Nitocris       Lynne Dawson
Cyrus          Catherine Denley
Daniel         James Bowman
Belshazzar     James Gilchrist
Gobrias        Neal Davies

Conductor      Robert King

Choir of New College Oxford (as Jews, Babylonians, Medes and Persians)
The King's Consort

This was really one for the Handel completionists, in spite of the claim in
the programme note by Anthony Hicks that Belshazzar is "an extraordinary
masterpiece".

There was some splendid singing: Lynne Dawson was glorious as ever as
Nitocris, the sensible but loving mother of Belshazzar, and Catherine
Denley was suitably heroic as Cyrus, the terribly civilized conqueror of
Babylon. Neal Davies got plenty of feeling and even some drama out of
Gobrias' rather conventional arias (especially the one about the monstrous
human beast wallowing in excessive feast, a moralizing precursor of
Flanders and Swann's Hippopotamus). And James Gilchrist, stepping into a
role he'd never done before at the last minute, did an impressive job but
was just too nice for the mocker of God Belshazzar.

I didn't think I'd be able to bear to stay and listen to James Bowman when
he started singing (way flat and cracking). Maybe he wasn't warmed up,
because he eventually managed to fake most of it, but it was still sad to
hear. Still, he has a lot of old-fashioned style.

All the singers were acting their roles to some extent, but it seems
specious to me to claim, as the programme note does, that this is "an
oratorio with distinctly operatic tendencies". The plot is sewn together
quite skillfully from the book of Daniel, Herodotus and Xenophon's
Cyropedia into something similar in narrative shape to Aeschylus Persae.
Belshazzar, ignoring the prophecy of Daniel and the warnings of his pious
mother, drinks at the feast of Sesach from the sacred vessels stolen from
the Jewish temple. Cyrus, aided by Gobrias, who wanted to avenge his son
murdered by Belshazzar, uses the opportunity of the feast to divert the
Euphrates and enter Babylon, where he kills Belshazzar then spares everyone
else and rules wisely along with Nitocris.

The trouble is, Jennens' libretto is a narrative poem, and a thinly
disguised Jacobite tract, not a drama. The characters embody abstracts
(only Nitocris has any inner conflict at all), and the verbiage is
monotone, with few distinctive musical numbers apart from some typical
choruses. The only time the music and drama really come together is in the
beautiful duet between Cyrus and Nitocris at the end, where the interaction
of words and music reconciles them (she has lost a son, he will be her
son).

So why claim it's operatic? I suppose it's more operatic than Israel in
Egypt or Judas Maccabeus in that there are scenes in which the characters
interact. (And there's a jolly little symphony marked allegro postillons
while everyone scrottles around looking for soothsayers to explain the
writing on the wall.) But there are no moments of crisis or ecstasy
expressed through music, as there are in the late oratorios Theodora and
Jephtha. There's not even a central character who goes through a personal
conflict and is redeemed, as Samson is, or destroyed, as Saul it. If you
staged Belshazzar, you'd have to add a lot of extraneous ideas to make
anything of it. It's an interesting question which Handel oratorios really
are suitable for staging, or really can be seen as operatic, but this isn't
one of them.