Is any act ever completely selfless? It’s a rather popular question — though not a particularly interesting one, if you ask me — in discussions of ethics and related areas. If you think that there are wholly selfless actions, BBC’s Messiah at the Foundling Hospital might stir up some doubts. But whatever your stance, the story of Handel’s oratorio and its role in the success of the Foundling Hospital shows art, religion, and social mores all coming together in fascinating ways for a greater good.
In this fun, well-crafted documentary, presenters Amanda Vickery and Tom Service weave together the strands of narrative that led up to the 1750 performance of Handel’s Messiah at London’s Foundling Hospital. Dramatizations are aplenty, with frequent short scenes of a recreated Messiah performance helping to glue it together.
But we’re also shown some fascinating documentary evidence, including the hospital’s billet books — records for each of the babies brought in. (Rather heartbreakingly, some of the records also contain scraps of cloth, left behind by the mother, which could later be used to help reunite her with the baby, if she ever returned.)
Of the three principal figures who feature in the story, it’s Thomas Coram, the founder of the hospital, who comes off as the most sincere, conscientious, and truly caring. “A man on a mission,” the seasoned naval captain who returned from America circa 1720, spent nearly two decades facing the many challenges which also plague many of today’s charity founders: coming up with the capital, connecting with the right people, and bringing together a hundred pesky details.
But for Coram it was even more difficult. He had to persuade not just others (virtually all in a social class far above his own), but ultimately the king, too, in order to help make his idea a reality. And the aim of his charity — to help save the abhorrent number of babies being abandoned each year in London — struck against deeply held beliefs about the status and causes of illegitimate babies and single mothers.
But ultimately Coram succeeded — thanks in no small part to Charlotte Seymour, Duchess of Somerset. (Interestingly enough, the “cult of sensibility,” which was floating around the air at the time, was one factor which led Coram to seek out the help of the refined young mother, Charlotte.)
The other two protagonists in the story, the great opera composer Handel, and the librettist of the Messiah, Charles Jennens, offer up motives a bit more tangled than Coram’s — but no less interesting (or unworthy) in the story of the Foundling Hospital.
Handel, we learn, had been creatively problem solving how to restart a grand career that had stagnated, owing in part to a rival opera house. And Jennens, a “fundamentalist Christian curmudgeon” had the rather lofty, grandiose goal in life to restore and revitalize Christian values in society, which had become “debased.”
Coram, Handel, Jennens: three people, three motives, about to come together. When Handel received Jennens’s libretto in 1741, he went on his well-known 24-day streak of frenzied genius which produced the music for the text.
The documentary covers the Messiah’s successful premiere in Dublin, in 1742 — eight years before the blockbuster London performance — followed by its decline during much of the rest of the 1740s, for various reasons. Along the way, it also brings in scholars to touch on the uniqueness of the music, and suggest why its had such profound staying power among audiences for over 250 years.
For an oratorio which might well have floundered permanently, it really is quite shocking. Despite its flagging in the 1740s, by 1750 a confluence of factors had helped bring Messiah to grand acclaim via the first-of-its-kind performance at the Foundling Hospital.
It had taken a cast of major (and minor) figures to make it happen — with a smorgasbord of motives propelling the ship — but it had brought attention to the great mission of the hospital. For a piece of music which is almost immediately recognized — by anyone — some two and a half centuries later, the story behind it is worth learning. And this BBC documentary offers viewers the chance to do just that.
Spectatio 