Alexander. An Opera. [Hwv 21]. [Full Score] Handel, George Frideric 1685-1759 New Arrivals

Quarto. Full ivory vellum with double rules to edges of both boards. 1f. (recto subscriber list, verso blank), 112 p. List of subscribers typeset, music engraved. Named singers include Sigra. Cuzzoni, Sigra. Faustina, and Senesino. The music includes the overture, solo arias, and a duet written for Cuzzoni and Faustina, "Placa l'alma quieta il petto." With "The Opera of Alexander" and "F. G. Upton" in contemporary manuscript and "afterwards Greville Howard" in pencil to front pastedown. Binding worn, rubbed, and bumped; pastedowns worn, soiled, and creased; free endpapers lacking. Slightly worn, browned, and soiled; closely trimmed at lower margin, not affecting text or notation; list of subscribers dampstained, with small tear to outer margin repaired with archival tape to verso; minor loss to lower outer corner p. 5; tear to margin of pp. 7-8, affecting lowest stave, repaired with archival tape; small tear to upper outer corner of p. 63 repaired with archival tape; paper abraded to pp. 63-65; tear to final leaf, affecting one stave; three stab holes to blank inner margins from earlier binding. Lacking title and index. First Edition, first issue. Rare. Smith p. 12, no. 1. BUC p. 425. RISM H82 and HH82. Rare Book Hub records only two copies having come to auction since 1950. Alessandro, in three acts to a libretto by Paolo Antonio Rolli based on Ortensio Mauro's La superbia d'Alessandro (1690, Hanover), was first performed in London at the King's Theatre on 5 May 1726, featuring two of the leading female divas at the time, rivals Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. "The1725-6season hung fire until Faustina finally appeared in Handel'sAlessandroon5 May 1726, the time meanwhile having been filled in by a pasticcio (Elisa), revivals and Handel's hastily preparedScipione(12 March 1726). The choice of subject forAlessandro(Alexander the Great's simultaneous wooing of the princesses Roxana and Lisaura), and Handel's ingenious equalization of Cuzzoni's and Faustina's music, amusingly but perhaps unwisely pointed up the rivalry between the two prima donnas." Anthony Hicks in Grove Music Online "Cluer published the score on 6 August 172, having invited a subscription on 27 May. There were eighty subscribers for 106 copies, some from as far away as Dublin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and New York ("Mr. Cook."). Dean: Handel's Operas 1726-1741, p. 34. One of the earliest examples of an American resident, "Mr. Cook, at New-York," having subscribed to a foreign musical publication. There is a strong likelihood that this "Mr. Cook" was related to the "Cooke" mentioned by Smith: "This edition may have been preceded by the two collections of songs presumably issued by Cooke." Smith p. 12.