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Handel’s Messiah is not too re-imagined, thankfully, with an almost Crystal Palace sized choir although not all singing at once!

Emily Howard's new opera, an Aldeburgh Festival commission, takes an ambitiously modernist approach to a dystopian story of loneliness: a tough, but thought-provoking work. 

In celebration of the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, the Hong Kong Arts Festival this year is presenting three programmes of works by the composer in collaboration with local choral group Die Konzertisten. The first of these, collectively called “The Britten 100 Project”, consisted of his early works based on religious themes completed mostly in the decade between 1934 and 1943.

Between them, Mozart and Bach wrote what is to my mind some of the happiest music in the repertoire, and the works performed in this concert by Northern Sinfonia and Chorus reminded us that great music doesn’t have to be solemn, or deliver a serious message – sometimes it’s about having as much fun as possible.

Probably no other work in the repertoire has such mystical status as Bach's Matthew Passion. Phrases like "The Greatest Work in the Western Canon", trip glibly off the tongue while failing to illuminate its greatness or acknowledge its strangeness. It is the sacred cow of sacred cows.

L’Opéra de Baugé est né d’un pari un peu fou : celui de créer, en Maine-et-Loire, un festival dans la lignée de celui de Glyndebourne, dans le Sussex. Champêtre, propice à d’élégants pique-niques à l’entracte, joyeux et tous publics, le festival n’en est pas moins exigeant et porté par une vraie passion pour le genre.