God Rot Tunbridge Wells! is a 1985 British musical television film directed by Tony Palmer, written by John Osborne and starring Trevor Howard, Christopher Bramwell and Dave Griffiths. [1] It was aired on Channel 4 in 1985 and was made to mark the 300th anniversary of Handel's birth.
In his old age in London, the German composer George Frideric Handel reflects over his life and musical career.
Musical excerpts used are: [2]
The film was shot for free at the Earl of Oxford and Asquith's house (for Brook Street, London), Chatsworth House for a banquet scene, Drumlanrig Castle for a grand house visited by the boy Handel, as well as other homes of English aristocracy. Palmer commented that "I had a million dollars worth of locations, and all for 3/6d". [3]
George FridericHandel was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel's music forms one of the peaks of the "high baroque" style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his age.
Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was an English stage and screen actor. After varied work in the theatre, he achieved leading man star status in the film Brief Encounter (1945), followed by The Third Man (1949), portraying what BFI Screenonline called “a new kind of male lead in British films: steady, middle-class, reassuring…. but also capable of suggesting neurosis under the tweedy demeanour.”
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Israel in Egypt, HWV 54, is a biblical oratorio by the composer George Frideric Handel. Most scholars believe the libretto was prepared by Charles Jennens, who also compiled the biblical texts for Handel's Messiah. It is composed entirely of selected passages from the Old Testament, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms.
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Tony Palmer is a British film director and author. His work includes over 100 films, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher and Frank Zappa, to his classical portraits which include profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Yehudi Menuhin, Julian Lloyd Webber, Carl Orff, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He is also a stage director of theatre and opera.
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Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate is the common name for a sacred choral composition in two parts, written by George Frideric Handel to celebrate the Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession. He composed a Te Deum, HWV 278, and a Jubilate Deo, HWV 279. The combination of the two texts in English follows earlier models. The official premiere of the work was on 13 July 1713 in a service in St Paul's Cathedral in London.