do handel's cantatas matter? - BOLbusiness

218 ELLEN T. HARRIS
[6
states not only that Handel’s concert at St. John Lateran was
attended by an extraordinary audience, «above all Cardinals,
Prelates and the Nobility», but that Handel «made visits in
Rome to all the respected Musicians of some reputation». He
specifically describes an assembly the evening before the Lateran
concert at the house of the Pasqualini family, the «famous
musicians of the Pope», which gathered together all the «able
musicians of Rome known either for their voice or instrument»
14 . One member of this family, Pasqualino Tiepoli, soprano
castrato in the papal chapel, appears as well in Pamphili’s
account books, and may have been the singer who premiered
Il delirio amoroso 15 .
Pamphili himself wrote the text of Il delirio amoroso 16 . Its
story line can be described in traditional terms, as in the liner
notes of a recent recording: «The text of the cantata is
couched in the Arcadian literary conventions that were fashionable
in Rome at the time. Clori is distraught at the loss of
her lover Tirsi [...]. Narrative recitatives frame the text, but
otherwise the ‘voice’ of the singer is that of Clori as she de-
14 URSULA KIRKENDALE, Orgelspiel, p. 3; WERNER BRAUN, Händel und
der ‘römische Zauberhut’(1707), in «Göttinger Händel Beiträge» 3 (1989),
pp. 71-86, gives the author as Denis Nolhac (p. 72), based on the research
of Jean-Daniel Candaux (p. 82 n7).
15 MARX, Händel in Rom, p. 109, identifies Pasqualino as the singer
who gave the first performance of Il delirio amoroso. KIRKENDALE, Orgelspiel,
p. 5 n20 points out, however, that the document of 18 February in the
Pamphili accounts listing payments to musicians for the months January and
February indicates only four performances and one rehearsal for Pasqualino,
while the castrato Checchino (possibly Francesco de Castris, the singer
with whom Ferdinand de’ Medici had an intimate affair who was in exile in
Rome) was paid for seven performances and multiple rehearsals; thus the
identity of the singer at the premiere remains a question. For details on the
life of Francesco de Castris, see WARREN KIRKENDALE, The Court Musicians
in Florence during the Principate of the Medici, Florence, Leo. S. Olschki,
1993, pp. 437-446.
16 Whether or not it was specifically written for Handel to set is not
known; see MARX, Händel im Rom, pp. 108 and 116 n7, and MONTALTO,
Un mecenate, pp. 335 and 505.