Göttingen Handel Festival ( German: Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen ) is an annual festival of early music in Göttingen , dedicated primarily to the music of Georg Friedrich Handel . The festival program lasts at least two days, on one of which one of Handel’s operas is staged, on the other a concert is performed with the performance of several of his oratorios along with the compositions of the composer's contemporaries that have something in common with them in one way or another.
The festival was founded in 1920 by art critic Oscar Hagen , on the initiative of which for the first time after almost two hundred years' break, Handel’s opera Rodelind was staged [1] . Under the leadership of Hagen in the early 1920s. the aesthetics of the productions was marked by the strong influence of expressionism (the first stage designer of the festival was Paul Tirsch ), and the music underwent significant adjustments. Early criticism dubbed the festival "Handel Bayreuth ." After the crisis at the turn of the decade (the festival was not held in 1928-1933), the emphasis shifted noticeably towards historical correctness, the 1937 festival was especially significant, where Peter Raabe , head of the Third Reich Music Chamber, was the invited conductor [2] .
Over the years, among the artistic directors of the festival were Fritz Lehman (1934-1953), John Eliot Gardiner (1981-1990), Nicholas McGegan (1991-2011), Lawrence Cummings (since 2012).
The international authority of the festival has significantly strengthened its appearance since the 1990s. numerous recordings of operas and oratorios made directly at the festival or on the basis of performances prepared for the festival [3] .
Notes
- ↑ M. Fichtenholtz . Hear Handel! // Moscow Musical Bulletin, December 1, 1999.
- ↑ David Imhoof. Becoming a Nazi Town: Culture and Politics in Göttingen Between the World Wars. - University of Michigan Press, 2013 .-- P. 73-74.
- ↑ M. Fichtenholtz. Eighty Years Around Handel // Izvestia, June 28, 2000.