George Frideric Handel: L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park

In his Harris Theater for Music and Dance conducting debut, Dinis Sousa will lead the choral masterpieces: J. S. Bach’s Mass in B minor and Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is one of the composer’s most unusual works. Despite its Italian title, it uses a completely English text, much of it written a century earlier by the poet John Milton. The work explores the contrasting moods of Mirth (L’Allegro) and Melancholy (il Penseroso), eventually advocating a “middle way” of Moderation (Moderato). This unusual structure yielded some of Handel’s most inventive and colorful music, focusing on elements of English rural and urban life that would have been familiar to him: milkmaids and shepherds, warbling birds, the busy hum of populous cities — all come to life thanks to the composer’s imaginative use of the orchestra and singers. The final Moderato section culminates in one of Handel’s most sublime duets, evoking nothing less than the dawn of the age of Enlightenment. The riotous variety of moods in Handel’s L’Allegro, one of his most inventive, varied, and characteristically English works, will be celebrated by the Monteverdi Choir and a team of brilliant young solo singers as well as by the English Baroque Soloists — the piece has notable solos for horn, flute, bassoon, organ, bells, and cello.