This year marks the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death, and therefore he is being honored with a wonderful array of performances of his music.

Handel’s father was a renowned doctor in the East German town of Halle and wanted Handel to become a lawyer, but the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels heard the ten-year-old playing the organ, and was so impressed that he persuaded Mr. Handel to allow the boy to train as a musician. By the time Handel died in London on April 14th 1759, aged 74, he had become “the great and good Mr. Handel”. Since then Handel has enjoyed 250 years of uninterrupted posthumous fame.

Handel's fame has long rested on his sacred oratorios, such as Samson (Prom 47) and Messiah (Prom 68), but it was as a master of Italian opera that he ruled the London stage for two decades. All of his operas are being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in the course of this anniversary year.

The Royal Danish Opera will be performing Partenope, a rarely performed opera which is a dazzling comic parody of a typically complicated opera seria plot, one that only unravels when the supposed Prince of Armenia is challenged to fight bare-chested, and so is exposed as the disguised Rosmira, her challenger's abandoned fiancée...

For its first complete Proms performance, the cast of the Royal Danish Opera's new production is led by Inger Dam-Jensen (1993 Cardiff Singer of the World) and star counter-tenor Andreas Scholl.

Cast from The Royal Danish Opera:

Inger Dam-Jensen soprano - Partenope
Tuva Semmingsen mezzo-soprano - Rosmira
Andreas Scholl counter-tenor - Arsace
Christophe Dumax counter-tenor - Armindo
Bo Kristian Jensen tenor - Emilio
Palle Knudsen bass - Ormonte

Lars Ulrik Mortensen - conductor

Royal Albert Hall
London

Box Office: 0845 401 5040
Tickets: £8 - £44