Comfort Ye My People

Like many I grew up with The Messiah as a Christmas tradition - either in its full version as broadcast each year on CBC from Massey Hall with the TSO under Sir Ernest MacMillan or snippets at our local church if the choir master was particularly adventuresome.   Both Handel and Charles Jennens would be puzzled by our tradition of their oratorio being presented in concert halls, town halls, school auditoria and churches at Yuletide.  It was premiered at Eastertide in Dublin in April 1742 and Jennens' text is an extended reflection on Christ as the Messiah; only Part I addresses the Prophetic Coming and Nativity, Part II and II portraits the Passion, Resurrection, Accession, Last Judgment and Final Victory of Christ the Messiah.

For Jennen's it was not a Christmas message but a Christian one (howbeit skewered to his particular beliefs) that he was delivering.  And though at various times his libretto has been denigrated as a mere cobbling together of text from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer it is now recognized as what Watkins Shaw describes as "a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief".  And despite his dislike for Jennens as a person, Shaw conceded that the finished text "amounts to little short of a work of genius".  And that literary genius was wedded perfectly to Handel's musical genius.

This copyist's manuscript from 1743 repeats a text error
from the original in the bass aria The Trumpet Shall Sound.
It reads "And the Death shall be raised..." of course it shoud
read "And the dead shall be raise...

Though Jennen's text has been little changed, if at all, over the years the same cannot be said for the musical settings around it.  Shortly after its premiere Handel himself was busy at work adapting the work to the changing vocal and instrumental forces at his disposal.  And he was to make further changes, additions and deletions until the last performances he attended eight days before his death in April of 1759.  After his death other hands began to "adapt" and even "improve" upon Handel's work - on the Continent Hiller in Berlin expanded the orchestration, and in 1789 Mozart in Vienna re-orchestrated the oratorio to bring it more in line with modern tastes.  Larger forces came into play both in Europe and North American but nowhere more than in the United Kingdom.  Larger and larger choruses and orchestras were employed until in 1857 at the Chrystal Palace a chorus of 2,000 sang their Hallelujahs with the backing of an orchestra 500 players strong.  This tradition of the "grand" Messiah was carried on - though with fewer numbers - by British conductors well into the later part of the 20th century.  Certainly the versions I first heard where with full 19th century symphony orchestra and a larger chorus backing singers such as Lois Marshall, Maureen Forrester and Jon Vickers.  The performances that conductors like Sir Ernest MacMillan, Sir Malcom Sargent and Sir Thomas Beecham led were full blown affairs with nary a whiff of "period practice" about them.  By the last quarter of the 20th century tastes had changed and Bernard Shaw's desire to hear a performance in a small venue "with chorus of twenty capable artists" was being fulfilled and more and more presentations reflected the desire for "historically informed performances".  It has now come to the point that no one would dare go for the Beecham style.

The Messiah during the Great Handel Festival of 1857 at the Crystal Palace in London
- a chorus of 2,000 and 500 musicians made sure that the Hallelujahs were well and truly heard.

 Though I have several versions of The Messiah - including Der Messias, the Mozart arrangement in German and several period instrument performances - for some reason every year I go back to my old Sir Thomas Beecham recording on RCA Victor.  It uses the very "unauthentic" and apparently contested arrangement Sir Eugene Goossens made for Beecham in 1959 for performances at the Lucerne Festival.  It is grand perhaps even grandiose, the forces are large - Beecham's Royal Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society at full throttle.  The four soloists come no where near giving us "authentic performances" - a phrase which always brings to mind Anna Russell's comment: "terribly pure if a trifle bloodless".  There is nothing period or bloodless about the young Jon Vickers and I dare anyone not to be thrilled when his voice cries out in the wilderness. 

In a letter in May of 1959 Beecham admonished Goossens: "You will not forget, I am sure, that Hallelujah must lead off with the most glorious and crashing noise, everybody going all out - hell for leather!"  Fulfilling Sir Thomas's wish Goossens uses cymbals to start of the thing with a big bang.  When challenged about his arrangement by Records and Recordings in 1960 Sir Eugene turned the question around.  "And why not?" he asked the interviewer: "Aren't we exhorted in the Bible to 'praise the Lord with the sound of cymbals'?"  And praise the Lord Sir Thomas and his forces certainly do.  It may lack a certain subtlety but its is joyous and guaranteed to bring an audience to its feet hoary old tradition or not.

Now this is not The Messiah as I always want to hear it - at some point this week the Gabrielli Consort CD will go on the player or the Charles Mackerras Mozart will be clicked on iTunes. The wonder is that Jennen's and Handel's glorious work can take all those interpretations and still move us to tears, joy and contemplation.

23 December - 1823: A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, is published anonymously.

Mercoledi Musciale

When I first heard the Verdi Requiem on the radio back in 1959 and not being terribly impressed - sorry I was an opera snob fan and wasn't going to go for any of this religious stuff.  Looking at the archives at the Met now I realize that it was actually a pretty special occasion - it was the last performance there conducted by Bruno Walter.  It was also the afternoon when Zinka Milanov had to retire after the several minutes and was replaced by Heidi Krall.  But even with such excitement I turned a "blind ear" to it.  It just wasn't my cup of tea.

