Ottone, re di Germania ("Otto, King of Germany", HWV 15) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane.[1] It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music (1719)'s fourth season and had its first performance on 12 January 1723 at the King's Theatre, Haymarket in London. Handel had assembled a cast of operatic superstars for this season and the opera became an enormous success.
The story of the opera is a fictionalisation of some events in the lives of Adalbert of Italy, his mother Willa of Tuscany (called "Gismonda" in the opera), Otto II, and the Byzantine Princess Theophanu, who became the wife of Otto II in a state marriage intended to form an alliance between the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.
- ^ McLauchlan, Fiona, "Lotti's Teofane (1719) and Handel's Ottone (1723): A Textual and Musical Study" (August 1997). Music & Letters, 78 (3): pp. 349-390.