Serse is one Handel’s best known operas and has enormous appeal for a modern audience, as was demonstrated in 1985 when Nicholas Hytner’s production was staged for the first time at English National Opera. In large part it owes its fame to the first aria, Serse’s ‘Ombra mai fu’ – commonly but incorrectly known as ‘Handel’s Largo’ (it is marked ‘Larghetto’).
Well known it might be, but Serse is far from typical of Handel’s operas: indeed, in its free mixing of serious and comic characters, and in the unpredictability of its aria forms it betrays the ultimate origin of its libretto in one of 1654 by the Venetian librettist Minato.
The comic elements in the libretto were a relief to the translator, who has always found that comic rhymes spring much more readily to mind than serious ones. In the title role we welcomed back a singer who had previously sung for CHO in Flavio sixteen years earlier: the distinguished Welsh mezzo-soprano Buddug Verona James.
Andrew Jones (Music Director)
