She is waiting for her husband to return from the war. He arrives. Then her jealousy destroys everything.
As is so often the case in Handel's dramatic works, Hercules also containsa woman and not the title hero in the center. This time it's about the psychological drama of Dejanira, who is plagued by morbid jealousy. At first she fears that her husband Hercules will not return from the war. When the war hero returns home, her joie de vivre returns, but dwindles because Princess Iole, whose father Hercules killed, is in his entourage. Dejanira projects all of her fears onto Iole. Her unfounded jealousy and self-destructive powers spread. She has her husband brought a robe that is said to have magical properties in order to be able to restore her supposedly lost love. But the attempt fails: the cloak, which ignites in the fire, turns out to be poisoned, and Hercules is burned alive. Dejanira realizes her guilt.
In his text, the librettist Thomas Broughton combined motifs from several ancient poems about the death of Heracles into his own version, focusing on the contrast between the innocence of those involved and the terrible consequences of their entanglements. Published as an oratorio, Hercules evades strict classification according to genre. Rather, it is a piece for music theater that, at the time it was written, could not compete with the great magic effects of the opera stage or with the religious demands of the oratorio and failed. So applies Herculesas a high point in Handel's dramatic work and at the same time marks the low point of his career as an impresario. With predominantly somber minor keys, he lets us witness a tragic
inner conflict.
