Strada Woman

This is a particularly welcome and important world-premiere recording. Handel composed Esther in about 1718?20 for James Brydges, the Earl of Carnarvon (and later Duke of Chandos), using a libretto that was anonymously adapted from Thomas Brereton’s English translation of a play by Racine. This slender work, containing only six scenes, lays a strong claim to being the first English oratorio, but Handel seems not to have considered performing it for a public audience until 1732, when the entrepreneurial composer thoroughly revised the score to fit his company of Italian opera singers (including Senesino, Strada and Montagnana, who all sang in English), and enlisted the aid of the writer Samuel Humphreys to expand the drama with additional scenes (which made the oratorio long enough to fill a theatre evening, advantageously fleshed out some of the characters a little bit, and also enhanced the musical attractiveness of the oratorio).