George Frideric Handel: Tolomeo, re d'Egitto (Ptolemy, King of Egypt), HWV 25)

Tolomeo is an opera seria in three acts to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro. It was Handel's 13th (or 14th if the one act Handel contributed to the collaborative opera Muzio Scevola is counted) and last opera for the Royal Academy of Music (1719) and was also the last of the operas he composed for the triumvirate of internationally renowned singers, the castrato Senesino and the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. The story of the opera is a fictionalisation of some events in the life of Ptolemy IX Lathyros, king of Egypt. An aria from the opera, Non lo dirò col labbro, was adapted by Arthur Somervell (1863–1937) as the popular classic 'Silent Worship', 1928.

Available arias: