Tag: Handel News 82 – February 2022

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The Sound of Silence

By Robert Hugill

For anyone studying the operas of Handel, there are two prime collections, the composer’s autograph scores in the British Library and the conducting scores in the university library in Hamburg; carefully curated sets of the composer’s scores which descended to his assistant and copyist, John Christopher Smith. Not every Baroque composer was as careful as this, as those reviving Baroque opera know. But there is no similar collection of letters for the eager biographer. If we seek to elucidate Handel’s personal or interior life, then silence reigns.

Some letters survive, though few if any shed light on personal or emotional concerns. The lack seems significant, if someone could be that careful with manuscripts then the absence of letters is perhaps deliberate. We can elucidate a lot about the composer’s life, as Ellen T Harris did in her book George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends, but to know that the composer was friendly enough with someone to leave them a legacy in his will says nothing about the quality of that friendship, whether it turned on a mutual love of philosophy, the sharing a jug of claret or indeed late-night intimacy. These details are largely lacking, what we have in Handel’s personal life is a great silence.

And into this silence floods the music.

The revival and interest in Handel’s opera, which has continued to develop during the last 30 years, has come about not just because he could write a rattling good tune, but because the characters in the operas offer us deep emotional experiences. When on form, the composer takes his characters (and us) on psychologically profound journeys.

Given the silence surrounding Handel’s personal life, you wonder where this knowledge of the human heart came from. In essence, did the young George Frideric get his heart broken?

Many historical figures indulged in orgies of letter burning, out of a desire not to reveal anything too personal to posterity. (This was not necessarily out of a need to hide, even a figure like the novelist Mrs Gaskell asked her daughters to destroy her letters.) This silence could represent many things; there has been speculation about Handel’s sexuality, but silence could simply represent other types of illicit relationship such as with married women.

It may seem prurient to want to dig into a composer’s love life, but it would be useful and illuminating to know whether he fell in love with his heroines (Puccini) or identified with them (Tchaikovsky), to at least learn if not with whom, then how, why and when? With Handel, we just don’t know, yet his music gives us a vast array of characters embroiled in the complexities of love and with whom the composer is in deep sympathy.

Here it is perhaps useful to give a brief sketch of his life and where any emotional life might sit. Always independent of mind, Handel learned his trade as a jobbing musician (and then composer) at Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt Theatre but as soon as he could afford it, he took himself off to Italy (aged 21). There he eschewed attaching himself to a particular patron and dealt with a wide variety of Cardinals and Princes. He was not only highly talented but charming and personable as an early portrait would suggest (though it no-longer survives). He dealt successfully with the necessary complexities of a society where many of his patrons took a more than a professional interest in him. Princes and even Cardinals had liaisons with members of both sexes. Ellen T. Harris has explored this in her book on Handel’s chamber cantatas, pointing out that a few cantatas have homosocial elements in their text and that, intriguingly, when Handel came to reuse one in London, he removed these elements.

It is from this period that we have snippets of gossip about Handel’s ‘amours’ with his (female) singers. But once he moved to London (aged 25), the trail goes largely cold. He is linked to the circle of the Earl of Burlington, and the Duke of Chandos, but largely seems to remain magnificently alone. Which leaves us extremely curious. Yet from the music, we cannot help but feel that at some point he must have felt deeply rejected and experienced unrequited love.

Whilst Handel’s music can be highly erotic, just think of Poppea in Agrippina or Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, often, his richest and most emotionally expressive music is for the characters who suffer in love. The sorceress Alcina is, technically, the villain of the opera Alcina but by the beginning of Act Three, we are in no doubt that we are in sympathy with her as she experiences the loss both of her powers and her lover. Alcina is just the last in a series of sorceresses who thread their way through Handel’s operas, usually getting the finest music. Medea in Teseo is even allowed to get away with it, for her no religious conversion or comeuppance, instead, she departs magnificently in a chariot drawn by fire-breathing dragons.

