Written when Handel was just 24 years old, it is one of his first operas, and demonstrated the composer's assimilation of the Italian style of opera at the time. It is the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman EmperorClaudius. The story has the traditional complexity of dramatic works of the time, but is not swamped by it, as many other works for the stage are.
For many years Agrippina lay unperformed, but is staged with more frequency today.
Composed for the sophisticated opera audience of Venice at the end of Handel’s five years’ stay in Italy, it is clear that his talent has matured from his early German efforts in the form.
His wife, Agrippina, who hopes to place her own son, Nerone, on the throne, has one trick up her sleeve: she knows that both Claudio and Ottone are in love with Poppaea, whom she tricks into arousing Claudio’s jealousy.
In any case, Agrippina, all smiles and cruel asides, rightly holds center stage here, and Poppaea is sexy without being vulgar, and only has trouble with ornament and intonation in some of her slower and lower arias.
Handel's opera 'Agrippina', which is generally regarded as his first masterwork, came into being in the second half of 1709 and had its first night either at the end of this year or at the beginning of January of the following year, in the Venetian theatre San Giovanni Grisostomo.
Libretto of this opera, written by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, is completely footed in the Venetian tradition and represents exactly the type of musical theatre against which Apostolo Zeno and the authors of the Roman Accademia degli Arcadi stood out sharply with their reforming aspiration; their most famous representative was Pietro Metastasio, younger by one generation.
Agrippina's son, Nerone, a weakling longing for power, whom his mother tries to put on the throne, could never become an emperor in the sense of a classical opera seria with its strict and moral requirements and educational trends.
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