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Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps bits of Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.

Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. His father noted but did not nurture his musical talent, and he had to sneak a small keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as organist on March 13, 1702, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when he fought a duel the following year with the composer Mattheson over the accompaniment to one of Mattheson's operas. In 1706 Handel took off for Italy, then the font of operatic innovation, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian opera seria. He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne; his patron there, the Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment for a royal boat outing. Much of his keyboard music, including the suite with the famous melody "The Harmonious Blacksmith" dates from just before his going to Italy and his first decade in England. For 18 months, between 1717 and 1719, Handel was house composer to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the 11 Chandos Anthems for chorus and string orchestra. He also founded the Royal Academy of Music, a new opera company in London, with the support of the Duke and other patrons. Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity was dented, though, by new English-language works of a less formal character, and in the 1730s and 1740s, after the Academy failed, Handel turned to the oratorio, a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences. Not only Messiah but also Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established him as a venerated elder of English music. The oratorios displayed to maximum effect Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers. Among the most popular of all the oratorios was Judas Maccabeus, composed in 32 days in 1746. His Concerti grossi, Op. 6, and organ concertos also appeared in the same period. In 1737, Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. He was urged to write an autobiography, but never did. Blind in old age, he continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759. More than 3,000 mourners were present for the funeral of the famous composer. He was buried at Westminster Abbey and received full state honors. Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare my head and kneel at his grave." ~ TiVo Staff

Conductor Harry Christophers is known internationally as the founder and director of the Sixteen. Earning accolades and awards for recordings with that group and the Handel and Haydn Society, Christophers has also taken up the baton at opera houses and festivals in Europe. With the Sixteen, he established the Coro label in 2001, and has issued more than 150 recordings since.

Christophers was born on December 26, 1953, in Goudhurst, Kent, England. He was educated at the Canterbury Cathedral Choir School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He founded the Sixteen and its accompanying instrumental ensemble in 1977. Christophers' emphasis with the Sixteen is in the performance of early English polyphony, but also in a varied repertoire from the Renaissance to contemporary composers. He has led the Sixteen on tours throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Asia. To perform music for choir and orchestra, Christophers founded the Symphony of Harmony & Invention. In 2000, in celebration of the new millennium, Christophers and the Sixteen embarked on what has become an annual tradition with a "Choral Pilgrimage," giving performances at cathedrals throughout England.

Along with his duties with the Sixteen, Christophers has performed as a guest conductor with orchestras such as the English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and the St. Louis Symphony. As an operatic conductor, his repertoire includes Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse, Gluck's Orfeo, and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. In his 2000 debut with the English National Opera, he conducted Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea. He makes regular appearances with the English National Opera and the Lisbon Opera. In 2009, Christophers expanded his workload when he became the artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest continuously performing musical ensemble in the U.S. In that capacity, he oversaw the transformation of a venerable but conservative American community organization into a state-of-the-art historical performance group, releasing new recordings of such standard Handel and Haydn repertory as Haydn's The Creation (2013).

Christophers and the Sixteen have continued issuing albums at a breakneck pace, with dozens of recordings appearing from 2010 to well into the 2020s. In addition to conducting, Christophers contributes a short note explaining his attraction to the music and his reasons for wanting to record it. He has generally stuck to his core Baroque and Renaissance repertory but has also ventured forward to Mozart and as far as contemporary music. English audiences, especially, have responded to Christophers' direct, personable approach, and his albums have earned heavy airplay on the radio as well as strong sales. The Sixteen's recordings, as well as those of the Handel & Haydn Society, have appeared on Coro since the label was established by Christophers and the Sixteen. To celebrate the group's 40th anniversary in 2019, Christophers and the Sixteen released 40, a compilation of recordings from throughout their history. The following year, Christophers and the Sixteen celebrated the 20th anniversary of the "Choral Pilgrimage" with The Call to Rome, with the program continuing as of 2024.

Christophers' recordings have been awarded Grand Prix du Disque honors, Deutsche Schallplatten prizes, Diapason d'Or awards, and the 1992 Gramophone Early Music Award (for the first of the five-volume series Music from the Eton Choirbook). In 2012, Christophers was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. ~ TiVo Staff

The Sixteen has established itself as an elite ensemble in the world of choral music. Acclaimed for its interpretation of music from the Renaissance and the Baroque, the Sixteen has also ventured forward in time to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. The ensemble has reached audiences across the globe through its performances, recordings, and outreach initiatives.

