Athalia (Handel)

Athalia (HWV 52) is an English-language oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel to a libretto by Samuel Humphreys based on the play Athalie by Jean Racine.

However, the child Joas, rightful heir to the throne, had been saved from death by Joad the High Priest and his wife Josabeth and raised as their own son under the name "Eliakim".

At the Palace, the Queen is disturbed by a dream she has had of a young boy dressed as a Jewish priest plunging a dagger into her heart.

Abner, Captain of the Guards, loyal to the God of Israel, go to the Temple to warn of the upcoming search just as Joad the High Priest and his wife Josabeth are preparing to reveal to the nation that the boy "Eliakim" whom they have raised as their own son is in fact Joas, descendant of David and rightful King.

She interrogates the boy and when he tells her he is an orphan she offers to adopt him, but he rejects with revulsion the idea of such close association with an idolator such as she.

[4]: 67 [5] The biblical story of Athalia, with its tale of deposing a usurping and tyrannous monarch, was used by supporters of the Jacobite cause as justification for restoring the Stuart monarchy.

Oxford was then a centre of High church and Jacobite sentiment, which has caused the choice of subject for this oratorio by a supporter of the Hanoverian monarchy such as Handel to seem strange to some writers.