In Amadigi, most of the characters experience love, and Handel finds ways to bring strong emotional expression to a form like opera seria which, in the wrong hands, can seem stiff or lacking in emotional connection. By the end of Amadigi, Amadigi and Oriana are happily united, but it is two other characters, Dardano and Melissa (another of Handel’s sorceresses) who get some of the most extraordinary music. They both experience unrequited love in different ways, and Handel uses his music to take them on a journey and to give a depth to the opera which is lacking in the source (Amadis de Grèce, a French tragédie-lyrique by André Cardinal Destouches and Antoine Houdar de la Motte.). In Act Two, Dardano has a powerful expression of the pain of thwarted love in ‘Pena tiranna’, an aria with a remarkable richness of texture, and then when Orianna seems within his grasp his remarkable aria, ‘Tu mia speranaza’ seems to convey the irony of his situation (he is about to die). From the first, Handel seems interested in Melissa as a woman in love, rather than simply a sorceress, and by Act Three she realises that love is not something to be cured by magic, and her final scene has intense pathos as well as being structurally imaginative in the way Handel depicts her steps faltering and life ebbing away.

This is music which as well as being powerfully memorable, is psychologically profound and erotically charged. So, we are permitted to try and fill the silence at the heart of Handel’s life with events which might suggest how the composer was able to write music with such a deep knowledge of the workings of the human heart.

This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author and of English Touring Opera who commissioned it for their tour of Amadigi, re di Gaula

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Handel Fernando 6th April 2022 at The London Handel Festival

By Miranda Houghton

The Hallische Händel Ausgabe is a collection of Handel editions held in Halle, the city of Handel’s birth. A new edition of Fernando, re di Castiglia, the product of extensive scholarly research by Michael Pacholke and subsequently published by Bärenreiter will be performed by Opera Settecento at both the London and Halle Festivals in 2022. This edition is based on a comprehensive study of all the surviving sources. It represents both published research and functions as a performing edition. At the request of the Director of the Halle Händel Festival, Clemens Birnbaum, Opera Settecento under the baton of Leo Duarte, oboist and musicologist were preparing to perform the premiere of Fernando in 2020 before the pandemic struck. We live in hope that both the London and Halle Festivals will return with their usual magnificence in 2022.

Anyone was able to attend the Alan Curtis-devised staged production in 2005 or has acquired a copy of the CD might well ask on what grounds the Halle Handel edition can claim the April performance as a premiere. The critical edition editor explains that the Curtis version of Fernando is in fact a significantly-shortened version of the 1732 (First) version of Sosarme, but with the Iberian setting and the character names derived from the libretto of Fernando. In terms of the proportion of music which appears only in Fernando and not in Sosarme, the recording includes only 2 bars. Not one of the over 130 bars of recitative which were deleted when Fernando became Sosarme was reinstated by Curtis.

In December 1731 after Ezio was completed, Handel began to compose his second new opera for the 1731/32 season. He chose as his text Dionisio, Re di Portogallo by Antonio Salvi (1664-1724,) first set to music by Giacomo Antonio Perti in Florence in 1707. The following appeared in the original published version of the libretto:

“Most honoured reader, Dionision, King of Portugal, had with Queen Isabella of Aragon his first-born son who succeeded him on the throne. He also had a daughter who was married to Fernando, King of Castile. He had in addition several illegitimate children, amongst whom was Alfonso Sancio who, because he was loved above all others by his father, aroused such jealousy in Prince Alfonso that, fearing that the succession to the crown might fall to Sancio, after many manifestations of ill will and anger towards his father, eventually declared against him with a shameless rebellion. Dionisio was compelled to gather together the forces of the kingdom and attack Colimbra (ancient spelling) in order to restore his son and the rebels to their duty and to punish them. The resistance was so obstinate, as was the siege, and the anger of the father and the son went so far that, among historians there are those who assert that they finally challenged each other to end their conflict with a duel; but because of the great danger of parricide, Queen Isabella hastened there, settled their differences and reconciled the minds of her husband and son.

All this is true, taken from the History of Portugal written in French by Monsieur Lequien de la Neufville. The rest is a poetic fiction, based upon probability.”

In his creation of a new opera, Handel as usual changed the title to reflect one of the other key characters, calling his new work Fernando, re di Castiglia. At the end of the 13th century, King Dionysius I of Portugal signed the peace treaty of Alcañices between Portugal and Castile. Ferdinand IV of Castile was at the time twelve years old. The treaty was sealed with two marriages, the more important of which was that of Ferdinand IV of Castile and Constança de Portugal, (called Elvida in Fernando,) King Dionysius’ daughter. They were betrothed in 1291 when Ferdinand was six and Constança not even two years old and married when they were respectively 17 and 12. King Dionysius did indeed face a rebellion from his eldest son, Alfonso who feared he would lose his right to the succession in favour to Alfonso Sanchez, his father’s favourite. In fact Ferdinand and Constança had died about a decade before the rebellion occurred, so Ferdinand’s embodied involvement in the plot is poetic licence. What is document is the fact that Elizabeth or Isabel de Aragão did stand between the rival armies of her husband and her son, preventing battle on that occasion and contributing to her canonisation after death.

