Four lives at a crossroads. Four people in the dark of night, when the only thing that lights the room is hope for even an ever so quiet answer. Handel’s oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (1707) depicts the conflict between the joy of being alive and the realisation of one’s own mortality. In this early masterpiece, the composer manages to open up clear emotional spaces for the simultaneity of the irreconcilable. What does it mean to be alive – and what does it mean to demand the fulfilment of this life? And what is left of my identity when the mirror only looks back at me in silence? In Händel’s music, the questions begin to levitate.