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Got Skype?The London Handel Festival celebrates the works of George Frideric Handel and his contemporaries, based around Handel's St George's Church in Hanover Square. The festival usually opens and closes with choral services and many performances are by the London Handel Orchestra.
Handel spent nearly 50 years as London's dominant musical force (1710-1759), an achievement celebrated since 1978 by the London Handel Festival, founded by Denys Darlow. Conductor Laurence Cummings now directs.
Opening on Handel's birthday (23 February) the festival usually ends on Good Friday with Bach's St Matthew Passion. Since 1992, with the Royal College of Music, a Handel opera is fully staged while the Handel Singing Competition began in 2002.
The oratorio Belshazzar opens the 2010 festival, followed by Handel's second opera for London Il Pastor Fido (1712).