(Photo: Thomas Ziegler)

The Leopoldina in Halle, seat of Germany’s oldest scientific academy, offered a rare confluence of setting and sound. Outside, summer plants stirred in the breeze and lavender bloomed along the garden paths. Inside, the classical Festsaal was filled with an attentive audience. In the foyer beyond the hall, portraits of centuries of scholars looked on—silent witnesses to learning and memory. The man taking the stage could easily be imagined among them: Christoph Prégardien, a tenor whose long career has marked him as one of the defining voices of historical performance practice.

Baroque violinist and director Leila Schayegh and her ensemble La Centifolia, brought a program titled “Händel italienisch & englisch,” woven from Handel’s operas and oratorios, with orchestral interludes by both Handel and Telemann. Perhaps being tailored to Prégardien, whose career reaches back to the era of Gustav Leonhardt, the concert built a mosaic of introspective character studies and delicately shaded instrumental pieces. What emerged was a shared language—spoken fluently by all the musicians onstage.

The concert opened with Bajazet’s “Forte e lieto” from “Tamerlano,” Prégardien’s portrayal of the defeated sultan was poised, inward-looking. Later, in “Figilia mia, non pianger” his tone turned darker, the voice falling gently into silence at the aria’s final plea. Now in his seventies, Prégardien sings with controlled projection and quiet precision, his phrasing shaped by years of thought and an instinctive sense of dramatic proportion.

Equally thoughtful was the interplay with La Centifolia, whose relationship with the tenor seemed built on long acquaintance and artistic trust. Schayegh led from the violin with ease and a kind of calm intelligence, bringing out soft edges and subtle inner lines. The movements from Handel’s Concerto grosso in F major, HWV 315, served as natural continuations. The Andante and Allegro glowed with inner tension; the closing Minuet shimmered, played with fine, clear articulation.

Scenes from “Rodelinda” offered a shift in focus. As Grimoaldo, the usurper torn between love and power, Prégardien moved between extremes. The stark recitative emerged like an open wound, answered by the weary dignity of “Pastorello d’un povero armento” and the conflicted vulnerability of “Tuo drudo” Each aria revealed a slightly different facet of the same troubled man.

After the interval came Telemann’s Concerto in E minor. Its Allegro was alert and rhythmically incisive, while the Andante and Minuet softened the mood, carrying us gently toward the English-language half of the program.

From “Samson,” “Thus, when the sun” offered a breath of lyric brightness. But the final sequence, from “Jephtha,” brought the most sustained emotional arc. After a stately overture, Prégardien entered into “Deeper and deeper still” with a near-whispered intensity. “Hide thou thy hated beams” followed with muted despair, and in “Waft her, angels,” the voice hovered above the continuo with fragile, almost immaterial grace.

Being aware that the full program might sound too introverted throughout, the musicians offered an encore in contrast: a bright and good-humored encore from a cantata by one of Bach’s older brothers. The shift in mood felt earned—an exhale after the long-held breath of Handel’s more solemn world.

What remained was a sense of shared listening, of voices and instruments responding to one another across time. In this space, surrounded by the history of thought, Prégardien sang not to prove a legacy, but to inhabit one—with humility, clarity, and quiet force.