LILY ZAEHNER (Mezzo-Soprano)
THE DORIAN TRIO
As simple as the better known Largo, this song of Handel's is one of those which would of itself have ensured an immortal name for its composer. The opera from which it comes has a special interest for us, as having been the first which Handel produced in this country. He arrived here at a time when the fashionable world had no great interest in any music except Italian opera, and he wrote this to an Italian text in the amazingly short time of only two weeks. It was produced with real success at the old Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, in 1710. The new-comer did not meet with universal applause at the hands of the critics, and the satirical comments on Rinaldo by Steele and Addison, in the Spectator and Taller of those days, make interesting. though rather pathetic, reading even now.