Halle (Saale), 19

PRESS KIT 2018 Handel Festival Halle

PRESS KIT

for the presentation of the 2018 Handel Festival programme,

a music festival in authentic venues

in the city of George Frideric Handel’s birth,

Halle an der Saale

November 15, 2017, 11am, Chamber Music Hall of Handel House

Grosse Nikolaistrasse 5, D-06108 Halle (Saale)

With:Dr. Bernd Wiegand, Mayor of the City of Halle / President of the Handel House Foundation Board of Trustees

Dr. Jürgen Fox, Chairman of the Executive Board, Saalesparkasse /

Members of the Board of Trustees of the Handel House Halle Foundation

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hirschmann, Professor at the Institute of Music at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg / President of the Handel House Halle Foundation Advisory Council / President of Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft Internationale Vereinigung e. V.

Clemens Flämig, Musical Director of Stadtsingechor zu Halle

Astrid Wessler, Press and Public Relations Manager Lotto-Toto GmbH Sachsen-Anhalt

Clemens Birnbaum, Director of the Handel House Foundation / Executive Director of the Handel Festival Halle

Musical accompaniment:

Stadtsingechor zu Halle conducted by Clemens Flämig

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Dir will ich singen ewiglich (one of the Chandos Anthems My song shall be alway HWV 252)

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767)

Das ist meine Freude TWV 8:17

Johann Heinrich Rolle (1716–1785)

Gott ist unsre Zuversicht und Stärke

Contents

2018 Handel Festival “Foreign Worlds”

Pages 3 - 4

Operas at the Handel Festival

Pages 5 - 7

Other staged performances

Page 8

Oratorios and sacred music

Pages 9 - 10

World premieres and new productions

Pages 10 - 11

Gala concerts with international stars

Pages 12 - 13

The Handel Festival breaks new ground

Pages 13 - 14

A new partnership: Handel Festival Halle and the London Handel Festival are working together

Page 15

International Academic Conference

Page 15

Admission-free and family events

Pages 15 - 16

“Foreign Worlds” – reflections on the festival themePages 17 - 18

Visitor information and information on ticket salesPage 18

2018 Handel Prize winner

Page 19

The Handel House Foundation museums duringthe festival

Page 20

Facts and figures

Pages 21 - 22

Patrons and sponsors

Page 23

Inserts:

Press release by Lotto-Toto GmbH Sachsen-Anhalt

Press release by HWG Hallesche Wohnungsgesellschaft mbH

Press release by Stadtwerke Halle GmbH

2018 Handel Festival: “Foreign Worlds”

International advance ticket sales start on November 24, 2017

From May 25-June 10, 2018, Halle an der Saale will once again be the scene of a glittering Handel Festival. Under the title “Foreign Worlds”, during the 17 days of the festival more than 100 events making up the main and secondary programmes will be taking place in and around the city of the composer’s birth in celebration of its great son while also providing some extraordinary musical experiences in authentic venues.

The new production of Berenice, Regina d’Egitto, HWV 38, at Halle Opera on the first day of the festival will close the final gap in the repertoire after nearly 100 years: all 42 of the composer’s operas will then have been performed in his home city since the revival of Handel’s operas began, with Orlando, in the year 1922. This first performance of Berenice, Regina d’Egitto is based on the Halle Handel Edition – just like a further eight works. The Handel Festival will be presenting 15 ECHO Klassik prize winners in eight operas, three other staged performances, three oratorios, six gala concerts and a number of events that cross all genres. The festival brings together stars of the international Baroque music scene. Among other artists, visitors will have the chance to hear, in live performances, several-time ECHO Klassik and Grammy award winner Joyce DiDonato, sopranos Julia Lezhneva and Sophie Karthäuser, mezzo-sopranos Magdalena Kožená and Ann Hallenberg, alto Nathalie Stutzmann and countertenors Max Emanuel Cencic and Xavier Sabata. Further musical enjoyment will be provided by internationally renowned ensembles such as Il Pomo d’Oro, under the musical direction of Maxim Emelyanychev, John Butt and the Dunedin Consort, and La Cetra Barockorchester conducted by Andrea Marcon. As in past years, bridges will also be built to other music genres, including jazz, electro and rock music. And a number of concerts will be entering into a thrilling musical dialogue with other cultures, such as Turkish and Persian music.

The motto bannering the 2018 Handel Festival, “Foreign Worlds”, will be omnipresent, with the International Academic Conference also turning its attention to this theme. During the course of his life, Handel got to know foreign languages, countries, cultures and religions. In his music he overcame barriers time and again, transporting listeners to faraway places and sometimes even to fairytale worlds. Has Handel’s world now become alien to us? Or is there also much that is familiar to us? We invite you to come and investigate these exciting questions.

The programme also includes an anniversary: in 1968, the Goethe Theatre in Bad Lauchstädt was a venue of the Handel Festival for the first time. During these 50 years, this historic theatre has become an established part of the festival. Next year, the famous Lautten Compagney Berlin under the musical direction of Wolfgang Katschner will be staging Handel’s serenata Parnasso in festa, HWV 73, and the Prague Baroque ensemble Musica Florea the opera pasticcio Muzio Scevola, HWV 13. This will be the first staged performance of Muzio Scevola in its entirety since the eighteenth century. This German premiere will take place at the Carl Maria von Weber Theatre in Bernburg. Bach Consort Wien with Rubén Dubrovsky and selected soloists will be performing Handel’s Oreste, HWV A11.

But the Handel Festival will also be breaking completely new ground in the year ahead. Besides the tried, tested and ever more popular Baroque Lounges, we will for the first time be a holding poetry slam, with the theme of “Foreign Worlds”. Baroque music and poetry slams – what a strange combination. Are they compatible at all? We’re looking forward to finding out, taking our example from Handel.

We will also be developing our partnership with the London Handel Festival. The Handel Singing Competition has already launched many an international singing career. For this first time, two prize winners of the 2017 competition will be presenting a lunchtime concert in Handel House, Halle. Admission is free – as it is for numerous other events at next year’s Handel Festival. For example, visitors can look forward to the 16th Organ Night, a night-time concert, the International Academic Conference, lectures on selected events, Handel for Brass on Domplatz and the Family Festival in the courtyard of Handel House, all admission-free.

