The story of young George Frideric Handel’s stay in Hannover shows him as a brave man full of great ambitions. First, he was almost killed in a duel with Johann Mattheson. The reason for the dispute was, of course, one of the most serious: when taking part in the production of his Cleopatra, Handel did not give up his seat at the harpsichord to his older colleague. Shortly thereafter, he ruthlessly took advantage of the coincidence and made his debut as an opera conductor at the expense of his boss – the notably talented Reinhard Keizer. Thanks to Andrzej Kosendiak and the participants of the Oratorio and Cantata Music Interpretation Course, we will have the opportunity to listen to the works of both artists who competed three hundred years ago.

The libretto of Almira, in its original version by Giulio Pancieri, was first used in 1691 by the Venetian composer Giuseppe Boniventi. In Germany, the story of the Castilian queen was first introduced to the opera audience in Braunschweig, for whom it was written by Ruggiero Fedeli. For Reinhard Keiser, then manager of the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg, the Italian text of the libretto was translated by Friedrich Christian Feustking. However, instead staging Almira on the Elbe, Keiser went to Weißenfels in Saxony. There, his modified version was first presented in July 1704. Keizer’s decision to leave was perhaps caused by a sudden order from the Elector of the Palatinate, John Wilhelm Wittelsbach, who was soon to visit the city. According to another hypothesis, suggested by John Mainwaring (Handel’s first biographer), Keiser, who liked a lavish lifestyle, fell into debt and simply left Hamburg escaping from his creditors.

Feustking’s libretto, which was to be the basis for the Hamburg performance, landed on Handel’s desk in this way – then a musician of the Theater am Gänsemarkt orchestra. The composer, partly using Keizer’s ideas, wrote his own opera. Staged in January 1705, it was a great success. This enabled Handel to write another work for Hamburg – the opera Nero. When Keiser returned to the city in the summer, it turned out that he begrudged his colleague taking advantage of his absence. It was the bad relations between them that soon probably contributed to Handel’s departure to Italy. Keizer published fragments of the unused setting in his collection Componimenti musicali, and his version of Almira (yet another one) was performed in Hamburg at the end of 1706. Handel was already in Italy at that time. The three-year stay in this country became another important stopover on the way to achieving artistic mastery.