Handel started writing “ Serse ” on 26 December 1737 and completed the third act on 6 February 1738. The première took place on 15 April of the same year at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. Four performances followed, after which the work was not heard again until 1924. The opera focuses on the Persian king Serse , who, rather than serving as a military commander or statesman, appears at the centre of a highly complex love story. Handel provided an admixture of buffo elements (the antics of...