of the Messiah in the Choral Hall. The success was enormous, with critics
enraptured and an audience that spilled out through the corridors and onto
Symonds Street. And of course, the record surplus for the year’s accounts was
wonderful; in that year, the verdict from all was a unison “Hallelujah!” Fast-
forwarding a hundred years to 1997, we find that a bold decision was taken
to schedule three Christmas performances of Messiah for the choir’s first
appearance in the grandly renovated town hall. The concerts were all packed
out, and the box-office receipts came in at an unheard-of $59,000.
It’s interesting to know that, in his own day, Handel himself took advantage
of Messiah’s unique popularity with audiences. In 1749, he conducted a benefit
concert at London’s Foundling Hospital and brought the house down with
the final item — the Hallelujah Chorus. The following year he repeated the
event but this time programmed the whole Messiah. The concert was vastly
oversubscribed, the critics were in raptures, even the wealthiest supporters
had to be turned away on the night, and the profits were large. From then on,
even after Handel’s death, Messiah was performed annually over two decades.
By 1770, it had taken its place as a regular occasion of real significance, and
Messiah was being hailed as an iconic work of musical art for London and the
nation. Over the years, the enormous sum of £7,000 had been raised for charity.
Auckland Choral’s twentieth-century experience reflected the same pattern
of success that Handel had encountered. Messiah could be relied on for vastly
increased receipts, so it was inevitable that large and regular, ultra-ambitious
performances should become the norm. In 1920, the NSW State Orchestra
arrived en bloc for a New Zealand tour that culminated in a Choral Society
Messiah of unprecedented size, scope, and standard. In these days, blockbuster
Messiahs were being widely featured, and Auckland was not to be outdone. In
front of the Town Hall, ticket-queues waited patiently for hours, and inside the
hall, on the night, the audience overflowed into the supper room and crammed
themselves into the foyers.
Such close relationship between musical work and financial worth was
illustrated in 1921, when the choir’s accounting procedures changed to run
from January to December, thus effectively making the Christmas Messiah into
the calendar year’s Grand Finale. Thus, every year could be seen to end with a
public re-confirmation of the choir’s musical identity — plus of course the ever-
welcome end-of-year windfall for its funds.
“Hallelujahs!” had been heard without a break during WW1, and through
the WW2 years, patriotism combined with the love of Christmas to form truly
record-breaking audiences. In 1941, the Messiah tickets sold out so early that
for weeks in advance, the huge seating allocation was drawn up, mounted,
and proudly displayed at every choir rehearsal. Adrienne Simpson reports
in Hallelujahs and History that 1942 was even more ambitious, with choir
numbers swelling to 400 voices, thanks to reinforcements from other choirs
around the city and region.
Post-war blues and the explosion of the media brought a sudden collapse
of live audience numbers, and the choir came to the urgent realisation that it
had to re-invent itself. The “Hallelujahs!” were clearly becoming fainter; even
Messiah could not be relied on to draw the people in. So, after a few years,
the bold decision was made to bring Messiah to the people. From the late
1950s Messiah took to the road, to venues around town at first, then to places