2. Hamburg.

The advantage of Hamburg to an aspiring and independent-minded theatre composer was that it contained the only regular opera company in Germany operating outside the courts. Since 1696 it had been dominated by the energetic and influential figure of Reinhard Keiser. Handel went to the opera house in 1703 as a second violinist, later playing continuo harpsichord. He also took the opportunity to gain additional income by giving private lessons. He soon became friends with the composer, singer and theorist Johann Mattheson, and Mattheson's later writings (his Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte, 1740, and his annotated translation of Mainwaring) provide much information on this period of Handel's life.

Opportunities for Handel arose in 1704 at the opera house. Keiser, being (in Mainwaring's words) ‘a main of gaiety and expence, involved himself in debts, which forced him to abscond’. In fact he moved temporarily to Weissenfels, leaving the management of the opera house to his partner Drüsicke; this allowed the younger composers a chance to display their talents, and occasioned some rivalry. At a performance of Mattheson's Cleopatra on 5 December 1704 Handel refused to give up his place at the harpsichord to Mattheson after the latter had finished singing the role of Antony, and the two men fought an ineffectual duel, Handel's life being spared only because Mattheson's sword broke on a coat-button. After this, according to Mattheson, the pair became better friends than before.

Handel got the chance to compose his first opera because (again according to Mainwaring) ‘Keiser, from his unhappy situation, could no longer supply the Manager, who therefore applied to Handel, and furnished him with a drama to set’. The drama was F.C. Feustking's Der in Krohnen erlangte Glücks-Wechsel, oder Almira, Königin von Castilien (usually known as Almira) – a challenging choice, since the libretto had been prepared for Keiser himself, who had already set it to music; only his enforced move prevented its performance in Hamburg. (He produced a revised version at Weissenfels on 30 July 1704; his original setting was never performed.) Handel's version, opening on 8 January, proved very successful, with about 20 performances, and was followed immediately (on 25 February) by the less successful Nero (again on a Feustking libretto), the music of which is lost. Handel remained in Hamburg until summer 1706, but his activities as a composer seem to have been cut off with Keiser's return in August 1705. He did however compose a pair of operas, Der beglückte Florindo and Die verwandelte Daphne, designed to be performed on successive nights, which were produced in Hamburg in January 1708 (both are lost except for some dances and other fragments). Since Handel is assumed to have been in Italy at that time, it has generally been thought that these works were composed shortly after Nero and were performed in the composer's absence after news of his successes in Italy had reached Hamburg. However, it is unlikely that so unusual a project would be mounted without the composer, and newly-found evidence (Roberts, C1995) makes it more plausible to suggest that these operas were composed in Italy and that Handel returned to Hamburg late in 1707 to direct them.

Keiser's influence on Almira and the whole of Handel's subsequent operatic output can hardly be exaggerated. Not only did Handel incorporate fragments of musical material from several of Keiser's operas in his own works almost throughout his life, but he also absorbed from Keiser the eclectic mix of national styles apparent in so much of his music. Though he was soon to refine and consolidate the specifically Italian elements in his music in Italy itself, he never relinquished French forms for overtures and dance music, and his use of orchestral colour, particularly the occasional instrumental doubling of the voice colla parte, was derived from German models. Less happy was his adoption in Almira of Keiser's tendency to write for voice in quasi-instrumental style, but this was a fault that the next stage of his career was quick to remove.

Handel, George Frideric