A tragedy of jealousy: after a long absence fighting in the war, Hercules returns home, bringing with him his vanquished enemy’s daughter as booty. His wife Dejanira regards the foreign princess with mistrust and even though Hercules insists that he loves no one but her the queen is consumed by jealousy and hate, which ultimately leads to a dreadful tragedy. George Frideric Handel calls Hercules a “musical drama”, and the work, first given in 1745, is indeed no static oratorio, but an absorbing English opera that presents the myth of Hercules’s death as a psychological tragedy.
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