Handel’s Messiah in Dublin
The site of the former Neal’s Music Hall.
On Good Friday 1742, Handel gave the first performance of Messiah in Neal’s Music Hall in Fishamble Street, Dublin. Two hundred and eighty years later, also on Good Friday, I was privileged to conduct the same piece just over a mile away.
It was a perfect week in spring and the city was looking its elegant best. I was surprised just how full of tourists the place was after several years of the lockdown. I have always loved the city, its charming Georgian squares and its wonderful National Gallery, not that I had much time to be a flâneur on this visit.
Sadly, very little survives from the time of Handel’s visit. Neal’s Music Hall is long since gone, although the entrance door does survive. Here is a photo of it that I took the day before our performance.
Next door, Keenan and Son, an ironmonger, dates from the 1790’s; although it still bears the old name, the building is now appropriately the Contemporary Music Centre. On the other side of Keenans is the George Frederick Handel Hotel, which has been there for over twenty years. I seem to recall a sign in the window soon after it opened saying something like ‘Handel Bar & Grill. Happy Hour, ALL DAY’. I am sure that he would have approved!
The hall, which was newly built in 1742, held about seven hundred people and it was packed for the première. Gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and ladies to come without hooped skirts. Handel was pleased with the hall, writing that ‘the Musick sounds delightfully in this charming Room’. By May, the heat in the Hall must have been intense, for an advertisement for Handel’s final Dublin performance announces that ‘a pane of glass will be removed from the top of each of the windows ’.
Handel lived in rented accommodation on the north side of the river in Abbey Street near Liffey Street. This, alas, no longer exists but the site can be seen in Rocque’s map of Dublin from the 1750’s.
Our performance was in the National Concert Hall, south of St. Stephen’s Green. The imposing building has been around since the 19th century, and it has been put to a number of uses since, finally becoming a concert hall in 1981. Compared to some of the gargantuan halls in the USA, it is modest in size, but that makes it ideal for music from the 18th century. Perhaps it could use a fresh coat of paint, but it is a lovely place to make music. It reminds me a bit of Birmingham Town where Mendelssohn gave the first performance of Elijah.
The orchestra is a delight to work with, as is the chorus. For most of the rehearsals, the singers had to wear masks, only removing them at the Dress Rehearsal. The difference was astonishing. Every word came across clearly and I could see them smile in the joyous parts of the work. David Young, who prepared the choir, worked wonders with them. They had not sung or performed together since before the pandemic.
Our soloists were all wonderful and we had a full house, just as there had been 280 years earlier. Perhaps the only good result of the pandemic is that audiences seem to have forgotten how to cough in concerts. Long may it continue! I was thrilled that we were able to give a performance without any cuts. Far too often nowadays, the second and third parts of the work are trimmed so that it will not last longer than two and a half hours. This seems such a shame to me. Jennens, who compiled the text, had an excellent understanding of musical structure and to chop his careful work about merely for the sake of saving time seems a great pity.
To perform Messiah on Good Friday rather than as an Advent bon-bon, certainly seems to increase the greatness and profundity of the work. The Second Part especially takes on increased importance rather than being something of an appendage to the Christmassy Part One. I hope that more performances will be given in Passion Week in the future.
All in all, I had a wonderful time in Dublin and was thrilled to be able to celebrate the anniversary of the première of one my favourite pieces of music in the city that first heard it all those years ago.