Last Handel

The Cantata Singers' Jephtha

by Lloyd Schwartz

Handel's very last oratorio, Jephtha, which many aficionados consider his greatest work, was a race against time. The composer was losing his eyesight. As the MIT Handel scholar Ellen Harris indicated in her moving pre-Cantata-Singers-concert talk, Handel completed Jephtha's long first act in 12 days, and all but the final chorus of the long second act in 11 days. He stopped for 10 days, then on February 23, 1751, his 66th birthday, he went back to his most autobiographical chorus, the magnificent and disturbing "How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees," which ends with the chilling insistence of Alexander Pope's ringing phrase "Whatever is, is right." During another hiatus, this one four months, he lost all sight in his left eye. The long last act (each act contains at least an hour of music) took him another month. He never completed another new work.

You feel his pain in Jephtha, which is probably the saddest piece he ever wrote. It's the story from Judges. Jephtha was cast out by his half-brothers because of his mother's shady past. But when the Israelites needed a warrior to defend them, they called on Jephtha, who makes a vow to God that if he wins the war against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first person he sees when he comes home. As in the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, that person is his daughter -- nameless in the Bible, but evocatively "Iphis" in Thomas Morrell's libretto.

In the Bible, Jephtha actually sacrifices his daughter. In the oratorio, an angel descends, like the one who interrupts Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and reinterprets Jephtha's vow: Iphis can live, but only as a virgin dedicating her life to God. Even her fiancé, Hamor, is relieved, and everyone celebrates, though Handel's ending is a compromise -- we can't help feeling his sense of resignation to a willful and mercurial power beyond human understanding.

A pervasive melancholy colors the entire oratorio. The moments of joy all seem to be clouded. And this essential dourness and doubt is what David Hoose stressed in the grimly powerful performance he led with the Cantata Singers. It was not an easy or comforting evening to get through, even with some cuts in the third act. Bach's Passions are more uplifting. But this performance will surely stay with me for a long time to come.

Hoose had a fine cast, though only countertenor Jeffrey Gall, as Hamor, was consistently at his best voice. Hamor is the good guy, engaged to the heroine, who never gets the girl (he's almost a prototype of Mozart's Don Ottavio); even in his first aria, the gorgeous "Dull delay is piercing anguish," Gall was already emphasizing pain over ardor. His voice remains a wonder: full and open at the top, brilliantly flexible in coloratura (which he executes with both bravura and taste), and emotionally rich in its infinite capacity for coloration and inflection.

The enchanting soprano Janet Brown was the perfect Iphis once her limpid, crystalline voice warmed up. That gleam arrived just in time for the first-act love duet with Gall. In her ravishing second-act "Tune the soft melodious lute," with Christopher Krueger's heavenly flute obbligato, she's about to rush out and greet her victorious father -- one of the great moments of dramatic irony in Handel that Brown made one of the evening's emotional high points. In Iphis's radiant acceptance of her father's rash promise, she ascended to pure spirit.

Mezzo-soprano Mary Westbrook-Geha was a forceful Storgè, Iphis's loving mother, who's enraged by Jephtha's vow. Baritone David Kravitz was, as usual, excellent in the key secondary role of Zebul, Jephtha's half-brother, and soprano Karyl Ryczek made a brief but glowing appearance as the Angel.

Three years ago, I wouldn't have believed tenor William Hite could ever sing Jephtha. This intelligent, musical, sweet-voiced singer had serious problems in the upper register. Those problems are virtually gone. His warmth has a new biting edge. He established the tough-but-tender character of Jephtha from his first notes. In the broken accompanied recitative, "Deeper and deeper still, thy goodness, child/Pierceth a father's bleeding heart" (which precedes the great "How dark, O Lord" chorus), Jephtha's militant defensiveness about his vow melts before Iphis's self-sacrifice. Hite was heartbreaking, transfixed by what he had done. And in the sublime "Waft her, angels, through the skies," his half-voiced phrases had an aching tenderness.

The role asks for a voice that can be stronger than Hite's (Jephtha is, after all, a warrior). The final turn inward ought to contrast more dramatically with the strength of his earlier heroic self. Still, this was a great accomplishment for a first shot at a complex tragic role. Hite is about to do his first Boston Evangelist in the Boston Cecilia's upcoming St. John Passion.

The Cantata Singers chorus outdid itself in the grandeur of its outpourings and in its haunting quietude, as did the orchestra, which included Peggy Pearson's plangent oboe lament piercing through the "How dark" chorus, the brilliant trumpets of Dennis Alves and Neil Mueller, and the expressive continuo of Michael Beattie (harpsichord/organ) and Beth Pearson (cello).