Turkish Delight: Handel's Tamerlano
By Leann Davis Alspaugh

Sultans and seraglios, turbans and tambourines-these were all the rage in the 18th century. Much of this vogue came from the popularity of janizary marches. The Janizary, the bodyguard of Turkish rulers, played on drums, triangles and the Turkish crescent, a pole covered in bells that was banged on the floor to mark time. Turkish tales easily carried over to the opera stage where the attraction of exotic music alongside oriental costumes made turquerie irresistible.

The lure of the East is as old the ancients, going back to Alexander's march to India. The Crusaders and the Silk Road traders brought back spices, silks and gold to adorn Renaissance princes and rich Dutch burghers. The luxury and voluptuous tastes associated with the East played no small part in the burgeoning age of conspicuous consumption in the West.

However, it was the rise of the Ottoman Empire and Mehmet II's conquest of Constantinople in 1453 that brought the East closer than ever before to Europe. The fall of the Byzantine Empire marked the end of a thousand-year empire with direct ties to the classical world. In his program of empire-building, Mehmet began to make forays into parts of Europe, but equally important was his plan to restore the glory of Constantinople. Under the Ottoman rulers, Greek and Italian influences blended with Persian-Turkish architecture, literature, decorative arts, music, and dance to make the capital a real cultural crossroads. When this rich export made its way westward, Europeans eagerly embraced Turkish delights of all sorts. (Interestingly, one of Mehmet's achievements was the reunification of Anatolia, a region first consolidated in 1402 by one Sultan Bayezid I. Bayezid-or Bajazet-was Mehmet's great-grandfather.)

Tamerlano Takes the Stage
By the time Handel's Tamerlano premiered in London in 1724, European culture was thoroughly saturated with Turkish motifs. Many of these ideas had devolved into stereotypes of Turks as passionate, indulgent, impulsive and sensual. While the authenticity of these impressions is questionable, their theatrical potential is obvious and Eastern-inflected dances and quasi-middle-eastern music appeared frequently in operas, ballets and plays. One of the earliest efforts was the first full-length opera in English, The Siege of Rhodes (1656) by Sir William Davenant, a dramatization of Suleiman the Magnificent's 1522 raid. The apotheosis of 18th-century opera à la turque is surely Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782), a snappy rescue romp in which the character of Pasha Selim covers all the Turkish clichés.

Written in three weeks between Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Rodelinda, Tamerlano went into rehearsals just days after Handel completed the score. The opera featured not one but three of the greatest stars of the day: the castrato Senesino as Andronico, the prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni as Asteria, and the renowned tenor Francesco Borosini as Bajazet. In fact, it was Borosini who brought the story to Handel's attention. Borosini, opera's first superstar, arrived in London with a libretto and manuscript score for Il Bajazet, an opera given at Reggio Emilia in 1719. As he presented the score to the composer, Borosini claimed that the show-stopping suicide scene had been written for him. Whatever the case, the role of Bajazet in Handel's Tamerlano is the first important tenor role in opera. (Tamerlano also marks Handel's first use of clarinets.) However, it is worth noting that Handel titled his opera not for the sultan, but for the 14th-century Mongol warlord Timur the Lame, also know as Tamerlane.

Timur the Lame
In England, the exploits of Tamerlane were first recounted by Christopher Marlowe in his poetic drama Tamburlaine the Great (1587):

Then shall my native city, Samarcanda... Be famous through the furthest continents; For there my palace-royal shall be placed, Whose shining turrets shall dismay the heavens, And cast the fame of Ilion's tower to hell.

The heavens were no doubt dismayed for Timur pursued his fame by sacking cities across Asia and India, slaying thousands of infidels and amassing untold wealth in jewels and gold. He is said to have spared only his fellow Muslims, scholars and artisans, the latter of whom were deported to beautify Samarqand.

Timur and Bajazet had been enemies for years when the Mongol warrior defeated the sultan at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Bajazet was captured and later died in captivity. Timur rationalized his attack on Bajazet by contending that the Turk had usurped Seljuk authority in Anatolia-authority granted, Timur believed, by the Mongols of the Golden Horde from whom he claimed ancestry.

The Man and the Music
In his study of Tamerlano, J. Merrill Knapp shows that Handel's frequent collaborator, Nicolo Haym, lifted the libretto almost wholesale from Piovene's 1710 opera of the same name. This kind of "adaptation" was common and certainly does not reflect badly on Haym as he never took credit as author. Knapp describes the opera as "an amalgam combining much of Piovene's 1719 Il Bajazet, a little of [Haym's] own inventions and probably some tinkering by Handel."

Significantly, Handel and Haym kept Bajazet's suicide scene. This dramatic moment tilts the balance of power from Tamerlano the conqueror to Bajazet the defiant prisoner. The defeated sultan seizes a cup of poison and declares that he is in control of his fate. "Forte e lieto a morte andrei," he sings-strong and gladly I go to death. In word and music, Handel ends the opera with Bajazet as the tragic hero, while his captor is left to achieve what nobility he can by a belated gesture of generosity.

In Handel's hands, the opera seria, or recitative alternating with aria, is an almost perfect meeting of form and content. Much of this comes from his virtuosity with the da capo aria and how he uses it to define character and propel drama. The da capo technique involves an initial, sung-through section that is then recapitulated with added vocal ornamentation. These embellishments are seldom written out in the score and serve not only to display a singer's artistry, but also to intensify dramatic expression. As the singer pushes onward, increasing the complexity of the ornamentation, sustaining inventiveness and maintaining agility, the dramatic tension escalates considerably. Handel was famous as a demanding director, but he must also have been a highly-valued collaborator to encourage such imaginative exploration of character.

Tamerlano contains all the ingredients for great opera: cruelty and conquest, subjugation and magnanimity-and, of course, love, mistaken identity and suicide. Handel manipulates it all with emotional intensity and unerring clarity. The monumental forces that motivated Timur and his opponent have long faded into history, but Tamerlano reinvigorates the encounter, this time between man and music.

Author's note: I am indebted to Eve R. Meyer's essay "Turquerie and Eighteenth-Century Music."

Leann Davis Alspaugh, a frequent contributor to LA Opera's performance programs, writes about opera from Boston.