ABSTRACT
During the spring of 1770, Londoners were presented with an especially rich and varied offering of oratorio performances. 1 On Wednesday and Friday evenings in the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, John Christopher Smith the younger and John Stanley presented several of Handel's most popular works plus Smith's own Gideon. On the same evenings at Covent Garden, Samuel Arnold and Edward Toms presented a somewhat more adventurous season which included, in addition to the usual Handel works, Arnold's The Resurrection, a Handel pasticcio by Toms entitled Israel in Babylon and English versions of two Italian oratorios on texts by Metastasio: Jommelli's The Passion and Piccini's The Death of Abel. On Thursdays in the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, a newcomer to the London oratorio scene, Johann Christian Bach, launched his first oratorio series, devoted exclusively to performances of three Italian works: Jommelli's La Passione, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and his own Gioas, re di Giuda. 2 It was, in the words of Howard Smither, „a season of unusual competition for the Lenten audiences . . .“ 3
