14TH August 2025
Handel’s Messiah and The Foundling Hospital
Hilary Brown
Handel’s Messiah and The Foundling Hospital
Hilary Brown
In his early years George Frederick Handel composed Italian operas. These were expensive to stage and profits were slim. As the taste for Italian opera waned Handel began to develop the English oratorio. This enabled him to dispense with expensive stage sets and costumes and concentrate on the orchestra, soloists and choir. However, these works still needed a large venue. The premier of Handel’s Messiah was for charity and held in Dublin in April 1742. The next year, The Messiah received its London premier in The Covent Garden Playhouse. Sadly, theatres were seen as very disreputable places, and it was considered sacrilegious to perform such a sacred work in a theatre. The performances, scheduled for an entire week, were not well received and badly attended.
Meanwhile in London, permission had been given to Thomas Coram to begin building the Foundling Hospital for abandoned babies and children. Once established the Hospital quickly became a fashionable place to visit due to the efforts of artist William Hogarth, who persuaded other successful artists such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough to exhibit their work at the hospital. While at the Foundling Hospital visitors could see the children having their meals and singing in the chapel and would hopefully donate money.
Handel must have recognised the potential of the Foundling Hospital’s Chapel as a good venue and in May 1749 he offered to stage a charitable concert for the foundling children. The concert programme included the first performance of Handel's “Foundling Hospital Anthem”, ending with the Hallelujah Chorus from his Messiah, which would have been unknown to most of his audience.
The concert was extremely successful. Handel donated an organ to the chapel and then returned the next year to perform The Messiah and raise funds for the hospital again. The event was so popular that wealthy supporters had to be turned away on the night and Handel was asked to repeat the concert two weeks later. To show its gratitude, the Foundling Hospital made Handel a Governor.
So, it is possible that without Handel’s association with this charity, The Messiah might have fallen into obscurity. Today Handel's Messiah is Britain's most popular choral work.
While the original Foundling Hospital is gone, its legacy lives on as the Coram group of charities, supporting vulnerable children and families.
