With the foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1719, George Frideric Handel placed his London opera career on a commercial footing that brought him success, at least in the medium term. Now his task was to compose one hit opera after another for the King’s Theatre on Haymarket, and Handel scored an immediate success with his very first opera for the Academy: with its tragic love stories, surprising plot twists and virtuoso arias, Radamisto had everything needed to send opera fans of the time home happy. First given in the spring of 1720, the work was revived later that same year, but this time the title role was performed by a singer only recently arrived in England: the star castrato Senesino. For him, Handel added more arias to the score. He did the same thing when the two prima donnas Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni appeared in later performances of the opera. As a result, the total of four versions of Radamisto provide a virtually inexhaustible source of brilliant arias, and it will be fascinating to see which ones Benjamin Bayl and the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra choose to bring with them to the Theater an der Wien.

Concert performance in Italian with German surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up