Lascia ch'io pianga (Rinaldo)

Rinaldo was the first Italian opera written specifically for the London stage, first performed at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket on 24 February 1711. Aaron Hill supplied the scenario and Giacomo Rossi put it into verse, drawing loosely on Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata; Handel, then twenty-five, assembled much of the score from music written in Italy. The production used live sparrows, fireworks and stage machinery, and Addison mocked it in The Spectator while audiences filled the theatre. Lascia ch'io pianga, borrowed from an earlier work, has outlived the whole apparatus that surrounded it.