Alessandro (opera)
[2] The story recounts Alexander the Great's journey to India and depicts him less in a heroic vein than as vainglorious as well as indecisive in matters of the heart.
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.
[2]As the newspaper notes, full houses were by no means a regular occurrence by that time, and the directors of the Royal Academy of Music decided to increase audiences' interest by bringing another celebrated international opera star, Italian soprano Faustina Bordoni, to join established London favourites Francesca Cuzzoni and the star castrato Senesino in the company's performances.
[2][6] The three stars, Bordoni, Cuzzoni and Senesino commanded astronomical fees, making much more money from the opera seasons than Handel did.
[7] The opera company would have been aware that the story of the two princesses in love with Alexander the Great chosen for the two prima donnas' first joint appearance was familiar to London audiences through a tragedy by Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great, first performed in 1677 and often revived and it may be that they were encouraging the idea that the two singers were rivals.
[6] One of the agents who had arranged Faustina's appearances in London, Owen Swiny, explicitly warned against the choice of libretto as likely to cause "disorder" in a letter to the directors of the Royal Academy of Music, imploring them: never to consent to any thing that can put the Academy into disorder, as it must, certainly, if what I hear ... is put in Execution: I mean the opera of Alexander the great; where there is to be a Struggle between the Rival Queen's, for a Superiority.
As 18th century musicologist Charles Burney observed about the Cuzzoni / Faustina rivalry, which became acute around the time of the performances of a subsequent Handel opera, Admeto: it seems impossible for two singers of equal merit to tread the stage a parte eguale, as for two people to ride on the same horse, without one being behind.
[9]The Royal Academy of Music collapsed at the end of the 1728/1729 season, partly due to the huge fees paid to the star singers, and Cuzzoni and Faustina both left London for engagements in continental Europe.
Despite the many victories he has won elsewhere, the city's defenders get the best of his army and he is in personal danger when he is rescued by his general Clito (Clitus the Black), Prince of Macedonia.
General Clito is once again compelled by his conscience to denounce such arrogance, whereupon Alessandro is about to run him through with his sword, but suddenly, as part of a plot by the conspirators, the roof caves in.
No sooner has he made this clear to her than King Tassile brings news that the people of Oxidraca, who seemed finally conquered, are staging a revolt.
[16] The opera is scored for two recorders, two oboes, bassoon, two trumpets, two horns, strings and continuo (cello, double bass, lute, harpsichord).
[12] Horace Walpole recalled years later that at the performance he saw, during the opening scene depicting the siege of Oxidraca, Senesino "So far forgot himself in the heat of the conquest, as to stick his sword into one of the pasteboard stones of the wall of the town, and bore it in triumph before him.
