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Way back in 1742, the English were gaga about Italian solo singers. So, of course, when George Frideric Handel had the audacity to feature the entire choir in a work he named "Messiah," the composer knew it was best to take his sacred oratorio faraway from London and preview it across the Irish Sea in Dublin.

What a hallelujah moment that turned out to be for the composer. Handel was still smarting from a previous work's rotten reviews, but this creation was earning rave reports and best of all, now England was begging the composer to return to perform the work that took him a mere two weeks to create. The comeback kid was back in business.

Centuries later, the sacred choral piece still sparkles each December, and this season is no exception with the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda offering up two variations of Handel's "Messiah." The celebration begins Thursday when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ratchets up the composer's cool factor by performing "Too Hot to Handel: The Gospel Messiah," with Marin Alsop conducting. On Saturday and Sunday, purists will be happy to hear the National Philharmonic and its 200-voice, all-volunteer chorale, conducted by Stan Engebretson, performing the original "Messiah."

Both the National Philharmonic and the BSO have shaved off an hour from the "Messiah," bringing each performance to about two-and-a-half hours with an intermission. And both retain the entire story, beginning with the prophecy of Isaiah and chronicling Christ's birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension to heaven.

Exactly why this 250-year-old work keeps returning year after year is no mystery to the National Philharmonic performers.

No matter "the audience members' and performers' theology," the "Messiah" is all about "the prophecy of hope," tenor Robert Baker says.

Besides, "Evergreens always stay fresh," contends conductor Stan Engebretson, the National Philharmonic's choral artistic director. He has learned that with "different soloists performing each season, it always makes for something new each year."

Mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood concurs, explaining, "As an artist, I have lived another year of my life. My voice and my spirituality are different, and I recreate the art differently."

Even after Mozart re-orchestrated his own version of the "Messiah," the composer still called Handel's original version "perfection," soprano Danielle Talamantes points out.

If it's hard to fault the original, what inspired Maestra Alsop to ask arranger-composers Bob Christenson and Gary Anderson to jazz up the "Messiah" to produce "Too Hot to Handel?"

Almost 20 years ago, Alsop, then a jazz violinist, "started toying with the idea of how Handel's "Messiah" might lend itself to a variety of updated feels. The tradition in Handel's time would have welcomed ornamenting and personalizing." She wondered "what kind of an update might work for the ‘Messiah.'

From the start, Alsop believed it was critical to "keep the essence of the piece the same, the DNA, [to] keep the melodies, structure and text all similar to the original version, but treat each number differently. We added a full-blown rhythm section, Hammond B-3 organ, electric guitars. The result is completely over the top."

Christenson recalls basing "it on the blues and B.B. King. I thought it would be performed once [at New York City's Avery Fischer Hall in 1992]."

Instead, the work has been performed by professional orchestras, school groups and churches, and is a hit on YouTube.

The performance "swings. It's fun and while it's radically changed, we keep the melody. The original ‘Messiah' is a warhorse dragged out every year because it's a great piece. We are opening audience members' eyes to something different. It's fun and infectious," Christenson explains.

The Baltimore City College High School Choir, directed by Linda Hall, will be the choral component. And the "Messiah" has been a serious challenge for the 100-plus students.

"When I handed out the music, one student said, ‘We have to learn all of this?'" Hall says.

Even with the grousing typical of teenagers, her students have taken their job seriously, with long rehearsals at school and at-home practicing.

The improvisational elements were easy for the students to embrace and, in fact, are a major part of the original work.

"Back in Handel's day, arias were improvisational and Handel hated working with one particular singer who wouldn't stop improvising. He must have told the singer to ‘shut up already,'" Christenson says.

No matter what version is on stage, the "Hallelujah" chorus is what audiences anticipate. But they will have to be patient since it doesn't come until the end of the second of three parts.

Still they won't be bored since some of the arias are "firecracker fast and quite difficult. You have to be accurate and not let people know you are working," Talamantes notes.

After performing the "Messiah" for many years, Livengood believes "it gets people in the spirit; after hearing it, audience members won't be Scrooges."

The "Messiah" has special meaning for many of the performers. Growing up in North Dakota, "90 miles from Fargo," Engebretson recalls first encountering the oratorio when singing the "Messiah's" "For Unto Us A Child is Born."

Baker was just a toddler when Handel's work stirred him.

"It was Christmas Eve [at his Frederick, Md., church] and my parents were singing in the choir. They began to sing the "Hallelujah" chorus and I jumped up off the pew, left my grandmother and walked up to the front of the church to stand by my father as he sang."

Livengood didn't learn the classics as a child. "I was born on a farm in North Carolina. I first sang it with my chorale at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We performed the work with the [late conductor] Robert Shaw and the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. It was the first I'd heard anything like it, and the experience was invigorating."

Even now, Handel knows just how to handle humans.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore City College High School Choir will perform "Too Hot to Handel: The Gospel Messiah" at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets range from $25 to $80 and are available by calling 877-BSO-1444 or online at www.BSOmusic.org.

The National Philharmonic and its Chorale will present the "Messiah" at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. A free pre-concert lecture will be offered before each performance. Tickets range from $29 to $79, free for ages with 7 to 17. Call 301-581-5100 or visit www.nationalphilharmonic.org.

Both events take place at The Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda.