Music of champions: Hendel lovers have always regarded Rodelinda as one of the composer's greatest achievements. Now, met audiences get to rediscover this masterpiece in a new production with "A-list" credits.(Critical Essay)

Handel operas are no rarity today: they figure regularly in the repertory of companies great and small. It is strange to think that for nearly two centuries the great works went unheard--indeed, were almost unknown! The "Handel Opera Revival" began in Gottingen, in 1920, and it began with Rodelinda. Oskar Hagen perceived that a score once deemed a string of excellent da capo arias, one after another, was in fact a music drama that could engage a modern audience. His enterprise was rewarded: within six years, Rodelinda had been taken up by twenty-five other German-language companies. Hagen's version of Giulio Cesare, two years later, was even more successful; it was taken ...