ABSTRACT

The singer who took part in performances of every single one of George Frideric Handel's English Oratorios was the tenor John Beard. As Burrows suggests, Beard may have stayed on and sung as a tenor for the next six months "on account of his general usefulness to the choir". And so, on the 8th January 1739 Beard sang the role of Jonathan in the morning rehearsal of Handel's Saul; went through a form of marriage with Henrietta in the Fleet Prison in the afternoon; and took his customary role in Columbine Courtesan at Drury Lane in the evening. John Beard's was the voice that he had in mind for the hero Samson. One famous anecdote about Beard's singing dates to this period: When Smith played the organ at the theatre, during the first year of Handel's blindness, Samson was performed, and Beard sung with great feeling Total eclipse — no sun, no moon, All dark amid the blaze of noon.