BBC Proms: Rarely has large-scale Handel felt so vital & involving. Peter Whelan & the Irish Baroque Orchestra in the Dublin version of Alexander's Feast

Handel: Alexander's Feast - Hilary Cronin, Stuart Jackson, Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus - BBC Proms (Photo: Chris Christodoulou/ BBC)

Handel: Alexander's Feast (1742 version, modern premiere), Concerti a due cori; Hilary Cronin, Hugh Cutting, Stuart Jackson, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus, Peter Whelan; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed 30 August 2025

This was unashamedly Big Baroque with the Dublin version of Alexander's Feast where Peter Whelan drew a remarkably communicative and urgent performance from all his players.

Handel's Alexander's Feast tends to be something of an unsung gem amongst his oratorios, perhaps Dryden's text is somewhat too poetically diffuse for modern audiences to take to their heart but in the work Handel displays his masterly grasp of creating large scale structures by interweaving chorus, recitative and aria into something more. He wrote the work in 1736 as a result of a sustained campaign by his friends to get the composer setting some great English poets, a campaign that would lead to Handel's other Dryden and Milton settings.

Until this year, the work had only been performed twice at the BBC Proms, in 1964 and in 2006 (this latter performance in Mozart's re-orchestration). On Saturday 30 August for their first appearance at the BBC Proms (and only the second appearance ever of an ensemble from the Republic of Ireland), Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra chose to perform Handel's 1742 Dublin version of Alexander's Feast along with a selection of his Concerti a due cori. The orchestra was joined by the Irish Baroque Chorus and soloists soprano Hilary Cronin, alto Hugh Cutting and tenor Stuart Jackson.

When Handel visited Dublin in 1741 and 1742 he gave two subscription series which would include the premiere of Messiah and a serenata version of his last opera, Imeneo. He also planned on performing Alexander's Feast but a decree from the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Jonathan Swift, meant that Handel could no longer use the singing men from the cathedral. This meant that Alexander's Feast had to be adjusted. The result is structurally different from the 1736 version, with a third part, using text by Irish writer Newburgh Hamilton who had arranged Dryden's original, and solos rewritten for soprano Christina Avolio, alto Susannah Cibber (who was in Dublin avoiding a sex scandal in London and who made a big impression in the alto solos in Messiah) and tenor Callaghan McCarty who was a Dublin-based theatre singer.

Handel: Alexander's Feast - Irish Baroque Orchestra & Chorus - BBC Proms (Photo: Chris Christodoulou/ BBC)

As Peter Whelan explained to me when we chatted in July [see my interview, Spurred by the story-telling], he designed the performance partly for the Royal Albert Hall and this was certainly Big Baroque. We had a chorus of 40, and orchestra with 30 strings, four oboes, three bassoons and four horns. These latter looked and sounded pretty spectacular with their miles of tubing and highly characterful timbre. The continuo line-up included two harpsichords (one played by Whelan), two theorbos and organ.

Ravishing delight: Rebecca Meltzer tells the story of Handel's Semele with engaging clarity at Waterperry Opera with Hilary Cronin & Michael Lafferty

Handel: Semele - Hilary Cronin & ensemble - Waterperry Opera Festival (Photo: Jennifer Hawthorn)

Handel: Semele; Hilary Cronin, Michael Lafferty, Sophie Goldrrick, Nathan Mercieca, Sarah Winn, director: Rebecca Meltzer, conductor: Bertie Baigent, Waterperry Opera Festival; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 23 August 2025

A small-scale production with a big heart. Director Rebecca Meltzer tells the story with engaging clarity and benefits from Hilary Cronin charming and delighting in the title role

Having finished its summer performances in Oxfordshire, Waterperry Opera Festival made two guest appearances at Opera Holland Park bringing their new production of Handel's Semele. We caught the second, on 22 August 2025. The director was Rebecca Meltzer and conductor was Bertie Baigent with Hilary Cronin as Semele, Michael Lafferty as Jupiter, Sophie Goldrick as Juno, Nathan Mercieca as Athamas, Sarah Winn as Ino, Phil Wilcox as Cadmus, Louse Fuller as Iris, James Micklethwaite as Apollo and Masimba Ushe as Somnus and the High Priest. Designs were by Jennifer Gregory, lighting by Catja Hamilton and movement by Alexandria McCauley.

Meltzer's production took advantage of the full extent of the Opera Holland Park stage even adding a walkway across the middle of the pit. Most of the action was on the forestage with the main stage used for emphasis. Jennifer Gregory's designs were contemporary, the mortals dressed in shades of black, white and grey with clothes that might have come from Cos, whilst the immortals were in vivid colour with paint on their skin and graffiti-esque clothes.

Handel: Semele - Michael Lafferty, Hilary Cronin - Waterperry Opera Festival (Photo: Jennifer Hawthorn)

It was a tight and small cast, with many of the smaller roles being doubled with the chorus, but quick changes and clear delineation of costumes meant that there was never any confusion, and the choruses filled the space admirably. Bertie Baigent directed a small-ish band from the harpsichord, but even with a second harpsichord in the ensemble the instrument sounded undernourished and the cello was the main driver in the recitatives.

Strange & intriguing: Dmitri Tcherniakov directs his first Baroque opera with Handel's Giulio Cesare in Salzburg

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto - Robert Raso (Curio), Lucile Richardot (Cornelia), Yuriy Mynenko (Tolomeo), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Achilla) - Salzburg Festival (Photo: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto: Christophe Dumaux, Olga Kulchynska, Lucile Richardot, Federico Fiorio, Yuriy Mynenko, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, director: Dmitri Tcherniakov, Le Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm; Salzburg Festival at Haus für Mozart
Reviewed 14 August 2025

Despite Dmitri Tcherniakov's updating of the drama, there was something weirdly compelling about the performance. The cast really convinced you that these people mattered, that we needed to watch their drama.

Asking Dmitri Tcherniakov to direct Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto, the director's first Baroque opera, was never going to produce a straightforward piece of music theatre. But that is what festivals are for, to push boundaries and to create events not possible in the regular theatrical mill. Salzburg Festival did just that, and Tcherniakov's take on Handelian Opera Seria is a big feature of this year's festival.

I caught the penultimate performance of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto on 14 August 2025 at the Haus für Mozart as part of the Salzburg Festival. Dmitri Tcherniakov directed and designed the sets, with costumes by Elena Zaytseva, and Emmanuelle Haïm conducted Le Concert d'Astrée. Christophe Dumaux was Cesare with Olga Kulchynska as Cleopatra, Lucile Richardot as Cornelia, Federico Fiorio as Sesti, Yuriy Mynenko as Tolomeo, and Andrey Zhilikhovsky as Achilla.

In an interview in the programme book Tcherniakov commented that 'At first, it [Baroque Opera] left me baffled', going on to add, 'how to make the characters feel alive when all I have were about forty exquisite arias - and little else'.

His solution was to place the action in the present, after an apocalyptic event. The evening began with warning sirens and the events unfolded in a nuclear bunker. The chorus (sung by Bachchor Salzburg) was an invisible presence, singing from the balcony and playing no part in the stage action, leading you to wonder, did they even exist in Tcherniakov's revised scenario.

His fixed set presented three areas, one colonised by Cesare and Curio, another by Cornelia and Sesto and a third by the Egyptians. For much of Act One, the entire cast was present all the time, gone was the concept of the Exit Aria. At times it felt like Tcherniakov had been watching too many Katie Mitchell productions; he gave us two other visual contexts to compete with the main aria. For instance, towards the end of Act One, this meant Lucile Richardot's Cornelia and Federico Fiorio's Sesto having to compete with Christophe Dumaux (Cesare) stripping down to his underpants before retiring to bed!

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto - Christophe Dumaux (Giulio Cesare), Federico Fiorio (Sesto), Lucile Richardot (Cornelia), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Achilla), Olga Kulchynska (Cleopatra), plus Rene Keller as Pompeo - Salzburg Festival (Photo: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

What this did was enable Tcherniakov to recontextualise arias by having different characters present and reacting to the singer, thus creating a more complex web of inference and influence. When Olga Kulchynska's Cleopatra told Yuriy Mynenko's Tolomeo about the Roman's reception of Pompeo's head (here his full body), Tolomeo already knew this but Tcherniakov made it clear this was all part of the siblings' games with each other. Two lesser-known arias for Cesare and Cleopatra in Act One acted as an extension of their wooing. This recontextualisation got more problematic in Act Two when Yuriy Mynenko's Tolomeo ordered the arrest of Cornelia and Sesto, with Cornelia to be put into the harem, though by this point in the opera we had come to suspect that Yuriy Mynenko's Tolomeo may have been somewhat delusional.

The perspicacious amongst you will have realised that with this scenario Dmitri Tcherniakov rather dug himself into a hold when it came to Act Three.

Who are these people? Oliver Mears' heavy handed updating of Handel's Semele at Covent Garden fails to convince, even with Pretty Yende in the title role

Handel: Semele - Pretty Yende, Niamh O'Sullivan (Photo: Vincent Pontet)

Handel: Semele; Pretty Yende, Ben Bliss, Alice Coote, Brindley Sherratt, director: Oliver Mears, conductor: Christian Curnyn; Royal Opera House
Reviewed 15 July 2025

A disappointing account of the title role alongside a misguided attempt at updating and relevance, mean Oliver Mear's heavy handed production never quite comes alive

Handel's later oratorios suggest that he was thinking dramatically, but whether he ever considered the works on stage is a moot point. We have little or no record of his thinking on these matters, no long correspondences with his librettists. But oratorios like Semele, Hercules and Susanna suggest he was thinking beyond a simple biblical story. The libretto to Jephtha owes as much to Greek drama as it does to the Bible, and how we would love to have a sample of Handel's discussions with librettist Thomas Morell about that. And then Theodora, though a religious subject, was based on a romantic novel!

But there is no doubt that these works present problems on the modern operatic stage. There are moments when Handel forgets about the on-going drama and concentrates on something more abstract. The large-scale choruses in both Semele and Susanna contrast strongly with the lighter character of the rest of the drama.

When Handel's Semele was first performed, his contemporaries viewed it as a possible satire on the relationship between King George II and his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and I imagine that Congreve's original libretto, written for John Eccles in 1706 had a similar intent. There is a lightness to much of Handel's writing in Semele and the most successful stagings of the work that I have seen have not taken themselves too seriously. 

At Covent Garden, having giving us an intensely serious version of Handel's Jephtha with a radical subversion of the ending in 2023 [see my review], Oliver Mears returned to Handelian oratorio with Semele given a similarly highly serious makeover. We caught the performance at the Royal Opera House on 15 July 2025, when Christian Curnyn conducted with Pretty Yende as Semele, Ben Bliss as Jupiter, Alice Coote as Juno, Brindley Sherratt as Cadmus and Somnus, Carlo Vistoli as Athamas, Niamh O'Sullivan as Ino, and Marianna Hovanisyan as Iris. Designs were by Annemarie Woods with movement by Sarah Fahie. This was a co-production with Théâtre des Champs-Élysées where the production debuted earlier this year with the same cast (and where the pictures were taken).

Handel: Semele - Brindley Sherratt (Photo: Vincent Pontet)

This was a highly serious take on the story, and though there were comic moments, Mears' intentions were to tell a remarkably disturbing story. Set loosely in the 1960s, the story took place in the very grand mansion inhabited by Jove and Juno (Ben Bliss and Alice Coote), where Cadmus (Brindley Sherratt) and his people are now servants. Jove's intentions are distinctly controlling, and his transactional relationship with Semele (Pretty Yende) ends in her incineration, done in a way that Mears suggests is a cycle, gone through endlessly. Many of Juno's scenes were comic, how could they not be, but there was little comedy or pastoral delight in the relations between Semele and Jupiter. At the end, as the assembled 'populace' watched Semele's incineration, Ino (Niamh O'Sullivan) became highly disturbed whilst Athmas (Carlo Vistoli) went mad.

