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Messiah: Love, Music and Malice at a Time of Handel
- Narrated by: David J Shaughnessy
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
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Messiah: Love, Music and Malice at a Time of Handel
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Summary
Harry Walsh is a young man on the make. He intends to become a famous singer, little knowing what dramas this will lead him through. He attaches himself to celebrity composer George Frederick Handel, maestro of the Italian opera and a favourite of royalty. But the aristocratic fashion for Handel is cooling. Opposing opera factions, one led by scheming castrato Senesino, knock the great man from his pinnacle. Meanwhile rival impresarios are capturing new audiences with vulgar burlesques and extravagant pleasure gardens. As Harry negotiates his way through these shifts in popular entertainment, his love life proves equally complicated. He develops a passion for Handel's shy, young assistant, Peter, and finds himself tied into a triangle of love that slowly and painfully falls apart. Documenting the launch of the great oratorio, the Messiah, in Dublin, and capturing the self-absorbed world of the singer, this is a light-hearted account of the rise and fall of the Italian opera in Hanoverian London. It is also a well-observed story of confused sexuality and an adolescent yearning for self-esteem and love.
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