Bachtrack logo
Agenda
Critiques
Articles
Actualités
Vidéo
Site
Jeunes artistes
Voyage

Handel's Saul

Ce listing n'est plus d'actualité
St George's, Hanover SquareThe Vestry, 2A Mill St, Londres, Greater London, W1S 1FX, Royaume-uni
Dates/horaires selon le fuseau horaire de London
Festival: London Handel Festival
Artistes
Laurence CummingsDirection
London Handel Orchestra
London Handel Singers
Adrian ButterfieldDirection musicale
Lucy CroweSopranoMerab
Sophie JunkerSopranoMichal
Iestyn DaviesContre-ténorDavid
Nicholas MulroyTénorJonathan
Njal SparboBasseSaul
Saul (1739), Handel’s fourth English oratorio and his first
collaboration with Charles Jennens, is for many the
composer’s most dramatic work. Drawing on tumultuous
events in ancient Israel that were charged with political
meaning in his own day, Handel charts the downfall of King
Saul and his replacement by the virtuous but non-royal David.
Jennens was Handel’s first librettist fully to appreciate
oratorio’s potential and Handel’s capacity to exploit it. His
drama, combining Shakespearian interplay of character and
Greek tragic intensity, prompted music of unprecedented
imaginative Power, freedom, concision, and affectiveness.
Handel enables us to see his characters’ actions – Goliath’s
strides, a crowd of women approaching, Merab’s head-tossing
contempt, Saul’s javelin thrust. He ranges from anguished
soliloquy to rapturous duet, from the jubilation of the opening
chorus to the sparse pain of the dead march. Harvesting thirty
years’ experience of opera writing, he evokes a huge gamut
of feeling – joy, festivity, love at first sight, same-sex affection,
conjugal love, suspicion, reconciliation, jealousy, fear, anger,
hate, desolation, tragic self-recognition, bereavement,
determination – taking us into the deepest recesses of his
characters’ minds and hearts and making the figures of
Old Testament history vividly human.Tickets £60 - £10 reserved seating will be on sale from 17th January.
London Handel Society Ltd
Version portable