celebrating St. Cecilia’s day with handel friends

On 28 November 2024, we celebrated St. Cecilia’s Day with some more and lesser-known works by Handel, focusing on his first decade in London with the amazing soprano Hilary Cronin and countertenor Francis Gush. The concert was organised by Dr. Alan King and generously attended by Handel Friends - a wonderful celebration throughout!

THE GOLSONCOTT FOUNDATION

We are incredibly proud and privileged to have been awarded a grant from The Golsoncott Foundation. Thank you, The Golsoncott Foundation, for your generous support.

London and Halle Handel Festivals

In 2022 we performed Handel’s Fernando at both the London and Halle Handel Festivals. Rescheduled from 2020, we were delighted to finally be able to give the premiere performances of the new Bärenreiter critical edition. We received an enthusiastic welcome at both festivals. You can red reviews of our performance here.

Resonanzen festival

In January 2022 we made our debut performance at the Resonanzen Festival in Vienna. We performed Handel’s Aminta at the Mozart-Saal, Wiener Konzerthaus in collaboration with Fair Oriana.

London Handel Festival with Jorge Navarro-Colorado

In October we performed in the 2021 London Handel Festival with tenor Jorge Navarro-Colorado. There were modern day premiere performances of pieces by Caldara, Scarlatti, Corselli, Mancini and Handel. The concert was received with great enthusiasm and we were delighted to be back in front of a live audience.

Lucio Papirio online

From 28th May until 13th June, our performance of Handel’s pasticcio opera “Lucio Papirio Dittatore” will be available to watch free of charge as part of the Händel Festspiele Halle’s digital season. You can find the performance here.

2020 season Concerts postponed.

We are sorry to announce that due to the COVID-19 pandemic we have had to postpone our performances of Fernando until 2022 when we be returning to London and Halle. In the meantime, please enjoy a video that we made back in November of “Vado al campo” - we look forward to performing it live for you soon.

Leo Duarte will be joining directors of the London and Halle Handel festivals in a discussion as part of “Handel in Livestream” on 6th June from 4pm (3pm GMT). The livestream will be available on the Händel-Festspiele Halle YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIesA9HoJIloRRyPGZhwblQ

Another Halle Handel Festival triumph

Our mini-tour of Handel's pasticcio Venceslao (HWV A4) began with a well-received premiere at the London Handel Festival in April and ended with a near sell-out and standing ovation in Halle in June. It was our third consecutive visit to Handel's home town in Germany and our reception appears to be getting better and better, The mostly German audience were hugely appreciative of our performance.

The joint promotion by the LHF and the Halle Festival is continuing in 2020 and 2021. Next year will see us perform a Handel rarity, Fernando, Re di Castiglia (HWV 30). We will let you know more about this opera later. In 2021 we plan to return to our series of Handel pasticcii.