Of the four operas written by the youthful composer George Frideric Handel (pictured) between 1703 and 1706 when he lived and worked in Hamburg, only the first, Almira, has survived complete. The music for the others is lost apart from a few orchestral fragments. Handel learned the rudiments of opera composition while employed as a violinist at the Oper am Gänsemarkt, Hamburg's famous opera house, and was able to get Almira and a second opera, Nero, performed there during the temporary absence of the theatre's director, Reinhard Keiser. Almira was successful, Nero less so. Handel's last two Hamburg operas, Florindo and Daphne, were not produced at the Gänsemarkt before Handel left Hamburg. No music that can be definitively traced to Nero has been identified, although scholars have speculated that some of it may have been used in later works, particularly Agrippina, which has a similar plot and characters. Fragments of music from Florindo and Daphne have been preserved, although without the vocal parts, and some of these elements have been incorporated into an orchestral suite first recorded in 2012. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel%27s_lost_Hamburg_operas> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1514: Ottoman forces defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, gaining control of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chaldiran> 1896: Andrés Bonifacio and his Katipunan comrades in modern-day Quezon City rose up in revolt against Spanish rule, marking the beginning of the Philippine Revolution. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_of_Pugad_Lawin> 1929: Palestine riots: Arabs began attacking Jews in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over sixty people in two days. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre> 1970: The United Farm Workers, led by Cesar Chavez, began the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farmworker strike in U.S. history. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_Bowl_strike> 2006: Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of 10 in Vienna, escaped from her captor Wolfgang Přiklopil after eight years in captivity. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natascha_Kampusch> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: gasbag: 1. A bag or bladder to hold a reservoir of gas, as in a hot-air balloon. 2. (figuratively) A person who is overly garrulous or prone to making empty, unsupportable statements; a windbag. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gasbag> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   The strife of Love's the abysmal strife, And the word of Love is the Word of Life. And they that go with the Word unsaid, Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.   --William Ernest Henley <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Ernest_Henley>