Acis and Galatea (Handel)

Acis and Galatea (HWV 49) is a musical work by George Frideric Handel with an English text by John Gay.

As is typical of the genre, Acis and Galatea was written as a courtly entertainment about the simplicity of rural life and contains a significant amount of wit and self-parody.

[2] The work is set to a libretto by John Gay which is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, xiii (see Acis and Galatea (mythology)), and there is some uncertainty as to whether he was the only author of the text.

The libretto also borrowed freely from John Dryden's English translation of Ovid published in 1717, The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea.

This is the period in which the gardens at Cannons were being extensively 'improved' with water features that included an impressive jet d'eau,[3] and so the choice of Acis and Galatea at this time, given that the conclusion requires a fountain, seems particularly apt.

The revised version was performed in a concert format in 1732 by the Italian opera in London and, according to Handel, included "a great Number of the best Voices and Instruments".

The work was advertised on posters saying the following, "There will be no Action on the Stage, but the Scene will represent, in a Picturesque Manner, a rural Prospect, with Rocks, Groves, Fountains and Grotto’s; amongst which will be disposed a Chorus of Nymphs and Shepherds, Habits, and every other Decoration suited to the Subject."

Although successful, the three-act version was not as well received as Arne's production, as the mix of style and languages made the work oddly devised.

[1] Handel's two-act English version is the basis for the form of the work that is most often performed today, although modern productions typically use a different arrangement from the one that he himself actually devised.

The opera shifts from its pastoral and sensual mood into an elegiac quality as the chorus warns Acis and Galatea about the arrival of a monstrous giant, Polyphemus, singing "no joy shall last".

The fugal minor-key of the chorus's music along with the percussive lines in the lower instruments, indicating the heavy footsteps of the giant, provides an effective dramatic transition into the more serious nature of the second act.

Polyphemus enters singing of his jealous love for Galatea, "I rage, I melt, I burn", which is in a part-comic furioso accompanied recitative.

The work closes with Galatea's larghetto air, "Heart, the seat of soft delight", in which she exerts her powers to enact the transformation, ending with the chorus celebrating Acis's immortalisation.