dixit Dominus and various psalm settings, all completed in 1707.

At the same time, more ostentatious and dramatically engaging fare could be found in secular cantatas, which essentially offered opera on a reduced scale. Most cantatas include only a handful of alternating recitative-aria pairings. Having heard and written several works in this minor genre, Handel was keen to try his hand at something a bit more ambitious. He quickly dashed off a brilliant first oratorio. This allegorical tale involves four personified attributes. Pleasure is pitted against Time and Disillusion for the devotion of Beauty; in general, it debates the competing appeal of earthly versus heavenly delights.

Frequently mentioned as Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion), Handel’s original title – as re-vealed in the manuscript copy – better captures the essential friction. La Bellezza ravveduta nel trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is a mouthful, to be sure, but it includes a critical element left out of the other designation: Beauty Redeemed by the Triumph of Time and Disillusion. Thus, even before a note of music has been heard, we know how our story will end. For the sake of space and keeping it distinct from Handel’s later version of the work (called Il Trionfo) from 1737, we shall refer to today’s oratorio as La Bellezza ravveduta.

Princes, Popes and Poets
The libretto was crafted by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili (1653-1730), one of the most prominent members of an ancient aristocratic family. The Pamphili name originated in Gubbio before the 14th century, and a century later they were well-entrenched in Rome. With Giovanni Battista Pamphili, the family had their first pope, Innocent X (who ruled from 1644-1655), though his reign was hardly innocent in regard to nepotism. A series of cardinals emerged within the family, including Handel’s librettist Benedetto. He served the church in many capacities and eventually became the Vatican’s chief archivist.

Outside the Vatican walls, Pamphili also nurtured artistic and literary ambitions. He was hardly alone in seeking to combine political/religious authority with an active role in cultural life. Cardinal Pamphili regularly attended sessions of the Accademia degli Arcadi, a forum for discussion and performance of contemporary art, music, and philosophy founded in 1690 by his close friend Marquis Francesco Ruspoli (1672-1731). In addition to princes and poets, this academy also could claim Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli as members. As we have seen this weekend, Scarlatti was a leading voice in Italian vocal style, while Corelli enjoyed fame as one of the best violinists in Europe. Both were influential on Handel as he took the opportunity to compose a dramatic vocal work for Pamphili in 1707.

Although Pamphili authored the text and received Handel’s dedication, the premiere performance of La Bellezza ravveduta would take place under the patronage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740). Like Pamphili, Ottoboni emerged as a major patron of the arts in 18th-century Rome, supporting such figures as Corelli, Vivaldi, and Scarlatti. His residence – the glorious Renaissance Palace of the Chancellery – became a venue for opera when such performances were banned in public. La Bellezza and a closely-linked piece, La Resurrezione, both took shape during papal bans on opera. As a kind of “work-around,” these pieces were billed as oratorios and presented in private residences: Ottoboni produced La Bellezza at his home in spring 1707, while Ruspoli had Resurrezione on Easter Sunday a year later.

Synopsis
La Bellezza unfolds in the conventional genre of a “controversy,” which is not to be understood by our modern sense of that word (i.e., as something shocking or embarrassing). Originally, controversies signified merely a dispute or debate; the Latin etymology implies a “turning against.” In La Bellezza ravveduta, Beauty poses a fundamental dilemma: to remain attached to physical beauty and earthly delights (“pleasures”), or to forgo them in quest of eternal peace and salvation. She receives varying pieces of advice from the other personified attributes: Pleasure (Piacere), Time (Tempo), and Disillusion (Disinganno). It is obvious what kind of advice will come from Pleasure herself, who stands in opposition to the staid wisdom proferred by Time and Disillusion. At the end, Beauty chooses the noble path, dashing her mirror to the ground, and delivering a wonderfully tender final aria.

This simple structure contrasts with contemporary opera libretti, with their mercurial heroes and heroines, their complex changes of allegiance and infatuation, their levels of deceit and redemption. Everything in La Bellezza ravveduta revolves around Beauty’s central puzzle, and this allows our focus to remain almost exclusively on the music. And what music it is! Handel clearly esteemed portions of it enough to reuse in other settings. Moreover, years later in London, he supervised new adaptations in both Italian (1737) and English (1757).

Part One
We can sense Handel’s own approval from the work’s very first movement. He launches La Bellezza ravveduta with a glittering Overture – material he recycled, note-for-note, just months later in La Resurrezione for Ruspoli. This is not a conventional “French Overture” familiar from countless Baroque operas. Handel eschews the typical majestic Overture topic and dives headlong into a buoyant, contrapuntal concerto for two violins. Whether Corelli had a direct hand in such music or not, he clearly would have approved.

