George Frideric Handel

Few Baroque composers have matched George Frideric Handel’s ability to shine penetrating light on human emotions. Born in the German city of Halle in 1685, Handel became a musician in spite of his barber-surgeon father’s wishes. Stubbornness became a virtue after he moved to London in 1712, having struck gold there the year before with his opera Rinaldo. He remained there until his death in 1759, shaping perceptions of Britain’s emerging identity as a world power with masterworks such as the Music for the Royal Fireworks and four Coronation Anthems, “Zadok the Priest” preeminent among them. He used the conventions of the 18th-century Italian opera seria to express deep psychological insights and plucked the dramatic English oratorio from obscurity, perfecting it for the elite tastes of Hanoverian London. His instinctive feeling for drama courses through such operas as Orlando (a nerve-jangling study in its title character’s descent into madness), Ariodante and Alcina. Best known today for his still-compelling oratorio Messiah, Handel possessed a genius for characterisation and storytelling that reached its peak in such late oratorios as Solomon, Theodora and Jephtha.