This book is based on the Ernest Bloch Lectures delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965/1966. It deals with an extensive and sparsely charted tract of musical history, the aesthetic issues raised by Handel's operas, and the practical problems involved in their revival today. Handel was in his day the unrivalled master of opera and oratorio. It was sheer genius that enabled Handel to overcome the limitations of his material and transmute an apparently decadent form into permanent art. Still, most of his works were buried, and it seems that scholars were too much in awe of the monumental composer until the systematic revival of the operas began in Germany in 1920. The author describes how the operatic phase of Handel's career is of crucial importance for what followed.

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