The Sixteen was founded in 1977 by Harry Christophers as a nameless choir, adopting the "Sixteen" name and giving its first billed concert in 1979. The ensemble's concept from its inception was to perform the music of the English polyphony through contemporary choral music. Christophers created a period-instrument ensemble for the Sixteen as well, dubbed at different times as the Orchestra of the Sixteen and the Symphony of Harmony & Invention; the ensemble is essential to the Sixteen's performance of the oratorios, odes, and operas of composers such as Handel, Monteverdi, and Purcell. The ensemble premiered Sir Harrison Birtwistle's opera Gawain at Covent Garden in 1991, and it has toured extensively, regularly performing throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The ensemble has made recordings almost from the beginning of its existence, recording for Hyperion, Chandos, and Virgin Classics, among others. The Sixteen has won several awards, including the 1992 Gramophone Award for The Rose and the Ostrich Feather: Music from the Eton Choirbook, Vol. 1, as well as the Diapason d'Or and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Beginning in 2000, the Sixteen annually tours England with a concert series titled the Choral Pilgrimage. In 2001, the group established the Coro label, where it has since issued its recordings. In 2009, Classic FM named the Sixteen "Artist of the Year." Since 2010, the ensemble has worked with the Genesis Foundation in the U.K., which has fostered a youth program, Genesis Sixteen. The foundation also commissioned a new work for the Sixteen, James MacMillan's Stabat Mater, which the ensemble premiered in 2016; it has also been featured on the BBC series Sacred Music. In 2017, the group embarked on its first tour of China. In 2019, the Sixteen celebrated its 40th anniversary with 40, an album of highlights from the group's recordings. The Sixteen has continued adding to its prolific recording catalog, issuing multiple albums each year, including four in 2021 alone. In 2022, it issued An Old Belief (the same title was used for that year's Choral Pilgrimage), featuring music by Hubert Parry, Thomas Campion, and Cecilia McDowall. ~ Keith Finke

Followers of the English operatic scene have known the name and singing of Lynne Dawson since the 1980s. Her renown became nearly universal in 1997 when she performed at the funeral of Britain's Princess Diana, and since then she has projected the star quality necessary to propel her career forward.

Her home was the rich farming country of Yorkshire in Northern England, where she was born in 1958 in a hospital next to the historic York Minster cathedral. She grew up on a farm in the Vale of York, and although she sang as a girl, she was much better known for sports. She won a place on the team representing the city of York in hockey and squash.

Dawson had a special aptitude for languages and studied French, German, Italian, German, Italian, and Russian as a university student. She sang only as a hobby, but was picked to sing the lead in school opera productions. After graduation she worked for the firm of Rowntrees in York (now a division of Nestlé) as an interpreter and translator. She also joined the Chapter House chorus at York Minster, and soon was singing most of the solo parts. Chorus master and composer/conductor Andrew Carter noticed her abilities and encouraged Dawson to consider a singing career.

She left York for London and enrolled in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, one of Britain's most prominent conservatories. Confirmation that she had made the right choice came when the Deller Consort, a leading professional early music vocal ensemble, invited her to join while she was still in her first year. Thus, for a mainstream opera figure, her singing career developed in an unusual direction. She began in early music as a member of the Hilliard Ensemble, working with such leaders of the period-instruments movement as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner, and Trevor Pinnock in concert before broadening into the standard international opera repertory.

Dawson's operatic debut was in the starring role of the Governess in Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw in 1982. She first sang in Vienna in 1983, at the 1988 Salzburg Festival, at La Scala in 1990, and the Berlin Staatsoper in 1991.

She sings a lyric soprano repertory. The operas in which she has appeared include Monteverdi's Orfeo, Handel's Cleopatra e Cesare, and Ariodante, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Gluck's Iphigénie in Aulide and Orfeo et Eurydice; she is well known for the Mozart parts of Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), the Countess (Marriage of Figaro), Constanze (Entführung aus dem Serail), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Elettra (Idomeneo), and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni); she has sung Norina in Don Pasquale, and Amenaide in Rossini's Tancredi. She took a leading role in American composer Elliott Carter's opera What Next? at the Berlin Staatsoper.