Something memorable: Jacqueline Stucker, David Bates & La Nuova Musica in Handel's Alcina & Rodelinda, plus Telemann at Wigmore Hall

Jacqueline Stucker

History's Lovers: Telemann: Overture-Suite: Burlesque de Quixotte, Handel: arias from Alcina, & Rodelinda, Concerto Grosso in F op. 6 No. 9, Telemann: aria from Orpheus; Jacqueline Stucker, La Nuova Musica, David Bates; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 28 May 2025

Love, from the comic to the obsessive to the devoted to real vengeance. Handel and Telemann brought vividly alive in an evening that rose far above a greatest hits concert and gave us something memorable

Under the title History's Lovers, David Bates and La Nuova Musica were joined by soprano Jacqueline Stucker at Wigmore Hall on 28 May 2025 for an evening of music by Handel and Telemann, friends as well as contemporaries, which moved from the comic in Telemann's Don Quixote to the obsessive with Handel's Alcina and then the devotedly marital with Handel's Rodelinda with an aria from Telemann's Orpheus bringing things to a virtuoso close.

We began with Telemann's late Overture-Suite: Burlesque de Quixotte which was probably written around 1761 when the composer was 80. In eight French-style movements, the suite began with an overture that really did channel Lully, with Bates and his ensemble giving us vivid rhythms and exciting passagework. The story then unfolded with Quixote's restless, fevered sleep, his fast and furious attack on the windmills, a gentle flute (Leo Duarte who was doubling flute and oboe) over sighing strings for Quixote mooning after Dulcinea, tossing Sancho Panza in a blanket with some great scene painting, and then the two trying to gallop away in what was a pure romp before finally a vividly urgent finish.

Myths like this are there for us to see ourselves in, and we are all different: director Tom Guthrie on Tales of Apollo and Hercules

Tales of Apollo and Hercules - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craid Fuller Photography)

With the 2025 London Handel Festival in full swing, it is presenting a new staged double bill, Tales of Apollo and Hercules.

Directed by Tom Guthrie, with David Bates conducting La Nuova Musica, plus New English Ballet Theatre with choreography by Valentino Zucchetti, the evening features dramatisations of two Handel works from opposite ends of his long composing career.

Tales of Apollo and Hercules pairs Handel's Italian secular cantata Apollo e Dafne HWV 122 (1709/10) with the English oratorio The Choice of Hercules HWV 69 (1750) featuring a cast including Dan D’Souza, Lauren Lodge-Campbell, James Hall, Madison Nonoa and Bethany Horak-Hallett.

Here, Tom Guthrie, introduces the programme and considers myths in the modern day.

Tales of Apollo and Hercules - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craid Fuller Photography)

"The lover of myth is in a sense a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonders"

Aristotle

"Myth is much more than a story. It is a way of understanding the universe"
Joseph Campbell

"Myth is the most basic way of organizing the world"
Northrop Frye

“The mythologems of the world arise from within us, and hence take on different meanings for every culture and individual”
Carl Jung

 "Myth is a healthy and allegorical way one tells the truth to a child"
Carl Kerenyi  

Tales of Apollo and Hercules - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craid Fuller Photography)

I'm walking to a site visit at Shoreditch Town Hall ahead of a new production for the London Handel Festival. I take a train and on the opposite platform is a dancer. It’s 11am. She’s not dancing. She’s pushing a buggy. I can tell she’s a dancer because of the way she moves, the way she holds herself, her feet. We’re working with fabulous dancers in one of the shows we’re doing in Shoreditch: Apollo e Dafne, Handel’s early Italian cantata exploring the wonderful transformation myth in which Daphne is pursued and is rescued from capture – and falling into the clutches of her pursuer – by being turned into a tree. As I stand on the platform, I realise I’m looking at a modern day Daphne. A mover, turned static. A body and life transformed, if only temporarily. 

Myths are rich, imaginative stories that help us understand how things are. Their meaning changes through life. They're not instruction manuals. They help us, not by explaining, but by presenting and exploring in multi-faceted ways the mysteries of our existence, our relationship with others, ourselves and the world around us. They articulate mysteries about who we are.

As such they’re open to interpretation. They cannot be locked down to one possible meaning. And neither should they be taken as judgements. Apollo and Daphne is a wonderfully clear but at the same time mysterious transformation myth. On many levels Daphne becoming a tree is a terrible punishment. This huntress, this liver of life, chaser of dreams, busy in her days, becomes static, voiceless. There are clear feminist readings of the story. She is robbed of the life that she could have had by the presuming attention of an arrogant man. Sylvia Plath’s extraordinarily moving poem Virgin in a Tree captures this idea with virile passion.

But in many versions of the myth, and certainly in Handel’s, Daphne is not the only one to be transformed. Apollo’s love is, increasingly perhaps, sincere, deep and vulnerable. His final aria, high, demanding, is a universe away from the first two he sings. 

And what if we take a more non-literal allegorical view? What is a tree? Daphne is not turned into a stone. She is not snatched down to the underworld, or turned into a bird. Trees are extraordinary. Rooted, giving nutrients, oxygen, shelter, nesting space. Long-living. The placenta is often called the tree of life. It looks like a tree. In some cultures, Mayan for one, placentas are buried under trees. What if this is a myth about the transformation necessary for birth, the huge and unknowable biological and psychological changes that happen in pregnancy, whether with or, in the worst cases, without consent?

