13.02.2026
Christ Church Hosts Lecture Series Celebrating Handel and Dublin
April is, very much, Handel month in Dublin. The anniversary of the premiere of Messiah (April 13) on Fishamble Street, just beside Christ Church, will be marked by the annual Irish Baroque Orchestra HandelFest at Dublin Castle from Friday April 10 to Sunday April 12. To frame this, a series of free lunchtime lectures will take place on four Thursdays in April: 9, 16, 23 and 30 at 1.10pm, upstairs in the chapter house of Christ Church Cathedral on the subject of ‘Handel and Dublin’.
Delivered by four leading researchers, the first will be given by Dr Triona O’Hanlon (April 9) an independent scholar, who gained her doctorate on the music collection of Mercer’s hospital and charity music in eighteenth–century Dublin. She will speak on ‘Music and charity in Handel’s Dublin’. This will be a fringe event leading into the wider HandelFest weekend which begins in Dublin Castle the following day.
Spread out over the month of April, the second in the lecture series will be by art and music historian, Adrian Le Harivel, former curator of British Art at the National Gallery of Ireland (April 16). He will remind attendees of Handel’s nine months spent in the city, with two concert series of oratorios.
Christ Church’s research advisor, and former secretary of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Stuart Kinsella, will underline the important role of the vicars choral and choristers from both cathedrals in the first performance of Messiah in 1742 (April 23).
Musicologist and music critic, Michael Lee, current editor of the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, will conclude the series (April 30), with a lecture on the wider context of the music of Irish and Italian composers in eighteenth–century Dublin.
Admission is free and all are most welcome. The lectures take place upstairs in the chapter house, appropriately, in the music room (or Henry Roe room) where the successors to the cathedral choir that sang for the first performance of Messiah still rehearse today. It is regrettably only accessible at present by stairs.
Thanks are particularly due to the dean, CEO and director of music for allowing the use of the space, and to Aliye Cornish Moore, CEO of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, and particularly to Friends of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, for their generous support of the lecture series – indeed attendees would be most welcome to join by clicking here.
These lectures follow in a long line of lunchtime series running since 1997, as well as a memorial series to former dean’s verger, Joe Coady (1987–2003), and a much older annual St Stephen’s day lectures begun by cathedral architect, Sir Thomas Drew, which ran from 1891 until at least the 1960s. For further information on this series, which has been kindly organised by Adrian Le Harivel for the Friends, and to register to give an idea of numbers attending, please contact cccdubfriends@gmail.com.
You can download a PDF of the lecture poster here.