Giove in Argo
opera pasticcio by Georg Friedrich Händel
Giove in Argo (Jupiter in Argos, HWV A14) is an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel. It is one of Handel's three pasticcio works made up of music and arias from his previous operas. The libretto was written by Antonio Maria Lucchini. The opera was first performed at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, London, on 1 May 1739.
History
The libretto by the Venetian poet Lucchini had been written for a setting by Antonio Lotti in Dresden in 1717. Handel might have heard Lotti's opera on his visit to Dresden in 1719, where the famous Senesino sang the part of Jupiter. Probably Handel took a copy of the text to England and remembered it in 1739 when he was looking for a libretto for a short pasticcio opera with three female characters in it.
Handel brought several pasticci to the London stage. In most cases he adapted successful works of Italian composers for London, but he wrote three pasticci in which he re-used music from his own earlier works. They are the well known Oreste, the little-known Alessandro Severo and the completely unknown Giove in Argo.
The public source identifies “Giove in Argo” as opera pasticcio by Georg Friedrich Händel. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Giove, Argo and opera.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1411441. VIAF identifies the subject as 194754473. The Library of Congress control number is no2013105527. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1739, 1717 and 1719.
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This entry incorporates text from “Giove in Argo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.