page_title: Atalanta (opera)
section_title: Reception and performance history
hierarchical_section_title: Atalanta (opera) / Reception and performance history
caption_attribution_description: Covent-Garden Theatre: This engraving was published as Plate 27 of Microcosm of London (1808) (see File:Microcosm of London Plate 027 - Covent Garden Theatre.jpg).
context_page_description: Atalanta is a pastoral opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel composed in 1736. It is based upon the mythological female athlete, Atalanta, the libretto being derived from the book La Caccia in Etolia by Belisario Valeriani. The identity of the librettist is not known.
  Handel composed it for the London celebrations of the marriage in 1736 of Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King George II, to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. The first performance took place on 12 May 1736 in the Covent Garden Theatre. It closed with a spectacular display of fireworks, which was highly popular with the royal family and the London audience, and the opera and fireworks display were revived a number of times in the year of its first performance.
  An arioso from the opera, "Care selve", is often heard in recital and on recordings.
context_section_description: Atalanta was well received at its premiere and was performed seven more times that season. In the new season that autumn, it was revived "by Command of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales" in celebration of whose wedding the work had been written, and who finally came to see it. Friend of Handel Thomas Harris wrote in a letter to a patron of Handel's, Lord Shaftesbury, that the royal couple had really come mainly to see the fireworks, which were not as spectacular as they had been in the first run of performances, saying that Atalanta:
  was performed to-night in order to give their royal Highnesses a view of ye Fire-works which went off with great Applause, tho' I don't think with that Splendour I have seen them formerly.
  The musical score of Atalanta, sold by subscription, was the most successful printed edition in terms of numbers of copies sold of any of Handel's works in his lifetime.
  Written as a piece d'occasion to celebrate a royal wedding, Atalanta was not performed again in its entirety after the revival in November 1736 until 1970 in London, though an arioso from the work, "Care selve", became popular out of context of the piece and is often sung in recitals and on recordings. With the increased interest since the 1960s in Baroque music and historically informed musical performance, the entire opera is now performed more often. Among other performances, Atalanta was performed at the London Handel Festival in 2008, by Cambridge Handel Opera in 2013. and by the Caramoor festival, USA, in 2018.
caption: Interior, 
  Theatre Royal Covent Garden where Atalanta was first performed
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