Agrippina (HWV 6) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the 1709–10 Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani's libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is an "anti-heroic satirical comedy", full of topical political allusions. Some analysts believe that it reflects Grimani's political and diplomatic rivalry with Pope Clement XI.
Handel composed Agrippina at the end of a three-year sojourn in Italy. It premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709. It proved an immediate success and an unprecedented series of 27 consecutive performances followed. Observers praised the quality of the music—much of which, in keeping with the contemporary custom, had been borrowed and adapted from other works, including the works of other composers. Despite the evident public enthusiasm for the work, Handel did not promote further stagings. There were occasional productions in the years following its premiere but Handel's operas, including Agrippina, fell out of fashion in the mid-18th century.
In the 20th century Agrippina was revived in Germany and premiered in Britain and America. Performances of the work have become ever more common, with innovative stagings at the New York City Opera and the London Coliseum in 2007, and the Metropolitan Opera in 2020. Modern critical opinion is that Agrippina is Handel's first operatic masterpiece, full of freshness and musical invention which have made it one of the most popular operas of the ongoing Handel revival.
Handel's earliest opera compositions, in the German style, date from his Hamburg years, 1704–06, under the influence of Johann Mattheson. In 1706 he traveled to Italy where he remained for three years, developing his compositional skills. He first settled in Florence where he was introduced to Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. His first opera composed in Italy, though still reflecting the influence of Hamburg and Mattheson, was Rodrigo (1707, original title Vincer se stesso ê la maggior vittoria), and was presented there. It was not particularly successful, but was part of Handel's process of learning to compose opera in the Italian style and to set Italian words to music.
Handel then spent time in Rome, where the performance of opera was forbidden by Papal decree, and in Naples. He applied himself to the composition of cantatas and oratorios; at that time there was little difference (apart from increasing length) between cantata, oratorio and opera, all based on the alternation of secco recitative and aria da capo. Works from this period include Dixit Dominus and the dramatic cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, written in Naples. While in Rome, probably through Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel had become acquainted with Cardinal Grimani, a distinguished diplomat who wrote libretti in his spare time, and acted as an unofficial theatrical agent for the Italian royal courts. He was evidently impressed by Handel and asked him to set his new libretto, Agrippina. Grimani intended to present this opera at his family-owned theatre in Venice, the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, as part of the 1709–10 Carnevale season.
Grimani's libretto is based on much the same story used as the subject of Monteverdi's 1642 opera L'incoronazione di Poppea. Grimani's libretto centres on Agrippina, a character who does not appear in Monteverdi's darker version. Grimani avoids the "moralizing" tone of the later opera seria libretti written by such acknowledged masters as Metastasio and Zeno. According to the critic Donald Jay Grout, "irony, deception and intrigue pervade the humorous escapades of its well-defined characters". All the main characters, with the sole exception of Claudius's servant Lesbus, are historical, and the broad outline of the libretto draws heavily upon Tacitus's Annals and Suetonius' Life of Claudius. It has been suggested that the comical, amatory character of the Emperor Claudius is a caricature of Pope Clement XI, to whom Grimani was politically opposed. Certain aspects of this conflict are also reflected in the plot: the rivalry between Nero and Otho mirror aspects of the debate over the War of the Spanish Succession, in which Grimani supported the Habsburgs and Pope Clement XI France and Spain.
According to John Mainwaring, Handel's first biographer, Agrippina was composed in the three weeks following Handel's arrival in Venice in November 1709, a theory supported by the autograph manuscript's Venetian paper.
In composing the opera Handel borrowed extensively from his earlier oratorios and cantatas, and from other composers including Reinhard Keiser, Arcangelo Corelli and Jean-Baptiste Lully. This practice of adapting and borrowing was common at the time but is carried to greater lengths in Agrippina than in almost all of Handel's other major dramatic works. The overture, which is a French-style two-part work with a "thrilling" allegro, and all but five of the vocal numbers, are based on earlier works, though subject in many cases to significant adaptation and reworking.
Examples of recycled material include Pallas's "Col raggio placido", which is based on Lucifer's aria from La resurrezione (1708), "O voi dell'Erebo", which was itself adapted from Reinhard Keiser's 1705 opera Octavia. Agrippina's aria "Non ho cor che per amarti" was taken, almost entirely unchanged, from "Se la morte non vorrà" in Handel's earlier dramatic cantata Qual ti reveggio, oh Dio (1707); Narcissus's "Spererò" is an adaptation of "Sai perchè" from another 1707 cantata, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno; and parts of Nero's aria in act 3, "Come nube che fugge dal vento", are borrowed Handel's oratorio Il trionfo del tempo (all from 1707). Later, some of Agrippina's music was used by Handel in his London operas Rinaldo (1711) and the 1732 version of Acis and Galatea, in each case with little or no change. The first music by Handel presented in London may have been Agrippina's "Non ho cor che", transposed into Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Pirro è Dimitrio which was performed in London on 6 December 1710. The Agrippina overture and other arias from the opera appeared in pasticcios performed in London between 1710 and 1714, with additional music provided by other composers. Echoes of "Ti vo' giusta" (one of the few arias composed specifically for Agrippina) can be found in the air "He was despised", from Handel's Messiah (1742).
One of the main male roles, Nero, was written for a castrato, "the "superstars of their day" in Italian opera. The opera was revised significantly before and possibly during its run. One example is the duet for Otho and Poppaea in act 3, "No, no, ch'io non apprezzo", replaced with two solo arias before the first performance. Another is Poppaea's aria "Ingannata", replaced during the run with another of extreme virtuosity, "Pur punir chi m'ha ingannata", either to emphasise Poppaea's new-found resolution at this juncture of the opera or, as is thought more likely, to flatter Scarabelli by giving her an additional opportunity to show off her vocal abilities.
The instrumentation for Handel's score follows closely that of all his early operas: two recorders, two oboes, two trumpets, three violins, two cellos, viola, timpani, contrabassoon and harpsichord. By the standards of Handel's later London operas this scoring is light, but there are nevertheless what Dean and Knapp describe as "moments of splendour when Handel applies the full concerto grosso treatment". Agrippina, Handel's second Italian opera, was probably his last composition in Italy.
On hearing that her husband, the Emperor Claudius, has died in a storm at sea, Agrippina plots to secure the throne for Nero, her son by a previous marriage. Nero is unenthusiastic about this project, but consents to his mother's wishes ("Con saggio tuo consiglio"). Agrippina obtains the support of her two freedmen, Pallas and Narcissus, who hail Nero as the new Emperor before the Senate.