Hydaspes (Mancini)

[2] It was the second opera in England to be sung entirely in Italian, after Almahide,[3] and was an early London success for the famous castrato Nicolò Grimaldi in the title role.

[4] The original libretto by Giovanni Pietro Candi and Giulio Convò was revised by Silvio Stampiglia and staged at the teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples in 1705, with the title Gli amanti generosi.

[10] The original cast was Nicolo Grimaldi (Idaspe), Giovanni Cassani (Artaserse), Valentino Urbani (Dario), Lawrence (Arbace), Isabella Girardeau (Mandane) and Margherita de L’Epine (Berenice).

[7]: 215 At the end of May 1710 Walsh, Randall, and Hare published Songs in the new Opera, Call’d Hydaspes, consisting of the overture and 40 arias.

[10] The scene in which Idaspe (dressed in a flesh-coloured costume to simulate nakedness) strangles a lion caused a sensation and ensured that the opera achieved a tremendous box office success, despite the unusually high price of the tickets.

13) Addison ridiculed it, and concluded that “audiences have often been reproached by writers for the coarseness of their taste, but our present grievance does not seem to be the want of a good taste, but of common sense.”[15] The historian of opera Sutherland Edwards commented 'after appealing to the monster in a minor key, and telling him that he may tear his bosom, but cannot touch his heart, he attacks him in the relative major, and strangles him.

[17]: 280 Much of the music from Idaspe was reused in Harlequin Hydaspes, together with arias from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Pyrrhus and Demetrius, Almahide, Handel’s Rinaldo and Amadigi and the pasticcio Clearte.(1716).