Serse January, the third by 6 February, and Handel put the finishing touches to the score on 14 February. "Serse" was first performed at the King's Theatre, Haymarket on 15 April 1738. The first production was a complete failure. The audience may have been confused by the innovative nature of the work. Unlike his other operas for London, Handel included comic ("buffo") elements in "Serse". Although this had been typical for 17th-century Venetian works such as Cavalli's original setting of the libretto, by the 1730s an "opera seria" was expected to be wholly serious, with no mixing of the genres of
Baroque music of the British Isles (1702–14), had a reputation for being uninterested in culture, but had a considerable musical education and some talent. As a princess she was a patron of Purcell, Turner and Blow and from the early years of her reign she sponsored compositions for Royal processions and occasions including her coronation and the Acts of Union in 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. Her successor George Elector of Hanover, king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1714 to 1727 as George I, was perhaps the most musically minded monarch of the era, bringing German and Italian music and musicians with