Colonizing Familiar Territory: Musical Topics, Stylistic Level, and Handel's Cleopatra

Greg Decker, Florida State University

With few exceptions, there is a distinct paucity of modern analytical studies regarding the association of music and drama in Baroque opera seria. Authors who do mention these works restrict themselves to passing comments or assume that they are inherently undramatic. However, in this paper, I contend that compelling relationships between music and drama may be revealed if the analysis of these operas is approached in a way that acknowledges the aesthetic principles that influenced their composition. Solo arias constitute the chief mode of expression in Baroque opera seria, and these musical monologues, through the intersection of music and drama, reveal the personalities and motivations of the characters who perform them. This paper, then, explores the manner in which structural and expressive musical devices contribute to characterization in Baroque opera, using the role of Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare (1724) as a case study. To examine structure, I use a reductive voice-leading approach and employ Willner's concept of tonal and durational periodicities in Baroque music (2005 and 2006). Musical topoi are the primary expressive elements at work in the arias. The integration of the structural, semiotic, and dramatic analyses (after Shaftel 2009) leads to hermeneutic interpretation, moving from general associative indications to character-specific meanings.

Handel's Cleopatra lends herself well to this character study because her motives for seducing Caesar are, on the surface, ambiguous. An examination of dramatic and musical evidence, however, reveals Cleopatra's motivations for cultivating a relationship with Caesar as chiefly political. This characterization, in Cleopatra's case, is achieved through incongruence among projected topical associations, stylistic level, and surface-level dramatic information. Examples from Cleopatra's music and contemporaneous Baroque arias demonstrate that the relationship between music and drama in the Baroque opera seria can be rich and revealing if the possibilities and limitations of the genre are taken into account.