The question of consent is central to the myth. So it is also a story about the mystery of agency and choice. What can ever prepare the first-time mother for what happens to her so completely in body and mind. How far are we really in control? What role does genetic biology, chance, and even the universe, have in what control we have over our lives? 

Beyond any interpretation that can be discussed here is an overriding point. The important question. What does it mean to you? And, in our work in Shoreditch, what did it mean to Handel? Myths like this are there for us to see ourselves in, and we are all different. 

The Choice of Hercules meanwhile, (some might call it at least useful, at best a stroke of programming genius), is about a boy. A special boy. Every child is special. Every child has the potential to affect the world. How do we bring up our children to make the best choices to face the challenges and the tasks that life throws at them in a way which will have a good effect for them and for those they love and those around them?

The ideas of virtue and pleasure are, on the face of it, simple. Should you live for your own pleasure or do you live for the good of the world? In ancient Greek times, as now, there are nuances and subtleties, as there were clearly for Handel too. Pleasure's first aria, with arching melody and longing suspensions, portrays pleasure, rightly, as a deep human emotion. In the 5th century BC, Epicurus gave his name to a philosophy of living that nowadays we associate with words like gluttony, indulgence, selfishness. Epicurus actually espoused a more serious philosophy. Deep pleasure can cost. Quality of life as a philosophical position that is not all about ease.

Meanwhile, virtue does not exclude pleasure. This oratorio written towards the end of Handel's life honours these nuances, these shadows, in profound ways. It makes for a deep and meditative piece of theatre. As with Apollo e Dafne, it embodies and personifies a mystery in a way that allows us to see ourselves, to project, to think, to imagine, perhaps to celebrate.

Tales of Apollo and Hercules - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craid Fuller Photography)

If you’re interested in reading more, try:

• Myths for a Post Truth World, Iannis Gabriel
• Soul Mates, Thomas Moore
• Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen
• Gods in Everyman, Jean Shinoda Bolen
• Like A Tree: How Trees, Women and Tree People Can Save The Planet, Jean Shinoda Bolen
• The Choice of Hercules: Pleasure, Duty and the Good Life in the 21st Century, A. C. Grayling
• Exit the Supersensorium, Erik Hoel

Tom Guthrie

Tales of Apollo and Hercules
Shoreditch Town Hall
London Handel Festival
Performances 28 and 29 March - full details from the festival website.

To create modern culture through the thoughts of the past: George Petrou artistic director of the Göttingen International Handel Festival introduces this year's festival

Atsushi Sakai (viola da gamba) and Bruno Helstroffer (theorbo) at PS.Halle, Einbeck for the 2024 Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen

This year's Göttingen International Handel Festival takes place from 16 to 25 May 2025, once more under the artistic directorship of George Petrou, who has extended his contract as director until 2031. This year's theme is fame and honour, power and glory, and the main events at the festival are a new production of Handel's Tamerlano, Handel's oratorio Solomon which will be performed in Göttingen and at the Elbphiharmonie in Hamburg, and a gala concert with the mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg. Tamerlano features Lawrence Zazzo in the title role with Louise Kemény as Asteria, Juan Sancho as Bajazet, and Yuriy Mynenko as Andronico, whilst Solomon features Lena Sutor-Wernich in the title role and Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli in the three soprano roles plus James Way as Zadok.

George Petrou (Photo: FreddieF)

But there is lots more Handel in the festival as well, and concerts showcasing what George Petrou refers to as their wonderful orchestra, the FestspielOrchester Göttingen. There is ensemble freymut in Couperin's Les Nations, the Calmus Ensemble exploring both Byrd and birds, Mayumi Hirasaki, Christoph Dangel and Kristian Bezuidenhout in a chamber music tour of Italy, viol virtuoso Hille Perl and her period instrument ensemble Los Otros take us to the French court, Tra Noi give us music from those in the circle of Cardinal Ottoboni including of course George Frideric, but also Domenico Scarlatti, Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Caldara and Antonio Vivaldi. The festival's former artistic director, Nicholas McGegan returns to celebrate his 75th birthday and amongst the lunchtime concerts there is the chance to heard George Petrou displaying his keyboard skills. There is also the excitement of the eighth annual Göttingen Handel Competition which invites young ensembles from around the world to compete.

In addition to various venues in Göttingen, a number of events will also take place in the region of southern Lower Saxony, in Duderstadt, Friedland, Scheden, Einbeck, Herzberg am Harz and Hann. Münden, and we know from our experiences last year that many of these places are visually and historically engaging too.

The choice of works is partly the way things worked out and partly deliberate choice. Last year, the festival presented a modern pasticcio, Sarasine, as the main operatic work. The idea was to create a drama our of the various arias rejected by Handel which were never revised or recycled. This was something of a novelty, an experiment and this year George Petrou felt it would be good to go back to one of Handel's major operas. For George, Tamerlano stands above everything that Handel did and its dramatic approach goes beyond the 18th century, looking forward to operatic developments in the 19th century. The big dramatic scene at the end of Act Three, when Bajazet dies on stage in front of the other protagonists, does not recur in Handel's later operas, and both the dramatic approach and sound-world look forward to Romantic opera. For George, this is genius at its best, eternal and not restricted to one era. And for this years opera, not only are they returning to Handelian basics but presenting one of his crowning achievements.

Anna Dennis' serious and intent Susanna was rightly the main focus of John Butt & Dunedin Consort's involving account of Handel's neglected oratorio

Anna Dennis

Handel: Susanna; Anna Dennis, Alexander Chance, Jessica Cale, Joshua Ellicott, Matthew Brook, Dunedin Consort, John Butt; Church of St Martin in the Fields
Reviewed 24 January 2025

Given complete, this wonderfully involving account of Handel's woefully neglected Susanna revealed why the work should be considered alongside his other masterpieces

Whilst we talk of Handelian oratorio, the composer's own conception of the genre rarely stood still. From 1739 to 1745, his sequence of oratorios consisted of Saul, Israel in Egypt, L'Allegro, Messiah, Samson, Semele, Joseph and his Brethren, Hercules and Belshazzar. Presenting us with a remarkable breadth when it comes to trying to pin down what exactly 'oratorio' meant to its creator. Of course, in 1745, external events intruded and for the next few years, Handel's works veered towards to martial and bellicose.

