Siroe

Siroe, re di Persia ("Siroes, King of Persia", HWV 24), is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was his 12th opera for the Royal Academy of Music and was written for the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. The opera uses an Italian-language libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Metastasio's Siroe. Like many of Metastasio's libretti, it was also set by Handel's contemporaries, e.g. by Leonardo Vinci, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Adolph Hasse (see Hasse's Siroe). Pasquale Errichelli's setting of the libretto (see Errichelli's Siroe) premiered in the year of Handel's death.

The story of the opera is a fictionalisation of some events in the life of Kavadh II (also known as Shērōē), King of the Sasanian Empire in 628 AD.

The opera was first given under the direction of the composer at the King's Theatre in London on 17 February 1728 and it was also seen in Braunschweig, Germany. It was rediscovered and performed in Gera, Germany, in December 1925. As with all Baroque opera seria, Siroe went unperformed for many years, but with the revival of interest in Baroque music and historically informed musical performance since the 1960s,Siroe, like all Handel operas, receives performances at festivals and opera houses today. Among other performances, Siroe received staged productions at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice in association with La Fenice opera house in 2001 and at the Göttingen International Handel Festival in 2013.

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