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I feel greatly honoured by the invitation to inaugurate this tercentenary conference, which I imagine has come to me because I have been haunting the Handelian scene for rather a long time. This is the third festival celebrating a major Handel anniversary that I have attended. The first was in Cambridge in 1935 under the auspices of Edward Dent, 250 years after the composer’s birth, the second in London for the bicentenary of his death in 1959. The presiding genius on that occasion was the chairman of the Arts Council Music Panel, Anthony Lewis, to whom I should like to pay a special tribute, personal and professional. I first met him during the 1935 festival, when he was to be seen, and heard, playing second oboe in the Cambridge student orchestra. He was also responsible for a memorable performance of the cantata Apollo e Dafne. By 1959 he had established himself as a leading Handelian, chiefly through his revival of Italian cantatas and operas on the BBC Third Programme. In due course he conducted a number of the operas on the stage at Birmingham and later as Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, and published vocal scores of Semele, Imeneo and Athalia. When the committee for organizing this tercentary festival and conference was formed three years ago, we inevitably voted him into the chair. It is sad that his sudden death a year later prevented him enjoying a series of events to which I know he was greatly looking forward, and which would have fallen aptly just after his seventieth birthday. Many people will remember their debt to him for opening their ears to some of Handel’s greatest works.
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