The aria Ombra mai fu at the start of Act I of Handel's opera seria Serse (Xerxes) is likely to be its best-known asset. Serse was written in 1733-38, at the end of Handel's career as an opera composer: he concentrated on oratorio after 1741. It is a great achievement. Not least because it uses the music, and the marriage of words and music, to evoke in the audience pathos, sympathy, delight, and as much tempered ridicule as tempered tenderness.

Karl Richter was regarded as one of the great Bach conductors of the twentieth century, noted for solid regularity in rhythms and a serious approach to the music, though he was not given to following the changing pronouncements of musicologists concerning historical accuracy in performance. He was brought up in the tradition of German Protestant religious music; his father was a minister in the central German regions near where Johann Sebastian Bach had lived. Richter learned piano and organ, and as he approached his 12th birthday entered the Kreuzschule school in Dresden.

Sometime in late 1705 or 1706 Georg Friedrich Händel, like many German composers before him, travelled to Italy, then the fountainhead of European music. During the next three years he paid extended visits to Rome and also spent time in Florence, Venice and Naples. In 1709-10, perhaps after a year back in Hamburg, he returned once again to Florence and Venice. Rather than studying with some Italian master, as others had done, he quickly established himself as a virtuoso performer and composer, enjoying the support of leading patrons and composing numerous cantatas.