Ariosto vs Handel

So I've been prompted to reread Orlando Furioso, for perhaps obvious reasons. Notwithstanding the somewhat tedious (okay, very tedious) bits where Ariosto feels the need to flatter his partrons by going on about how illustrious their ancestors were, it remains highly entertaining, and Barbara Reynolds' verse translation a marvel. The episode from whence Handel's Ariodante comes is early on in the text, so I thought it might be interesting to look at the differences between poem and opera.

The biggest difference is that in the poem, Rinaldo is involved in the story. It's easy to see why you'd want to remove what seems like a somewhat extraneous character to streamline things, but for better or worse, it definitely leads to other big differences. The idea is that he's been sent to England to find military aid, and while he's there he wants to do some knight-type chivalry, so he asks around and some monks tell him about the situation with Ginevra and her impending execution. The opera is sort of vague on this point, but the poem makes it explicit: the law says that if a woman is found with a lover, she'll be burned at the stake unless a knight comes along to defend her in combat. The opera makes you infer this, presumably because such an insane-sounding thing would derail the narrative (or maybe that's just my twenty-first-century perspective). But Ariosto faces it straight on: Rinaldo's first reaction to hearing about it is "fuck this garbage law" (not an exact quote), and then we get this famous, shockingly forward-thinking bit:

'If the same ardour, if an equal fire

Draws and compels two people ever more

To the sweet consummation of desire

(Which many ignoramuses deplore),

Why should a woman by a fate so dire

Be punished who has done what men a score

Of times will do and never will be blamed,

Nay, rather, will be praised for it and famed?

Right on.  Possibly being raised with his sister as a peer makes him especially sensitive to these things.  So he decides he's gonna defend her whether or not she's "innocent," and the story has a slightly different conclusion: in the opera, Polinesso (the villain who got Ginevra in trouble in the first place) is defending her against Ariondante's brother Lurcanio (who is angry at Ginevra because he thinks her unfaithfulness caused his brother's suicide); he kills him, and then Ariodante just sort of shows up. But the poem kind of makes more sense in this regard. It's not clear why Polinesso would be defending Ginevra; that suggests a depth of character that isn't otherwise there. Also, it makes Ariodante himself less of a bystander to his own story. So here, Rinaldo comes by and sees Lurcanio fighting against the disguised Ariodante, who, having decided that maybe Ginevra isn't guilty after all and besides he still loves her, is there to defend her. He knows the real story from Ginevra's maid Dalinda, so he gets them to call off their battle and challenges Polinesso to fight and when he wins everyone's happy, except the dead Polinesso.

Another significant difference is that the opera makes it very clear that Dalinda and Polinesso are not actually lovers: it specifically states this, and Polinesso declares that he'll respect her honor when they pretend to be as part of his scheme to trick Ariodante. Whereas in the poem they've been sleeping together for some time. It's not totally clear in the opera why Dalinda would accede to Polinesso's weird request with no question (okay, because her brain is scrambled by love, but still...), but in the poem it's both more realistic and sigificantly more twisted: he convinces her that he's in love with both her and Ginevra, but he's sad because he can't have the latter, so he instructs her to...well:

"Notice her ornaments and style of hair,

And, taking every detail in your scope,

All her appearances imitate with care.

Then from the balcony let down the rope,

Which I, pretending to be unaware

Of your disguise, will climb, for thus I hope

By self-deception to assuage my pain

And from my longing some relief to gain.

Cool. Cool, cool. It's maybe no surprise that the secondary romance between Dalinda and Lurcanio was made up out of whole cloth for the opera; in the poem, she goes off to join a nunnery after the skulduggery is revealed.

Okay, one more thing which is small but nonetheless I think illuminating about the differences in sensibility between sixteenth-century Italians and eighteenth-century Brits (Handel was writing for an English audience, remember): in the opera, after Ariodante fails to drown himself, he sort of bemoans the fates that have made him live on. But in the poem, he realizes, after having thrown himself in the ocean, that maybe there's something to be said for not drowning and swims to shore. I think this is probably more psychologically realistic, and also makes him a more appealing, assertive character. However, the opera seems to be illustrative of a somewhat different aesthetic, where being willing and eager to die for love would seem the height of romance. Or so I, a non-expert in the field, perceive.

Anyway, I'm not trying to judge these, to decide which is "better." They're both great. I will concede, however, that the story alterations do raise more plot questions than they answer.