For many people Handel remains first and foremost a composer of the Messiah.  Yet he wrote more operas - and more great operas - than any other composer of the first rank in any period, and the twenty or so English music dramas match these in their vivid musical characterizations and dramatic worth.

This course will make a chronological survey of Handel’s dramatic works for stage, both opera and oratorio, that span his entire, almost half-century, career.  It will do so by making a thorough study of selected works that best define Handel’s developing approach first to opera and then gradually, but finally, to the masterful oratorios that close his career.

These selected works will also include those to be performed soon both locally and at major venues around the world.  Thus the course will begin with Handel’s very first opera for Hamburg, Almira, (1705), which The Boston Early Music Festival will perform in June; midway it will focus on Giiulio Cesare  (1725), the great opera seria that the Met performs in the Glyndebourne production this winter; and then it will finish with one of Handel’s final two masterful oratorios, Jephtha (1752), to be performed by Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society in May.

Representative operas to be studied will include the virtuosic opera for competing sopranos, Siroe, re di Persia of 1727 (being performed at the Göttingen International Handel Festival in May); the enchanting “magic” opera Alcina of 1735 (being presented at the Halle Handel Festival in June in the city of Handel’s birth); and the delightful late comic opera of 1740, Imeneo (being performed at the London Handel Festival in March).   An optional spring Opera con Brio tour will be available to attend the Göttingen Handel Festival in Germany.

The course will also include the following oratorios: the early Italian oratorio, La Resurrezione (1708); the seminal first English oratorio, Esther (1718);  the powerful drama of individuals, Saul (1739); and both the secular and sacred “English Operas,” Semele (1744) and Hercules (1744) respectively.

The well-known Handel critic Andrew Porter once wrote:  “In some forty Italian operas and twenty English music dramas, Handel gave expression to just about the full range of human experience…and he composed so abundantly that there are likely to be new adventures in store all life long for even the most assiduous Handelian.” Indeed Handel was the greatest and most successful theater composer not only of his age but of any age. Come hear for yourself; you too will become an “assiduous Handelian” – if you are not already.

Winter 2013 Offering:

Handel’s Journey from Opera to Oratorio

Twelve sessions beginning on February 6/7 and ending on May 1/2

(with a one week break from March 12-16 for The London Handel Festival)

Handel