Handel The Anti-Semite

You all know about the pernicious anti-Semitic coding in Wagner's operas, right? Turns out, Wagner was late to the party in employing that scurrilous device. Handel beat him to it. Behold!, the anti-Semitic coding in Messiah is now revealed for all to see.

The boycott of that debased work in all its forms, and of the "Hallelujah" chorus in particular, will now commence. Or, at very least, "Listeners might do well to ponder exactly what it means when, in keeping with tradition, they stand during the 'Hallelujah' chorus," writes Michael Marissen the sharp-eyed discoverer of Handel's and his librettist, Charles Jennens's, covert and dastardly anti-Semitic shenanigans.