DVD + 2 CDs
Half documentary half fiction, this DVD The Wandering Maestro introduces the viewer to the life and works of the great Baroque composer George Frideric Handel .
Both unpredictable and full of ardor, both a mysterious and jovial fellow, Handel was a tireless traveler. His odyssey took him from his native Saxony to Austria, Italy and finally England - where he became the country's pride and joy, adulated by both its people and aristocracy. During his many trips Handel's music absorbed countless influences and styles, culminating in the masterpieces that, in the end, granted it immortality.
Through Handel's chamber music works, The Wandering / Traveling Maestro take us into the composer's paradoxical universe. The film is a combination of documentary-style vignettes - that recount the musician's life story and illustrate it with the help of visual archives - and choreographed movements which portray a few key moments. The works featured in this film are interpreted by "Les Boréades", a Canadian ensemble.
The four choreographed movements are staged to a few of Handel's shorter works (The Harmonious Blacksmith, Sinfonia). Amid stylized sets, dancers and actors present eight themes or moments of the composer's life: a duel between the maestro and one of his best friends; his passionate love story with Italian music; his arrival to eighteenth century England; the rivalry he caused between two prima donnas; his convalescence in a thermal spa; his "resurrection" after a lengthy sickness and years of professional failure; his reaching his artistic peak with The Messiah; and finally his slow descent towards death.