Clemens Birnbaum, director of the Handel House Foundation and the Festival’s executive director, is ecstatic: “That is a unique record, unrivalled anywhere in the world: eight different staged Baroque music productions in just 17 days. Visitors can hear works that have not been performed in this way since the eighteenth century, or which are new productions or even world premieres. Moreover, we will be building bridges to other music genres and other cultures. I am delighted that we are once again able to celebrate a great Baroque music festival that is second to none. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the City of Halle, the State of Saxony-Anhalt and the federal government, as well as our numerous partners, patrons and sponsors, of whom I will cite just Lotto Sachsen-Anhalt, Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and Saalesparkasse. Although “foreignness” is the theme of this year’s festival, all this shows that more than 250 years after Handel’s death the music of the Halle-born composer, far more than alienating us, still touches us as deeply as ever.“

Operas at the Handel Festival

Rinaldo HWV 7b (concert performance, German premiere of the 1731 version, performance based on the Halle Handel Edition)

Muzio Scevola HWV 13 (staged, first stage performance since the eighteenth century)

Giulio Cesare in Egitto HWV 17

(staged, premiere)

Arianna in Creta HWV 32 (concert performance, new production based on the Halle Handel Edition)

Berenice, Regina d‘ Egitto HWV 38 (staged, premiere, new production based on the Halle Handel Edition

Parnasso in festa HWV 73 (staged, premiere, new production based on the Halle Handel Edition

Ormisda HWV A3

(concert performance, German premiere)

Oreste HWV A11 (staged, German premiere of this production by Kammeroper, Theater an der Wien)

In 2018, the Handel Festival will be presenting eight operas, five of which will be staged versions and three concert performances. Nearly 100 years after the first modern performance of Berenice, Regina d’Egitto, HWV 38, all 42 of Handel’s operas will have been performed here. With performances of Ormisda, HWV A3, and Oreste, HWV A11, the series of performances begun in 2012 at the Handel Festival of hitherto largely neglected pasticcio and fragments by Georg Frideric Handel will be continued. All these opera performances have some special claim: some are the first performances in Germany based on the Halle Handel Edition, while others are the first staged productions anywhere in the world since the eighteenth century.

The 2018 Handel Festival will open with the new production of the opera Berenice, Regina d’Egitto, HWV 38, at Halle Opera, based on the Halle Handel Edition. Mistakes, misunderstandings, revenge, power-play and love are all reflected in Handel’s powerful music. The Handel Festival Orchestra Halle will be conducted by Jörg Halubek, who has already made a name for himself as a conductor of Baroque operas. The stage director of this opera, which focuses on the Egyptian queen, Berenice III, is Jochen Biganzoli. He delighted audiences at Halle Opera during the 2016-17 season with his extraordinary and moving production of Puccini’s Tosca. With the performance of the rarely produced opera Berenice, Regina d’Egitto, a special milestone has been attained: all 42 of Handel’s operas will have been performed in Halle.

This new production based on the Halle Handel Edition will be premiered in the historic Goethe Theatre Bad Lauchstädt, which has been a regular venue of the Handel Festival for 50 years. The serenata Parnasso in festa, HWV 73, will be staged by Lautten Compagney Berlin under the musical direction of Handel Prize winner Wolfgang Katschner and a soloist ensemble of choice on May 27, 28, and 29, 2018. The internationally successful specialist of Baroque dance and gesture Sigrid T’Hooft will be bringing to life the nuptials of Thetis and Peleus on Mount Parnassus in a historically informed production of Parnasso in festa. The Goethe Theatre will be decked out in full Baroque splendour for this performance, which is sponsored jointly by Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and Saalesparkasse and promises to be a feast for the eyes and ears.

“The Handel Festival marks the highpoint of the region’s cultural year and each time round enthuses a keenly interested audience. As longstanding partners, we are proud of its success even beyond the immediate region. Above all we are delighted once again at this performance in the historic Goethe Theatre in Bad Lauchstädt, which makes the festival an experience to be enjoyed not only in the city of Halle, but also in the wider Saale region,” says Dr. Jürgen Fox, Chairman of the Saalesparkasse Executive Board and member of the Board of Trustees of the Handel House Foundation.

One rarely performed work will be staged in the Carl Maria von Weber Theatre in Bernburg: Oreste, HWV A11. In a production based on the Halle Handel Edition and performed for the first time in Germany, the renowned Bach Consort Wien under musical director Rubén Dubrovsky presents this opera pasticcio which deals with the well-known theme of Iphigenia. The Junges Ensemble of Theater an der Wien and Bach Consort Wien deliver a musically gripping performance in a production of great scenographic interest. The performances on June 2 and 3, 2018, in Bernburg are sponsored by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Another rarely heard work, Ormisda, HWV A3 , will be presented by the English early music ensemble, Opera Settecento. Conducted by Leo Duarte these young musicians, who made their much-acclaimed debut at the Handel Festival in 2017, captivate audiences with their performances on period instruments. The vocal support will be provided by a splendid young ensemble of soloists, including prize winners of the London Handel Singing Competition. The London Handel Singing Competition has long been a springboard for international singing careers. This new production, which is being performed for the first time in Germany and sung in the original Italian, is a joint project with the London Handel Festival. For his opera pasticcio that you can hear on May 26, 2018, in the Francke Foundations, Handel compiled and rearranged music by L. Vinci, J. A. Hasse, G. M. Orlandini. Research has found that this is the first time this work has ever been performed in Germany.

The second, largely unknown version of the opera Rinaldo, HWV 7b, of 1731 can be heard in a concert performance on June 3, 2018, in George Frideric Handel Hall with international prize-winning soloists such as Jason Bridges Sandrine Piau, Xavier Sabata and Christopher Lowrey. Kammerorchester Basel, one of the world’s top Baroque orchestras, will accompany the singers, conducted by Christophe Rousset. Catalan countertenor Xavier Sabata, who is a very familiar guest in Halle, will play the role of Rinaldo. Another member of this excellent cast of singers who certainly deserves a mention is the outstanding French soprano, Sandrine Piau. The popular story of the knight Rinaldo marked Handel’s highly acclaimed debut in London. Many years and several revisions later, Handel staged the opera once again. With such excellent musicians, this new production of the 1731 version, based on the Halle Handel Edition, is set to become a reference.

