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Holiday Concerts: Handel’s Messiah

Basilica of Saint Mary

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

In Act I, the king’s devoutness and ‘marital bliss’ is celebrated ‘amid flowers, sweet breezes and nightingales’ songs’.

Solomon

Southbank Centre

Handel’s colossal work tells the story of one of the Bible’s most prominent characters, King Solomon, with each of its three acts illustrating his different qualities and exploring the theme of leadership. In Act I, the King’s devoutness and ‘marital bliss’ is celebrated “amid flowers, sweet breezes’ and nightingales’ songs”. Act 2 recognises Solomon’s great wisdom as he dramatically resolves a dispute between two women claiming to be the mother of the same child, whilst the final act highlights the splendour of Solomon’s kingdom through a lavish masque presented to the visiting Queen of Sheba.

An absolute must: with Poro, re dell’Indie, Handel set a popular libretto to music in his inimitable way. Alexander the Great conquers India and gets embroiled in intrigues of love and murder. The opera is performed on the stage, in costume and with props and is staged by countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic, who also sings the title role. Julia Leszneva can also be seen as the tragic Queen Cleofide. Lucile Richardot in the role of Poro’s sister Erissena sings the famous lyrical aria Son confusa pastorella.

Poro, re dell’Indie

The Concert Hall Ulrichskirche

A long time ago, in Sicily... Galatea was a sea nymph, a Nereid, who lived on the island inhabited by the Cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, who was deeply in love with her. But Galatea loved the young shepherd Acis, son of Pan. The jealous Cyclops Polyphemus crushes Acis under a rock. Fortunately, sea nymphs have special powers and Acis is granted immortality, transformed by Galatea into a gushing fountain.

Acis & Galatea

Clermont-Ferrand Opera-Theater

It is easy to imagine the great Johann Sebastian Bach almost exclusively as an elderlyman, steeped in the greatest musical knowledge that only time and experience can bring. Yet it was a young man in his early twenties who handed down to us the powerful, true masterpieces that comprise his very first sacred cantatas. These works are the first of one of the most important musical collections in the whole of the western world, delivered in all their splendour here with La Chapelle de Québec.

Bach, les premières cantates et Bernard Labadie

Palais Montcalm – Maison de la musique

Handel's great oratorio is one of the most celebrated choral works of the 18th century. A radical vision of faith and freedom.

London in 1750: rocked by earthquakes, and stunned by the 65-year-old Handel’s penultimate oratorio. The adopted Englishman had abandoned his tried-and-tested Old Testament formula for a work set in Christian times, and ending not with triumph and fanfare, but the minor-key death of hero and heroine.

The 18th-century audience shunned Theodora, but 225 years later this story of devotion and martyrdom is firmly recognised as a masterpiece, containing some of Handel’s greatest arias (‘As with rosy steps the morn’; ‘With darkness deep’; ´Angels ever bright and fair’), and choruses which range from the rollicking to the pious to the anguished.

The Monteverdi Choir is amongst the world’s greatest exponents of Handel oratorio, and Theodora requires the choir’s whole expressive spectrum, stretching from the piety of oppressed Christians, to the orgiastic revels of Roman pagans. Continuing our exploration of Handel oratorio in ‘staged’ concert performances, Christophe Rousset conducts the Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, bringing his trademark operatic panache to this transcendental work. They are joined by an international cast of soloists, each of them acclaimed for their thrilling performances of Handel.

Handel: Theodora

Schwarzman Centre

Masaaki Suzuki will conduct his acclaimed his vision of the work, performed according to Bach’s partbooks, with solo singers stepping out of the choir. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will be integrated with the most brilliant members of a new generation of Bach singers. 

To experience a performance of the St Matthew Passion is to participate in something larger than a concert. For Bach and his congregation, this music formed part of a shared act of devotion, a way of understanding and engaging with the central message of Christianity. But the generosity of Bach’s musical imagination allows the music to resonate beyond its original context with an extraordinary humanity, bringing solace and inspiration to performers and listeners, whatever our beliefs.

Bach’s earlier musical version of the Passion of Christ, the St John, was already extravagant and ambitious by the standards of the time.  The St Matthew, composed for Leipzig in 1727, goes even further, with two choruses and two orchestras, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in ferocious opposition, sometimes in exultant unity. Bach illuminates the complex structure of the piece with amazing inventiveness, varying the instrumentation and musical structures, interweaving the ancient chorales of his Lutheran forebears through the biblical narrative and the reflective poetry of his collaborator Picander.

“A dream cantata date for Japanese maestro and local supergroup…Here was choral and instrumental Bach performed not just with meticulous professionalism but a dash and verve that filled each movement with an infectious enthusiasm.”

Bach: St Matthew Passion

University of Michigan

University of Georgia Performing Arts Center

University of California, Berkeley

Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Carnegie Hall

Princeton University

The Pennsylvania State University

Dinis Sousa conducts the combined forces of the Monteverdi Choir and Royal Northern Sinfonia in a performance of Bach's legendary St Matthew Passion, 300 years after it was first performed.

Tenor

Hugo Hymas

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 18, 2026

Handel: Theodora · English Baroque Soloists

9 - 23 Feb, 2027

Bach: St Matthew Passion · Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

Mar 7, 2027

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Royal Northern Sinfonia · Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

Past events

18 - 21 Dec, 2025

Holiday Concerts: Handel’s Messiah · Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Oct 12, 2025

Solomon · Southbank Centre

Future and recently performed repertoire

Septimius in Theodora by Handel

English Baroque Soloists

Singer in Solomon by Handel

Southbank Centre

Singer in Messiah by Handel

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Singer in St Matthew Passion by Bach

Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

Acis in Acis & Galatea by Handel

Clermont Auvergne Opéra

Alessandro in Poro by Handel

Händel-Festspiele Halle

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