• Belezza: Rebecca Bottone
• Tempo: Andrew Kennedy
• Piacere: Renata Pokupic
• Disinganno: Romina Basso
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Conducted by Paul McCreesh
‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ is an Oratorio produced in three different versions across 50 years of Handel’s career. Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, HWV 46a an Italian Oratorio from 1707 has been revised and expanded in 1737 as HWV 46b. Finally, HWV 71 is a further expansion and revision, possibly without much involvement by the blind and aging Händel in his retirement, into an English-language oratorio from 1757.
The history of Handel’s Oratorio « The Triumph of Time and Truth » spans just fifty years. Händel composed the first version in Rome in 1707, on a libretto by Cardinal Pamfili. A reworked version was performed in 1737 in London. The title was changed from ‘Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno’ into ‘Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verità’, and now contained a number of choruses, in line with the practice Handel had adopted in his English oratorios.
(…) this Work is an Allegory, in which the overall theme is the Vanity of all earthly things. This is a deeply Christian thought, based on the book Ecclesiastes, where the words ‘vanitas vanitatum’ (in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible) are repeated time and again. And Vanity is one of the main motifs in European paintings of the Renaissance and the Baroque eras.
The Triumph of Time and Truth is part of a long tradition of moral plays in Western history.
Here the main character is Beauty. In the first act she admires herself in the mirror – which is depicted by the echo-effects in the Orchestral introduction to her first Aria, ‘Faithful mirror, fair-reflecting’ – and is assured by Pleasure that her youthful charms will never fade. Counsel (Truth), however, argues that youth will vanish with Time, and that she should follow Truth. Pleasure is supported by Deceit, Counsel by Time.
In the Second Act the debate continues: Counsel and Time offer Beauty the mirror of Truth which shows things the way they really are. Whereas Deceit insists that life is only now and here, Counsel argues that without Truth all pleasures are vain.
In the Third Act Beauty is gradually moving towards the other side of the argument, throwing away her old mirror and looking into the mirror of Truth. Pleasure, confronted with his defeat, seeks his own death: « Truth drives me to despair; open, ye rocks, and hide me there ». Johan van Veen
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