About the work
Handel's opera „Agrippina" (HWV 6) was premiered at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice in 1709 and was Handel's first great success. The libretto is by Vincenzo Grimani, the Papal legate to Venice, and is a biting political satire on ancient Rome — and implicitly on the power games of his own day.
Plot
In the Rome of Emperor Claudius the rumour spreads that the emperor has perished at sea. His wife Agrippina seizes the chance to have her son Nero (from a previous marriage) crowned emperor. But Claudius returns, rescued by the general Otho. Otho and Nero both desire the beautiful Poppea. Agrippina spins a dense web of intrigue: she persuades Poppea to play every man off against the others; she slanders Otho before the emperor; she secures Nero's succession. In the finale, after many confusions and declarations of love, Agrippina has the upper hand: Otho and Poppea are united, Nero is named heir to the throne. The gods are invoked for support — a cynically cheerful conclusion.
Cultural significance
Agrippina is musically and theatrically the most glittering of Handel's operas from his Italian early period. The work has comic edge — Grimani's libretto unmasks every character as corrupt — and contains arias (Agrippina's „Pensieri, voi mi tormentate", Poppea's „Bel piacere è godere") that Handel later reused in his own works. Twentieth-century rediscovery, especially through David McVicar's Paris production of 2003 and the ROH staging of 2019, has made the work a fixture of the Baroque repertoire.