Giustino was the second of three new operas produced during the 1736-1737 opera season at Covent Garden Theatre. It's libretto is based on a work by Pariati which was originally set by Antonio Vivaldi. The libretto contains many opportunities for visual spectacle, and Handel took advantage of them. As usual, spectacle inspired some of his most imaginative and theatrical music. In one elaborate scene, the goddess Fortune descends on her wheel to inspire the sleeping peasant Giustino with dreams of greatness. The music composed for the goddess contains a rhythmic suggestive of the turning of a wheel. She sings an that develops this material , followed by an . The chorus then develops the music in corroboration of her urgings to Giustino. The orchestra finishes on the same material, still developed, gradually fading out to a pianissimo dynamic and leaving only the violins and string basses playing softly. Fortune and her geniis vanish into thin air, leaving the echo of their music behind them like fairy dust. This dream tableaux is written in flat keys only, with magical development of the musical material. As they vanish, Giustino wakes, and sings an aria in which he accepts his destiny. He responds first in C Major, and then with a full aria in the triumphal key of D major.

In addition to this elaborate spectacle, Giustino has the opportunity to rescue a princess from a bear, and another princess from a sea monster during the course of events. The opera opens with a splendid coronation ceremony, filled with sumptuousness and pomp, and the dramatic action includes a shipwreck in a stormy sea. One of the finest pieces was composed for the princess Arianna. As she is facing being devoured by a sea monster, she sings an echo aria. She cries for help, but is answered only by the echoes of her own voice, hauntingly unaccompanied, sung off-stage. The orchestration for Giustino, like that of Arminius, pays particular attention to the woodwind section. Handel had in his orchestra that season a virtuosic oboist. Traditionally this instrument and the recorder was played by the same instrumentalists. Giustino contains in its score a consort of recorders, which included a bass recorder. In Giustino's arioso "Puo ben nascer", the scoring is for a double choir of recorders, the first of which is doubled by an oboe. Throughout the piece a viola doubles the bass recorder, but there is no other continuo writing until the coda. Here the entire compliment of strings enters along with the harpsichord and two horns to create a big ending.

The three new operas of the 1736-1737 season of Handel, Arminius, Giustino, and Berenice, are not the masterpieces that some of his other operas are. He was quite fatigued by producing such a big season, and became seriously ill in the middle of the spring. These operas adhere to many of the more ridiculous opera seria conventions in plot, and left themselves open to ridicule. John Frederic Lampe, a fellow Saxon andmig to England, was among those that wanted to create a truly English opera. The brother-in-law to Thomas Arne, he was a bassoonist and composer for the theater. He collaborated with Henry Carey in the production of one of the more hilarious spoofs known as called the Dragon of Wantley. It was a direct lampoon of Handel's Giustino. Although merciless in its treatment of his opera, Handel is known to have liked the work.



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