Prepare yourself for a musical journey as the Händel-Festspiele Halle 2025 brings together a spectacular array of events celebrating the genius of George Frideric Handel. From the revival of 'Alexander's Feast' to a vibrant mix of hip-hop and classical music in 'Harmony in Break,' this festival promises a unique blend of historical reverence and contemporary creativity. With performances from globally acclaimed artists and a lineup of diverse genres, this festival is a tribute to Handel's enduring legacy in the world of music.

Celebrate Handel: A Symphony of Events at the Händel-Festspiele Halle 2025

For the previous two festivals, Anna Bonitatibus (the 2023 Handel Prize laureate) lent her voice to Halle’s Serse. Now, she is returning with a recital for which she has selected solo cantatas from Handel’s period in Italy. A perfect opportunity to get to know another side of this fabulous mezzo-soprano – with no orchestra pit between you and her.

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Il Maestro e Margherita

Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences

Handel’s work in London and, a century later, the voyages of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy resulted in many a musical exchange between England and the Halle/Leipzig region. The London Festival Chorus and Denkmalchor Leipzig under the baton of Philipp Goldmann remind us of this historical connection with choral works by both composers and the cantata BWV 137 by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Halle-London-Leipzig Music Connection

The Market Church

Its intimate atmosphere makes the Chamber Music Hall of Handel House a place where internationally sought-after soloists can present themselves authentically and undisguised. Soprano Isabelle Haile won the Audience Prize of the 2024 London Handel Singing Competition and with this concert is taking up the traditional invitation of the Handel Festival to Halle.

Lunchtime concert II

Händel-Haus

A meeting of early Italian secular music with later English sacred music: tenor Christoph Prégardien vividly demonstrates both with the most beautiful arias from Rodelinda, Tamerlano, Samson and Jephta, accompanied by the fabulous violinist Leila Schayegh and her ensemble, La Centifolia. Overtures and concerti grossi by Handel round out an already very varied programmed.

Handel in Italian & English

The pastoral world is supposedly idyllic. But even shepherds are only people, and pretty Clori drives not one, but two shepherds to distraction. The most charming of all Handel’s Italian cantatas is accompanied here by three dancers who embody the feelings around this story and everyday’s relationships.

Clori, Tirsi e Fileno italian Cantata HWV 96

Goethe Theatre Bad Lauchstädt

In the Bible account of the Annunciation, Mary is told by the archangel Gabriel that she will bear God’s son. Alessandro Scarlatti devoted one of his numerous sacred oratorios to this episode from St. Luke’s Gospel: this is the sumptuous sound of the Italian establishment at the time the young Handel came to Rome. It made a lasting impression on him, but also provoked his contradictory spirit: in La Resurrezione, Handel went on to do things quite differently.

A. Scarlatti: La Santissima Annunziata, Oratorio

Halle Cathedral

Equally at home in the concert hall or the jazz club, the celebrated pianist Johanna Summer made herself known to the music world with her 2020 debut album, Schumann Kaleidoskop, in which she transformed the works of Robert Schumann into music of her very own. Süddeutsche Zeitung described it as “a minor sensation”. Summer combines her precise musicality and her talent for spanning a huge musical range with the freedom of jazz.

Resonanzen Women in Jazz

St. George’s Church

On visiting Halle, the French star organist Benjamin Alard fell in love with the Reichel organ in the Marktkirche on which the young Handel played. Especially for this instrument he has compiled a programme of Baroque devotion and contemplation for which the chorale Jesus meine Freude sets the tone, but which also leaves scope for virtuosity – as with Handel’s organ concerto Op. 6, No. 4, and sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.

Organ recital "Jesu meine Freude"

The harpsichordist Asako Ogawa reconstructs some historical keyboard battles: Handel versus D. Scarlatti in Italy and Clementi versus Mozart in Vienna. Marchand versus J. S. Bach in Dresden did not take place, as Marchand fled on the morning of the battle shortly before Bach’s arrival. But in this concert, he will
have to face the music.

Lunchtime concert I: Solo recital by Asako Ogava

The fifth opera written in Handel’s new home, London, Amadigi di Gaula, is an exuberantly inventive work with brilliant musical ideas full of youth, love and magic. The sorceress Melissa loves the knight Amadigi. But he loves Oriana, who in turn is coveted by Amadigi’s friend and rival Dardano. The four figures stumble around in a labyrinth of deceptive images and feelings and run the risk of losing not only their way, but above all themselves. Hurt and filled with hate, Melissa uses all her magical powers to destroy the inclination of Amadigi and Oriana for one another. She plots, lies, begs, flatters and threatens death and torture. But love is victorious in the end.