Muzio Scevola, HWV 13, can be heard on June 8, 9 and 10, 2018, in a staged production featuring the Prague Baroque ensemble Musica Florea and the ballet dancers of the Hartig Ensemble in the Goethe Theatre, Bad Lauchstädt. This is the first staged performance of the work since the eighteenth century. Three composers worked on this opera pasticcio. It is suspected today that Giovanni Bononcini, the less well-known Filippo Amadei and George Frideric Handel worked simultaneously on it for reasons of time. But it is also thought that the diplomat Friedrich von Fabrice had the idea of a competition and that a draw decided who would compose which act. Handel drew the lot for Act 3 and at the premiere reaped the greatest applause from the audience. Act 1 was written by Amadei and Act 2 by Bononcini. The musicians of Musica Florea and the dancers of the Hartig Ensemble already delighted audiences at last year’s festival with their performance of Terpsicore in the Carl Maria von Weber Theatre in Bernburg. Director Laurent Charoy, who has already worked with director Benjamin Lazar on several occasions and also studied the Baroque gesture of language under him, is known for his historically inspired stage performances. This new production of Muzio Scevola is sponsored by Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik e. V. Tickets for the performances in the Goethe Theatre entitle you to free admission to the permanent exhibitions “Neues Schillerhaus” (New Schiller House) and “Badegeschichte im Douche Pavillon” (History of Spa in the Douche Pavilion) on the day of the concert.

One rarely performed work by Handel can be heard on June 9, 2018, in a concert performance in Ulrichskirche Concert Hall: Arianna in Creta, HWV 32, will be played by the highly acclaimed ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro and an impressive line-up of soloists under the musical direction of the young, up-and-coming conductor and harpsichordist, Maxim Emelyanychev. For this first performance based on the Halle Handel Edition, the soloists taking the stage will be Karina Gauvin, Ann Hallenberg, Kristina Hammerström and Andreas Wolf. The premiere in 1734 marked the London debut of the young castrato Giovanni Carestini. A whole 25 years younger than Senesino, he charmed everyone with his contralto voice, putting the by then ageing Senesino in the shade.

Anhaltisches Theater Dessau is to be a venue of the Handel Festival for the first time. In cooperation with the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig and the Handel Festival, they will be staging a masterpiece: Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17. Nicola Fransesco Haym wrote the libretto which tells of the love story between Caesar and Cleopatra in a combination of drama, power, politics and also a touch of humour. The performance on June 8, 2018, is staged by students of Leipzig’s Music University. Markus L. Frank will conduct the Anhaltische Philharmonie performing on modern instruments.

Other staged performances

Jephtha HWV 70 (oratorio, staged, based on the Halle Handel Edition)

The Blissful Twins (staged concert performance with music from Handel’s Music for Comus and others)

“Die Nachtigall des Zaren”’(staged reading with arias from the Baroque period(The Tsar’s Nightingale)

(in German))

Besides the five staged opera performances, another three stage productions also feature on the programme of the 2018 Handel Festival. For example, you can enjoy a repeat of last year’s Halle Opera production of Handel’s oratorio Jephtha, HWV 70. This much-remarked and highly acclaimed production by director Tatjana Gürbaca, a gripping drama of vows and paternal love, brought the oratorio based on the Halle Handel Edition to the stage of Halle Opera in 2017. With its huge choruses and affect-laden arias, Handel achieved a pinnacle of musical excellence in his career in 1752. One June 1 and 10, 2018, the Handel Festival Orchestra conducted by Christoph Spering will be accompanying this stage performance at Halle Opera.

In a staged concert being premiered at the Handel Festival, listeners will further be able to enjoy a poetic gesamtkunstwerk. The Blissful Twins focuses on the Arcadian poetry of John Milton and its setting to music by George Frideric Handel, turning Handel's Music for Comus, HWV 44, extracts from the first two parts of L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato and movements from the Concerto Grosso Op. 6 into a poetic pasticcio. Baroque ensemble Scenitas and sopranos Anne Schneider and Julia Kirchner, wearing historical costumes, will be joining forces in song and word on June 3, 2018, in the auditorium of Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

Die Nachtigall des Zaren, or “The Tsar’s Nightingale”, a Handel Opera production first performed at the Handel mini-festival, Handel in Autumn, in 2017, tells the fascinating life story of the star castrato, Filippo Balatri (1682–1756), based on his movingly personal and bitingly sardonic autobiography –a "road movie of the Baroque” about everyday life at court, the European art scene and the hardships of travel in the seventeenth century between Pisa and St. Petersburg, London and Düsseldorf, Paris, Munich and Vienna, and the Kalmuk steppe.

Oratorios and sacred music

Messiah HWV 56

Samson HWV 57 (A new production of the soloist version of 1743 based on the Halle Handel Edition)

Jephtha HWV 70 (cf “Other staged performances”)

Jazziah – Handel’s Messiah reloaded (world premiere)

Chandos Te Deum HWV 281

(new production)

Probably Handel’s best-known oratorio, Messiah, HWV 56, is traditionally performed in the church where he was baptised, Marktkirche in Halle. Next year however,Messiah will be performed in another authentic venue: Halle Cathedral, where Handel also worked as an organist from 1702-3. The Marktkirche is undergoing renovation work in 2018.

The strength and beauty of this major choral work is undiminished even today. Together with a host of internationally renowned soloists, the multiple award-winning musicians of La Cetra Barockorchester and Vokalensemble Basel will be performing under the baton of Andrea Marcon. This benchmark performance on June 1 in Halle Cathedral is presented by LOTTO Sachsen-Anhalt.

“We are proud to see how over the past twenty years the development of the Handel Festival has contributed to the global reputation of Saxony-Anhalt as an important, richly historical centre of music,” says LOTTO’s managing director Maren Sieb. “LOTTO has been a willing and dependable partner of the Handel Festival for many years.”

