Ruth Smith
speaker
216 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 7 May
Ruth Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
They weren't very keen to travel.
And so fees were even greater.
No, because Handel's music was already known and liked.
And that was a very good reason for going there.
Handel had a very good friend in the form of the first violinist at the Lord Lieutenant's Orchestra.
And the fact that his music was known there was one reason.
reason why he might feel confident that he could premiere an oratorio there.
There were two cathedrals with professional choirs.
And as anybody who's sung in the choruses of Messiah knows, the choruses are not easy.
So certainly having professional choirs would be useful.
Dublin had built a new concert hall, neutral ground, neither a theatre where the sacred word might, as turned out to be the case, be objected to.
It was a good concert hall.
It had a good capacity.
There was nothing like that in London.
And also Dublin, like London, in fact, had a very strong ethos of philanthropy, which was very much needed because there had been a terrible famine when one of the many Irish famines in Dublin.
And it was said that the Lord Lieutenant felt that it was time that there should be some uplifting public entertainment.
Well, what better than Messiah?
and a very good opportunity to raise money for charitable causes, which it successfully did.
And I think if Handel had been really canny, he would have realised this was the way forward for Messiah, not to do it for profit.
Though Jennings himself had said that he hoped that Handel would perform it as a one-off for his own benefit, for his own profit.
Showing 41–60 of 216 · page 3 of 11
← Previous
Next →