Handel Week Festival

From the Artistic Director

Warmest of WELCOMES to the Handel Week Family! We, the artists, board, volunteers and listeners here at Handel Week prize Baroque masterpieces of music and especially the music of Handel. We present world-class readings of music in an opulent acoustic, all in a room with tremendous sight lines! We surround these in-person and virtual concerts with informative lectures, fascinating program notes and festive receptions. We reach out to young singers to learn what it is to be a professional musician through our Wells Choral Scholar program and we engage young Conductors to hone their craft with our Mark and Randi Ravitts Woodworth Award for young conductors. Welcome to our website and read here about our upcoming musical offerings!
To Handel and his Music!

Dennis Northway

Newsletter #10 - We WELCOME Assistant Artistic Director Henry Griffin to the Handel Week Family!

We are delighted to announce that the Handel Week family has grown just a little bit bigger. We welcome Henry Griffin to the new role of Assistant Artistic Director of our festival. Henry made quite a splash as our Mark and Randi Ravitts Woodworth Conducting Intern in our opening concert of our 26th festival season. He conducted two works on that concert and showed skill and sensitivity at the same time. Henry is a triple-threat musician who is a singer, a keyboardist and a conductor. Henry also has a real passion for Baroque music and the music of Handel. You can read more about him below. Welcome Henry!

Henry Griffin, described as “luminous” and “supremely tender” by the Chautauqua Daily, is a 25-year old baritone, keyboardist, and conductor. He is pursuing his master's in opera at Northwestern University with Nancy Gustafson (MM ‘27) and he also studied voice with the late Marlena Kleinman Malas at Manhattan School of Music (BM ‘23).

Henry has sung all of his life including solo appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera of Chicago as a boy soprano from age 11, as well as the more recent roles of Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Castleton Festival, and Toby in 110 in the Shade, Snug in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Dr. Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory. Henry also covered the role of the Commentator in Derrick Wang's opera Scalia/Ginsburg at the Chautauqua Opera Company in the summer of 2021.

Henry has played piano since the age of 6. Highlights include a piano four-hands performance on the Rush Hour Concert Series in June 2021 which aired live on WFMT Chicago, and an upcoming performance of Dohnányi's Sextet with musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in september 2025. Henry sang the role of Ottone in L'incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi with the MSM Undergraduate Opera Theater & Orchestra in May of 2023 just before graduating with his Bachelor's degree in classical voice and the Hugh Ross Award. Henry won a Fellowship for a full ride to the Mostly Modern Festival in June 2023 and in July of the same year he was the youngest singer in the Opera and Song Programmes of the Verbier Academy's Atelier Lyrique in Switzerland. There, he performed Keeper of the Madhouse in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

In summer 2025, Henry is a young artist at Opera Neo in San Diego, CA and will be a fellow with the Tosti International Singing Academy in Folkestone, England led by Matthew Rose. Henry is extremely excited to continue his work with the Handel Week Festival as Assistant Artistic Director!

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