Demons in the Bath: Aci, Galatea e Polifemo

Due to essential maintenance required in Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall, this concert will now take place at Cadogan Hall.

This concert is the second in the OAE's 'The Wilderness Pleases' series.

'The Wilderness Pleases' is inspired by one of the many influential pieces of work to come out of the Enlightenment era; Shaftesbury’s 'The Moralists.'

In the book, the main character Theocles describes the terror of encountering a group of crocodiles in an Egyptian desert. After escaping the monsters, he is overcome with a desire to admire them as wondrous creatures of the natural world. He says,

'let us fly to the vast deserts of these parts [...] ghastly and hideous as they appear they want not their peculiar beauties. Wilderness pleases.'

Delve into the darker side of the wilderness with 'Demons in the Bath: Aci, Galatea e Polifemo' on 23 January featuring bass Trevor Eliot Bowes and OAE Rising Stars alumni Zoë Brookshaw and Bethany Horak-Hallett. Handel’s tragic tale is about two lovers who are being kept apart as servants by a villainous cyclops creature. With its thrilling and varied scoring, the music excites a sense of both determination and helplessness in confronting the natural world. As Handel's music so often does, this concert challenges our understanding of order and fairness and delivers us to a supernatural world of poetic possibilities.