A world premiere featuring a new arrangement of the music of Handel’s Messiah combined with various jazz styles awaits the audience in the Steintor Theatre on 2 June, 2018. Extracts from Handel’s composition will be played in their original form and others by jazz musicians, while yet others have been arranged by the Italian guitarist Domenico Caliri in such a way as to allow the musicians from two effectively “foreign” worlds to able to play together. Nevertheless, both conserve their own musical language. Besides proven jazz musicians such as Caroline Henderson (vocals), Gianluigi Trovesi (clarinet) and Domenico Caliri (electric guitar), also playing under the musical direction of the outstanding Baroque musician Attilio Cremonesi will be Vokalensemble Ardent and Camerata Bern. They are co-producing this new Jazziah jointly with the Handel Festival. About the genesis of Jazziah, Attilio Cremonesi writes: “The catchy melodies in Handel’s Messiah, which express a special sensuality like the best blues, and the rhythmic drive of the rapid arias make for an ideal combination of jazz and Baroque music.” The concert is sponsored by Hallesche Wohnungsgesellschaft mbH.

The oratorio Samson, HWV 57, was written in what was probably Handel’s most creative period, beginning with Saul and Israel in Egypt up to Samson. It was premiered on 18 February, 1743, in Covent Garden in London. On 27 May, 2018, the soloist version of 1743 based on the Halle Handel Edition will be performed for the first time in Ulrichskirche Concert Hall. The dramatic structure, the wealth of musical imagery and the dramatic strength of this oratorio make it a masterpiece. The English organist, harpsichordist and music historian John Butt, who is respected the world over for his historically authentic interpretations of Handel’s works, will be conducting the top Scottish ensemble, the Dunedin Consort.

In 1717, Handel accepted an invitation from James Brydges, Earl of Carnavon and later Duke of Chandos, and spent two years at the latter’s country seat of Cannons near London, where a small ten-instrument orchestra and eight musicians were at his disposal. At Cannons, among other works Handel wrote eleven psalm settings, which became known as the Chandos Anthems. The Chandos Te Deum, HWV 281, is very rarely performed. The work has now been re-edited for the Halle Handel Edition. It is this version that will be premiered on May 29, 2018, in Halle Cathedral by musicians from the London Handel Orchestra, who have gained a reputation as proven Handel specialists. The works that Handel composed at Chandos are unique and charm listeners with their elegant, often restrained sound.

World premieres and new productions

a) World premieres and new productions of previously performed works

Jazziah – Handel’s Messiah reloaded (world premiere)

Hercules (world premiere of a pasticcio of Hercules settings by G. Fr. Handel and Joh. Seb. Bach by Clemens Flämig)

My Handel (world premiere of new Handel arrangements by Dieter Ilg)

Muzio Scevola HWV 13 (first staged performance since the eighteenth century)

Samson HWV 57 (first modern-day performance of the soloist version of 1743)

b) German premiere

Ormisda HWV A3

(German premiere)

Rinaldo HWV 7b

(German premiere of the 1731 version)

Tu fedel? Tu costante? HWV 171a (German premiere of the version of this Handel cantata discovered in 2016)

c) New productions based on the Halle Handel Edition

Rinaldo HWV 7b

Arianna in Creta HWV 32

Berenice, Regina d‘ Egitto HWV 38

Samson HWV 57

Chandos Te Deum HWV 281

Parnasso in festa HWV 73

Tu fedel? Tu costante? HWV 171a

One particular feature of the Handel Festival Halle is the close link between academic research and music practice. New productions based on the Halle Handel Edition are held on a regular basis during the festival. This is a critical edition project involving academics from all over the world and funded by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. It enables new findings from research to find their way into performance practice. Moreover, special versions of Handel’s works that have never or only rarely been heard in modern times have repeatedly been performed in Halle. Frequently, they are the first performances of the works in the world since the eighteenth century. This is true this year of the staged opera production Muzio Scevola (cf “Operas at the Handel Festival”) and the soloist version of Samson (cf “Oratorios and sacred music”). In past years, the Handel Festival has revived Handel’s hitherto largely ignored and little-known pasticcios. They reveal Handel in quite a different light: as an arranger of music by his contemporaries. For the first time in Germany, audiences will have a chance to hear the pasticcio Ormisda (cf “Operas at the Handel Festival). In addition to this, the Handel Festival also commissions new projects and arrangements that have their world premiere in Halle.

On June 10, 2018, the concert entitled “Light and shadow in a pastoral world” will focus on the cantata Tu fedel? Tu costante?, HWV 171a, that was discovered only in 2016. Based on the Halle Handel Edition, it will be performed for the first time in Germany by Concerto Melante, an ensemble that includes members of the Berlin Philharmonic. The ensemble is led by violinist Raimar Orlovsky and the solo will be sung by the young soprano Marie Luise Werneburg. Further pastoral works are also included in the concert programme.

The concert entitled “My Handel” includes works commissioned by the two Handel Festivals of Göttingen and Halle from the double bassist Dieter Ilg. The musicians build on Handel’s works from the perspective of modern, 21st-century jazz in best jazz manner, with harmonic changes and rhythmic diversity. Ilg has already provided ample proof with Beethoven, Verdi and Wagner that jazz adaptations can be an enriching experience over and above the usual crossovers. For My Beethoven and Parsifal, he and his trio won the ECHO Jazz award. Dieter Ilg’s My Handel will be premiered on May 26, 2018, in St. George’s Church in Halle.

Bach’s “Hercules cantata”, Lasst uns sorgen, lasst uns wachen, BWV 213, and Handel’s The Choice of Hercules, HWV 69, are part of the often performed standard repertoire. Both works have already been played on numerous occasions in immediate succession in concerts. However, never before in Halle have the two Hercules settings been woven together into a new pasticcio. This is what Clemens Flämig has done, and his work will enjoy its world premiere at the Handel Festival on June 3, 2018, at 11am at the Francke Foundations. With Hercules, the young demi-god, who on his journey is forced to choose between desire and virtue, this concert takes up a central motif of cultural history. In the eighteenth century in particular, many composers took an interest in the subject and transferred the ancient material to a setting with the Christian worldview. How do Bach and Handel resolve the question of the importance of the passions and virtue in their settings? With Stadtsingechor zu Halle, one of Central Germany’s oldest boy choirs, the soloists and the Handel Festival Halle, this new melding of the two cannot fail to please. We are grateful to Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and Saale-sparkasse for their joint sponsorship of this concert.

Gala concerts with international stars

Next year’s Handel Festival will present six exclusive gala concerts featuring top Baroque music artists. The gala concerts lend special glamour to the Handel Festival, a homage to the star singers of Handel’s time and the internationally renowned singers of our own.

