No one seems to know how to classify this work. Not of sufficient scale to be a real opera, it has been called a 'little opera', a 'pastoral opera', a pastoral masque, as well as a serenata and even an oratorio. What is not in doubt is that Handel wrote it in 1718 as a courtly entertainment and, in his lifetime, it was his most popular dramatic work.
And no wonder! The music is delightful: in the first act elegant and sensual, in the tragic second, more sombre and soulful. The story (from Ovid's Metamorphoses) of youthful love, jealousy and, ultimately, tragedy is perhaps trite, but with a libretto by John Gay of Beggar's Opera fame, embellished by both Alexander Pope and John Dryden it is told with wit and humour.
The work's first staged performance took place in 1731 at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Produced by Thomas Arne, starring the singers Thomas Mountier and Susannah Cibber, it was advertised as having "all the Grand Chorus’s, Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations; being the first Time it ever was performed in a Theatrical Way'".
Our performance may be more modest.
MK