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Alceste

G.F. HANDEL (1685-1759)
(1567 - 1643)

16th December 2009

A staged performance at
the Banqueting House, Palace of Whitehall

Alceste is a work of high quality, the mature creation of a great musical dramatist, but for reasons which remain obscure, the production planned for Covent Garden Theatre was cancelled and the music was never performed in the context for which it had been designed.

Alceste is clearly theatrical music and demands stage presentation. The first ever performance was given by the English Bach Festival at the Banqueting House on the 13th of June 1984, then the following day at the Opéra Royal, Château de Versailles, and later recreated at the Linbury Studio, Covent Garden, to bring the music for the first time to the location, if not the actual theatre, for which it was composed.


Conductor: Nicholas Cleobury
Production by Tom Hawkes
Choreography by Sarah Cremer
Costumes by Terence Emery
Scenery by Peter Rice after the Benaki Museum, Athens

‘…the style and quality of performance are just the reminders needed of the special place this dauntless enterprise still holds in our musical life’
Max Loppert Financial Times

‘The Dance Event of the month’
Nicholas Dromgoole’ Sunday Telegraph