Guarda su CineBlog01. Discovered at age nine and a celebrated composer by age eighteen, George Frideric Handel experienced a meteoric rise to success, with forty-two operas performed on three continents in his lifetime. As enduring as Handel's operatic work is, the prodigious German genius is best known for his oratorio Messiah. Now you can learn in poignant detail how Handel's magnum opus came to be.