The London Handel Festival 2009
However much you tell people what you're about, there's nothing like showing them.
That's why we encouraged the London Handel Festival to make a video of a typical major production of the Festival in rehearsal. In it, we listen to some of the music and hear what the stars, the artistic director and his colleagues have to say about Handel, his music and his place in the life of London (his adopted home for 50 years, and the place where he died).
The production we selected was Theodora, one of the last and greatest of Handel's oratorios whose theme - dear to mid-eighteenth century novelists - was that of a virtuous damsel in distress. The setting for this production was the great church of St George's in Hanover Square, where Handel himself worshipped, and where the London Handel Festival has its home. The result, we hope you will agree, is astonishing and curiously moving.