By 1749, he clearly felt enough time had passed to look elsewhere. That year, he premiered two new works, Susanna and Solomon, both works take a somewhat oblique approach to the conventions of dramatic oratorio. Rather coincidentally, both works have received recent London performances, giving us a chance to compare and contrast. Earlier this month, Paul McCreesh directed the Gabriel Consort & Players in Handel's Solomon [see my review], then on Friday 24 January 2025, John Butt directed the Dunedin Consort in Handel's Susanna at the Church of St Martin in the Fields.

Another link between Susanna and Solomon is Handel's casting. The mezzo-soprano Caterina Galli sang both Solomon and Joacim in Susanna, whilst soprano Giulia Frasi sang the three soprano roles in Solomon and the title role in Susanna. Rather intriguingly for modern-day London audiences, soprano Anna Dennis was common to both the recent Handel performances, singing the Queen of Sheba in Solomon for Paul McCreesh, and then singing the title role in Handel's Susanna for John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. She was joined by Alexander Chance as Joacim, Jessica Cale as Daniel (and an attendant), Joshua Ellicott and Matthew Brook as the elders.

A glorious, yet sophisticated noise: Handel's Solomon from Paul McCreesh & Gabrieli with Tim Mead as Solomon in Inner Temple Hall

Inner Temple Hall in its modern incarnation built in the 1950s

Handel: Solomon; Tim Mead, Rowan Pierce, Hilary Cronin, Frances Gregory, Anna Dennis, James Way, Morgan Pearse, Gabrieli Consort & Players, Paul McCreesh; Temple Music Foundation at Inner Temple Hall
Reviewed 16 January 2025

One of Handel's finest oratorios in almost perfect circumstances, glorious choral singing, fine orchestral playing, superb dramatic pacing and seven soloists who drew you into the drama. Pure magic.

Written in 1749, Handel's Solomon is a lavish work, large in scale, using a double chorus and with the one of the largest orchestras Handel would write for (strings, flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani), yet Susanna which premiered the same season uses relatively compact forces. Clearly, in Solomon Handel wished the conception to match his eulogy of Georgian England.

After having written a whole sequence of martial oratorios in the years after the 1745 rebellion, Handel turned to a greater variety of sources for his oratorios, Susanna and Solomon are both Biblical, but the one has elements of a lighter operatic style, whilst the other has that large scale grandeur. Then in 1750 he would turn to a sentimental novel for Theodora, which though religious in nature is not Biblical at all, before the final towering masterpiece of Jephtha with its story combining the Bible with Euripides and the daring use of a dramatic tenor as the hero.

For Solomon, Handel seemed to be looking back. There is the use of Da Capo arias, but also the casting of the title role. This was written for a female alto, Caterina Galli, as if Handel was looking back towards the castratos of his Italian opera. Countertenors in Handel's day rarely had the dramatic range needed for the role, though nowadays Solomon is rarely played by a woman. Having also sung Joachim in Susanna, Caterina Galli would create a sequence of remarkable roles for Handel including Irene in Theodora and Storgé in Jephtha. In Handel's performances of Solomon the three soprano roles, Solomon's Queen, First Harlot and Queen of Sheba, were sung by the same singer though modern practice tends to have them sung by different singers.

On Thursday 16 January 2025, Temple Music opened their 2025 season with one of their largest events yet, Handel's Solomon performed in Inner Temple Hall by Gabrieli Consort & Players, conductor Paul McCreesh, with Tim Mead as Solomon, Rowan Pierce as Solomon's Queen, Hilary Cronin and Frances Gregory as the Harlots and Anna Dennis as the Queen of Sheba, plus James Way as Zadok and Morgan Pearse as a Levite.

The concert took place in Inner Temple Hall, this is a traditional classical style building dating from the 1950s, and the third incarnation of the hall. The original 17th century hall was replace in the later 19th century by a Gothic one, this in turn was destroyed during the war and replaced by the present one.

Satisfying, yet thought-provoking: Handel's Messiah from Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music

The chapel of the Foundling Hospital where Handel performed Messiah annually

Handel: Messiah; Anna Devin, Tim Mead, Nick Pritchard, Cody Quattlebaum, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican Hall
Reviewed 16 December 2024

Sometimes avoiding traditional readings and emphasising contrasts, this was a Messiah where the word was of primary importance, delivered with remarkable directness at times.

I would imagine that neither Handel nor Charles Jennens (who created the libretto) thought of Messiah as a Christmas piece. In fact, for Jennens the work had a purely didactic purpose bringing the Word of God to those in the concert hall, and Messiah narrates the entire arc from Christ's coming, through his Passion to the Resurrection. Returning to Handel's Messiah at the Barbican for the first time since 2022 [see my review of that performance]. Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music seemed to relish this didactic element, the telling of a narrative as serious and intense as the Passion. The soloists this year were Anna Devin (replacing Louise Alder), Tim Mead, Nick Pritchard and Cody Quattlebaum.

This wasn't a large-scale performance, an orchestra based on an ensemble of some 14 strings, with a continuo based around two harpsichords (one played by Cummings), organ and theorbo, plus a choir of 18. Not a huge group for the Barbican Hall, but entirely sufficient.

Christmas with George Frideric and Jimi: the Handel Hendrix House celebrates the season

Handel Hendrix House (Photo: Christopher Ison)

We don't know how George Frideric Handel celebrated Christmas, but certainly Queen Charlotte brought the idea of the Christmas tree to England when she married King George III in 1761, decorated yew branches being traditional in her native Mecklenurg-Strelitz, and by 1800 she had set up a Christmas tree in Queen’s Lodge, Windsor.

