★★★★☆ Handel with heft turns a concert into an occasion.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
December 3, 2015

Handel’s Messiah is one of the first musical examples of ‘event entertainment’. It may seem run of the mill nowadays, but since the most famous oratorio in the world burst on the scene in Dublin back in 1741 it has been growing bigger and bigger with little sign of a decline in popularity. Handel knew he was onto a good thing, programming it every season up until his death. The Victorians couldn’t get enough of it, the choirs swelling from Handel’s modest forces up to 500, 800 and a ridiculous 2765 blowing the roof off the Crystal Palace in 1859. Here in Sydney, we were back to 500, but as serried ranks go that’s still quite an array, with the Sydney Philharmonia Symphony Chorus of around 100 being supplemented by a Christmas Choir of eager ‘rock up and have a go’ amateurs, all of whom have attended numerous rehearsals in order to learn the thing by heart – no mean feat considering a performance lasts for nigh on three hours!

For this outing, the massed forces were supplemented by the Signing Choir,...