Sir, - I recently found myself in the German city of Halle (Handel's birthplace) and I visited the eponymous museum where the travels of the composer are chronicled in great detail. To my dismay there was no reference whatever to Dublin and the first performance of Messiah.
In view of our Government's extravagant collusion in the recent effort to "modernise" the masterpiece, I feel that this inadvertent air-brushing was indeed deserved in that, to quote W.B. Yeats, we have once again disgraced ourselves. - Yours, etc.,
Prof Gerard Gillen, Department of Music, NUI, Maynooth, Co Kildare.