River Thames
The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed for King George I on his barge and he is said to have enjoyed it so much that he ordered the 50 exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.
Handel's lost Hamburg operas
Handel joined the Hamburg opera house when it was experiencing a period of considerable artistic success. This blossoming followed the arrival of Reinhard Keiser, who had become musical director at the Gänsemarkt in about 1697, and in 1703 succeeded Johann Kusser as the theatre's manager. Born in 1674, Keiser had studied under Johann Schelle and probably Johann Kuhnau at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig. In 1694 he was employed as a court composer at Brunswick, where in three years he composed seven operas, at least one of which ("Mahumeth") was performed in Hamburg. According to Handel's biographer Donald Burrows, Keiser was a good judge of popular taste, with a flair for writing Italian-style arias. Between 1697 and 1703, prior to Handel's arrival, about a dozen more Keiser operas had been staged at the Gänsemarkt. Despite his on-stage successes, Keiser was an unreliable general manager, with expensive private tastes and little financial acumen, often at odds with his creditors.