Florence Foresti

Un recueil de bons mots, traits d'esprit et calembours empruntés à des auteurs célèbres : A. Allais, F. Blanche, A. Einstein, G. Clémenceau, Coluche, P. Desproges, L. Ruquier, entre autres. …

“Germanico del sig. Hendl”. Since 1929 the printed catalogue of the Conservatorio Cherubini in Florence (section “Opere teatrali”, p. 143) has contained a Handel title not mentioned in any other sources.
In autumn 2009 a photocopy of the manuscript was circulated in London, where a Bond Street jeweller helped to contact top experts in the field with the aim of soliciting an authentication. On behalf of whom? The mystery has been partially solved with an official notice that appeared on 18 May on the website of Sony Classical, convening a press conference on 6 June at La Scala Shop in Milan..

Found by chance in a Florence archive, Germanico may be the first work that Handel composed in Italy. An allegory on the War of the Spanish Succession, it is low on incident but long on suavity. Harpsichordist Ottaviano Tenerani has pieced together a putative provenance from the scant documentation of Handel’s movements before 1709. Venetian watermarks on the manuscript paper, and the flux of pro- and anti-Habsburg feeling in Italy at the time, suggest to Tenerani that Germanico was written for private performance in 1706 and is indeed, as the anonymous copyist wrote, ‘Del Sigr Hendl’. If the discovery of Germanico marks a career boost for Tenerani, he has repaid the favour in this stylishly executed performance by the ensemble Il Rossignolo.