The problem is that a very small % of Handel’s music is still played.
I know and it's a shame. Most people don't know him except for Messiah and perhaps the Water Music, and yet almost his complete canon is still in existence as he was as meticulous in archiving his works as he was in composing them.
Handel was a true innovator in opera. He had a unique (at least until Mozart) to set the emotional color of a scene and to spin from light to dark on a dime.
In this excerpt from Acis and Galatia he takes us from a moment of pure, unadulterated (pun) joy, to a grave and solemn forecasting of the dark fate born of that sweet union, culminating in a pointillistic use of voices to build on the drama in a way that wasn't again used until Kodaly came on the scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9WnCyHmxzY
If the hair on the back of your neck doesn't stand on end from this as Handel takes us from the frivolity of Bernstein's "Glitter and be Gay" to Bach's b minor Mass, to the slow movement of Schumann's Rhenish Symphony with Kodaly-esque motivic punctuation layered on top...
Well then you have no soul. It's just a miracle.
And Handel did it before all of those fakakas (well, 'cept his equal, Bach - see St. Matthews Mass for the puncti-vocals)