Soprano Lucy Crowe joins The English Concert led by Harry Bicket in this dazzling programme of Handel arias and cantatas dating from his 1706-10 sojourn in Italy, where he was affectionately dubbed ‘the dear Saxon’. 2nd in the 2005 Kathleen Ferrier and a Wigmore Young Artist, Lucy Crowe made her debuts with Scottish Opera as Sophie in 'Der Rosenkavalier' and ENO as Poppea in 'Agrippina', both to great critical acclaim.
The first performance of Handel’s Ottone took place in London on 12 January 1723 at the King’s Theatre. Handel had finished composing the opera the previous summer, with the first draft completed on 10 August, but he had to make several revisions before the first performance took place…
Although he cultivated most of the vocal and instrumental genres of his time, Georg Friedrich Händel’s true calling always was the opera. Indeed, most of his professional life was devoted to writing and performing operas. As a youth, he was already a member of the Hamburg opera orchestra, writing some operas in the eclectic style of Reinhard Keiser, blending Italian da Capo arias, German recitatives and French-style dances. In order to keep up with Italian music - which was then a synonym of fashionable music - Händel traveled to Italy in 1706, where he composed numerous chamber cantatas and religious music in Latin. In late 1707 he wrote his first Italian opera, Rodrigo, which premiered in Florence, and at the end of 1709 Agrippina was performed in Venice, showcasing his brilliant assimilation of the Italian style. After this opera’s success, Händel accepted the invitation to travel to London, where the taste for Italian opera was just beginning thanks to some pasticcios and a version of Camilla by Giovanni Bononcini, which was extraordinarily successful.