Handel's Agrippina (1709) is a somewhat tawdry tale of the efforts of the title character to elevate her son, Nero, to the Roman throne, and it's widely accounted as Handel's first big operatic masterpiece. It is a kind of prequel to the material covered in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. The work fits into neither the categories of Italian opera seria nor comic opera, though it borrows elements of both. From opera seria comes an athletic strand of vocal writing that runs through several roles and is ably handled by ...
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Handel's Agrippina (1709) is a somewhat tawdry tale of the efforts of the title character to elevate her son, Nero, to the Roman throne, and it's widely accounted as Handel's first big operatic masterpiece. It is a kind of prequel to the material covered in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. The work fits into neither the categories of Italian opera seria nor comic opera, though it borrows elements of both. From opera seria comes an athletic strand of vocal writing that runs through several roles and is ably handled by Joyce DiDonato as Agrippina and two of the hottest countertenors on the scene, Franco Fagioli as Nerone (Nero) and Jakub Jozef Orlinski as Ottone (Otho, another claimant to the throne who is the sole character to emerge with moral dignity intact). The latter role was originally performed by a female contralto, but Handel would have had no problem with inserting a male singer; several other roles were for castrati. Some of the arias were recycled from earlier compositions by Handel...
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