Handel's first opera for the Italian stage is usually known as Rodrigo, but Vincer se stesso was its original title. The opera was composed during Handel's second visit to Florence, and staged there. It was his first experiment with Italian forms and music, and shows that he was able to subsume the euphonious Italian writing style in his own Teutonic idiom. Rodrigo and Agrippina, his second Italian opera, both show a shift toward Italian scenic construction, built around the exit aria, Italian recitative, and the aria form. The texts for Italian recitative was unrhymed, and built of lines seven and eleven syllables in length. This freedom from rhyme schemes was reflected in the freer settings of Handel, which were no longer rhetorically structured around rhyming couplets musically. Both operas reflect the trend in Italy towards an aria based opera; there are no choruses or large groupings which structure the work or provide the type of contrast in evidence in German and French operas of the period. The plot is constructed around domestic troubles and intrigue, as well as court intrigues and conflicts of power. Although the librettist is anonymous, the literary predecessor of this work is F. Silvani's Il duello d'amore. And although some of the music is missing, much survives, partly because of Handel's predilection for recycling, and using old music in new contexts.

© Rita Laurance, Rovi