A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the name of the composer without whose presence, according to Anthony Hicks, so unusual a project would not have been attempted?, using the article: Dean and Knapp record that in early 1707 Keiser surrendered the lease of the Gänsemarkt to Johann Heinrich Sauerbrey, who thus became responsible for the staging of the double opera. It may by this time have been in rehearsal, and the difficulties involved in such a complex and elaborate work may have necessitated several postponements. The consensus among experts is that the two parts were first performed on consecutive evenings in January 1708, as they are the first works in Mattheson's opera list for 1708. There are no surviving records of the public's reception, the length of the original run, or of any revivals. Whether Handel was present at any time during rehearsals or performance is uncertain; he may have returned from Italy, fresh from the opening of Rodrigo in Florence, to supervise the production of Florindo and Daphne in Hamburg. Dean and Knapp suggest the works may have been directed from the harpsichord by Christoph Graupner, although Anthony Hicks in his Grove Handel biography, says that so unusual a project would not have been attempted without the composer's presence.The theatre's management was clearly concerned that the public might find the double opera too heavy in undiluted form. Accordingly, a comic intermezzo in Low German dialect (platte-deutsch) was devised by Sauerbrey to precede the performance of Daphne. The critic and essayist Romain Rolland, in his life of Handel, termed this a "mutilation", carried out "for fear that the music may tire the hearers"., what would be the answer ?



Handel