Brisbane Baroque presents the Australian premiere of the Göttingen International Handel Festival production of Agrippina, an opera in three acts by Georg Frideric Handel to a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed in 1709 when Handel was just 24 years of age, Agrippina was one of his earliest operas and one of his biggest successes.

The opera premiered in Venice and enjoyed twenty-seven successive performances, an extraordinarily long run at that time. Though not one of Handel’s better-known works, Agrippina is a telling example of the maestro’s openly dramatic and realistic style.

 Italian audience of the 17th and 18th centuries were fascinated by tales of ancient Rome which, in many cases, paralleled contemporary political intrigues, and the history of Julia Agrippina the Younger is a prime example.

Scheming, manipulative wife of one emperor, sister of another, mother of a third and (if rumours are true) the incestuous lover of the latter two, Agrippina dominated Roman imperial politics as no other woman before her had dared to attempt.

Here was a tale ripe with audience appeal. Some ten composers, including Porpora, Graun and Telemann, set operas on the Agrippina theme but the finest of these was that of the young Handel. It won for him fame not only in Italy, where he became known as il caro Sassone, the dear Saxon, but also in England, whence, in the following year, he was lured to become one that country’s greatest and most revered composers.

While the libretto plays fast and loose with history, it is better than most Handel had to work with. It sustains the drama and helps move the show along at a cracking pace. And the music is marvellous.