Handel’s Messiah
MTU Cork School of Music
Friday 14th October, 7:30pm

Tickets: €25 / €22 early bird

Madrigal ’75, dir. James Taylor
Cork Baroque Players
Lauren McCann, soprano
Francesco Giusti, alto
Stuart Kinsella, tenor
Tim Nelson, bass

Presented in partnership with Cork Orchestral Society

Cork’s favourite chamber choir Madrigal ’75 with the Cork Baroque Players raise their voices in joyous song again for a performance of Handel’s Messiah, singing ‘Hallelujah’, after too long without choral singing during COVID.

In 1741, Georg Frideric Handel was invited to Dublin by the then Lord Lieutenant to give concerts in for charitable causes. Ireland was in the grip of famine, and the concerts benefited debtors’ relief and Mercer’s Hospital, and the biggest concert of these, was the premiere of the Messiah in Neale’s Music Hall in Fishamble Street. If you had called to Handel’s rooms in Abbey Street, you might have been able to snag one from the man himself for half a guinea. The room was so packed out that ladies were requested not to wear hoops in their skirts and gentlemen were requested not to wear their swords in order to squeeze people in.