Four Times of the Day, a series…

Four Times of the Day, a series of four paintings by English artist William Hogarth, is the first set of prints that Hogarth publishes after his two great successes, A Harlot's Progress (1732) and A Rake's Progress (1735).

It is among the first of his prints to be published after the Engraving Copyright Act 1734 (which Hogarth had helped push through Parliament); A Rake's Progress had taken early advantage of the protection afforded by the new law Completed in 1736, they are reproduced as a series of four engravings published in 1738.

They are humorous depictions of life in the streets of London, the vagaries of fashion, and the interactions between the rich and poor.

Unlike many of Hogarth's other series, such as A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress, Industry and Idleness, and The Four Stages of Cruelty, it does not depict the story of an individual, but instead focuses on the society of the city.

Hogarth intends the series to be humorous rather than instructional; the pictures do not offer a judgment on whether the rich or poor are more deserving of the viewer's sympathies: while the upper and middle classes tend to provide the focus for each scene, there are fewer of the moral comparisons seen in some of his other works.

The four pictures depict scenes of daily life in various locations in London as the day progresses.

Morning shows a prudish spinster making her way to church in Covent Garden past the revelers of the previous night; Noon shows two cultures on opposite sides of the street in St. Giles; Evening depicts a dyer's family returning hot and bothered from a trip to Sadler's Wells; and Night shows disreputable goings-on around a drunken freemason staggering home near Charing Cross.

The King's Theatre, London had in late 1737 commissioned Handel to write two new operas.

The first, Faramondo, is premiered on January 3, 1738, by which time Handel had already begun work on Serse.

The first act was composed between December 26, 1737 and January 9, 1738, the second was ready by January 25, the third by February 6, and Handel puts the finishing touches to the score on February 14.

Serse is first performed on April 15, 1738, at the King's Theatre, Haymarket.

The Italian libretto had been adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694.

Stampiglia's libretto was itself based on one by Nicolò Minato that was set by Francesco Cavalli in 1654.

The opera is set in Persia (modern day Iran) in 480 BCE and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia, though there is little in either the libretto or music that is relevant to that setting.

The first production is a complete failure.

The audience may have been confused by the innovative nature of the work.

Unlike his other operas for London, Handel includes comic (buffo) elements in Serse.

Although this had been typical for seventeenth-century Venetian works such as Cavalli's original setting of the libretto, by the 1730s, an opera seria is expected to be wholly serious, with no mixing of the genres of tragedy and comedy or high and low class characters.

Serse will disappear from the stage for almost two hundred years.

Although the English title Xerxes is widely used, the original Italian title was Serse.

The opening aria, "Ombra mai fu", sung by Xerxes to a tree (Platanus orientalis), is set to one of Handel's best-known melodies, and is often played in an orchestral arrangement, known as Handel's "largo" (despite being marked "larghetto" in the score).

Xerxes, originally sung by a castrato, is now generally performed by a mezzo-soprano, contralto or countertenor.