Handel’s Messiah – The Greatest Story Ever Sung

presented by City Choir Dunedin

Tuesday 7 December 2019, 7:30 pm

Dunedin Town Hall

Handel’s Messiah is heard around the world during the Christmas season, being greatly appreciated, admired and enjoyed. City Choir Dunedin, with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and soloists conducted by David Burchell, is pleased to perform this oratorio again next month.

Many concerts and other events had to be cancelled since COVID-19 restrictions came into force, leaving music-lovers yearning for live performances. But, Hallelujah!, the Dunedin public can embrace this opportunity to experience a world-class delivery of the dramatic and passionate Messiah.

We fully expect that this performance of Messiah on Tuesday 7 December in the Town Hall will be able to proceed, albeit with greatly reduced seating capacity as required for social distancing. Seats will be sold via Ticketmaster online and at the Regent box office on a general admission basis. We urge the public to buy their tickets as soon as these go on sale, from Monday 22 November.

Handel began composing Messiah on August 22, 1741, and completed it twenty-four days later. The scholar Clifford Bartlett writes, “But, however hasty the composition, the power of the musical imagination, the wealth of ideas, the depth of inspiration, and the sheer variety of invention continue to astonish.”

Messiah is unique among Handel's oratorios in its New Testament subject and reflective treatment. It has been described as a 'collection' taken from the Bible and the Prayer Book Psalter, and is a mixture of narrative and commentary. This freed Handel from some of the more restrictive opera conventions and permitted greater use of the chorus than is generally the case in his other oratorios. Messiah is Handel's most famous work and its ubiquity has outreached anything Handel could ever have envisaged.

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