Amadigi di Gaula (HWV 11) is a "magic" opera in three acts, with music by George Frideric Handel.

Handel made prominent use of wind instruments, so the score is unusually colorful, comparable to his Water Music.

The opera received its first performance in London at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket on 25 May 1715, in a lavish successful production.

Charles Burney maintained near the end of the eighteenth century: Amadigi contained "...more invention, variety and good composition, than in any one of the musical dramas of Handel which I have yet carefully and critically examined".

[5][6] Previous consensus had been that John Jacob Heidegger, who signed the dedication to Richard Boyle was the author,[7] but more recent research has indicated that the librettist was more likely to be Giacomo Rossi, with Nicola Francesco Haym as a more probable candidate.

[4] In act 2, Amadigi addresses the Fountain of True Love in a long cavatina of the utmost sensuous beauty.

[10] The singer Elisabetta Pilotti-Schiavonetti in the role of Melissa, who specialised in playing sorceresses, and for whom Handel had written the similar parts of the witch-like Armida in Rinaldo and Medea in Teseo is distinguished in Handel's music between her vengeful character and that of the other leading female part, the sweet Princess Oriana.

[13] Among other performances, the opera received its North American premiere in March 2003 at Western University's Don Wright Faculty of Music.

The opera is scored for two recorders, two oboes, bassoon, trumpet, strings, and basso continuo (cello, lute, harpsichord).

[20] According to Winton Dean the quality of the score, especially the first two acts, is remarkably high, but it shows less careful organization than most of the later operas.

The conception of an opera as a coherent structural organism was slow to capture Handel's imagination.

Handel made prominent use of wind instruments, so the score is colorful, comparable to his Water Music.

Like any romance of chivalry, Amadís de Gaula is a nightmare to summarise owing to its length, numerous characters, and complicated subplots.

Amadis of Gaul is a prince born of a secret amour, educated in Scotland, reared as a knight, and serving devotedly the fair English princess Oriana.

[25] Amadigi, a Paladin, and Dardano, the Prince of Thrace, are both enamoured with Oriana, the daughter of the King of the Fortunate Isles.

One particular vision at the "Fountain of True Love", however, of Oriana courting Dardano upsets Amadigi to the point that he faints.

Dardano exults in the attention of Oriana, and in an impulsive moment, challenges Amadigi to single combat.