Crudel tiranno Amor HWV 97

Handel, like Vivaldi and Mozart, was one of the great impresario-director-composers. He
began as virtuoso organist but realised he would not be content with life as
Kapellmeister at a German court. Still in his early twenties he took off for
Italy where he began his lifetime career of composing a combination of secular
cantatas, oratorios and operas. While in Italy, he first came across Margherita
Durastanti and he wrote his Venetian hit opera Agrippina for her. Ten years later Handel was in
Europe engaging top Italian singers for his new opera company, the Royal
Academy of Music, and he found Durastanti in Dresden and brought her back to
London.

Crudel
tiranno Amor was
written for a benefit concert for Durastanti at the King’s Theatre in July
1721. Handel only gave it one performance and then purloined all three arias
for a revival of Floridante with Durastanti the following
season. This self-borrowing was common practice for Handel and hardly
surprising given the number of new operas he was expected to produce each
season. The cantata’s text describes a woman in love, torn between doubt and
hope and was certainly a spectacular show-piece for Durastanti’s talents.