The winner of several ECHO Klassik and Grammy awards, Joyce DiDonato, ranks among the world’s top classical music artists. On May 26, 2018, she will be appearing in her staged concert entitled “In War and Peace – Harmony through Music” in the George Frideric Handel Hall and setting new musical accents. Wearing gowns byBritish punk designer Vivienne Westwood, the US mezzo-soprano will present an elaborate light show featuring dancers and music by composers including H. Purcell, N. Jommelli, C. Gesualdo, A. Pärt and G. F. Handel. Joyce DiDonato will beaccompanied by the internationally respected Il Pomo d’oro under the musicaldirection of Maxim Emelyanychev.

Sophie Karthäuser has made a name for herself throughout Europe in the past few years and enjoys an excellent reputation with audiences and critics. In her concert on May 27, 2018, in the auditorium of Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, the soprano will be singing well-known arias from operas by G. F. Handel with great power of expression and musical diversity, accompanied by Capella Augustina. The con-ductor, harpsichordist and early music specialist Andreas Spering, who conducted the production of Almira at Halle Opera at the 2014 Handel Festival , has conducted this resident orchestra of the Brühl Castle Concerts since 1996.

Yet another world star will be appearing in Ulrichskirche Concert Hall on May 31, 2018: Magdalena Kožená. This Czech mezzo-soprano and 2013-14 Handel Prize winner has been a familiar guest at concert and opera houses all over the world for many years. She is celebrated everywhere she goes for her emotive stage presence and power of expression. Together with La Cetra Barockorchester Basel led by musical director Andrea Marcon, she will be singing a concert of the “best of” Handel’s works. The concert is sponsored by GP Günter Papenburg AG.

The French alto and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann will be appearing at Ulrichskirche Concert Hall on June 2, 2018, with her ensemble, Orfeo 55. The special thing about this concert is that she will be both conducting and singing. Her flamboyant, deep alto voice with its fine-grained timbre never fails to give listeners goosepimples. In the gala concert “Duello Amoroso”, which is sponsored by TOTAL Raffinerie Mitteldeutschland GmbH, you can hear some moving Handel arias and duets. The beautiful voice of the Swedish soprano, Camilla Tilling, will complement the performance. Nathalie Stutzmann was already a guest at the Handel Festival back in 2015, when she took the stage and delighted the audience alongside the Handel Prize winner Philippe Jaroussky.

Since Julia Lezhneva appeared at the Salzburger Musikwoche in 2010 conducted by Marc Minkowski, she has become an established and frequent guest at international concert venues. Her award-winning albums have earned her the German RecordCritics’ Award, a Diaposon d’Or and an ECHO Klassik. Her powerful and clear soprano voice thrills audiences with its imitable, effortless coloratura. She will be accompanied on June 6, 2018 by the period ensemble La Voce Strumentale from Moscow, con-ducted by Dmitry Sinkovsky, who is also a successful violinist and countertenor. This gala concert is sponsored by Kathi Rainer Thiele GmbH.

No Handel Festival Halle would be complete without a gala concert featuring a countertenor. On June 8, 2018, Max Emanuel Cencic will be presenting a programme devoted to the two rivals of 1730s London, Handel and Porpora, in Ulrichskirche Concert Hall. Cencic’s career began when he was a young child, with the Vienna Boys Choir. Since then, he has made countless appearances with renowned ensembles and played in numerous stage productions on Europe’s most famous stages, including in Handel’s Alessandro at the 2015 Handel Festival. Today, Cencic is one of the most famous countertenors of our time. He will be accompanied by the Greek orchestra Armonia Atenea, conducted by George Petrou.

The Handel Festival breaks new ground

There is always something new to discover at the Handel Festival. The programme is open to all music genres and cultures, including those outside Europe. But next year, visitors will be treated to a very special innovation: a poetry slam. At first glance, the two worlds seem completely foreign to one another. But during his life, Handel was always in search of new knowledge and new worlds, and also travelled to foreign lands. In the same way, our modern-day poets travel from place to place to present their texts. These impressions of foreign – as well as familiar – worlds will be coming together for the first time in Handel House on May 31, 2018. The poetry slam “Fremde Welten” is a cooperative project with the HALternativ association.

The Norwegian musician Tora Augestad together with the Lautten Compagney Berlin will be contrasting Handel’s English Songs, HWV 228, with “English Songs” of today in a programme entitled “As on a Sunshine Summer’s Day”. Handel composed 24 songs over a period of more than 30 years which document life in England. The songs were performed in different plays, but were probably also sung in London’s public gardens, known as “pleasure gardens”. Tora Augestad and these creative Baroque musicians will be appearing in St. George’s Church on May 30. The partnership struck up with the Women in Jazz festival over the past two years will be continued in 2018. The Austrian singer Ulrike Tropper, who will have performed just a few weeks previously at the 2018 Women in Jazz festival, will be appearing at the Handel Festival with the Quadriga Consort. This concert excursion will take us to the English pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century. Here were nooks to eat in, music pavilions and shady walks. G. F. Handel also provided “honest" entertainment with his music. In its concert entitled “Pleasure Gardens” in St. George’s Church on June 7, 2018, the Quadriga Consort will venture into this exciting place, constantly shifting between complex art music and catchy traditional tunes, and between the Renaissance and Baroque right through to folk and pop. As if between the trees in Vauxhall Gardens, the music wanders at leisure between these different styles. The special thing about this concert is that we will be hearing beautifully crafted, erstwhile popular songs of love and death, and joy and sorrow, which have survived in a London collection from the mid-eighteenth century and which today is in the possession of the Handel House Foundation. A thrilling journey of discovery is in store.

The Siedehalle (evaporating hall) of the Halle Salt-Panners and Saltworks Museum will be a new festival venue from next year. This is where the Baroque Lounge concert entitled “Mr. Handel’s Pocket Operas” featuring DJ Brezel Göring and the Elbipolis Barockorchester from Hamburg will take place on June 8, 2018. Elbipolis Barockorchester is known for its rousing and varied interpretations. The musicians will play works by G. F. Handel brilliantly and with plenty of surprises, to which DJ Brezel Göring will respond electronically, opening up a whole new realm of exchange and spon-taneous musical experience.

