At the inaugural festival of June 1857 he delivered "Messiah", "Israel in Egypt" and "Judas Maccabaeus", and these were repeated at the Handel centennial festival of 1859, when he was in company with Willoughby Weiss, Clara Novello, Mme Sainton-Dolby and Giovanni Belletti. In "Sound an Alarm" during that festival, Reeves created a sensation, and the audience stood to applaud him. Yet the "Musical World" considered that his "The Enemy Said" from "Israel in Egypt" surpassed even that, and was the vocal feat of the festival. At the opening of the Leeds Town Hall in 1858 he was a soloist in the premiere of the pastorale "The May Queen" by William Sterndale Bennett. After a period of absence from the stage, in 1859–60 an English version of Gluck's "Iphigénie en Tauride" by H. F. Chorley was presented by Charles Hallé at Manchester, with Reeves, Charles Santley, Belletti and Catherine Hayes, and two private performances were also given at the Park Lane home of Lord Ward. Mapleson had obtained Reeves, Santley and Helen Lemmens-Sherrington for a summer and winter season from Benjamin Lumley, and in 1860 they had a major success in George Macfarren's "Robin Hood" (text by John Oxenford) at Her Majesty's, again under Hallé's direction. This new composition had several very effective passages written for Reeves in his role as Locksley, including "Englishmen by birth are free", "The grasping, rasping Norman race", "Thy gentle voice would lead me on", and a grand prison scena. This proved more successful in ticket sales than the alternate Italian nights of "Il trovatore" and "Don Giovanni" despite the rival attractions of the soprano Thérèse Tietjens and the tenor Antonio Giuglini. In 1862, Reeves presented "Mazeppa", a cantata written for him by Michael Balfe. In July 1863 Reeves appeared for Mapleson as Huon in "Oberon" – the role written for Braham – with Tietjens, Marietta Alboni, Zelia Trebelli, Alessandro Bettini, Edouard Gassier and Santley. After touring that winter as Huon, Edgardo and in the title role of Gounod's "Faust", (with Tietjens) in Dublin, in 1864 he appeared at Her Majesty's in "Faust" and was especially complimented for the dramatic instinct of Faust's soliloquy in Act I and the superb energy of the duet with Mephistopheles which closes the Act.