2019: Between Alcina and Theodora. Female figures in the works of Handel and his contemporaries

International Academic Conference during the Handel Festival in Halle (Saale), 1 and 3 to 5 June 2019

Between the pagan sorceress Alcina and the Christian martyr Theodora, Handel has created a complex cosmos of female figures in his operas, oratorios, cantatas and serenatas, fed by history, myth and epic. That women in Handel’s works are often “powerful” figures, that they are active and dominant and act self-confident, gives them a modern touch and raises the question of past and present gender conceptions. The modernity of Handel’s female figures also shows in their emotional complexity and dramatic developability. The musical elaboration of the individual parts was, of course, always linked to the interpreters and performance situations for which Handel composed his works.

Experts from the USA, Great Britain, Austria and Germany will speak about Handel’s female figures in their historical characteristics and current brisance. The intention is to find out if Handel’s complex view of female characters is a singular or rather time-typical phenomenon.

At the beginning of the conference, the International Handel Research Prize 2019 will be awarded. Following the lecture on 1 June, Prof. em. Dr. Silke Leopold will receive the Handel Prize of the City of Halle.

Programme

Saturday, June 1, 2019, Stadthaus am Markt

10 am: Festival Lecture and Award of the Handel Prize of the City of Halle

Silke Leopold (Heidelberg)
Von A(thalia) bis Z(enobia): Händels Galerie der starken Frauen (in German only)

Monday, June 3, 2019, Händel-Haus, Kammermusiksaal

10 am: Opening of the Conference and Greetings

Award of the International Händel Research Prize

Lecture by the prizewinner

Musical Programme: Students of the Institut für Musik, Medien- und Sprechwissenschaften der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

1:45 to 3:15 pm: Section I

Elisabeth Birnbaum (Wien)
„So are they blest who fear the Lord“? – Händels biblische Frauengestalten

Sabine Volk-Birke (Halle)
Geschlechterrollen in Händels Oratorien: Haben Frauen Handlungsspielräume?

3:30 to 5 pm: Section II

Irmtraud Fischer (Graz)
Gender „wildert in Texten“. Zur Rezeption biblischer Frauenfiguren

Matthew Gardner (Tübingen)
Female Virtue in Early English Oratorios

5:30 pm: guided tour through the exhibition „Ladies first“

Tuesday, June 4, 2019, Händel-Haus, Kammermusiksaal

9 to 10:30 am: Section III

Natassa Varka (Cambridge)
„For Wisdom far renown’d“: Jennens’s Nitocris and her role in Belshazzar

Ellen T. Harris (Massachusetts)
Deranged, defiant, and dutiful: Ginevra, Susanna, and Iphis facing the threat of death

10:45 am to 12.15 pm: Section IV

Berta Joncus (London)
„Charity as well as Skill in Music“: Galatea, Giulia Frasi, and Self-Staging at Ranelagh Garden Concerts

Donald Burrows (Milton Keynes)
Beyond Theodora. Handel’s oratorio soloists in the 1750s: men, women and castrati

1:45 to 3:15 pm: Section V

Ina Knoth (Hamburg)
Eine Kriegerin – drei Tonsprachen? Margherita Durastanti in Il Muzio Scevola

John H. Roberts (Berkeley)
Semiramide: Handel’s Unknown Queen

3:30 to 5 pm: Section VI

Reinhard Strohm (Oxford)
Weibliche Arientypen in der venezianischen Oper und bei Händel?

Wendy Heller (Princeton)
Authority, Agency, and Autonomy: Handel’s Women and the Legacy of the Seicento Heroine

5:30 pm: guided tour through the editorial office of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe

Wednesday, June 5, 2019, Händel-Haus, Kammermusiksaal

9 to 10:30 am: Section VII

Ivan Ćurković (Zagreb)
Concealing musical feminity: women pretending to be men in Handel’s works

Graydon Beeks (Claremont)
„Thy hand, Dalinda“: Characterization, Contrast and Maturity in Ariodante

10:45 am to 12:15 pm: Section VIII

Antje Tumat (Paderborn)
Rodelinda bei Händel und seinen deutschen Zeitgenossen
→ This paper is cancelled!

Ruth Smith (Cambridge)
„Ho un gran cor“: Dorinda’s great-heartedness

1:45 to 3:15 pm: Section IX

Corinna Herr (Bochum)
Griselda zwischen Scarlatti und Vivaldi: Wandlungen eines Weiblichkeitsbilds im Dramma per musica
→ This paper is cancelled!

Florian Mehltretter (München)
Il pastor fido – Decorum und Tragikomik unter Nymphen und Schäferinnen

1:45 to 3:15 pm: Section X

Anke Charton (Wien)
Amastre to Armida: Tropes of Female Agency in Handel and beyond

Suzanne Aspden (Oxford)
Emblems, allegories, didacticism and nationalism: figuring the female in mid eighteenth-century Britain

Conclusion

Abstracts and biographies can be read in the conference brochure.

Download the flyer of the conference:
Flyer Handel 2019 [2.4MB/pdf]

Download the conference brochure:
Programme 2019 [169KB/pdf]