In 1703, the young Handel moved to Hamburg, which was then a bustling cosmopolitan city—sophisticated and wealthy, and boasting its own public opera house. Handel served in the opera orchestra, first as a string player, and later as a harpsichordist before being offered his first libretto to set. The work assigned to him, Almira, was his first operatic composition, and it not only reflects the nineteen-year-old composer's talent's, but also stylistic trends in Hamburg at the time—a combination of elements from both Italian opera and the German Singspiel.

Almira was premiered on January 8, 1705, with the eminent singer, composer, and theorist Johann Mattheson in the role of Fernando. The libretto, originally by Giovanni Boniventi, was derived from L'Almira, by Giulio Pancieri, and modified for the German stage by Friedrich Feustking (also author of Handel's later opera, Nero).

There were many peculiarities of the Hamburg style, but chief among them was a predilection for bilingual texts. The first act of Almira contains twenty arias. Of these, six are to Italian texts, while fourteen are in German. Some of the German arias adopt the Italian da capo form, but they often do not follow the Italian conventions of scene structure—appearing early or midway in a scene, as opposed to at the end as they would have in Italian opera. The use of two languages also highlighted differences in poetic style. Italian recitatives were usually written in blank verse with lines of seven or eleven syllables, in contrast to German recitatives which almost always rhymed. Because the arias in Hamburg operas were placed throughout the scenes, particularly at the beginning, the recitatives and arias show a higher degree of integration than in Italian operas.

Germans liked spectacle in their operas, especially chorus scenes and ballet. This is in sharp contrast to tastes in Italy, where choruses had gone out of vogue. The ballets that Handel composed for Almira are elegant and Lullian—scored with imagination and grace.

Almira is especially indebted to the works of Reinhard Keiser, who was then the leading composer at the Hamburg opera house (indeed one of the leading German composers), and for whom the libretto had originally been written. Handel looked up to Keiser, and his early music reveals a great deal of the older man's influence. Kaiser, however—forced to leave Hamburg because of severe debts—was not nearly so enamored of Handel and was jealous of the young composer's success. Almira was in fact tremendously popular, and Handel would go on to write three more operas for the house in Hamburg, though none of them are extant.

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