Amadigi di Gaula

The Opera Halle

With the help of a time machine, George Frideric Handel stumbles into a rehearsal for a children’s Handel concert and causes minor chaos. Different periods of the composer’s life and humorous episodes are related, illustrated by well-known Handel melodies with new texts accessible to children and peppered with comic moments resulting from the reciprocal incomprehension of the realities in which each other lived. At the end, the famous Hallelujah Chorus is sung in a simplified, unison version.

Handel is back?!

The Concert Hall Ulrichskirche

When, in 1741, Handel was forced to admit that the London audiences were sick of hearing Italian opera, he thought back to what he had learned from his teacher Zachow in Halle. At this difficult time, an invitation to Dublin gave him the opportunity to create something completely novel: a sacred oratorio without action, an intimate confession of faith instead of superficial pomp. What is often lost in mass performances, the choir and orchestra of Liberati rekindle with their very special positioning. The choir stands in front of the orchestra and the organist right at the back: they cannot see one another, so they must listen all the more, and the tension thus created takes us to the very core of Messiah.

Messiah Oratorio HWV 56

The George Frederic Handel Hall

When you have spent a day talking about hymns, you want to hear them too: the hymnology conference will end with a public concert. There will be a brief introduction by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hirschmann (president of the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft music society and 2022 Handel Prize laureate).

Jesus is the Finest Light

Francke Foundations

Liselotte von der Pfalz (1652-1722), a princess at the court of the Sun King, wrote letters as we write tweets today: untiringly and sometimes several times a day to the same addressee. Rather like an elderly lady who is always on the telephone. The princess came to Versailles as the wife of Monsieur, the brother Louis XIV, and lived at the most magnificent court of her day until her death. Her writings provide a picture of life as seen from the very centre of the most famous royal court of the period.

Tweets from Versailles

Carl Maria von Weber Theater

The great composer Arvo Pärt turns 90 on 11 September – reason enough to celebrate him! His imposing, rich-sounding and fabulously well-written music builds bridges between the music of the Baroque and our time. It no longer tries to go somewhere, like the music of the 19th century, but abandons itself completely to the here and now. It waits, listening out for single sounds and opens our ears to new musical and spiritual experiences.

Arvo Pärt & G. F. Händel

The diaries of the English Admiralty official and man-about-town Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) have been described as a “literary wonder” and a “unique monument of world history”. Pepys noted down literally everything that happened to him on a daily basis in the London of the 1660s. The result is a detailed, humorous chronicle of his everyday life – how Pepys squabbles with his wife, strolls through the London of the Great Plague in his new silk jacket and for safety’s sake during the financial crisis buries his money. Actor Gustav Peter Wöhler, who in 2013 was awarded the German Audiobook Prize, lends his voice to these entertaining jottings. How fitting that  throughout his life Pepys was also a keen musician. With lautten compagney, the Swinging Sixties under Charles II are brought back to life in music as well as words.

Peeping at Mr. Pepys

Bei Bach zuhause

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach House

Choral works about air, love and new beginnings can be heard in the popular mobile concert in the Botanical Garden. Under the new direction of Keno Weber, the Halle University Choir and Pfeiferstuhl Music Halle will present works by Monteverdi, Tormis, Brahms and many others. The musicians of the two ensembles and the team of the Botanical Garden team have been enchanting festival visitors with these promenade concerts since 2006.

Promenade concert

Botanischer Garten Halle

The 2025 International Academic rence takes a closer look at the Italian texts Handel set to music and his contacts with Italian literature and librettists, and attempts comparisons with other 18th-century composers. In a round table chaired by Prof. em. Reinhard Strohm (Oxford), questions concerning the critical edition, translation and digitisation of Handel’s Italian texts will be investigated and discussed. The event will start with the awarding of the 2025 International Handel Research Prize.

Handel’s Italian Texts and His Librettists

G. F. Handel based his grandiloquent oratorio Israel in Egypt on three models: his own funeral anthem for Queen Caroline, a serenade by Alessandro Stradella and a Magnificat by Dionigi Erba – all complete works in themselves. Here, you will get to know them before hearing the original oratorio in the evening: a unique opportunity. For the great Egyptologist and Handel fan Jan Assmann, the exodus of the people of Israel from Egyptian captivity was of course a significant subject, including philosophically, and he authored an important book on Israel in Egypt. Sadly, his wish to be able to hear the originals together cannot be fulfilled, as he died in 2024. This is why we have dedicated this concert to his memory.

