Handel’s Messiah Premieres in Dublin

On 13 April 1742, an expectant crowd of roughly seven hundred listeners packed the Great Music Hall on Fishamble Street in Dublin. To maximise capacity inside the hall, organisers asked gentlemen to unbuckle their swords and requested that women attend without hoops beneath their skirts. What they heard was the premiere of George Frideric Handel's newest English-language oratorio, Messiah. Organised as a benefit concert, the performance raised about four hundred pounds, shared between relief for imprisoned debtors and two local medical charities, Mercer's Hospital and the Charitable Infirmary.

Handel had spent most of the preceding winter in Dublin, where a concert series of his music had already drawn considerable attention. By the early 1740s, the German-born composer had spent three decades in London, building fame primarily on Italian opera. Changing audience preferences and costly rival theatrical ventures eventually led him away from staged Italian works toward English oratorio. The text for Messiah came from Charles Jennens, a wealthy landowner who compiled scriptural passages from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Rather than presenting a dramatised narrative with acting characters, Jennens constructed an extended meditation in three parts, moving from Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah through the birth, death and resurrection of Christ to verses on the Day of Judgment.