On George Frideric Handel’s birthday, check out these H. Paul Moon films documenting four of the composer’s operas tailored for outdoor performance in New York community gardens by Opera Essentia. The company’s artistic director, countertenor Jeffrey Mandelbaum, manages to get each of them down to about an hour. The operas are rarely-heard. The abridgments are tasteful. The productions are no-budget, bare-bones, and beautiful. I posted about “The Queen’s Heart,” the distillation of “Radamisto,” early in January. Hear all four here:

https://zenviolence.com/handel

Happy birthday, Handel!