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The week before last I was in Vienna, at a conference on Handel's , which was organised by the to coincide with the opening of a new production of that opera. It being Vienna, the conference audience was hearteningly large, containing not just other academics, but Viennese music lovers too. Vienna's association with great music can take a rather debased form for the benefit of tourists (regular programmes of Mozart and Strauss performed by a bewigged orchestra are touted by men in costumes outside the opera house), but that's not the norm. The Viennese really take their music very seriously, with even Sunday-morning concerts at the Musikverein attracting capacity audiences, all dressed to the nines.

And Handel, effectively an Ausländer? Well, what was significant was not the Viennese interest in the composer (scarcely a surprise in such a cultured place), but the degree to which the conference presented him as fully European, not merely either German or British. Partenope, after all, was a Neapolitan story, which Handel knew in a Venetian version before creating his own for London in 1730, using singers collected on his latest foray to the Continent.

Seeing Handel as a composer who was at home in a variety of European contexts is vital to really understanding his work (perhaps particularly the operas). As this is not a bad week to be reminded of it. The week Radio 3 features material written in Italian for both Italy (the cantata, 'Tra le fiamme') and London (the opera Radamisto and an aria from Alcina), and the German devotional aria, 'In den angenehmen Buschen'. A 'Europhile' indeed!

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