Tamerlano

Tamerlano ("Tamerlane", HWV 18) is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music theatre company, with music by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Agostin Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de Bajazet.

One of Handel's major works, he composed it in the space of 20 days in July 1724, in a year in which two more great operas were composed by him: Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. Eve Meyer has noted that the role of Bajazet was one of the first major tenor roles in opera, and has also commented on the place of the opera in the context of the contemporary fashion for Turkish culture (turquerie).

Performance history

Tamerlano was first performed at the King's Theatre, London, on 31 October 1724, around the time of the annual performance of Nicholas Rowe's play of Tamerlane (4–5 November). There were 12 performances and it was repeated on 13 November 1731. The opera then received a production in Hamburg with the recitative in German and the arias in Italian. The first modern production was in Karlsruhe on 7 September 1924. Amongst recent productions, it appeared in the repertory of the Washington National Opera in 2008 and of the Los Angeles Opera in November 2009; both productions featured tenor Plácido Domingo who also appeared as Bajazet in a production at Teatro Real, Madrid, in 2008.