Scholars are not sure who reworked Salvi’s text into the “book” Handel set. However some anomalies which have been described as “poetic awkwardness” and a poor command of grammar have led to the suggestion the librettist was Giacomo Rossi. We know he prepared the libretti of Rinaldo and Il pastor fido and he is also credited as librettist of Silla which was later recycled as Amadigi di Gaula. Rossi’s limitations with the Italian language were apparently well-known amongst the Italian chattering classes in London who already objected to the way Handel stripped fine Italian poetry down to a bare minimum to appease his inadequately polyglot London audience. In 1729 Paulo Antonio Rolli mockingly wrote to Giuseppe Riva, “Now I must inform you that Signor Rossi, that famous Italian poet (not ed.), is Handel’s librettist.

The action of Fernando takes place in Coimbra, currently Portugal’s 4th largest city. The city is under siege which dates the plot to between 1280-1320. This makes Fernando the second most “modern” of Handel’s operas, after Tamerlano. There are no documents explaining why Handel changed the locus of the drama two thirds of the way through its composition. It could be because the setting was within living memory rather than set in Ancient Rome or a mythical middle-Eastern country. From 1727-1729 there had been war between England and Spain, so the portrayal of the eponymous magnanimous hero as a Spanish king might have offended some at a time when Spaniards were demonised as the enemy. By contrast Portugal had for centuries been a traditional ally of England.

Perhaps, instead it was the focus on a conflict between father and son which was felt to be insensitive. George II, one of Handel’s staunchest supporters and his son, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales were estranged at the time of Fernando’s composition. When Queen Anne died, Frederick’s parents left Hanover for England. Their eldest son was 7 and was not reunited with his parents until he was 14. When his father ascended the throne in 1727, Frederick was called upon to give up his role as Head of the House of Hanover and take his place at his parents’ side as Prince of Wales. Sadly the separation irreparably damaged his relationship with his parents. In England he surrounded himself with dissenting politicians and supported The Opera of the Nobility, the rival opera company to Handel’s because his father attended and financially supported the latter. Frederick Lewis also played the cello and was a discerning collector of paintings as well as composers. His country seat was at Cliveden where the masque, Alfred (including Rule Britannia,) written by Arne was premiered by a cast including Kitty Clive. Would a depiction of a warlike rebellion in the 13th century of a son against his father be viewed as too resonant with England in 1732 and therefore disloyal to Handel’s greatest moral and financial supporter? Frederick, Prince of Wales married Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. The wedding was celebrated by a production of Atalanta at the King’s Haymarket and Porpora’s serenata, La festa d’Imeneo at The Opera of Nobility. As far as we know, the conflict was not resolved; Frederick Lewis predeceased his father at the age of 44.

Whatever the reason for realising the plot’s insensitivity, its locus was shifted to Lydia in a mythical period. The names of 6 out of 7 characters were changed. The editor of this edition posits that the only remaining connection to the Iberian peninsula is the use of a Sarabande in the opening movement of the overture – something unique amongst Handel’s operas. The reworking of Fernando (which Handel dropped within sight of the end of Act Two) involved significant cuts in the first accompagnato and in about half of the recitatives. Much has been written about the London audience struggling with long stretches of Italian recitative, even though for the most part a published translation was made available for premieres. It could be in part due to the fact that the preceding opera, Ezio which contained extensive recitative was not successful.

So Fernando became Sosarme and was premiered to great acclaim on 15th February 1732. At least two members of the Royal Family attended each of the initial 11 performances. The first cast featured Senesino, Anna Maria Strada del Po, Francesca Bertolli and the great bass, Montagnana. It also included an Italian tenor called Pinacci. When viewing Baroque opera from a 21st century perspective, we must suspend notions of copyright in the sense of droit d’auteur (rather than publishing copyright which was already in its infancy.) Operas at this time were events, the best possible combination of libretto, stage machinery, star singers, fine players and of course the music. Because of the success of Sosarme, Handel recycled five arias from the opera in the pasticcio, Oreste which he put together himself. He also reused a duet from Sosarme in Imeneo. Sosarme was reviewed by Handel in 1734. He made yet more cuts in recitative, reducing 505 lines of text to 365.