So, we can perhaps forgive Handel Hendrix House for celebrating the season with a Christmas tree and much else besides. From now until 22 December 2024, the house is in decorated festival mode with both Handel’s 18th-century rooms and Hendrix’s 1960s flat, bedecked with decorations. There is live music on Fridays and Saturdays, with late openings on Thursdays Late featuring mulled cider or mulled apple juice and plus the Meyer Dancers offering lessons in go-go dancing in Jimi’s bedroom!

More immediately of interest perhaps is an immersive display about the composition of Handel’s Messiah, which was written in the house (in 1741), and Handel's newly restored kitchen will be laid out for a feast.

Full details from the Handel Hendrix House website.

Apollo & Hercules, L'Allegro & Il Trionfo, Jonathan Cohen & Arcangelo: the London Handel Festival 2025

It is all change at the London Handel Festival. As announced previously by festival director Gregory Batsleer, the festival has a new artistic advisor, Jonathan Cohen, whilst Cohen's group Arcangelo becomes the principal ensemble in residence. But the London Handel Players are still in the frame, and they too have a new principal conductor, Richard Gowers.

Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo open the festival on 7 March 2025 at St George's Church, Hanover Square with Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Arcangelo are back on 12 March as Arcangelo’s New Ensemblists perform at the Foundling Museum, then on 14 March at St George's, Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo are joined by Hungarian soprano Emőke Baráth in a programme celebrating great Handelian heroines.

Richard Gowers and the London Handel Orchestra, along with the London Handel Singers and the Choir of St. George's, Hanover Square will be coming together on 22 March 2025 for a tercentenary celebration marking the foundation of St George’s Church, Hanover Square in 1725. The programme features Handel’s Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne and Dettingen Te Deum alongside the Organ Concerto in D Minor and soloists include Alexander Chance and Florian Störtz, winners of the International Handel Singing Competition in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

There is more oratorio when Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra make their festival debut with Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno on 19 March at St George's with soloists Hilary Cronin, Helen Charlston, Jess Dandy and James Way, two of whom are recent winners of the International Handel Singing Competition. The singing competition returns in 2025 with the final being held at St George's on 2 April with the finalist performing with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Violinist Bjarte Eike returns to the festival on 5 April at Middle Temple Hall where he performs with members of his ensemble Barokksolistene, in collaboration with members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and mezzo-soprano Katie Bray. Other visitors to the festival include violinist Charlotte Spruit, keyboard player Steven Devine, The Vauxhall Band and Ensemble Augelletti, who are performing at a Handel Supper Club.

The festival is collaborating with David Bates, La Nuova Musica and New English Ballet Theatre on a new stage production, Tales of Apollo and Hercules where director Thomas Guthrie and choreographer Valentino Zuccetti will be staging Handel's early cantata, Apollo e Dafne and his rather later one-act oratorio, The Choice of Hercules. The production takes place at in the Victorian grandeur of Shoreditch Town Hall’s Music Hall.

As part of its 20th anniversary season, experimental record label and promoter nonclassical returns to the festival on 20 March for Arias Reimagined at Stone Nest in the heart of London’s West End. The programme features a selection of well-known Handel arias reimagined live by an exciting line up of artists and performers, all of whom are renowned for their originality.

The festival is brought to a close on 10 April when Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company perform Handel's Floridante a welcome chance to hear something of a Handelian rarity. Floridante was written in 1721, one of Handel's early works written for the castrato Senesino.

Full details from the London Handel Festival's website.

As vivid and vigorous as ever: David McVicar's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare returns to Glyndebourne with a terrific young cast

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Louise Alder - Glyndebourne, 2024 (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto; Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Louise Alder, Beth Taylor, Svetlina Stoyanova, Cameron Shahbazi, director: David McVicar, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Laurence Cummings; Glyndebourne
28 June 2024

Nearly 20 years old, McVicar's iconic production returns as vivid and vibrant as ever, with superb performances from a young cast

Amazingly, David McVicar's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne will be 20 years old next year. It debuted in 2005, with Sarah Connolly and Danielle de Niese, returning in 2006 (with David Daniels and Danielle de Niese) and in 2009 (with Sarah Connolly and Danielle de Niese). Now, after something of a gap, it is back as vivid and vigorous as ever with a young new cast.

We caught the second performance of the 2024 revival of David McVicar's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne on Friday 28 June 2024. Giulio Cesare was Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen [who was David in Handel's Saul at Komische Oper Berlin in 2023, see my review], Cleopatra was Louise Alder [who sang the title role on Arcangelo's recent recording of Handel's Theodora, see my review], Cornelia was Beth Taylor, Sesto was Svetlina Stoyanova [who was Ruggiero in Handel's Alcina at Glyndebourne in 2022, see my review], Tolomeo was Cameron Shahbazi [who was Hamor in Handel's Jephtha at Covent Garden in 2023, see my review] and Achilla was Luca Tittoto [who sang Saul at the Komische Oper], with Thomas Chenhall as Curio and Ray Chenez as Nireno. Laurence Cummings conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Sets were by Robert Jones, costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel, choreography by Andrew George.

The production takes an admirably expansive view of what is actually a very long opera with a first act lasting just shy of 90 minutes and, correctly, two intervals, none of the arias is trimmed, Nireno got his aria and Achilla got both of his. The second interval is, however, placed after Cleopatra's 'Se pietà', with the scene for Tolomeo, Cornelia, Sesto and Achilla opening the third part.

