relenting (and sadly, unjustified) jealousy.
It's not the outlandish plot that intrigues me, but the way in which Handel presents this woman who begins the opera already slightly unhinged by her grief, and sculpts her downfall into one of the greatest scenes of madness ever written, yet never once resorting to caricature.
On the first day of rehearsal I was shaking at the prospect of meeting Maestro William Christie for the first time, but he told our cast, "Don't you worry about anything - just give me everything you've got: soft and loud, black and white, whisper and yell, and we'll be just fine." He held my hand daily as I searched for her vulnerability, her madness. In the immense, exhausting final mad scene, "Where shall I fly", I ran into great difficulty trying to make it work, and at each dead end, I would return again to the score to search for an answer. It was always right there waiting for me: the repeated "See! See! See!" announcing the horror of her visions, the relentless melismas as she attempts to flee the furies, the jagged lines, and the hollow calls for the black shades of night to hide her.
It was a lasting lesson for me that Handel is ultimately about theatre. So whether he wrote to put food on the table or because he was channelling something divine, it doesn't matter: he moves me, and for that I thank him.
• Joyce DiDonato will be singing in Les Talens Lyriques at the Barbican Hall, London, tonight. Box office: 020 7638 8891. Her CD of Handel's opera arias, Furore, is released on Virgin Classics.