Messias

Handel wrote Messiah in twenty-four days in 1741, assembling it from scripture rather than working to a libretto, and it has not left the repertoire since. It is not a Christmas piece by design: the second part is the Passion, and the Hallelujah everyone waits for is not the end but the hinge. Weimar last heard it in this house in the 1945/46 season, the first after the war, and the theatre bills this one as a community oratorio.