Handel’s Rinaldo is an opera about war and the stories we tell about it.

Written at a time when tales of crusading knights filled the European imagination, the opera reflects the fantasies of power and expansion that shaped its era. Rinaldo and his fellow warriors arrive as invaders, battling the rulers of the land they seek to control.

In this new staging, director Ralph Bridle looks beyond the myth to the darker realities beneath the fantasy: captivity, enslavement and the human cost of war. These themes find their most haunting expression in the music of Almirena, Rinaldo’s captured lover.

More than three centuries after its premiere, in a world still shaped by conflict, Handel’s score resonates with surprising immediacy and emotional power.