Online booking opens on 25 January for this year's London Handel Festival, which runs from 15 March to 24 April.
Handel-y highlights include the final of the annual Handel Singing Competition (15 March), a fully staged version of Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra (26 to 29 March), and a concert version of Il pastor fido (13 April) featuring Lucy Crowe. The Festival ends with the 1742 Dublin version of Messiah, featuring Christine Rice and Sophie Bevan.
But it's not just Handel da capo ad infinitum. On 21 March the Croatian choir Collegium floridum perform early sacred music by Croatian composers and Croatian songs. Hasse's Cajo Fabricio is given its modern premiere on 20 April, and there's a Good Friday (6 April) outing at St George's Hanover Square (Handel's own parish church) for Bach's St Matthew Passion. This will be performed as originally intended as part of Vespers, including the congregational hymns and the Jacob Handl Gallus motet that Bach himself chose for the Good Friday service.
A number of reasonably-priced concerts throughout the Festival highlight the skillz of past Singing Competition finalists, touching on some rarely-heard repertoire.
