Handel - Acis and Galathea

Acis and Galatea (HWV 49) was originally a masque composed by George Frideric Handel. He first composed this piece while he was living at Cannons (the seat of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos) during the summer of 1718. It is set to a libretto by John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Hughes, who borrowed freely from John Dryden's English translation of Ovid published in 1717, The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea. In 1732 Handel revised and expanded it to three acts and presented the work in London as an ode.

It is not clear whether the original performance was staged, semi-staged, or performed as a concert work. The single voice per part allotted to the chorus links the work with the contemporary Italian serenata. The libretto is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, xiii (see Acis and Galatea). It was first published in 1722, and went through a number of revisions before finally becoming the two-act work which is generally performed today. It had a number of revivals in various forms and was Handel's most widely performed dramatic work during his lifetime.

Handel is often noted for his recycling of old material in new works; however, for a work based on a text which he had previously set (his outdoor cantata, or serenata: Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, 1708), there is surprisingly little taken from the earlier work. Borrowings include the aria "As when the dove," a reworking of "Amo Tirsi" from the cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno and, in the 1732 version, "Un sospiretto" and "Come la rondinella" from the same source.

Perhaps the best-known arias from this piece are the bass solo: "I rage, I melt, I burn" and the tenor aria "Love in her eyes sits playing".

In 1788, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart rescored the work for his then-patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten.