"The sacred story of _Esther_, an oratorio in English," was accordingly
announced for May 2, with the information that "there will be no acting
on the stage, but the house will be fitted up in a decent manner for the
audience; the Musick [i.e. the orchestra] to be disposed after the manner
of the coronation service." Within a fortnight, Thomas Arne, father of the
composer, advertised a performance of _Acis and Galatea_ at the Little
Theatre in the Haymarket "with all the choruses, scenes, machines, and
other decorations, being the first time it was performed in a theatrical
way." The laws of the time gave no protection to musical and dramatic
copyright. Handel could only reply by giving a performance of the work
himself; his one advantage was that as composer he could remodel the score
and make several new additions to it. But he did not have the work acted;
it was sung in costume with a background of appropriate scenery. Even in
this form it obtained four performances; Senesino and Strada took part in
it, singing in English.

Such a setting may appear strange to modern readers, but, even if it was
a new idea for England at the time, it was a fairly well established
tradition on the Continent, and Handel may very likely have seen a similar
entertainment in Italy. The subscribers to the opera would see little in
it that was incongruous. They were accustomed to see singers in all operas
wearing dresses that differed very little from their own, and scenery which
recalled their own Italianate gardens and palaces; Handelian opera, in any
case, left little scope for what most people now call acting. At the same
time we may be pretty sure that concert singers, especially Italians,
allowed themselves far more liberty of spontaneous expressive movement than
Victorian oratorio singers holding their music-books in front of them by
traditional convention.