IN 18th-century Italy, the opera closed down during Lent, but opera-goers still wanted to be entertained. The answer was that composers wrote dramatic oratorios.
One such was Il Daniele nel Lago de’ Leoni (Daniel in the Lions’ Den), by Francesco Scarlatti, uncle to the more famous Domenico, probably performed in Palermo in about 1710, and discovered in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, by Geoffrey Webber. The libretto is based on the book of Daniel, with incidents drawn from the Septuagint. As well as the lion’s den, there is Daniel’s unmasking of the priests who are sneaking in at night to eat the offerings left for Baal, and the prophet’s besting of a fire-breathing dragon. The prophet Habbakkuk is carried through the air to rescue Daniel by an angel holding on to his hair.
In the oratorio’s first modern performance, in the Wigmore Hall, London, last month, by the Armonico Consort, seven singers provided both chorus and soloists, who did full justice to the composer’s clear musical characterisations. Billie Robson’s bright-voiced Angel contrasted well with Hannah Fraser-Mackenzie’s softer Daniel, to whom the composer gives undecorated, rhythmically uncomplicated lines expressive of deep and simple faith, except in his final “Chieto mi resto”, in which a sudden exuberant flurry of notes expresses his joy.
Alex Jones’s Demon held just enough menace not to topple over into parody, and was a devil who got one of the best tunes in the contrapuntal voice and violin duet “La sostanza vi lascio”. The promising tenor Graham Neal as Habbukkuk shone in the Handelian “Correre per soccorrere”, ably accompanied by Peter Mankarious’s natural trumpet. The alto William Towers was by turns coaxing, blustering, and oddly sympathetic as the weak Babylonian king Dario, who tries to convince his friend Daniel to worship Baal, and sings in a drooping, nicely coloured line of his impotence in the face of a crowd.
Scarlatti treats his improbable material with reverence. As in the Mystery plays, there are comic touches, but the central message of God’s triumph over evil is never obscured. His scoring is skilful, light when accompanying singers, but effectively descriptive in orchestral passages, such as the opening chorus’s cascading downward scales representing flights of arrows. Some roughness in the upper strings did not detract from the work’s dramatic power, a credit to the director Christopher Monks, and to Geoffrey Webber’s solid and flexible organ continuo.
There is a modern trend to stage oratorios. This is a work that absolutely cries out for it.
