Rodelinda is widely considered to be one of Georg Friedrich Handel’s finest operas. After its premiere on the 13^th of February 1725 at the King’s Theater in London, the performance was shown thirteen more times. The reopening of the opera with a new cast in 1731 proved equally successful. The work was also staged in Hamburg (in 1735 and 1736), only to disappear from opera houses for almost two hundred years. In 1920, Rodelinda, happily rediscovered by Oskar Hagen, a lecturer in art history at the University of Göttingen, inaugurated the triumphant return of Handel’s works to opera stages.