There is a moment in the year, in the great European capitals, when the musical calendar seems to bend to a shared rite, almost to an ancient summons returning as punctually as the cold and the lights in the streets. In London, Berlin, Vienna, and also Milan, this rite often has a precise name: Messiah. It is not merely a matter of “programming Handel” in view of Christmas, but of putting back into circulation a work which, since 1742, has continued to question the relationship between music, sacred word, and the listening community. Conceived for Lent and for a non-liturgical setting, the oratorio eventually came to embody the season of expectation and birth, settling into the winter fabric of cities as an identity-bearing appointment: one goes to hear the Messiah to assess the health of an orchestra, of a choir, but also to measure one’s own way of inhabiting the world in relation to a text that no longer coincides with the faith of its listeners yet continues to speak of justice, fragility, and redemption.

In the Milanese context, the performance of the Messiah at the Auditorium di Milano by the Sinfonica di Milano – with a conductor like Fabio Biondi – takes on a particular significance. On the one hand, it fits into an already established tradition of oratorios and sacred works presented as major seasonal events; on the other, it brings into that same tradition a drive toward lightness, terseness, almost a “return to origins,” linked to the re-examination of sources, to philology, but also to a contemporary taste less inclined toward emphasis. Entrusting this repertoire to a musician who has made the relationship with the eighteenth century his natural terrain is not a neutral gesture: it means shifting the focus from monument to articulation, from mass to design.

The history of the Messiah is, indeed, a history of continual transformations. Born for Dublin in 1742, in a relatively small hall, with a reduced ensemble, and intended for an audience of cultured bourgeoisie and enlightened aristocracy, the oratorio was progressively enlarged, amplified, orchestrated, monumentalised. From the immense Victorian choirs of the nineteenth century to the re-orchestrated versions – the Mozartian one being particularly famous, adding winds and “modern” colours – and up to the “gigantic” readings of the twentieth century, Messiah has served as a mirror for the sensitivity of its performers. Bringing it back to a more intimate dimension, as Biondi does, does not so much reject that history as place another path beside it: one of closer dialogue with the writing, with musical rhetoric, with the interplay of recitatives, arias, and choruses that constructs an implicit dramaturgy without resorting to staging.

In this season of the year, Handel’s Messiah is never just a concert. It is a threshold: a point where listening slows down and a different inner order takes shape. At the Auditorium di Milano, Fabio Biondi approaches the score with a sense of clarity that restores to Handel’s masterpiece its most authentic essence: not gigantism, not overloaded solemnity, but a limpid, attentive reading capable of giving space to the word without imprisoning it in a heavy ritual. The hall, with its controlled acoustics, favours this approach: everything breathes in a clear, almost chiselled dimension.

The orchestra of the Sinfonica di Milano responds with a quality striking for its order and stylistic awareness. The strings, lightened and refined, draw an agile, unclouded texture; the care in articulations, especially in fugal passages, allows the structure to emerge naturally. The basso continuo – steady, discreet, never prominent – provides a stable foundation, while the winds intervene sparingly, without self-indulgence, as elements of a fabric that privileges sobriety over showy colour. The result is an ensemble that renounces all rhetoric and finds its balance in the intelligence of detail.

The Coro Sinfonico di Milano tackles the collective pages with well-governed verticality and careful diction. In the large blocks – And the glory of the Lord, Hallelujah, Worthy is the Lamb – the sonic mass remains compact without losing transparency or textual clarity. Dynamic planes are handled with good control, and the shaping of long phrases avoids gratuitous emphasis, maintaining a profile that favours order over pathos.

Giulia Semenzato offers an interpretation of great balance and rigorous attention, faithful to the page both in its larger design and in its detail. The vocal line proceeds with care and full control, always limpid in its trajectory, supported by an emission that is consistently orderly and stylistically very attentive. In Rejoice greatly, one especially appreciates the clarity of musical organisation, free of self-indulgence, conducted with lucidity and measure, never indulging beyond what the score itself requires. The accent remains composed, deliberate, projected into a register of formal purity that finds its centre in absolute precision. Overall, her vocal presence stands out for coherence, cleanliness, and interpretative discipline, fully integrated into the vision drawn by Biondi.

Gaia Petrone presents a polished timbre, a homogeneous legato, and a composure that well reflects the introspective nature of the more meditative numbers.

Jorge Navarro Colorado stands out for the clarity of his diction and natural agility, with phrasing always balanced, in full consonance with the evening’s general approach.

Fabrizio Beggi brings a firm, authoritative voice to the stage, with clear accents in the more solemn moments of the third part; his The trumpet shall sound shows notable control of attack and solid awareness of line.

Fabio Biondi’s conducting asserts itself as an act of lucidity. He does not overwrite the score: he lets it emerge. The tempos avoid both haste and self-satisfied lingering, preferring the naturalness of inflection; transitions are clear but never sharp, and the entire structure of Messiah appears with narrative linearity that restores to the music its internal logic. It is a reading that does not seek effect but understanding; that does not demand immediate emotion, preferring the broad breath of form.

Messiah remains a work that speaks of transformation: not only that of the biblical word but also that of the listener. In this interpretation, so clear and controlled, transformation does not proceed through spectacle but through clarity. A clarity that does not claim, does not overrun, does not impose itself as rhetoric: it settles gently, allowing the music to become a space of inner listening. And it is precisely in this essentiality that the most enduring power of this evening reveals itself.

If one observes from a distance the path Messiah has travelled in the history of performance, the reading proposed at the Auditorium di Milano is clearly situated on the side of what one might call a “renunciation of the superfluous.” Far from seeking to impress through the sheer number of performers or sonic mass, Biondi prefers work on the internal fabric: on the contrasts between secco and accompagnato recitatives, on the alternation between intimate arias and pages of collective proclamation, on the interweaving of voices in the great architecture of the final choruses. It is a choice aligned with a contemporary sensibility that perceives the need to restore to the eighteenth century its capacity to speak to the present not as “great repertoire,” but as a living, legible, articulated language.

In this picture, one should not underestimate the role of the Auditorium di Milano and the Sinfonica in disseminating an idea of sacred repertoire that is not mere liturgical reiteration but an opportunity for engagement with the European tradition. Presenting Messiah in such a controlled form also means challenging a certain imagery associated with the work: that of “picture-postcard” performances, immense choirs, and the Hallelujah sung almost automatically. Here, that Hallelujah arrives instead as a passage within a coherent trajectory, not as an isolated episode: the applause is inevitable, but the perception is that of a segment within a larger discourse, not of a standalone firework.

From the standpoint of the contemporary listener, accustomed to a musical consumption system that is often rapid and fragmented, an oratorio like Messiah still demands an act of trust: sitting still, following the English text, restoring to slowness a dignity that our time tends to deny. In this sense, Biondi’s reading is almost pedagogical: it rejects easy spectacle, privileges the clarity of discourse, and entrusts to the structure of the work itself – its returns, its reprises, its circularity – the task of guiding the listener. Those seeking immediate emotional impact, the chill of effect, may feel unsettled; those willing to be guided will find in this evening a rare form of concentration.