Amazing pieces of classical music - 8

After Bach, there's Handel, because the two go hand in hand. We can count ourselves lucky that true geniuses sometimes come in pairs. However, it's somewhat more difficult to convey the importance of Handel's opera music, and even fewer people know that singer Joan Sutherland played a crucial role in its revival. Kenneth Clark's masterful depiction of the world of Handel's opera "Acis and Galatea" (1718), HWV 49 a.d.h., from Tiepolo's ceiling painting in the Würzburger Residenz, was remarkably beautiful. Moreover, it has an English libretto written by none other than John Gay, better known for his "The Beggar's Opera". In the selected performance of "Acis and Galatea", Act One: Questo è il cielo di contenti (The Sorrow of the Sun) for the BBC television series Civilization with the London Symphony Orchestra & Choir in 1962, Sutherland's husband, Richard Bonynge, conducting the action never slackened. Indeed, as if it were a stairwell to heaven, he captured the rise and fall of the drama almost effortlessly

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