The tragedy of Handel’s life gave us his greatest masterpiece

When Handel was producing his last opera seasons at Covent Garden nearly 300 years ago, he began to experience the first terrifying symptoms of physical and mental collapse. From then until his death two decades later in 1759, London’s greatest composer was to suffer increasingly debilitating attacks of paralysis, pain, and blindness – now thought to be the result of lead poisoning, a hidden 18th century killer of the affluent and the epicurean.