The young Almira is crowned Queen of Castile. She must marry the son of her guardian, Consalvo, but has no interest in allying herself to the ambitious Osman. She is loved, however, by Fernando, who turns out, by a happy accident, also to be a son of Consalvo, so that, after a variety of intrigues, all ends happily.

Almira was Handel’s first attempt at opera, written in Hamburg to replace a work that, seemingly, Reinhard Keiser, the lessee and director of the Hamburg Goosemarket Opera, had been forced to abandon while he took refuge from his creditors.