In fact, the Jewish Bible claimed that the Messiah would be born in the town of Bethlehem. Drawing a link between this Messiah and King David, Micah 5:2 declares: “But you, O Bethlehem of ...

The well-known chorus, “For unto Us a Child Is Born,” for example, is a reworking of an Italian duet, “Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi,” that Handel had composed just a few months earlier.

That will probably be even more the case this year, for one big reason. The “Messiah” was born of — and built for — a world awash in political turmoil, social unrest and fear about the future.

Handel was born the son of a “barber surgeon” and a much younger wife in a territory that would later become Germany. After an itinerant musical apprenticeship in Italy, he arrived as an ...

"Messiah" was a huge hit in Dublin, and, eventually, in London. It seems to offer a sense of hope and light at a time when they were in short supply. King said, "'Messiah' was born in the kind of ...

That “Messiah” was first performed in Dublin, where Handel had been invited to give a series of concerts in the winter of 1741-42—and not in London—is itself suggestive of a waning career.

The Messiah often is, ... Born in Halle, Germany, in 1685, he settled in England in 1712 and concentrated on the genre of Italian opera seria, a London craze whose popularity later faded.