We are looking forward to the return of the American Handel Festival and Conference to Bloomington in March 11-14, 2021, this time for a virtual gathering. This event is co-hosted by Indiana University and the American Handel Society. The society seeks to foster study of the life, works, and times of George Frideric Handel, and to encourage and support the performance of his music. The main organizer of the conference is Professor Ayana Smith, Board Member of the American Handel Society, who organized the previous successful Handel conference at IU in 2019, which we featured in our 2019 Newsletter.

The conference promises exciting academic panels on Handel’s music by top baroque scholars. We are working in tandem with the Historical Performance Institute to provide a livestream performance of music by Joseph de Boulogne (1745-1799), and with the IU Opera to offer a streamed performance of Handel’s Xerxes to conference attendees.

Three of Set and Costume Designer Robert Perdziola’s set renderings from the IU Jacobs School of Music Opera & Ballet Theater’s 2013 production of Handel’s Xerxes — directed by Tom Diamond and conducted by Gary Wedow. The production was done in collaboration with the Jacobs School of Music Department of Ballet. The ghostly figure in the tree was an added character, a dancer, called Amore.