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen - Glyndebourne, 2024 (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

The production sets the action in the context of the British Raj, which gives a firm underpinning for the drama without the need for extensive back history, though Brigitte Reiffenstuel's costumes, particularly for Cleopatra are rather more playful. Robert Jones' sets might seem lavish but they are enormously responsive and scene changes happened smoothly and easily, with no awkward waits and only a couple of uses of the drop curtain. This has the admirable effect of allowing Handel's drama to flow exactly as it ought. Cleopatra's scene in Act Two where she is supposed to appear enthroned with the muses really did feature the nine musicians on stage, which is something opera companies rarely attempt nowadays, and McVicar keeps largely to the work's dramaturgy so that exit arias were largely that.

Whilst McVicar does present Handel and his librettist Nicola Haym's drama pretty much as they intended, McVicar also takes the view that opera seria as a genre is something that needs help if it is to live theatrically. He does this by leavening the drama with humour, the use of the chorus and actors has a stylised sense of the comic to it and choreographer Andrew George's movement generally had a lightening, leavening effect. Also, in the moments of unfortunate coincidence or suspension of disbelief, to which opera seria is rather prone, if the production did not actually encourage a laugh, it was rather expected. That said, within this playfulness, the characters are taken seriously and their emotions are never lightened.

A very modern sort of magic: Handel's Alcina at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Handel: Alcina - Yolisa Ngwexana (Morgana) - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)

Handel: Alcina; Georgie Malcolm, Yolisa Ngwexana, Samantha Hargreaves, Shana Moron-Caravel, Julia Merino, Jonah Halton, Alaric Green, director: John Ramster, conductor: James Henshaw; Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Reviewed 5 June 2024

Handel's sorceress gets a very modern take-over in this imaginative production full of engaging and impressive performances from the young singers and instrumentalists

The story Alcina continues to resonate with modern audiences because the heroine, building on a standard trope of the Baroque era of the wicked sorceress caught in her own toils and falling in love, is a remarkably three-dimensional modern character. Fallible and believable, Alcina combines danger, glamour with deep feeling, she is very much a cousin of the modern 'tart with a heart' and part of the opera's success is the way Handel evinces sympathy for her

Handel's opera provides a wealth of possibilities for directors using her magic as some sort of metaphor with recent productions highlighting glamour and celebrity [at Covent Garden, see my review or at Opera North, see my review], or the theatre itself [at Glyndebourne, see my review]. For the new production of the opera at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, John Ramster and designer Louis Carver chose to leave the metaphor to us, instead their Alcina was a sorceress commanding a very modern sort of magic allied to a performance which saw Guildhall School students sitting side-by-side with members of the Academy of Ancient Music in the pit.

Handel: Alcina - Georgie Malcolm (Alcina), Shana Moron-Caravel (Ruggiero) - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)

We caught the second performance of John Ramster's production of Handel's Alcina given by the Guildhall School at Milton Court Theatre on 5 June 2023. Designs were by Louis Carver with lighting by Andy Purves and video by Jonathan Strutt. Georgie Malcolm was Alcina, Yolisa Ngwexana was Morgana, Samantha Hargreaves was Oberto, Shana Moron-Caravel was Ruggiero, Julia Merino was Bradamante, Jonah Halton as Oronte, Alaric Green was Melisso and Harun Tekin was Astolfo. The conductor was James Henshaw and the orchestra featured members of the Academy of Ancient Music as section leaders alongside the Guildhall Opera Orchestra.

But despite the period manners in the orchestra and period style from the singers, this was a very modern production. Ramster and Carvel's designs were pure 21st century (or perhaps 20th century fantasy). And the forces used were not those Handel would have expected. The scale was different, for a start. The orchestra was significantly smaller than those typically used by Handel for his operas (a common feature of the economics of modern performance), but more significantly this performance had no chorus and no dance troupe, choruses and dances were done by the soloists themselves.

Telling a story: Solomon's Knot in stylishly vivid form for the Canon's version of Handel's Esther

Esther, mosaic from The Dormition Church on Mount Zion in Jerusalem

Handel: Esther (Canons version); Solomon's Knot; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed: 27 May 2024

Solomon's Knot on vibrant and vivid form in a dramatic account of the earliest version of Handel's first oratorio

Handel's Esther has an important place in music history as the first of his English oratorios, though it wasn't intended as such. Written as a small-scale masque at Canons around 1718 for the Duke of Chandos, that original version probably used just a handful of singers, though the work was revised in 1720 for a larger scale performance also at Canons. Handel probably never intended the piece to have any further life, by the 1720s he had turned his back on large-scale private patronage and was enmeshed in creating Italian opera. But in the early 1730s, a version of the work was staged in pirate performances. It was very successful. Handel's response when faced with this sort of copyright/piracy issue was to create a new improved version of the work in question. He did that for Esther, expanding it using some of the Coronation Anthems and re-writing for his Italian singers. The work's success led to further oratorios. 

Frustratingly, not that much is known about the work's early history, Handel's period working for the Duke of Chandos is frustratingly lacking in detail. We don't even have a secure edition of that very first version, but the earliest manuscript (dating from 1720) still gives us a work that is smaller in scale, poised between masque and oratorio, yet respectful of English theatrical traditions (the main male characters played by tenors and basses), thus almost by accident pointing the way.

On Monday 27 May 2024 at Wigmore Hall, Solomon's Knot, artistic director Jonathan Sells, turned their attention to Handel's Esther and gave a performance of that early Canons version, featuring a vocal ensemble of ten singers including Zoe Brookshaw as Esther, Joseph Doody as Mordecai, Xavier Hetherington as Ahasuerus and Alex Ashworth as Haman, plus an instrumental ensemble of 14 (strings, woodwind and continuo) plus horns and trumpet as necessary. The result was a very full stage indeed.

Performing from memory, the singers gave the work a rather effective element of semi-staging. Esther is not strictly a dramatic work; structured in six scenes it has static choruses and discontinuities that reflect the work's masque origins. The English text is not the most felicitous that Handel set, so for instance at the end of Act Two the first Israelite sings 'With inward joy his visage glows/He to the Queen's apartment goes'. But in its very compactness the work is effective.

