IN the course of more than half a century devoted largely to the study of Handel's dramatic works I found my attitude changing. The experience of taking part in a stage production of Saul nearly seventy years ago, and seeing other oratorios in similar action, astonished me by their powerful presentation of many-layered conflicts, personal, national and moral, in terms that seemed to demand the visual theatre. Here surely was dramatic genius of the highest order. In approaching the operas I felt initially, what countless others have felt, and many perhaps still feel, disappointment that what was present in abundance in the oratorios was wanting in the operas: variety of form and texture, due to the extreme rarity not only of choruses but of ensembles of any kind, and (it would seem) a desolating reliance on two elements, dry recitative and da capo aria. The comparatively few variants in the way of accompagnatos, cavatinas and sinfonias did not seem sufficient to leaven the lump. Thinness of texture appeared to be compounded by weak forward drive.

It presently dawned on me that the mighty dramatist of the oratorios was unlikely to have sprung from nowhere. If works designed for a theatre of the imagination could make such an impact when transferred to the boards, the composer must have possessed or somehow acquired an instinct for the dramatic. From his earliest days at the Hamburg Gansemarkt opera, playing in the orchestra as well as composing for the stage, Handel had been above all else a man of the theatre. The creator of more than forty operas, nearly all before the main oratorio period, must surely have learned a great deal about what was effective in the theatre, how to harness plot and music to its strengths and limitations, even if it was not the theatre of today. It should not then be difficult to reproduce those effects.

One factor known to theatre historians but seldom observed today is that in Handel's theatre set changes within acts – generally two or three in his operas – were effected in full view of the audience by the rotation of wings, borders and backflats while the music continued without interruption to the end of the act.