With “Alessandro Severo” Handel takes up the story of the Roman Emperor Severus Alexander. Thanks to the new volume in the Halle Handel Edition, this pasticcio opera is now available in an authoritative edition for future performances – far beyond the 1,800th anniversary of the original event.

The first performance of George Frideric Handel’s pasticcio opera Alessandro Severo, HWV A13, took place in the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, London on 25 February 1738. The libretto was written by an unknown author, based on Apostolo Zeno’s (1668–1750) drama per musica, which had been performed in 1717 in Venice in the setting by Antonio Lotti (1667–1740).

For the season at the beginning of 1738 Handel composed not only the two operas “Faramondo” and “Serse”, but also the pasticcio “Alessandro Severo” (his second pasticcio after “Oreste” HWV A11, of 1734 based on his own existing music); this could be put down to his wish to save as much as possible of the particularly successful music from the operas “Atalanta”, “Arminio”, “Giustino” and “Berenice”, first composed and premiered in 1736 and 1737, for future performances. Revivals of these operas, which were still almost new and little-performed, was not an option for Handel at the end of 1737 because, following the collapse of the previous London opera companies a couple of months earlier, he was now composing for vocal soloists who were largely completely unknown to him. To adapt these operas to suit other vocal soloists than those for whom they were written, but were no longer available, was not a realistic option for him. 22 of 31 musical numbers in “Alessandro Severo” came from these four operas. With the other six works from which Handel borrowed numbers for his pasticcio – “Orlando”, “Radamisto”, “Siroe”, “Ezio”, “Arianna” and “Ariodante” – each supplied just one or two movements, including some of the greatest Handel hits such as “Nasce al bosco in rosca cuna” (“Ezio”) and “Con l’ali di costanza” (“Ariodante”).

Gessius Bassianus Alexianus (Severus Alexander, Alessandro Severo) was born on 1 October 208 in the region of present-day Syria or Lebanon. After his cousin, the Emperor Elagabal, had been murdered at the age of 18 on 11 or 12 March 222 following a four-year rule, Alexander nominally became the autocratic ruler of the Roman Empire on the 13th of the month, at the age of 13. But according to tradition, the actual power lay with his (and Elagabal’s) grandmother Iulia Maesa, who probably died in August 224, and also with his mother Iulia Mamaea (Giulia). Severus Alexander seems to have seldom left Mamaea’s side during his short life and she was also murdered with him in March 235 at Mogontiacum (present-day Mainz) by rebelling soldiers. The historic event on which the moving and exciting plot of Handel’s “Alessandro Severo” is based, the overthrow of the Empress Gnaea Seia Herennia Sallustia Barbia Orbiana Augusta (thankfully just Sallustia in the opera) because of her mother-in-law’s intrigues, can be dated to the first half of 227 on the basis of evidence from coins and an inscription in honour of the Empress in 227 CE in Africa. As Apostolo Zeno set the plot of his libretto on the anniversary of the official beginning of the dictatorship of Severus Alexander, the opera takes place on 13 March 227.

Michael Pacholke
(from [t]akte 2/2026)
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)