SYLVIA NELIS (Soprano)
HUBERT EISDELL (Baritone)
THE GERSHOM PARKINGTON QUINTET

WHEN Handel set himself in the autumn of 1741, at the age of fifty-six, to compose Messiah, he was under a cloud of misfortune and bitter disappointment which must have overwhelmed any but the stoutest spirit. His last two operas had failed, largely, so we are told, through the plots of his opponents. In those days music was taken seriously, almost as seriously as League football is now, and feeling between rival factions ran high. It is believed that Handel's opponents even engaged hired ruffians to prevent people reaching the theatre where his operas were being given.
He was in anything but good health; his eyesight was beginning to fail him and he was almost penniless. He shut himself in his house (he was living at Brook Street), and, seeing no one, hardly stopping even to touch the food which his faithful man brought to his room, he set himself to the composition of Messiah with such wholehearted zeal that the work was completed in little more than three weeks. But he had no prospect of an immediate performance of it and it was simply laid aside for the time being. In November of the same year, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Devonshire, and the presidents of three big charitable societies invited him to Dublin to organize concerts of his own music on behalf of the charities they had at heart. One was the provision of food for prisoners. It was at one of these concerts that Messiah had its first performance in April, 1742. The singers also went over from this country, Mrs. Cibber, the actress, being the contralto. The oratorio had a magnificent success, and it was repeated in the following June. So great was the crowd at the first performance that ladies of the audience were asked to come without hoops, and men without swords. When the work was first given in English, in the early part of 1743, at Covent Garden Theatre, it was practically a failure, although Samson, given at eight performances just before then, had been a triumphant success. Only when it was performed in the Foundling Hospital in 1750 did it win its way to the hearts of Londoners, and since then it is safe to say it has been the most popular of all oratorios.