WERE George Frideric Handel to be beamed back to Earth from the celestial realm he has inhabited since his death two-and-a-half centuries ago, he would soon have a Netflix hit and scores of viral YouTube videos with a host of marketing tie-ins — from organ pe(da)loton work-out regimens to a line of prophylactic powdered wigs so fashion-backward they’re actually fashion-forward.

Handel was a musical entrepreneur and entertainment was his business. Ultimately it made him rich, though there were ups and downs. Handel’s England was a modern place, with its stock schemes, real-estate deals, overseas ventures, wars, coffee houses, love of leisure and spectacle, free-wheeling journalism, fake news, a gin craze and an ice-cream parlour, the Pot and Pineapple.

There was much talk of liberty, its perquisites built on the enslavement of Africans. The plagues that devastated London in the 17th century and which we’ve been hearing much about during the present pandemic seemed sequestered in the past.