A large, curious and keenly interested audience has grown up around the intercultural and interreligious projects initiated by the Handel Festival every year. Next year, they can look forward to an encounter between the music of Handel and Persian music. The beauty of nature as an eternal spring has inspired artists of all generations – poets or musicians alike – in all countries. In his Nine German Arias, Handel set to music the extremely popular, lyrical depictions of nature by B.H. Brockes. Descriptions and metaphors of nature are also a popular stylistic means for Persian poets. This is where lutenist Sofie Vanden Eynde steps in with her concert entitled “Flaming Rose, Earth’s Adornment” on June 5, 2018, in the Leopoldina’s banqueting hall, and builds an artistic bridge between cultures. The yearning for love between West and East, joie de vivre and timeless poetic images are evoked in works by composers such as G. F. Handel, Saadi, J-Ph. Rameau, Attar and E. Moulinié. The singers are Marie Friederike Schöder, who won first prize in the Baroque voice section of the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in 2008, and Maryam Akhondy, one of the best-known interpreters of traditional Persian music.

Together with guitarist Xavier Díaz-Latorre, Friederike Heumann and Turkish singer Nihan Devecioglu explore new forms of expression in these Mediterranean worlds of sound in a concert entitled “Nostalgia. The Sea of Memories” on May 28, 2018 in the chapel of St. Maria-Magdalena in the Moritzburg. The Baroque music of the Mediterranean region is exceptionally diverse; it spread far and wide, and by ship reached the ports of major cities of the time. As the most important cultural hub and a melting pot of cultures, the Republic of Vienna played a significant role in this development. In this concert, besides Baroque music you can hear the traditional music of the Sephardim, songs from Italy, Greece and Armenia, and Portuguese fado.

In the concert “Corona Aurea” by Concerto Foscari on June 4, 2018, in the Chamber Music Hall of Handel House, works by G. F. Handel, M. Locke and A. Jarzębski will rub shoulders with compositions relating to Jewish mysticism in Safed (Galilee), creating a link to the places of origin and work of the authors of the Kabbalah Denudata. Concerto Foscari is an ensemble of young international musicians with great affinity to Baroque music and a desire to instil in people of all generations a delight in the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as in the concert experience. They will perform an eclectic mixture of mainly seldom-heard or forgotten works performed on period instruments.

Jigs, reels and hornpipes are the typical dance rhythms of Irish folk music that everyone knows and loves, and which even found their way into Baroque music. Irish traditional and Baroque music by H. Purcell, G. Ph. Telemann, G. F. Handel and others
can be heard on June 9, 2018, in the banqueting hall of the Leopoldina in a concert entitled “The Piper and the Faerie Queen”. It will be performed by the Irish group Kilkenny and by David Power on the Uilleann pipes – the Irish bagpipes.

A new partnership: Handel Festival Halle and the London Handel Festival are working together

Starting in 2018, the Handel Festivals in Halle an der Saale, where the composer was born and in London, where he died, will be working even more closely together. This partnership, which is to be continued in subsequent years, includes a performance of the Handel pasticcio Ormisda in Halle by the English early music ensemble Opera Settecento and a group of superb young soloists, including winners of the London Handel Singing Competition, in the Francke Foundations on May 26, 2018. Prizewinners of the last London Handel Singing Competition in 2017 are also a part of this new cooperative venture. Visitors will be able to hear Polish mezzo-soprano Marcjanna Myrlak, the winner of the Regina Etz (first) Prize, and countertenor Jungkwon Jang from South Korea, who won the Michael Normington (audience) Prize, in a free lunchtime concert on Saturday, June 2, 2018, at 12 noon in Handel House, the house of the composer’s birth.

In future years, the partnership will concentrate in particular on joint performances of unknown works and versions of works by Handel, and on fostering outstanding young musicians.

International Academic Conference

On May 28 and 29, 2018, the International Academic Conference of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Institute of Music, Media and Speech Communication, Musicology Department, will be taking place once again in collaboration with the Handel House Foundation and the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft e. V. music so-ciety. The subject, “Migration Movements in Music. Music and Musicians from Foreign Lands 1650–1750” is based on the festival title. Academics from all over the world will be considering the topic of musical migratory movements from different perspectives and presenting their latest research findings. The conference will shed light on the opportunities, as well as the conflicts and challenges, that arose from the migratory movements of musicians and music in Europe in the period from 1650 to 1750. The purpose is also to help re-situate the case of Handel, as both symptomatic and exceptional, in the context of these movements.

Admission-free and family events

The traditional start of the festival will take place on May 25, 2018, at 4pm, with the official ceremony at the Handel Memorial. That evening, or rather night, the festival continues with the 16th Organ Night. For these events, no tickets are required. In addition to this, two festival services will be held, in Halle Cathedral on May 27 and in Halle's Marktkirche on June 3, 2018.

On May 26, the open-air concert “Handel for Brass” and the “Family Baroque Festival” will be held for the third year running on Domplatz. The highpoint of this will be the appearance by Sachsen-Anhalt-Brass – Die Mitteldeutsche Bläsersolisten, a combination of two outstanding music bands from Central Germany. Admission to this exceptional concert is free for all visitors thanks to the support of Hallesche Wohnungsgesellschaft mbH.

An admission-free “Nocturnal concert: Encounters between Worlds” will be performed by the duo Roots into the Future in the unique atmosphere of the chapel of St. Maria-Magdalena in the Moritzburg on June 1, 2018. In it, the singular sounds of the viola da gamba and saxophone will combine in works arranged or composed by the duo.

Prize winners of the last London Handel Singing Competition, in 2017, can be heard in a free lunchtime concert on Saturday June 2, 2018, at 12 noon in Handel House (cf “A new partnership: Handel Festival Halle and the London Handel Festival are working together”).

In the admission-free “Family Festival” on June 9, 2018, in the courtyard of Handel House, there will be painting, handicrafts, baking and much more besides. The highpoint will be the (paying) children’s concert “Au clair de la lune oder Die Farben der Nacht” (Au clair de la lune or The Colours of the Night)”, a puppet play with music for children age seven and over. The Family Festival is kindly sponsored by KATHI Rainer Thiele GmbH. There will also be performances of this children's concert on two other days in the Kinderpark day care centre (registration required).

For teenagers, an education project will be held in cooperation with Georg-Cantor-Gymnasium secondary school on May 26, 2018, with a special focus on improvisation in Baroque music. (For pupils of Georg-Cantor-Gymnasium secondary school only).