The differences between Sosarme 1732 and Sosarme 1734 largely came about because 6 of the 7 vocal parts were allocated to new singers. In taking over from Senesino, Giovanni Carestini retained none of Sosarme’s arias without alteration from the 1732 version of the opera. Two of the arias he sang were rearranged from Riccardo Primo. Two further arias were transposed upwards to reflect the higher fach of Carestini’s voice. The two duets were rearranged so that the lower part didn’t go too low for Carestini (who we think was a dramatic soprano rather than a contralto.) Otto Erich Deutsch, the 20th century Austrian musicologist, presumed Durastanti performed Haliate (which had been sung by a tenor in 1732) as trouser role. There are marks in the score which suggest the role was largely transposed up an octave, but then the second and third arias were subsequently removed. The performance materials have not survived from the 1734 performances so we cannot verify if this role was allocated to Durastanti. Two of Erenice’s arias were excised from the 1734 version and it appears the remaining arias were raised in pitch by a tone. The role of Argone was given to Scalzi, a soprano castrato. He was allocated two more rearranged arias from Riccardo Primo and a rearranged aria sung by Sosarme in the 1732 version. Whoever sang Melo’s role in 1734 lost one aria and the remaining arias were reworked for a singer with a more restricted range than Bertolli in 1732. With the loss of Montagnana, the first of Altomaro’s 1732 arias was cut (music which was lifted by the composer from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo) and also the second so that the baddie was left with only one aria to sing.

In conclusion, there is no such thing as a definitive Baroque opera in the sense that each busy composer would reuse/recycle/reinvent existing arias or adapt popular arias favoured by a new cast member to fit the context. The dramma, or section of epic poetry if you will, was at the heart of each opera and the arias had emotional themes which made them eminently adaptable to being recycled in a similar context. Two thirds of Sosarme started life as Fernando. It could be argued that there is a greater overlap between Fernando and Sosarme 1732 than there is between the two versions of what we now consider to be Handel’s opera, Sosarme.

Fernando, re di Castiglia: A Handel Premiere, Wednesday 06 April 2022, 19:00 at St George’s, Hanover Square – Opera Settecento conducted by Leo Duarte.

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Book review: Three Papers on Handel by Anthony Hicks

By Les Robarts

In these short papers Tony Hicks explores some of the creative work of three men whose labours inextricably link them to Handel’s music. They are a twentieth-century conductor, an Italian poet who wrote verse to be set to music, and an English librettist for Handel. Written by an acknowledged expert on Handel sources, these papers typify the author’s assiduous scholarship. He delves behind the music, finding new sources and unveiling hidden meanings, taking readers carefully and logically through his topics, flawlessly sharing his extensive knowledge. He makes his methods approachable and, more importantly, readable.

Your eyes won’t glaze over at any discussion of diminished thirds, augmented fourths and submerged tenths, for there isn’t any. No technical words obscure meaning, no arcane musical analysis clogs the story. The few music examples illustrate verbal underlay, how the words fit musical notes. Written with rigour these papers allow discerning readers easily to follow this Handelian sleuth’s logic. He never assumes prior knowledge, for every point is explained. While detail is fastidious it is never otiose, its simplicity belying considerable intellectual depth.

In presenting Paolo Rolli’s cantatas and strophic songs, Hicks sets out concise terms of reference and makes no claim to being definitive. His decidedly exploratory style does not hide a confident expertise, inviting readers with occasional tentative suggestions, e.g. ‘it is plausible that Rolli and Handel would have encountered each other when they were in Rome’. He never hides the need for further research. Such provisos prevent reckless assertion and disarm negative criticism.

Wordbooks published for Handel’s oratorios whose words are by Thomas Morell aroused curiosity by some inverted commas preceding the poetic text on the page. Hicks identifies several sources for the quotations, concluding that what he found should provide ‘a better-informed view’ of the librettist’s work. Isn’t it odd that Handel’s reputation has suffered from indictments of ‘borrowings’ while literary writers are not morally scarred when employing ‘quotations’?

Reading a biography of Thomas Beecham led Hicks to explore connections between Beecham’s ballet music and Handel. Not all is what is claimed, he finds, for some locations are misattributed. Hicks sets all to right.

