This Day in Christian History: March 23 March 23, 1743: Handel's Messiah is Performed for the First Time in London George Frideric Handel George Frideric Handel was born in Germany in 1685. He became a well known British-German composer. His favorite genre of music was the Italian Opera, but during the 1730's, the genre was losing popularity--and funding. To combat this, Handel began composing operas in English. His first English opera composition was Esther, which was first performed for a private gathering in 1718, but later revised and performed publicly in 1732. The success of this first opera encouraged Handel to write more English adaptions including Deborah, Athalia, Saul, and Israel in Egypt. The success of the English productions so outshined the Italian versions that Handel abandoned the Italian productions all together. Charles Jennens had composed the text for a new opera and charged Handel with the creation of music to accompany it. In a letter to his...