Who sang Hamor in Handel’s Jephtha?

Abstract

Abstract When Jephtha an Oratorio was published by John Walsh in April 1752, music allocated to the character Hamor was headed as sung by ‘Mr. Brent’. William Barclay Squire began his Dictionary of national biography entry (1885) on the soprano Charlotte Brent by stating that she was the daughter of ‘a fencing-master and alto singer, who sang in Handel’s “Jephtha” in 1752’, and this has been generally accepted. Charlotte’s father, Charles, was a leading fencing-master, but he was in his late 50s at the time of the Jephtha premiere and his only known ‘musical’ appearance was as the player of the salt-box in a burlesque ode at his daughter’s benefit at Ranelagh in 1763. Handel began composing the oratorio expecting that the alto castrato Gaetano Guadagni would create the role of Hamor, but when the premiere took place in February 1752 Guadagni was unavailable. For the revival of the oratorio in 1758 Hamor was sung by the 17-year-old Isabella Young, who probably also took the role in 1756. No male singer called Brent is recorded in concerts or on the London stage, so it is extremely likely that the singer at the premiere of the oratorio was the young Charlotte Brent.