Combining disparate sounds with a bit of magic: Michel Godard and serpent in Göttingen

Atsushi Sakai (viola da gamba) and Bruno Helstroffer (theorbo) at PS.Halle, Einbeck

Light the earth: Incantation: Handel, Jean de la Fontaine, Michel Lambert, Sieur de Saint Colombe, Marin Marais, Michel Godard; Michel Godard, Antje Rux, Airelle Besson, Atsushi Sakai, Bruno Helstroffer; Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen at PS. Halle, Einbeck
Reviewed 14 May 2024

The somewhat unlikely combination of voice, serpent, theorbo, viola da gamba and jazz trumpet in a programme moving between French Baroque, Handel and contemporary

The serpent is a bass instrument of somewhat uncertain origins that acted as wind bass line in ensembles from 17th to early 19th century Related to the cornett, it is a wooden instrument covered in leather with a brass mouthpiece, pitch altered using finger-holes. The sound is described as being somewhere between a bassoon and a euphonium, but hearing one played for the first time earlier this week, my first naughty thought was how much the sound evoked my Dad playing tunes on random bits of tubing and hosepipes.

Michel Godard and serpent

On 14 May 2024, French multi-instrumentalist Michel Godard brought his serpent to the Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen. At PS. Halle, Einbeck, Godard was joined by Antje Rux (soprano), Airelle Besson (jazz trumpet), Atsushi Sakai (viola da gamba) and Bruno Helstroffer (theorbo) for a programme entitled Light the earth: Incantation with music by Handel, Jean de la Fontaine, Michel Lambert, Sieur de Saint Colombe, Marin Marais and Michel Godard. 

The venue was the event hall at PS. Speicher, a museum containing Europe's largest collection of old cars, motorbikes and commercial vehicles. So the concert took place against a backdrop of classic, veteran and vintage vehicles, many, like the serpent itself, rather wonderful but tricky to 'drive'. PS. Speicher is based in Einbeck, a town also notable for its timber framed houses (Fachwerkhäuser) dating from 16th to 20th centuries.

At first sight, Michel Godard's ensemble seemed somewhat oddly matched, a modern type of broken consort, perhaps. But what all the instrumentalists had in common was a feel for improvisation, so viola da gamba player Atsushi Sakai could move between poised 17th-century divisions and playing his instrument like a jazz bass.

Anchoring this was Antje Rux's pure, clear soprano, bringing a line of clarity to the music around which the others moved. Godard ran the ensemble much like a jazz group, in each piece the original formed the basis and repeats would allow different members of the ensemble their own solo riff.

With two halves of some 40 minutes each, and a similar approach with each piece, the result was perhaps a programme slightly too long and occasionally the improvisatory sections felt a little unfocused, as if the players had not had time to bed in. But what really came over was the musicians' delight in making music together and combining such disparate sounds with a little bit of magic.

Göttingen 1853: Johannes Brahms & Joseph Joachim, a meeting of musical minds evoked

Aula of Georg-August Universität, Göttingen  (Photo: Stefan Flöper / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Bach, Joachim, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven;  Shunske Sato, Shuann Chai, Wolfgang Sandberger; Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen at Aula of Georg-August Universität
Reviewed 13 May 2024

Brahms and Joseph Joachim spent a musical Summer together in 1853 in Göttingen and this event imaginatively evoked the music those two young men played together

In 1853, 20-year-old Johannes Brahms was hired as a pianist by Hungarian violinist Eduard Remeny for a concert tour. In mid-May they are in Hanover and visit violinist Joseph Joachim, the 22-year-old concert-master of the Hanover Court Orchestra. Joachim used his concert-free Summer months to improve his education by attending lectures at the university in Göttingen (then part of the Kingdom of Hanover). When Brahms and Remeny parted company, Brahms wrote to Joachim suggesting a visit and for one month during the Summer, Brahms stayed with Joachim in Göttingen and the two young men made music togethere.

At the Internationale Händel Festspiele Göttingen, the event Göttingen 1853: On the trail of Joseph Joachim on 13 May 2024 evoked that musical meeting. In the Aula of Georg-August Universität, Shunske Sato (violin) and Shuann Chai (piano) played the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2, Joachim's Romanze Op.2 No. 1, Mozart's Sonata in B K454, Handel's Sonata in A K 361 and Beethoven's Sonata No. 47 in A "Kreuzer/Bridgetower", whist Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sandberger gave a talk on the subject.

Beauty and meaning: Handel's Theodora from Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo with Louise Alder in the title role

Handel: Theodora; Louise Alder, Tim Mead, Anna Stéphany, Stuart Jackson, Adam Plachetka, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Alpha Classics
Reviewed 20 February 2024

A performance of Handel's late masterpiece that combines musical beauties with a sense of the inner meaning of the words, with a wonderful central performance from Louise Alder

Considering that Handel evidently regarded it as one of his favourite oratorios and that any performance of it is something of an event, Handel's Theodora has rather a sparse history on disc, though the converse of that is that most of the recordings are that little bit special. Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli recorded it in 2000 with Susan Gritton and Susan Bickley, Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d'Oro recorded it in 2022 with Lisette Oropesa and Joyce DiDonato, whilst further back there is the recording with the unforgettable Lorraine Hunt Lieberson from 1992 as well as the famous Glyndebourne production.

Now Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo have turned their attention to the work with a new recording on Alpha Classics that features Louise Alder as Theodora, Tim Mead as Didymus, Anna Stéphany as Irene, Stuart Jackson as Septimus and Adam Plachetka as Valens. 

Jonathan Cohen first conducted the work with Arcangelo at the BBC Proms in 2018, and since then the group has done further performances. Whilst the cast of the Prom was largely different to that on the disc, a common thread running through all the performances has been the Theodora of Louise Alder and the ensemble's most recent London performance in March 2023 was linked to the recording of the disc.