A Night With Handel

Starring: John Mark Ainsley, Sarah Connolly Director: Alexander Marengo Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 25th October, 1999 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Full Screen, PAL, Subtitled, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: English, French, German Dubbed In: French, German

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DVD Extras: The DVD comes with the narration in English, French & German, & subtitles in those languages. The arias are also playable as audio only.

Sultry sopranos & contraltos brood in candle-lit churches or at the top of a shopping mall escalator; a shaven-headed tough menaces enemies with a knife, singing of vengeance & death in a terrifying counter-tenor rasp; a couple sing of fulfilment in the back of a limousine. Jonathan Keates remarks in his accompanying lecture that the heroes & heroines of Handels opera are real people, whose passions transcend the baroque libretti they are singing; by taking them out of full-bottomed wigs & panniered frocks & putting them at large in contemporary London at night, this interesting documentary reminds us of the immediacy of these arias. This would not work, of course, were not the performances exemplary in their own right & presented with a driving urgency that takes us away from the pieties of the oratorio tradition & reminds us what a superb & popular man of the theatre Handel was.

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