These papers resonate with the author’s astonishing grasp of sources, materials, context, and interleaved concepts. In a closely wrought discussion he never speculates but offers possibilities. Judicious conclusions carry us with him. Hicks opens fascinating vistas as he lets readers into a hitherto unrevealed world of three musical and poetic artists associated with Handel across three centuries.

Hicks is a secure guide, modest in style, never pompous. Be assured, he smiles as he conducts us to broad conclusions while sometimes accepting that for all his exertions he still cannot be certain. We emerge from these brief tours engrossed and wiser, even entertained. Be prepared to be amazed, for new information, fresh interpretation and invention await the purchaser. Colin Timms, editor of the three papers, updates Hicks’s spoken papers in the light of recent research. No lover of Handel’s music should be without this book.

The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation at the Foundling Museum together with the Handel Institute published this booklet as a tribute to Tony Hicks who died in 2010. Copies may be obtained from the Foundation through: colin@ foundlingmuseum.org.uk

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Handel in Cambridge

By Tony Watts

In 1733 Handel visited Oxford at the invitation of its University’s ViceChancellor. Although Handel was reported as not accepting a doctorate offered to him, it was a great occasion, attended by many Heads of Houses from Cambridge, and included the first performance of his new oratorio, Athalia in the Sheldonian Theatre. So far as we know, Handel never visited Cambridge. But it was reported that he refused a doctorate here too (though no documented evidence of either offer exists), and he had other contacts with Cambridge: for example, Thomas Morell, one of his main librettists, was a Fellow of King’s. But subsequently, Cambridge has made a huge contribution to both Handel scholarship and Handel performance, at least comparable to that of Oxford. The Cambridge Handel Opera Company (CHOC) is part of that tradition.

The collection of Handel autographs in the Fitzwilliam Museum is second in importance only to the Royal Collection in the British Library. Handel was the great hero of the Museum’s founder, Viscount Fitzwilliam, who acquired all the material that had not been bound and presented to King George III. This comprised over 500 leaves of complete, incomplete and uncompleted works, fragments and sketches, written between about 1708 and Handel’s death – now bound in 15 volumes. This collection has subsequently been extended, notably by Francis Barrett Lennard’s gift in 1902 of 67 volumes of early copies of Handel’s scores. In addition, the Fitzwilliam holds the terracotta model of Roubiliac’s famous statue of Handel erected during Handel’s lifetime in the Vauxhall Gardens: public statues of living individuals other than monarchs were rare in England at that time, and the informality of Handel’s attire and pose are strikingly realistic.

There are also important Handel collections in several College libraries. In particular the Rowe Music Library in King’s contains a substantial collection of both contemporary manuscript sources and of 19th century copies assembled by A.H. Mann (1850- 1929), and its Rowe Collection is even richer in first editions of Handel’s music. In addition, the Wren Library in Trinity houses several scores of Handel’s English oratorios which were edited and/or published in Cambridge in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The first biography of Handel – published in 1760, a year after the composer’s death – was written by John Mainwaring (c.1724-1807), a graduate and Fellow of St John’s. A later biography was written by Edward Dent (1876- 1957), a Fellow of King’s and Professor of Music. Dent was also responsible for bringing to Cambridge a number of eminent musicians to escape Nazi persecution, including the great scholar Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967), cataloguer of Schubert’s compositions: while in Cambridge (1939-51) Deutsch collected material for his Handel: A Documentary Biography (1955), which served for decades as the ‘bible’ of Handel biography and was the precursor to Handel: Collected Documents. The most substantial work on Handel’s music, the monumental three volumes on his operas and oratorios, was by Winton Dean (1916-2013), a graduate of King’s: his work is widely recognised as seminal in musicology as a whole, a benchmark for analytical and perceptive scholarship, based on comprehensive and strongly contextualised documentary research.

Christopher Hogwood (1941-2014), a graduate and Honorary Fellow of Pembroke and also an Honorary Fellow of Jesus, was a leading figure in the early-music revival of the late 20th century, wrote yet another biography of Handel, and was involved in several concert performances and recordings of Handel operas and oratorios by the Cambridge-based Academy of Ancient Music, of which he was the founder. More recently, Andrew Jones, a Fellow of Selwyn, was founder and conductor of the Cambridge Handel Opera Group (see below), and is currently preparing an edition of Handel’s continuo cantatas; and Ruth Smith, an independent Cambridge-based Handel scholar, is author of Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought and of many essays in programmes for Handel productions both in the UK and internationally.

