It showed the oratorios Semele and Susanna, the opera Orlando furioso arranged by Hans Joachim Moser, and smaller works by Handel and other Halle composers of the 16th, 17th and 18th century.
[4] After World War II Erich Neuß, Max Schneider, Herbert Koch and others founded a Hallische Händel-Gesellschaft (Halle Handel Society), which organized a fourth festival in 1948 in collaboration with the Landestheater, the Evangelische Kirchenmusikschule (Academy of Protestant Church Music) and the Musikhochschule.
Since 1952 the festival has been organized annually by the city of Halle, in collaboration with scholars of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe.
[5] The first modern professional performance of Rinaldo in 1954 was conducted by Horst-Tanu Margraf; Radamisto followed in 1955, Poro in 1956, Imeneo in 1960, Scipione in 1965.
The 2009 festival staged the operas Floridante and Serse, the pastiche Anaesthesia, also the oratorios Theodora, Messiah, Belshazzar and Israel in Egypt.