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
Water Music (novel) Water Music (novel) Water Music is the first novel by T. C. Boyle, first published in 1981. It is a semi-fictional historical adventure novel that is set in the late 18th and early 19th century. The novel follows the parallel adventures and intertwining fates of its protagonists Ned Rise, a luckless petty criminal, and the famous explorer Mungo Park - the first a purely fictional character, the latter based on a historical person. The book takes place in various locales in Scotland, England and Western Africa. It revolves around two Imperial British expeditions into the interior of Western Africa in