Jetske Mijnssen made her Royal Opera debut with Handel's Ariodante, the first opera he wrote for Covent Garden, with Emily D'Angelo in the title role.
The Royal Opera staged Handel’s Ariodante, the first opera he wrote for Covent Garden, at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from Tuesday 9 to Sunday 21 December 2025. Jetske Mijnssen made her Royal Opera debut directing the new production.
Handel composed the opera in 1734, and it opened his first season at the Covent Garden theatre on 8 January 1735. It is the only opera he set in the British Isles, in a Scotland taken from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.
A rival’s plot convinces Ariodante that his fiancée Ginevra has betrayed him. Each act carries dance, written for the French dancer Marie Sallé and her company.
The opera then fell out of the repertory for nearly two centuries and returned in the 1970s. It is now counted among his greatest operas.
This staging continued the house’s series of Handel’s Covent Garden works, after Alcina, Jephtha, Theodora and Susanna. It was a co-production with Opéra National du Rhin and Opéra de Lausanne.
Stefano Montanari conducted. Emily D’Angelo sang Ariodante opposite Jacquelyn Stucker’s Ginevra, with Christophe Dumaux as the scheming Polinesso, Elena Villalón as Dalinda and Ed Lyon as Lurcanio.