Over the course of the first few arias, we meet the oratorio’s four protagonists. Beauty steps forth in effervescent, lilting phrases (No. 1), whereas something of Pleasure’s hidden anxiety already seeps into the angular gestures of “Dark spirits and black deceit” (No. 2). Immediately after, her two opponents for Beauty’s devotion – Time and Disillusion – get straight to the point:

Time: I shall reveal that Beauty is but a flower . . .
Disillusion: . . . which blooms lovely and fair for a single day, and then dies.

To arms then! Beauty begins on the side of Pleasure, even through Disillusion’s brilliant and unsettling “Urne voi” (No. 5) marked by a string of evaded cadences. Undeterred, Beauty and Pleasure unite for a sparkling coloratura duet celebrating the joys of youth. Beauty’s fiery “Un pensiero,” taking Time to task for its fickleness, shows the level of soloists active in Rome, and Handel was only too eager to push them to new heights.

Time and Disillusion continue their argument, but musically Handel also seems happy to side with Pleasure for now. He even injects himself, in a way, into the scene by including prominent organ solos in two movements, Nos. 10 and 11 (Handel was famous for his organ playing). As Part One nears its end, Beauty finally starts to succumb to counterarguments from Time and Disillusion. The latter’s tender aria with recorders is backed up with a short, forceful B section. Time follows up with the pivotal revelation: if Beauty is so eager to escape Time’s constant influence, she should look to eternity in Heaven. Handel captures her wavering mindset in the Quartet (No. 15), which also brings back the important symbol of the mirror, echoing the very first words she sang, “Fide specchio”(“Faithful mirror”).

Part Two
During Part Two, Beauty’s devotion to Pleasure erodes entirely. Already in “Io sperai” (No. 17), with its emotive oboe solo, Handel uses sharp dissonant outbursts to capture Beauty’s anguish at not finding Pleasure “within the realm of Truth.” Pleasure’s vengeful nature bursts forth, opening the door for Time and Disillusion to capture Beauty to their side. In “Piu non cura,” Disinganno regains the dulcet pastoral mood he found earlier, singing here of the peace that comes by living above the dark valley of temptation. From echoes of Christ as shepherd, Pamphili’s libretto brings in the related image of a skillful helmsman navigating a storm at sea (a poetic conceit that also turns up in La Resurrezione, by the way).

At this point, Pamphili and Handel make a strategic choice. Rather than end the entire oratorio with a grand quartet or chorus, the quartet “Voglio tempo” will appear right now, as Beauty is poised to make her fateful choice. Each character sings their individual phrase – Tempo and Disinganno reinforcing their supportive presence, Pleasure deriding their very involvement. Handel delays resolution with a masterstroke. In a last effort to win the day, Pleasure quells her bitterness in the sweet, ingratiating, and brief “Lascia la spina.” Built as a Sarabande, this aria uses beauty itself – rather than virtuosic fireworks – to lure Beauty back to its side. Handel recycled it a few years later as the famous “Lascia ch’io pianga” for Rinaldo (1711).

Beauty calls once more for her trusty mirror. At last, her decision is made: “Addio Piacere, addio” (Farewell Pleasure, farewell). Disillusion helps reinforce her choice even though it brings to light harsh realities about aging and earthly mortality. Making the analogy to a ship that must jettison weighty treasures if they threaten its progress, Beauty seems ready to move forward in No. 26. After victorious Time and Disillusion come together in a spirited duet, Handel comes full circle back to the scintillating strings of the Overture’s concerto manner. Pleasure bids farewell in an athletic tour de force. She has been defeated. But rather than gloat or even celebrate, Time and Disillusion step aside to let Beauty have the last word.

Her final aria – the final strains in this incredible work from 21-year-old Handel – is achingly tender and restrained. Perhaps significantly, Handel chose E major as the key for this devotional outpouring. In the 18th century, most composers attached fairly specific characteristics to individual musical keys. These were codified by none other than Johann Mattheson, Handel’s good friend from Hamburg. According to Mattheson, E major was linked with “fatalistic” moments, sometimes quite “sharp” or “painful” but necessary. Here the aria provides the final nail in the coffin of Beauty’s earth-bound vanity and marks her entry to heavenly bliss. No grand chorus or fevered ensemble number – just the pure beauty of a solo voice with minimal accompaniment. At his best, Handel could write Italian melody with an ease and charm that even native composers failed to surpass.

Jason Stell, © 2026