Hallelujah! Celebrating Handel in Dublin

Talks, walks, film and song are all part of "In Handel's Day " tomorrow in Dublin as the city celebrates George Frideric Handel's Messiah. The choral masterpiece was first performed in Fishamble Street on 13 April 1742.

"The idea was to have one big day of celebration that would go from early morning until evening," Lorraine Maye of the Temple Bar Cultural Trust told the Irish Times.

There will be a special focus on Irish music to remember the Neal family, who ran the New Music Hall, where Messiah premiered. "They were also great publishers of Irish traditional music," Maye said. Fiddler Paul O'Shaughnessy and harpist Siobhán Armstrong will perform as part of a talk on 18th-century Irish folk music.

Visitors can experience Handel's Dublin during a walking tour by music historian Professor Barra Boydell. Film fans can relive 18th-century Ireland with an open-air showing of Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon, which features several compositions by Handel.