Admeto
The original cast included Faustina Bordoni as Alcestis and Francesca Cuzzoni as Antigona, as Admeto was the second of the five operas that Handel composed to feature specifically these two prime donne of the day.
A tremendous success, Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers.
The star soprano Francesca Cuzzoni had partnered with internationally renowned castrato Senesino as the leading performers in a long series of Italian operas by Handel and other composers for the academy, and to increase audience interest, the directors decided to import another celebrated singer from Italy, soprano Faustina Bordoni, so that the operas would have not one but two leading ladies onstage.
This was a common practice in opera houses of the day in Italy; Cuzzoni and Faustina (as Bordoni was called) had appeared together in various European cities without incident.
The hero Hercules, on his never ending mission to perform glorious deeds to increase his fame, has come to pay a visit to his friend King Admetus.
In the gardens of the palace, Alceste holds a dagger, preparing to die in her husband's place as she bids farewell to her grieving ladies-in-waiting, and then retires.
Hercules appears, fights with Cerberus the guard dog of hell, overcomes the Furies and breaks the fetters tying Alceste to the rock.
In the woods, Alceste, returned to life, is now disguised as a male soldier, worried that her husband, thinking her dead, may have fallen in love with someone else or even married another woman.
When Admetus realises Alceste has been restored to life, he is undecided as to the honourable course for him to take - should he return to his wife, whom he thought dead, or keep his pledge to Antigona?
[6][7] The opening of the opera, with Admeto on his deathbed tormented by a ballet of demons representing his inner physical and mental agony, is very striking in its use of unusual harmonies, dissonance and chromaticism, followed by a dramatic accompanied recitative for the suffering king.
[8] 18th century musicologist Charles Burney wrote that he was "told by persons who heard this opera performed when it first came out, that Senesino never sung or acted better, or more to the satisfaction of the public, than in this scene.
[10]: 150 Handel, as in Alessandro, is careful to give his two leading ladies equal opportunity to shine in their arias, which are, in the opinion of Paul Henry Lang, music of "surpassing" quality.
One of Handel's most loyal supporters, Mary Delany, wrote to her sister that she had attended Admeto with a friend who "was driven out of her senses" by the singing of Faustina, Cuzzoni and Senesino.
With royalty again present in the person of the Princess of Wales, Cuzzoni and Faustina were onstage together and members of the audience who were supporters of one of the prima donnas were loudly protesting and hissing whenever the other one sang.
Actual fist fights broke out in the audience between rival groups of "fans" and Cuzzoni and Faustina stopped singing, began trading insults and finally came to blows onstage and had to be dragged apart.
[22] The Royal Academy of Music collapsed at the end of the 1728 - 29 season, partly due to the huge fees paid to the star singers, and Cuzzoni and Faustina both left London for engagements in continental Europe.
