Handel’s Semele is one of those works that refuses to sit neatly in a box. First staged at Covent Garden in 1744, it was billed as a “new oratorio” to slip past London’s strict Lenten ban on opera.

Lucy Crowe as Rodelinda and Nicholas Thurbin as Flavio - Alastair Muir Handel’s great 1725 opera Rodelinda is as confusing as any from the Baroque era, but underneath the shifting alliances there is a ...

The immigrant Handel, a Saxon trained in Italy, dominated the musical skyline as surely as St. Paul’s dome did the city’s.

Pretty Yende sings with her customary exquisite delicacy as Semele - Alastair Muir Semele has always annoyed the puritans. At the 1744 premiere of Handel’s gorgeously entertaining oratorio, it was ...

For the first time in decades, George Frederic Handel’s most famous oratorio, “Messiah.” will be performed in its entirety in Vermont. “It’s a masterpiece. It’s a great, great piece,” says conductor ...

NEW YORK — When talk turns to whether the Metropolitan Opera should put on old works — like 1709 old — habits die hard. The story has been told for decades that intimate Baroque operas will vanish in ...

The year 1685 was certainly good for music. After all, Johann Sebastian Bach, composer of St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass, was born in that year, but, if that ...

Others have done similar things: Samson – based on Milton’s work in what he considered to be the style of Greek drama – is a text that cries out to be staged, and has been. Messiah, too, albeit that ...