Many of the most important books on Handel have been published by Cambridge University Press. These include the five volumes of Handel: Collected Documents, The Cambridge Companion to Handel, The Cambridge Handel Encyclopaedia, and several monographs.

Only one performance of Handel’s works is recorded as taking place in Cambridge during his lifetime: Acis and Galatea at Trinity in February 1756, conducted by John Randall, Professor of Music in the University. Randall subsequently performed Messiah in the Senate House a month after Handel’s death, in May 1759, following this over the next few years with a series of other Handel oratorios in the same location: a number of these were designed to raise funds for the new Addenbrooke’s Hospital (echoing the role famously played by Handel’s own performances of Messiah in fund-raising for the Foundling Hospital in London). Between 1789 and 1809 The Musical Society at the Black Bear Inn in Market Street was almost a Handel Society, an average of three out of eight items at their monthly concerts being devoted to Handel. The first performance in England of Mozart’s arrangement of Alexander’s Feast was given in the Senate House in 1819; and the first revival in England of Semele in the Guildhall in 1878, under Sir Charles Stanford.

A particularly significant series of Cambridge productions was the staged performances of Handel’s oratorios between 1925 and 1948, following the powerful movement in Germany to stage these works – which, though highly dramatic, were not designed by Handel for staged performance. The stage première of Semele was mounted in 1925 by Dennis Arundell, a Fellow of St John’s: a reviewer noted that the artists included two Borzoi dogs, a fantail pigeon, and two goats, which “appeared to require a little more stage experience”. This was followed by staged performances of Samson, Jephtha, The Choice of Hercules, Susanna, Saul and Solomon, some at the Guildhall and others on the back lawn of King’s. They were conducted by Cyril Rootham of St John’s and later by Boris Ord of King’s, with staging by Camille Prior, and costumes and sets by Gwen Raverat – all famous Cambridge figures. The 1935 performances were part of a substantial Cambridge Handel Festival.

In the 1980s Andrew Jones founded the Cambridge Handel Opera Group (CHOG). Its first production, Rodelinda (1985), was followed by 14 further productions of Handel operas, every two years, usually with four performances, at West Road Concert Hall. A distinctive aim of these productions was to observe principles of 18th century performance practice in visual as well as musical respects. They were always in English, with new translations by Andrew Jones that were often used elsewhere, notably at the Coliseum in London. They were accompanied by a Study Afternoon on the opera being performed, with presentations by Handel scholars and, usually, the Stage Director.

Alongside CHOG, there have been other recent staged Handel productions in Cambridge, including by Colleges, like Xerxes at Fitzwilliam (2007), and by Cambridge University Opera Society, like Jephtha (2015). Particularly notable have been productions by English Touring Opera, of which there were at least ten in Cambridge between 2007 and 2014 at the Arts Theatre and West Road, many produced by James Conway.

CHOG ended in 2013, but King’s graduate Julian Perkins has subsequently revived it as CHOC. Its first production was Rodelinda (2018) at The Leys; Tamerlano is its second. CHOC reaffirms the staging principles which underpinned CHOG’s work, and has also sustained the tradition of the Study Afternoon, now extended by the “Green Room” online seminars, again linked to the production – both curated by Ruth Smith. CHOC’s production values, and its commitment to promoting relevant scholarship alongside its productions, give it a unique position in the world of Handel performance. It has also mounted a concert performance of John Eccles’s Semele in Trinity, recorded in a much-praised CD, in collaboration with the Academy of Ancient Music and Cambridge Early Music – bringing together the vibrant earlymusic scene in Cambridge. In all these respects, CHOC is building upon and extending a long, rich and widely influential tradition.

The CHOC production of Tamerlano will be staged in Cambridge on 5, 6, 8 and 9 April. Tickets are available from Cambridge Live: https://www.cambridgelive.org.uk/tickets/events/cambridge-handel-operacompany-presents-handels-tamerlano

Meanwhile, CHOC is holding three online ‘Handel’s Green Room’ discussions in February/March, curated by Ruth Smith, on preparations for the Tamerlano production. For details, and to subscribe to CHOC’s News Bulletin, see: https://cambridgehandel.org.uk/