Handel Around the World

Handel’s deft musical touch gave his audiences tantalising glimpses of the cut and thrust of human life (and the occasional deity) or the taste of spices and wine from distant lands.  

Handel’s travels defined the course of his career. His youth was spent travelling in Germany and Italy, where his early operas were produced, before eventually settling in London where he achieved commercial success and became a national icon. In his operas and oratorios he conjured places even further afield and from the past; from the rolling fields of Lombardy to mystical India, mythical Greece to fabled Babylon.

Ian Bostridge is in demand in concert halls and opera houses across the world. Described as having a “silver tone” he brings remarkable insight to music from Monteverdi to Adès and is the winner of seven Gramophone Awards. Also renowned as a writer – his latest book is the award-winning Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession drawing on his vast experience performing Schubert’s Winterreise – he is the perfect guide to the imagined lands in Handel’s work through this personal selection of arias.