Sound and fury

As mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato prepares to sing Handel's arias around the world, she reflects on the challenge of performing his celebrated scenes of madness

Ignorance can be bliss: I'm afraid of delving too deeply into a composer's mind for fear of discovering that a masterpiece came into being to enable him to put food on the table rather than to further the evolution of the human spirit. I love to imagine an impassioned composer working all night to find the perfect, heart-wrenching harmonic progression to accompany the betrayal his hero just endured as he overheard the soprano utter, "Si".

What do we know of Handel's life? He was born on February 23 1685, just a month before Bach, into a remarkable age: Sir Isaac Newton was introducing his guidelines for the universe, the thermometer appeared, Hamlet was performed for the first time, the clarinet was invented, and the witch-hunts were in full swing in Salem. We know he set up shop for the majority of his life in London, constantly battling with shifting musical tastes, temperamental divas and competing theatres - all the while churning out successful works. But did he ever fall in love? Did a lover ever scorn and betray him? What sparked his jealousy? How could such a competitive workaholic know about such sorrow, or fury?

Perhaps it was lavish, magical theatrical devices that inspired him, or temperamental singers demanding showcase pieces. But I prefer to imagine that something welled up in him and that he had no choice but to express it musically.

Take the suspension of time in an aria like "Dolce riposo", with it's penetrating solo oboe and wave-like strings hauntingly reminding the character Medea, the sorceress in Handel's opera Teseo (1713), of the peace and repose that will never be hers? The drama is primed to turn bloody when that perfect, restful peace, so far from her and yet so seductive, is shattered with the discovery that her love, Teseo, has shunned her. Handel has set her (and us) up for a great fall, and he delivers it in the defiant "Ira, sdegni, e furore" (Anger, scorn and fury) - an audacious proclamation that she will invent new ways to avenge her pain, pronouncing that she will either win him back, or her rival will die. Handel brings the voice and strings into fierce unison careening down the octave, relishing the vision of revenge

Here the master is at his finest, crafting a three-dimensional character who possesses the power not just to impress with vocal histrionics, but to break our hearts. Her third aria, "Morirò, ma vendicata" ("I will die, but I will die avenged") begins with damning G minor chords followed by cascades of avenging strings - only to be stopped in their tracks by a weeping Medea announcing she will welcome death, and to accompany her in this fate, Handel brings back the solo oboe, weeping alongside her. But it is fleeting, as her thirst for revenge invades her soul, blasting away all hopes of that longed-for repose.

As Italian opera was beginning to fall out of fashion in London, Handel was intensely aware that his "product" was becoming more difficult to sell. This would soon encourage him to focus on oratorios. Thankfully, he did not succumb to the mode too easily, as he was invited to premiere a new work in grand Italian opera seria form for Covent Garden: Ariodante (1735). The role of Ariodante was created for the standout castrato Giovanni Carestini, one of the most celebrated artists of the day - and considering the devilish vocal writing Handel threw at him, he truly must have "had it all".

Searching for arias around the theme of "fury", "Scherza infida", Ariodante's haunting act two lament, was not an obvious first choice: it's hypnotic beauty stands in contrast to his announcement of intended suicide on discovering that his lover has just betrayed him. (Were they not singing of eternal love mere minutes ago? Yet here she is, falling shamelessly into the arms of another man?) Interestingly, where Handel chose violent, hellfire orchestrations for Medea - the scorned woman - he gives a slow, pulsating, calculated accompaniment to the man, a decorated war hero. We have no obvious "fire" as we did with Medea; this time we have "ice". Ariodante chooses his words most carefully as he tells this faithless woman to go ahead and laugh for now, but his death will rest on her shoulders for ever. It is his ultimate revenge - to haunt her for eternity.

This is one of the trickiest arias in the operatic canon to pull off: essentially, it's a 10-minute monologue consisting of three sentences. Ariodante's discovery of Ginevra's infidelity takes only seconds, but what is suggested is the days and years that it takes to process such news, and how one's response can change over that time. How much does he relish the thought of destroying her life with guilt? If he truly loved her, doesn't it also cause him pain? The same phrase can be uttered with icy resignation, and then through tears.

When I debuted this role for Geneva Opera, there were no elaborate painted baroque sets to sustain the audiences attention, no armour to hide behind, no real set, just the same three sentences over and over. And yet, I never sang it the same way twice. Each night the solo bassoon that Handel weaved into the texture of the orchestra spoke differently. Each utterance of "per tua colpa ora men vò" (by your fault, I go to my death) held a different, often surprising emotion, and my capacity to sing it varied: one moment in complete defiance ("I never loved you anyway"), and the next feeling so weak I could barely stand ("did you never love me?").

Handel wrote oratorios as the market demanded, and yet often they were far more dramatic than his operas. What was happening? The Italian opera melodrama was supposed to be dead. Handel wrote the Messiah at this time, but also Semele, which was declared a scandal for its bawdy subject matter and apparent lack of morals.

Inspired to conquer London, he turned to an English libretto by Thomas Broughton after The Trachiniae of Sophocles and The Metamorphoses of Ovid, and premiered his oratorio/musical drama Hercules at the King's theatre in London in January 1745. I wonder at how he could have written the character of Dejanira, the wife of Hercules, driven to madness by her unrelenting (and sadly, unjustified) jealousy.

It's not the outlandish plot that intrigues me, but the way in which Handel presents this woman who begins the opera already slightly unhinged by her grief, and sculpts her downfall into one of the greatest scenes of madness ever written, yet never once resorting to caricature.

On the first day of rehearsal I was shaking at the prospect of meeting Maestro William Christie for the first time, but he told our cast, "Don't you worry about anything - just give me everything you've got: soft and loud, black and white, whisper and yell, and we'll be just fine." He held my hand daily as I searched for her vulnerability, her madness. In the immense, exhausting final mad scene, "Where shall I fly", I ran into great difficulty trying to make it work, and at each dead end, I would return again to the score to search for an answer. It was always right there waiting for me: the repeated "See! See! See!" announcing the horror of her visions, the relentless melismas as she attempts to flee the furies, the jagged lines, and the hollow calls for the black shades of night to hide her.

It was a lasting lesson for me that Handel is ultimately about theatre. So whether he wrote to put food on the table or because he was channelling something divine, it doesn't matter: he moves me, and for that I thank him.

Joyce DiDonato will be singing in Les Talens Lyriques at the Barbican Hall, London, tonight. Box office: 020 7638 8891. Her CD of Handel's opera arias, Furore, is released on Virgin Classics.

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