Handel's Italian libretti and his librettists

Keynote Lecture: 7 June 2025 // Conference preceded by the presentation of the International Handel Research Prize: 10–12 June 2025

The Handel Festival in Halle an der Saale in 2025 was held under the theme ‘A Breath of Fresh Air: The Young Handel in Italy’. The International Academic Conference held as part of the festival took this as an opportunity to examine more closely the Italian texts set to music by Handel – including those from his later career – and his connections with Italian literature and Italian librettists. Speakers were invited from Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Austria, the USA and the UK. During a round table initiated and organised by Reinhard Strohm (Oxford) on Wednesday, 11 June, issues relating to the critical edition, translation and digitisation of the texts were discussed in greater detail. The keynote lecture by Silke Leopold, which took place on Saturday 7 June, provided an ideal introduction to the conference theme. Finally, the conference also offered researchers the opportunity to present recent and latest findings in Handel research to an academically interested audience in the form of open contributions. 

As part of the conference opening ceremony on 10 June, the International Handel Research Prize was awarded for the seventh time.

You can find the flyer and programme for this year’s International Academic Conference here:

Flyer International Academic Conference 2025

Progamme and Abstracts International Academic Conferenz 2025

International Handel Research Prize

On 10 June 2025, the Georg Friedrich Händel Society, an international association, awarded the 7th International Handel Research Prize to the musicologist Dr Joe Lockwood (Newcastle upon Tyne) in recognition of his outstanding doctoral thesis *The Performance and Reception of Handel’s Music in Revolutionary North America*. “This study demonstrates for the first time the extent to which Georg Friedrich Handel’s music was used to articulate and reinforce political positions within the conflicts of the American War of Independence,” said Prof. Dr Wolfgang Hirschmann, President of the Handel Society and Chair of the jury, in his laudatory address to the prize winner; “at the same time, this once again documents the international, indeed global, appeal of Handel’s music”.

Further information can be found on the website of the Georg Friedrich Händel-Society.