Germany 1920: Handel Rediscovered

Having long triumphed on European stages, Baroque opera almost entirely disappeared during the 19th century, before re-emerging in the 20th from the libraries where its manuscripts had lain dormant. From forgotten heritage, it has become, in the 21st century, a space for artistic creation. A look back at this revival in three parts. First stop: Germany, with the gradual rediscovery of Handel from the 1920s onwards, centred on the Göttingen Handel Festival, often presented for this reason as the oldest Baroque music festival in the world.

Countertenor Jake Arditti in Leonardo Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie at the 2022 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival. © Falk von Traubenberg

During the Baroque era, operas flourished, but their stage life was generally brief. In most cases, a work was written for a single season, sometimes for only a handful of performances. Thus, at the end of 1726, Vivaldi simultaneously composed three operas intended for the stages of Venice and Florence during the same winter. While a few works have certainly enjoyed more enduring success—such as Handel’s Rinaldo, which was performed nearly fifty times in London between 1711 and 1717—they remain the exception. France presents a somewhat different case: because opera there was almost a form of state art, tragédie lyrique remained structured for a long time by Lully’s legacy. Even so, the entire Baroque repertoire gradually disappeared from European stages. By the beginning of the 19th century, works ranging from Monteverdi to Hasse, and from Lully to Rameau, had almost entirely vanished. In Germany, their revival began in the 20th century, largely under the influence of Handel.

Did Someone Say Handel?

In Germany, the revival of Baroque opera can be dated to 1920, with the performances of Rodelinda at the Göttingen Handel Festival. This production subsequently toured 21 stages across Germany, receiving 136 performances by 1927. After the Second World War, another Handel Festival was established in Halle, and a Handel festival was also founded in Karlsruhe in 1978.

Just over a century after this rediscovery of Handel’s operas, Baroque opera is now firmly embedded in German musical life. During the 2023/24 season, German theatres programmed 32 Baroque operas across 43 productions by 13 composers. Handel overwhelmingly dominates the repertoire, accounting for 17 productions of 12 different works. Serse, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Alcina, as well as the staged oratorios Semele and Saul, appear particularly frequently.

Final scene of “Rodelinde” reproduction 1921 at the Stadttheater Göttingen, stage setting by Paul Thiersch. © Händel Göttingen 1920 / Städtisches Museum Göttingen

Far behind come Purcell (chiefly Dido and Aeneas), Gluck, and, in Monteverdi’s case, almost exclusively L’Orfeo. Even when the period under consideration is broadened, the picture changes very little. Behind these leading names, other celebrated composers such as Johann Adolph Hasse, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, and Nicola Antonio Porpora appear only sporadically, not to mention lesser-known figures such as Christoph Graupner and Johann Friedrich Lampe. The revival of Baroque opera on German stages therefore rests above all on a limited number of Handel’s works. Much like the Classical and Romantic repertoire, only a handful of works dominate Baroque opera programming.

This dominance of a handful of works also reveals the blind spots of the German Baroque revival. French opera, in particular, highlights these limitations: it has proved more difficult to establish a lasting presence in German theatres. Its prosody, its relationship to dance, the importance of recitative, its ornamentation, and the practice of notes inégales all require a particular stylistic familiarity. Despite the growing interest in historically informed performance, this repertoire continues to be championed largely by French and Francophone ensembles. During the 2023/24 season, German stages featured only three productions of French Baroque operas: Rameau’s Zoroastre in Münster, the same composer’s Les Boréades in Oldenburg, and Charpentier’s Médée at the Staatsoper Berlin. In 2025/2026, the picture remains much the same: the revival in Karlsruhe of Les Boréades—originally staged in Oldenburg—and Platée, also by the same composer, at the Theater Hagen confirm that the French repertoire still has a tenuous presence… and, perhaps, a budding passion for Rameau?