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Handel’s Messiah was composed over the course of a month in 1741, six months before its premiere in Dublin at a new concert hall where several of Handel’s operas were also performed. Even the dress rehearsal was ticketed,
and the morning newspapers excitedly reported that the oratorio “far surpasses anything of that nature, which has been performedin this or any other Kingdom.”
Ladies were asked to attend without hoops and gentlemen without swords, to increase the capacity of the hall.
The premiere was a triumph; the Dublin Journal proclaimed,
“The sublime, the grand, and the tender,
adapted to the most elevated, majestic, and moving words, conspired to transport
and charm the ravished heart and ear.”