Messiah: The Background
Programme notes by Heath Lees
Messiah had not just one premiere performance, but three. The first one — a
success — was in Dublin in 1742, a time when London audiences had grown
tired of Handel’s music.
The following year, back in the capital, the determined composer mounted the
English premiere of Messiah at his old stamping-ground, Covent Garden Opera
Theatre. Alas, many church-goers were scandalised at the thought of theatre
singers being let loose on scriptural verses, so the reception was muted.
Six years later, Handel conceived
the idea of a third ‘premiere’ for
Messiah, this time in the chapel
of the recently opened Foundling
Children’s Hospital, then in
Bloomsbury.
Handel’s choice of venue was a
stroke of genius. Since it was a
chapel, religious scruples were
satisfied, and since it was a
charity occasion for the benefit
of the Hospital itself, the moral
worth was beyond doubt.
Royal Foundling Hospital
Photos: Wellcome Library, London
Yet the hospital had been forced to fight hard for
its right to funds — indeed for its right to exist. Had
it not been for two decades of tireless campaigning
by Thomas Choram, a retired sea-captain, the
Hospital might never have existed. Having come
back to London after years at sea, Choram had
been scandalised by the sight of babies and infants
left abandoned in the streets (figures tell of about
1,000 a year in the 1720s and 30s). No-one did
anything, largely on account of the prevailing
morality that considered unwed mothers a disgrace
and their offspring better forgotten.
Capt. Thomas Choram, painted by
Wm Hogarth.
For years Choram fought to change this by winning
over the sympathy and concern of the high-born
and the wealthy. Eventually the hospital was built,
following the granting of a Royal Charter, and from
the mid-1740s the new building admitted its first
babies and young children.
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