Arianna in Creta

Arianna in Creta ("Ariadne in Crete", HWV 32) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Francis Colman from Pietro Pariati's Arianna e Teseo, a text previously set by Nicola Porpora in 1727 and Leonardo Leo in 1729.

The opera was first given at the King's Theatre in London on 26 January 1734 and then presented in a revised version with dances added for Marie Sallé at Covent Garden Theatre on 27 November of the same year.

As with all Baroque opera seria, Arianna in Creta went unperformed for many years, but with the revival of interest in Baroque music and historically informed musical performance since the 1960s,Arianna in Creta, like all Handel operas, receives performances at festivals and opera houses today. Among other performances, Arianna in Creta was staged by Gotham Chamber Opera in 2005 and by the London Handel Festival in 2014.

Long before the action of the opera, King Minos of Crete fought a war with King Aegeus of Athens, who had killed Minos' baby son and carried away his baby daughter. The girl, however, had been brought up by an ally of Athens', King Archeus of Thebes, in the belief that she was his own child. Athens had to pay tribute to Crete as a term of ending the war - once every seven years seven Athenian youths and seven Athenian maidens had to be sent to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster that lurked in a labyrinth from which escape was all but impossible. The human sacrifice of Athenians can only be ended by a hero slaying the Minotaur and defeating the Cretan warrior Tauride. The Athenian hero Teseo is on the way to Crete, resolved to do this and end his peoples' suffering, and to join with Arianna, whom he loves, and whom Minos has demanded as a hostage to ensure that the Athenian young people will be sent for sacrifice.

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