Ariodante HWV 33 is an opera seria in three acts by Georg Friedrich Haendel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which had itself been adapted from Canti 4, 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. It premiered at London’s Covent Garden Theatre on 8 January 1735, and received eleven performances during its initial run. It was revived by Handel for his 1736 season, but then went unperformed until it appeared in Stuttgart in 1926....

The story to be found in Handel’s Alcina of 1735 comes from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic sixteenth century poem Orlando furioso. This had already been employed by Francesca Caccini in La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina of 1625, which is recognised today as the first opera to be written by a woman. Handel himself used the libretto of L'isola di Alcina, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the...