had made a huge impact, and the playbills advertising the 1732 performances of Esther said "The music will be disposed after the manner of the Coronation Service". Handel's Italian operas laid overwhelming emphasis on solo arias for the star singers, with no extra choruses, while for the revision of Esther, the coronation anthems "My Heart is Inditing" and a version of "Zadok the Priest" were added. Their large choruses and grandiose orchestral effects with trumpets and drums were very different from what London audiences had experienced in Handel's Italian operas. Esther was very successful, Handel revived the work in many subsequent London seasons, and it proved the prototype for a long succession of similar dramatic oratorios in English by the composer. The playbills also stated "N.B. There will be no action on the stage, but the house will be fitted up in a decent manner for the audience." An anonymous pamphleteer found this novel form of entertainment, with the Italian opera stars sitting on stage in contemporary dress and singing in mangled English, rather hard to get used to:This being a new thing set the whole world a-madding. Han't you been at the oratorio? says one. Oh! if you don't see the oratorio you see nothing, says t'other, so away I go to the oratorio, where indeed I saw the finest assembly of people I ever beheld in my life; but to my great surprise found this sacred drama a mere concert, no scenery, dress or action, so necessary to a drama. But Handel was placed in a pulpit ... by him sat Senesino, Strada, Bertolli and Turner Robinson [stars of the Italian opera] in their own habits [clothes] ... Strada gave us a "Hallelujah" of an half hour long; Senesino and Bertolli made rare work of the English tongue, you would have sworn it had been Welsh. I would have wished it had been Italian, that they might have sang with more ease to themselves, since ... it might as well have been Hebrew. James Murray recounts as an anecdote of the 1732 premiere performance that the foreign singers garbled the text, Senesino making the line "I come my queen to chaste delights" to be heard as "I comb my queen to chase the lice" according to a contemporary account. Dramatis personae Synopsis Act 1 Esther and her adoptive father Mordecai are thrilled by Esther's elevation to Queen of