Once again, there will also be free introductory talks on numerous concerts by Dr. Erik Dremel in the Glass Hall of Handel House. Many other free events and much more besides await visitors in the secondary programme. These can be found in the programme starting on page 58.

The two open-air events – “Bridges to Classics” on June 9, and the closing concert on June 10, 2018 – will once again be enticing visitors to the breathtaking Galgenberg Gorge. In “Bridges to Classics”, we witness a fascinating bridging of Baroque music and modern rock, sponsored by Stadtwerke Halle and presented by MDR Sachsen-Anhalt. The musical direction lies in the expert hands of saxophonist, conductor and university professor Bernd Ruf, one of the most innovative personalities in classical crossover. The evening’s special guest from the world of rock music will remain a secret until the spring. The closing concert of the Handel Festival will awaken your wanderlust, featuring world-famous and well-loved pieces by J.-Ph. Rameau, G. F. Handel, W. A. Mozart, E. Elgar and G. Rossini, the 150th anniversary of whose death will be celeb-rated in 2018. Traditionally it behoves Staatskapelle Halle to sound the final chord of the Handel Festival, which it will do under the proven conductorship of Jan Michael Horstmann. And as every year, both evenings close with a spectacular fireworks display.

Tip: Family ticket for the closing concert: one child under 14 accompanied by one adult paying the full ticket price pays only ten euros.

“Foreign Worlds” – reflections on the festival theme

Curiously, “foreignness” awakens two different, contradictory emotions in people. We are fundamentally fascinated by foreignness. The effect of this even today in art is that artists are influenced by foreign styles and incorporate them into their own creative work. The avidness of people today for travelling to other countries and continents is also a reflection of this curiosity about otherness. Advertising exploits this taste for the exotic too, suggesting to us that if we buy a certain product we will be plunged into the idyllic and paradisiac – in other words, strange and “different” – world it places before our eyes. In the Baroque period, the fictive Arcadia with its pastoral idylls served the same purpose.

But foreignness can also trigger a primeval fear – for example, when people are forced to go to foreign lands, or if a person suddenly feels like a stranger in their own country. This primeval fear is reflected etymologically in the German word Elend, meaning misery, which is derived from the Old High German word elilenti, meaning “another country”. This feeling can ultimately cause people to raise defences to shut out what is foreign. Handel’s pasticcio Oreste cruelly explores the subject of foreignness, and the plot is a compelling study of people’s darker side: on the island of Tauris, King Toante terrorises everyone with his archaic, bloody methods, and shuts himself off from all foreigners. He orders that any foreigner who sets foot in his country should be executed, since an oracle announced that a stranger named Oreste would rob him of his ru-lership and his life. Oreste himself grew up abroad and, after his return to the court where he was born, took revenge for the murder of his father. He comes to Tauris to find rest from pursuit by the Erinyes. There, he unexpectedly meets his sister, Iphigenia, who, as the priestess of Artemis is charged with executing King Toante’s cruel law and must kill all strangers.

The coming Handel Festival, entitled “Foreign Worlds”, sets out on the one hand to investigate how experiences of foreignness in and also outside Europe are manifested in Handel’s work, and on the other, how the Halle-born composer adjusted as an intra-European migrant abroad. John Mainwaring’s heroic narrative of a musician at whose feet people in all the places he worked readily threw themselves glosses over the fact that throughout his career Handel, as a foreigner, had to deal with the phenomenon of his linguistic, religious, cultural and aesthetic alterity and prove himself in these foreign environments. Whether it was the “new world” of opera in Hamburg, the versatile and diversified musical culture of the Italian cities, London with the musical life pe-culiar to it, fluctuating between the national (English) and international (Franco-Italian) idioms: in all these different milieus Handel had to re-adjust and try to find a way of reconciling everything that made him what he was with the foreignness with which he was confronted.

This was a challenge Handel shared with many European contemporaries, who since the end of the Thirty Years War had become far more internationally oriented. Closely bound up with this migration of musicians was the transfer of different kinds of mu-sical notation, singing practice and playing styles into all kinds of cultural milieus, which triggered friction and conflict but also set in motion numerous phenomena of hybridisation. The Handel Festival aims to help shed new light on the opportunities, as well as on the conflicts and challenges, which arose from the migratory movements of musicians and music in Europe in the period from 1650 to 1750, and at the same time resituate the specific figure of Handel in the context of these movements. In a further sense, this theme is also intended as a historical reflection on the current crisis in Europe, between the deliberate raising of barriers against migratory movements and the political will to integrate foreigners.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hirschmann and Clemens Birnbaum

Visitor information and information on ticket sales

The 2018 Handel Festival visitors’ office in Handel House is open daily from May 23 to June 10, from 10am to 6pm. Here, visitors can get information about events, the programmes of individual events and unsold tickets. Visitors can also purchase the festival magazine. This provides an overall insight into the festival, with interesting features on the performers, background information about performances and much more besides. The box offices open one hour before the start of performances at the respective venues.

Tickets for the 2018 Handel Festival are available:

· Via the hotline +49 (0)345 / 5652706 (Monday to Friday: 7am-7pm, Saturday: 7am-2pm)

· at: www.haendelfestspiele-halle.de

· From all CTS-Eventim advance ticket booking agencies all over Germany

· In Saxony-Anhalt also from TiM Ticket in Mitteldeutsche Zeitung servicecentres and Galeria Kaufhof Passage in Halle

Information and ticket sales as well as a free waiting list service for sold-out events are available from:

Roßdeutscher & Bartel GbR, Tel. +49 (0) 341 / 14990758 or www.barock-konzerte.de/warteliste.

Handel Prize winner 2018

The 2018 “City of Halle Handel Prize, awarded by the Handel House Foundation, goes to the US mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato.

With this award, the Handel House Foundation Board of Trustees chaired by the Mayor of Halle, Dr. Bernd Wiegand, are paying tribute to her outstanding services to Handel’s music. The Handel Prize is a gold and enamel brooch in the shape of notes from Handel’s Messiah. Joyce DiDonato will receive the award during her gala concert, “In War and Peace – Harmony through Music” on Saturday May 26, 2018, in George Frideric Handel Hall.