Dawson is an active concert and recital singer, with a solid reputation in the Handel oratorios: Saul, Alexander Balus, Jephtha, Hercules. She sings the Bach B minor Mass, Mozart's C major Mass and Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth. Further afield, she has also performed Mahler's Second, Brahms' Requiem, Ravel's Shéhérazade, Britten's Les illuminations, and songs of Othmar Schoeck.

She has appeared on the major concert, festival, and operatic stages of Europe (including multiple appearances in the popular BBC Henry Woods Proms concerts) and at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. In 1997 she was asked to sing at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, a ceremony telecast to an audience of billions; she performed part of the Libera Me from Verdi's Requiem.

Dawson appears on over 60 compact disc releases, including four of the highly acclaimed complete Schubert song series on Hyperion and the award-winning San Francisco Symphony recording of Orff's Carmina Burana under conductor Herbert Blomstedt. She lives in England with her husband, Simon Jones.

Internationally appreciated for the tenderness and beauty of her soprano voice, Patrizia Kwella was born to a Polish father and Venetian mother, both non-musicians. Nevertheless, she sang and played the piano at an early age. She also learned to play the cello and was a member of the Nottinghamshire County Youth Orchestra. Her formal musical education began when she entered the Royal College of Music where she studied singing, cello, and piano. Gradually, her interest turned to singing as more glamorous than instrumental playing. While still a student, Kwella was the soprano soloist in the annual televised performance of Handel's Messiah from Royal Albert Hall. The next year at Albert Hall, she gave her debut live broadcast singing the impassioned solo Lamento della ninfa by Monteverdi under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner at a BBC Promenade Concert. Kwella has performed throughout the world. In the United States, she sang with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and with the San Francisco, Houston, and Washington Symphony Orchestras. She appeared to great acclaim with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and sang the title role on Handel's Theodora at the British Embassy in Paris. Kwella has also premiered many contemporary works, such as Night's Mask and Pli de Lin by Colin Matthews, The Sleeping Lord by David Matthews, and the Colin Matthews orchestration of Gustav Holst's song cycle Dream City. In May 2001, she gave the first performance of the Gloria in excelsis Deo by Handel, which had recently been uncovered in the archives of the Royal Academy of Music. Her other re-creations of rarely performed older works have included Haydn's The Creation with Anne Hunter's recently discovered libretto, the first performance in modern times of Zelenka's Requiem, Weber's Mass in E flat major, and a well-received presentation of an Elizabethan Masque in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Her repertoire also includes solo Bach cantatas, Mahler's Symphony No. 2, Mozart's Mass in C minor, Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, and Tippett's A Child of Our Time.

James Bowman was an influential English countertenor whose popularity led to the reintegration of the countertenor voice in modern vocal performance. He was known for collaborations with Benjamin Britten and David Munrow, and he recorded over 180 albums of music from all eras.

Bowman was born in Oxford in 1941, and he started singing when he was very young. He attended school at the King's School in Ely, where he sang as a boy chorister in the Ely Cathedral Choir. He eventually became a head chorister, and he sang as a bass after his voice changed. However, in 1959 he made his first appearance as a countertenor at the Lady Chapel, and he remained in this range thereafter. Bowman became a choral scholar at the New College of Oxford in 1960, where he earned his diploma in education in 1964 and his M.A. in History in 1967. He also sang in the New College Choir, Christ Church Choir, and the Choir of Westminster Abbey. After his graduation, Bowman auditioned for Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group, and he was offered the role of Oberon in the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This also led to a debut performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Britten later wrote other music for him such as Canticle No. 4, and the role of Apollo in Death in Venice. Bowman also participated in numerous premieres of other works, including Ridout's Phaeton, Maxwell Davies' Taverner, and Tippett's The Ice Break. He worked with several leading early music ensembles such as the Early Music Consort of London and Pro Cantione Antiqua, and he became highly respected in that genre.

Bowman toured and recorded constantly through the 1970s and '80s, and in 1990 he finally recorded Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He received several honors and awards in the 1990s, including the Medal of Honor of the city of Paris, an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle, and he became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He accepted an invitation to join the prestigious Gentleman of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal of St. James' Palace in 2000. In the early 2000s, Bowman recorded the albums Eternal Source of Light and Songs for Ariel, and he collaborated with Andrew Swait and Andrew Plant on Songs of Innocence in 2008. He performed his final London concert in 2011 at Wigmore Hall with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, and he continued giving infrequent recital performances. Bowman passed away in 2023. ~ RJ Lambert