Fast forward to the 1970s when I had begun to actually listen to the Requiem and become familiar with the work - its form and structure, its antecedents and its subtleties.  I finally ended up with three recordings of it and have since acquired three more on iTunes; and in the past three years I have heard it performed four times.   Though none of those performances have reached anywhere nearing I cam away from each one having heard something new and wonderful or in a new and wonderful way.

The most recent performance was here at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.  The NAC Orchestra has grown under Pinkas Zuckerman and though I may not always enjoy his style of conducting I have to admire his programming skills.  As with the three performances I saw in Rome - Santa Cecilia twice and La Scala once - the chorus at the NAC were the stars of the evening.  I mentioned to my friend Ben, who is in the chorus, that I had never realized how strong the Gregorian strain is in the choral music - and he tells me that chorus master extraordinare Duain Wolfe had worked on archiving the sound of chant for much of their rehearsal time.  A difficult effect had been suburbly realized 

But perhaps the most difficult task in any performance of the Requiem is assembling a quartet of soloists who can do justice to the music Verdi allotted to his soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass.  And in a day and age when real Verdi singers are a rarity it must be even more difficult.

Though Jon Vickers was never a Verdi tenor in the truest sense of the word in this 1970 recording with Sir John Barbirolli he brings a passion and intensity to the Ingemisco that has yet to be matched.

I groan as a guilty one,
and my face blushes with guilt;
spare the supplicant, O God.

You, who absolved Mary Magdalene,
and heard the prayer of the thief,
have given me hope, as well.

My prayers are not worthy,
but show mercy, O benevolent one,
lest I burn forever in fire.

Give me a place among the sheep,
and separate me from the goats,
placing me on your right hand.

At the risk of sounding like one of those old opera fans who bemoaning the passing of a golden age - they just don't make them like that anymore.  And I do apologize that it cuts out just as the Confutatis maledictis begins but I'd have to post another 5 minutes and that would lead to the Lacrymosa dies illa and then I'd feel I had to add the rest and ...  well you get the drift. Funny how much I love this "non-operatic" Verdi now.

06 June -  1813: War of 1812: Battle of Stoney Creek – A British force of 700 under John Vincent defeats an American force two times its size.

Mercoledi Musicale

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I have never been a big fan of Bellini and its true that other than I Capulleti e i Montecchi I don't find most of his operas to my taste.  And indeed I find Norma, his biggest hit and best known work,  a bit of a bore - those long lyric lines do very little for me.  However many years ago I was in the audience for one of the great performances of the late 20th century of - you guessed it - Norma.  It was an evening that became legendary in opera circles and remains 37 years later etched in my memory as one of the most incredible evenings I've spent at the opera.

It was July 20, 1974: Montserrat Caballé, Jon Vickers and Josephine Veasey were scheduled to sing the first of several performances of Norma at the summer festival in the old Roman Theatre in Orange.    My friend Bob and I drove up from Avignon - all the hotels in and around Orange had been booked for months and that was the closest place we could find lodgings.  There was excitement in the air - and a Mistral.  That cold, strong, relentless wind that can blow for one or two days and at times a week often reaching speeds of 90km an hour.

We gathered for the 2100 curtain sitting on the stone benches of the ancient theatre, protected from the cold by rented cushions and wrapped in sweaters that we had sensibly brought with us.  The promoters obviously were hoping the wind would drop and delayed the performance for almost 45 minutes - but Mother Nature was having none of that.  So the orchestra clothes pegged their scores to the music stands, the lights went down on a packed house, Giuseppe Patané mounted the podium and what followed was the stuff of legends.  The Mistral was as much a protagonist that evening as the druid Priestess and her unfaithful Roman; indeed perhaps it was the need to fight that constant wind that spurred the singers on to give such magnificent performances. Vickers, never a bel canto specialist, sang with the strength and intensity he brought to all his roles, Veasey was worthy subject of his adoration but at the centre of it all was Caballé giving her considerable all.

Caballé claimed that this was the greatest performance she ever gave and as she listens to the applause you can just catch as slight smile cross her lips.  At that point she, and we, knew that this was going to be something special.

29 giguino - Santi Pietro e Paolo

Mercoledi Musicale

On Saturday night I'll have the opportunity to hear Elina Garnaca, the new mezzo sensation, in Carmen. While surfing YouTube for a clip I came across one of her singing another French role - Dalila. A few of the comments on her singing of "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" took me to what is one of the great performances of Saint-Saens' best known opera. Shirley Verrett was one of the great singers in the last half of the 20th century. Retired after a incredible career she is now teaching at the University of Michigan. Here at Covent Garden in 1981 she and Jon Vickers seemed to have inspired each other to give one of those performances that became legendary.



I only had the pleasure of seeing Verrett on stage twice - the first time in 1971 as Gluck's Orfeo with Georg Solti conducting at Covent Garden and the following year in Meyerbeer's rarely performed L'Africaine with Placido Domingo at San Fransisco Opera. Performances that have stayed with me to this day.

29 lulgio - Santa Marta di Betania