Only recently, Joyce DiDonato collected her 4th ECHO Klassik “Singer of the Year” award at the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg. For her album “In War and Peace”, featuring primarily works by Handel, she is now already receiving her next award. The Handel Prize is awarded to her for her many years of outstanding Handel interpretations, thanks to which she has contributed to the worldwide popularity of the city of Halle’s great son, says Clemens Birnbaum, director of the Handel House Foundation and the Handel Festival’s executive director.

Several-time ECHO Klassik and Grammy award winner Joyce DiDonato is one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of her time. She was born on February 13, 1969, in Prairie Village in the American state of Kansas. Her repertoire ranges from Handel to contemporary music. For this eclecticism she is acclaimed and respected worldwide. Joyce DiDonato is a familiar face in the world’s most famous opera houses – whether in London, Milan, Vienna, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Chicago, San Francisco or Tokyo, she charms audiences and critics alike. She also gives concerts all over the world, always working with top musicians and ensembles. She has earned global fame with her numerous recordings with, for example the Il Complesso Barocco ensemble led by Alan Curtis, William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants and Antonio Pappano, and thanks to her extensive tours of Europe, Asia and North and South America.

Musically, Joyce DiDonato is always breaking new ground, inspired by many different artistic influences. Her staged concert “In War and Peace – Harmony through Music” sets unusual accents and is absolutely in tune with the times. At her gala concert at the 2018 Handel Festival, she will be accompanied by the award-winning ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under the musical direction of Maxim Emelyanychev.

The City of Halle Handel Prize is awarded to individuals or ensembles for special artistic, academic or political and cultural achievements which correspond to Halle’s efforts to preserve Handel’s musical heritage at the international level.

Further information is available at: https://joycedidonato.com/.

The Handel House Foundation museums during the 2018 Handel Festival

Handel House

Große Nikolaistrasse 5, 06108 Halle

Phone: +49 (0) 345 / 500 90 221

Email: stiftung@haendelhaus.de

Special opening times during the 2018 Handel Festival:

daily from 10am to 7pm

Permanent exhibitions:

HANDEL – The European

Historical Musical Instruments

Annual exhibition:

So fremd, so nah (So foreign, so close)

Duration: February 23, 2018, toJanuary 10, 2019

Curated by: Dr. Konstanze Musketa, Christiane Barth

Special guided tours:

June 1 and 8, 2018, 3pm Ι Historical musical instruments and annual exhibition

“Halbmond, Drachen und Chinesenhut” (Crescent Moon, Dragons and Chinese Hats)

A guided tour of chinoiseries and other foreign elements in European musical instrument-making, with Christiane Barth (director of the Handel House Foundation Museum, in German)

June 2, 2018, 11am | Annual exhibition

“Aufbruch in fremde Welten” (Away to Foreign Worlds) * Guided tour by Dr. Konstanze Musketa, director of the Handel House Foundation Library (in German)

*Tickets: €7, number of participants limited, reservation possible up to 15 minutes before start on 0345 500 90 103, ticket@haendelhaus.de

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach House

Grosse Klausstrasse 12 (entrance on Hallorenring), 06108 Halle (Saale)

Phone: +49 (0) 345 / 500 90 221

Email: stiftung@haendelhaus.de

Special opening times during the 2018 Handel Festival:

Friday to Sunday: 10am - 6pm

Permanent exhibition:

Musikstadt Halle (“Halle, the City of Music”)

Special guided tour:

May 27, 2018, 11.30am | Wilhelm Friedemann Bach House

“Durch mühsames Reisen erlangtes Renommee: Hallische Musikerbiografien zwischen Migration und Sesshaftigkeit” (Renown achieved through wearisome journeying: migration and sedentarism in the lives of Halle-born musicians)

A special tour of the “Musikstadt Halle” (Halle, the City of Music) exhibition: Dr. Konstanze Musketa, director of the Handel House Foundation Library (in German) *

*Tickets: €7, number of participants limited, reservation possible up to 15 minutes before start on 0345 500 90 103, ticket@haendelhaus.de

Handel Festival 2018: Facts and Figures

Dates:

May 25 - June 10, 2018

Admission-paying events:53

Total number of events:

over 100

Venues:

26

Regional venues:

3

· Goethe Theatre, Bad Lauchstädt

· Carl Maria von Weber Theatre, Bernburg

· Anhaltisches Theater Dessau

New venues:

2

· Halle Salt-Panners and Saltworks Museum

· Anhaltisches Theater Dessau

Operas:

8

· Rinaldo HWV 7b

· Muzio Scevola HWV 13

· Giulio Cesare in Egitto HWV 17

· Arianna in Creta HWV 32

· Berenice, Regina d‘ Egitto HWV 38

· Parnasso in festa HWV 73

· Ormisda HWV A3

· Oreste HWV A11

Oratorios:

4

· Messiah HWV 56

· Samson HWV 57

· Jephtha HWV 70

· Jazziah (world premiere)

World premieres and new productions ofpreviously performed works: 5

· Jazziah – Handel’s Messiah reloaded (world premiere)

· Hercules (world premiere of a pasticcio of Hercules settingsby G. Fr. Handel and Joh. Seb. Bach by Clemens Flämig)

· My Handel (world premiere of new Handel arrangements byDieter Ilg)

· Muzio Scevola, HWV 13 (first staged performance since theeighteenth century)

· Samson, HWV 57 (first modern-day performance of the soloist version of 1743)

German premieres:

3

· Ormisda, HWV A3 (German premiere)

· Rinaldo HWV 7b (German premiere of the 1731 version)

· Tu fedel? Tu costante? HWV 171a (German premiere of

the version of this Handel cantata discovered in 2016)

Other new productions: 1

· Chandos Te Deum HWV 281

Performances based on the Halle Handel Edition:

5

· Rinaldo HWV 7b (premiere based on the HHE)

· Arianna in Creta, HWV 32 (premiere based on the HHE)

· Berenice, Regina d‘ Egitto HWV 38 (premiere based on the HHE)

· Samson HWV 57 (premiere based on the HHE)

· Jephtha HWV 70

· Parnasso in festa HWV 73 (premiere based on the HHE)

· Tu fedel? Tu costante? HWV 171a (premiere based on the HHE)

· Chandos Te Deum HWV 281 (premiere based on the HHE)

· Oreste HWV A11

Patrons and sponsors

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