HANDEL TIME.

There is nothing in music more unstoppably beautiful than a Handel aria moving in slow, regal splendor. It is like a godly machine, crushing all ugliness and plainness in its path. Consider "Ombra mai fu," an ode to a shady tree, from the 1738 opera "Serse." It has a stately tempo marking (Larghetto); a swaying meter of three-quarter time; a hypnotic procession of quarter notes in the bass; and immaculate lyric turns in the upper parts and the solo voice. As Baroque art goes, it is not very baroque. Not a single note is out of place, or seems to have been put there for a decorative purpose. The aria is all structure, as if it were an ideal modern building whose girders are gorgeous in themselves. There is something uncanny about how the segments are joined together. Often, the changing chords of any given bar pivot on a single tone, and this tone is found sometimes in the bass, sometimes in the middle parts, sometimes on top. Like a great river in the sun--the best way to track such music is by a triangulation of metaphors--the aria glitters on the surface and flows powerfully below.

For a long time, the better part of George Frideric Handel's output seemed destined for oblivion, with "Messiah," the "Water Music," and other popular favorites standing in for the rest. In the past decade or two, however, beauty has triumphed over time, and dozens of Handel's operas and oratorios have crossed over into the mainstream repertory. So far this year, "Hercules" has been staged at BAM, "Acis and Galatea" has played at New York City Opera, and "Solomon" has had a concert performance at Lincoln Center. This month, "Rodelinda" runs at the Metropolitan Opera. Deluxe recordings are piling up; some recent highlights are Rene Jacobs's vigorous version of "Saul," Alan Curtis's tasteful "Radamisto," and strongly characterized recitals by Sandrine Piau, Cecilia Bartoli, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who sings a near-definitive "Ombra mai fu." With the release of Curtis's "Lotario" in 2004, all thirty-nine surviving Handel operas have been recorded.

It's a bit of a mystery why Handel has become so crucial for early-twenty-first-century listeners. The prior century made a cult of Bach, whose music takes the form of an endless contrapuntal quest. Perhaps, in an age of information overload and ambient fear, we have more need for Handel's gentler, steadier art. At the same time, though, this composer appeals to the permanent hunger for high-class melodrama and psychological theatre. Not only the operas but also some of the oratorios have proved stageworthy; Peter Sellars's deeply gripping 1996 production of "Theodora," which is available on DVD, was a landmark in this respect. Handel commands our attention with bold changes of tone, vivid swings from joy to rage, and spells of paralyzing sadness. From time to time, he lifts his facades to disclose a shadowy background, full of broken forms and desperate gestures. He does not conceal the artifice of his mythological stories--deus-ex-machina endings seem designed to cause as much amusement as awe--and thereby acknowledges the limits of art. He does not want to save the world, only to make it better for a little while.

Handel was born in Saxony in 1685, moved to London in 1712, and died there in 1759. Scholars have lately been poking around in the corners of his biography, trying to flesh out the opaque image that appears in standard histories--that of the grumpy German music master with the waspish tongue. Ruth Smith has studied the composer's relationship to the politics of his time, showing how his grand Israelite oratorios metaphorically celebrated the regime of King George II, while also leaving room for religious dissent and contrary thought. Donald Burrows has emphasized the piety and workmanship of this seemingly worldly, lordly figure. Gary Thomas and Ellen Harris have delved into the composer's sexuality, drawing implications from the fact that he often moved in what would now be described as gay circles. We get the sense of a crafty character who had a flair for satisfying diverse constituencies without becoming captive to any of them. He was at once a great artist and a great ...