Israel in Egypt: The Originals

Of all the great national poets, whether Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe or Tolstoy, none was so dearly loved by the people at large as Sweden’s Baroque poet-singer, actor and musician, Carl Michael Bellmann (1740-1795). In these extremely lively songs with their closely matching words and music, Fredmann – the poet’s alter ego – proclaims the “gospel of riotous life”. His musical borrowings range from Handel to Haydn and Mozart and the classical French song collections of his time. The Epistles became known in Germany thanks first and foremost to the ingenious performances of Manfred Krug, on which the programme of this concert is based. But Klaus Adolphi adds his own settings and recitations of various Bellmann texts

Carl Michael Bellmann: Fredmanns Episteln

An unprecedentedly popular oratorio: the story of the sufferings of the enslaved Israelites in Egypt and their determination to free themselves is awe-inspiring. No hero appears, even Moses himself remains in the background; the chorus alone describes the action. This work announces Handel’s inner volte-face, which is then fully expressed in Messiah. A chance to hear the inspiring Hervé Niquet and his Concert Spirituel in Halle for the first time.

Israel in Eqypt, Oratorio HWV 54

A star-studded occasion: three top countertenors unfold a fireworks display of coloratura and warm us with Handel’s most beautiful melodies. And the radiance of the excellent Polish {Oh! Orkiestra} with Martyna Pastuszka will add extra glow to the evening.

The Three Countertenors

Handel composed the six organ concertos grouped together under opus number 4 in a very short period of time as interludes for his oratorios. The innovative combination of organ and orchestra enchanted the audience, as it still does today. With Merseburger Hofmusik, Michael Schönheit presents all six works in the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Handel’s Organ Concertos Op. 6

Gewandhaus Leipzig

In Italy, a whole new world opened up to Handel and the Te Deum by Francesco Antonio Urio was part of it. Urio’s compositions enthused the young man from Halle so much that he drew inspiration from them for several of his own works. For example, he borrowed sections from the Te Deum for his oratorio, Saul. Baroque legend Reinhard Goebel, together with the MDR Radio Choir and Staatskapelle Halle, gives us another opportunity to hear this profound piece of music.

F. A. Urio: Te Deum

When the young Handel was working on his Agrippina, which is to be performed this year at Halle Opera, he also lifted whole sections from the score of Octavia by his former superior in Hamburg, Reinhard Keiser – here, for the first time, you have the opportunity of comparing the two works. One point of interest is that the two title characters are the mother and first wife of the Roman emperor, Nero, who won legendary status as a persecutor of Christians, untalented musician and arsonist. In Keiser’s opera, Octavia, who is being urged by her husband Nero to commit suicide, uses cunning to save her life. On the advice of the philosopher Seneca, she appears to Nero as her own ghost and succeeds in making him relent.

Octavia

As every year, Handel House invites young and old to a colourful party at no. 5, Grosse Nikolaistrasse. The different creative activities on offer are fun whatever age you are.

Family Festival

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

Not only do they share the same first name, they have already been guest performers together at the Handel Festival: this time round, the programme of the much sought-after sopranist Federico Fiorio and early music expert Federico Maria Sardelli is made up entirely of music written in Italy at the time Handel was there, around 1707. It includes two motets with enchanting soprano arias which are just tailor-made for Federico Fiorio’s supple voice.

Handel in Rome 1707

Universidad Martin Luther

This is where the music is – and not only music! On Saturday afternoon, young voices, eclectic musical sounds and impro theatre will turn the stage on Marktplatz into a playground for creativity all about Handel, Halle and Italy.

Handel for (H)all(e)

Marktplatz

Lingua toscana in bocca romana - Handel’s (not only musical) experiences in Italy

With the fifth new production of Handel’s Agrippina in the history of Halle Opera, two world stars will be making their first appearance at the Handel Festival on the Saale: the British conductor Laurence Cummings, formerly director of the Handel Festivals in London and Göttingen and today music director at the Academy of Ancient Music London, and the Serbian scenic designer Aleksandar Denić, known for his powerful graphic creations for Emir Kusturica and Frank Castorf. Together with Walter Sutcliffe, they are creating a vibrant new perspective on Handel’s youthful work. Romelia Lichtenstein leads an international cast of prominent guest singers and ensemble members. This melodious comedy of oversized egos in a dysfunctional First Family gave the 24-year-old composer his breakthrough. It shows a society driven by greed for power, vanity, cunning and stupidity in a complex plot with numerous, fortuitous reversals of situation.

Agrippina

Ceremony at the Handel Memorial

21st Organ Night

St. Moritz Church

Dom zu Halle

Halle youth has talent! Here, Handel meets hip-hop and the music of the young composer, Oscar Jockel. Based on workshops, a thrilling dance project has grown up featuring Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum Leipzig and the Gewandhaus Brass Quintett.

Harmony in Break

Carillon Concert

Marktplatz Halle

Kicking off this “Italian” Handel Festival is the historic revival of the first Italian version of Alexander’s Feast. It was an English Lord who infected the Grand Duke of Tuscany – later Emperor Leopold II – with a love of Handel’s oratorios. On 21 April 1768, the first ever performance of Alexander’s Feast on the continent took place in Lord Cowper’s villa outside the gates of Florence, followed two days later by a performance

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