Regarding my claim to the near-completeness of the René Jacobs Solomon about which I posted last night, correspondent Bob Lee, a well-versed and zealous Handelian, has written to gently inform me that more was omitted than just the one aria I mentioned. Lee counted perhaps four other excised numbers (the words of which did not appear in the libretto distributed at the Jacobs concert), which suggests to me that I should perhaps be slightly less rash in the claims I make during the wee, small hours.
I'm grateful to Lee for the clarification, and he also brought up another good point: In massing his choral singers together as a single group, Jacobs may have inadvertently diminished the impact of some of Handel's juiciest antiphonal writing. From where I was sitting, rather close to the front, the intended effect could just be made out. But given that the counterpoint between first and second violins was so ideally achieved by dividing the sections left and right, one might well wonder why more physical separation wasn't effected between the two choral groups, as well. Perhaps there simply wasn't room on the stage?
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