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and is generally a dash to the seaside, but in the eighteenth century it was a slow, stately progress to the country villa, where the sweltering days were spent in gossip, flirting, and pottering about the estate. Handel, with his love of the country, must have enjoyed a two-month sojourn at Ruspoli’s moated palace in the little town of Vignanello, in the foothills of the extinct volcano Monte Cimino, between Rome and Viterbo. He was busy in any case with Armida abbandonata and had written three Latin motets, O qualis de coelo sonus , a Salve Regina and Coelestis dum spirat aura , for the weekend celebrations of Pentecost and St Anthony’s Day, when the cathedral was presented with a new altarpiece by the painter Michelangelo Ceruti. The Marchese was well pleased with the music and its performers. Handel got a jewelled ring and so did Durastanti, which suggests either that as a woman she was given the then exceptional privilege of being allowed to sing in church, or, more likely, that the motets must have been given in the Ruspoli palace.
    At meals Handel, listed in the Ruspoli accounts as ‘the Saxon’, joined Durastanti at the top table, ‘ l’eccelentissima tavola ’. As a distinguished addition to the company in the dining room, Cardinal Ottoboni had dropped in on his way to Bologna. With him he may have brought the soprano Vittoria Tarquini, since the Vignanello guest list includes someone simply referred to as ‘Vittoria’, and a week later we find the diva detained in Ferrara by the advance of the imperial army. Nicknamed ‘La Bambagia’ (cotton wool), either for her flossy blonde hair or her generous figure, she was the mistress of Ferdinando de’ Medici, Crown Prince of Tuscany, but this seems not to have deterred other admirers, among them the young Saxon composer. She, rather than Margherita Durastanti, may have given the first performance of Armida abbandonata and another work written for the villa party, Una alma innamorata .
    It seems reasonable to assume that a more important commission than either of these two works was preoccupying Handel during his days in the Latian countryside. The exact circumstances under which he came to compose his first Italian opera are unknown,and for many years even its actual performance history was in question. It has now been discovered that it was given in Florence during the early autumn of 1707, and that its title (it has always been called Rodrigo for convenience) was Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria (The greatest victory is over oneself). It was probably presented in the Teatro del Cocomero, which since 1652 had been the seat of the Accademia degli Infuocati, a splinter group of members of the original Accademia degli Immobili, established under the protection of Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici. One of numerous such learned bodies in Florence – there were also the Sorgenti, the Cadenti and the Nascenti, as well as the Conversazione del Centauro and various smaller ones – the Infuocati had their theatre, now known as the Nicolini, in Via dei Servi by the Duomo. Its name was taken from the exploding grenade which the Infuocati – literally ‘aflame’ – had adopted as their symbol and which resembled the watermelons, cocomeri , still sold on stalls in Florence today. Renamed Teatro Niccolini, it has the distinction of being one of four surviving theatres (all of them rebuilt since the eighteenth century) associated with Handelian first nights.
    One of the Infuocati at the time of Handel’s Florentine visit was Antonio Salvi, Prince Ferdinando’s court poet and one of Italy’s most important librettists. He may have supplied Handel with the text, a revision of Francesco Silvani’s Il duello d’Amore e di Vendetta , written for Venice in 1699. The story is very loosely based on events and characters from the last days of Visigothic Spain, but though the historical