I'm mostly with the audience on this

Nobody much seemed to like Handel's oratorio, Israel in Egypt, when it was first performed (c. 1740). I can tell you why: the first half is just so relentlessly same-key-same-tempo depressing. Of course, being Handel, it's all very grand, I assure you. But I almost gave up listening before the plagues arrive, and they're sheer undiluted genius. Want a swarm of locusts in music? Check (is a fugal swarm, which really does bend and twist in the most amazing way). Want cute hopping motifs for the frogs ('yea, even in the King's chambers')? Check.

But still, it's no Athalia and it's nowhere near as impressive as the far earlier Dixit Dominus.

Resultant mood: even.

I do very much like Handel as a character: given to overindulging in fine food and quarelling, what's not to like? I recall one incident where, in a rehearsal, a stroppy tenor threatened to jump up and down on Handel's harpsichord if he didn't get his way; Handel is supposed to have replied that, unlike the chap's singing, that was something people would pay to come and see.

More famously, and probably more apocryphally, a soprano who was complaining about the lack of ornaments in one particular aria - after all, Baroque sopranos did think the show was all about them*, and the point of an aria was surely to to show off - rapidly decided to see things Handel's way when he held her out a window.

* It's not really that different today.