One of England's most peripatetic and persuasive lyric tenors, Ian Partridge retained most of his vocal freshness into his sixties, cutting a wide swath through the repertory. Well schooled and long on musicianship, he is comfortable and exemplary in works from the Renaissance to modern times. His voice, though not large, has substance: a firm lower register and a fine-grained texture, it lent vocal authority to his performances. Although Partridge had earlier been disappointed by the relatively few opportunities for British artists to perform songs by German composers, he later went on to record many of them, preserving interpretations of warmth, wisdom, and vocal appeal. Almost exclusively a recitalist and oratorio singer, Partridge has enjoyed a low-key but enduring career and has won the respect and admiration of colleagues and audiences alike. Partridge began his advanced level musical studies at the Royal College of Music in 1956 before transferring to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he trained under the bass Norman Walker and pursued conducting classes with Aylmer Buesst. His reputation grew rapidly following his solo debut in a 1958 performance of Messiah in Bexhill. Within a few years, he found himself one of his country's busiest tenors, valued for his reliability and interpretive suitability for several centuries' worth of music. From Monteverdi, Schütz, Handel, and Bach to Schoenberg, Weill, and Britten, Partridge was point-on in both his singing and interpretation. Benefiting from work with both Britten and Peter Pears (who instructed him in the art of singing through phrases), he further sharpened his already very precise diction, making it more flowing and conversational. With Pierre Boulez, Partridge recorded Schoenberg's Die Jacobsleiter, finding the French composer/conductor stimulating and pleasant to work with. Other projects Partridge has undertaken with Boulez include Schumann's Der Rose Pilgerfahrt and Stravinsky's Le Rossignol. In addition to performing the roles of the Evangelist in the Bach Passions, parts for which Partridge has long enjoyed a strong reputation, he recorded the Evangelist in Norwegian composer Trond Kverno's St. Matthew Passion, a work described by the tenor as "powerful," calling for unaccompanied singing over its hour and a half length in a contemporary adaptation of plainsong. Partridge's collaboration with actress Prunella Scales has resulted in more than 300 performances of a program entitled "An Evening with Queen Victoria," featuring songs written by Prince Albert. Partridge also portrayed St. Nicolas in a Thames Television production of Britten's score, winning the Prix Italia in its aftermath. Among the tenor's more than 150 recordings are Schubert's Die Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin (the latter rated by BBC Music Magazine as a first choice); recordings of Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 39, and Dichterliebe; Peter Warlock's haunting Curlew River; Ralph Vaughan Williams' equally affecting On Wenlock Edge; a complete edition of Handel's Chandos Anthems; Purcell's The Fairy Queen; and Iopas in the recording that grew from Colin Davis' Covent Garden production of Berlioz's Les Troyens, the occasion of Partridge's stage debut in 1969. As a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, Partridge has given master classes in song and early music from Aldeburgh to Ravinia to Versailles. The tenor received the CBE (knighted) in 1992 for his service to music.

Michael George is an established British bass-baritone. He began as a boy singer in the chorus of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks. His higher education was at the Royal College of Music in London, where he won several major prizes.

His career has included performances with all the leading orchestras in Britain, and extensive performances with overseas orchestras and in major festivals around the world. He has worked with Sir Neville Marriner, John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Charles Mackerras, Trevor Pinnock, Richard Hickox, Vernon Handley, Kurt Sanderling, Jean-Claude Malgoire, David Zinman, Ricardo Muti, and Kent Nagano.

He frequently records, and has appeared on a number of major labels. For Decca he appeared in Haydn's Creation. For BMG Conifer, he recorded Finzi's Let us Garlands Bring. His singing in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius is on the EMI label. For Chandos, he has performed in Stainer's The Crucifixion and Handel's Dafne, and he was in the original instruments recordings of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony on the Nimbus label. A major portion of his discography is on the Hyperion label, including a performance of Handel's Messiah with The Sixteen. On that label he most frequently sings solo with The King's Consort; such releases include a major project of the complete songs, odes, and church anthems of Henry Purcell and a large number of Handel operas and oratorios, including Alexander Balus, Occasional Oratorio, Ottone, Deborah, Acis and Galatea, Judas Maccabaeus, and Joshua. George sings on six volumes of Hyperion's great series of complete Schubert song recordings with Graham Johnson, and in Emmanuel Chabrier's Briséis and Jan Dismas Zelenka's Lamentations.

He is married to soprano Julie Kennard.