Celebrate Holidays With Tucson Orchestra

The Tucson Symphony Orchestra will be joined by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus, directed by Bruce Chamberlain, and four soloists who are making their debuts with the TSO, to perform Handel’s holiday favorite with its beautiful Hallelujah Chorus. This will be the TSO’s last presentation of Messiah! until at least 2009 because it is not scheduled for the 2008/09 season.

The TSO’s performances of Handel’s Messiah! will feature soloists Christina Major, Keri Alkema, Eric Fennell and Andrew Garland. Rising American soprano, Christina Major, has been called a “fascinating and hugely talented singer” by the San Francisco Chronicle and will be returning to the TSO for the Viennese Festival early in 2008. American mezzo-soprano Keri Alkema has been praised by the New York Times for having “an appealing brew of dark and creamy colors in her mezzo, which she yields with an incisive musicality.” Fast becoming one of the most sought after lyric tenors, Eric Fennell’s opera experience includes leading roles with San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Arizona Opera, Tulsa Opera, Central City Opera, Sarasota Opera, and the Spoleto Festival USA. According to Opera News, American baritone Andrew Garland has “coloratura [which] bordered on the phenomenal as he dashed through the music’s intricacies with his warm baritone.”

Messiah! is Handel's most popular work and one of the most beloved masterpieces of the choral repertoire. The work is frequently treated as a smorgasbord of delectable arias, sinfonias and choruses from which a concert can be comprised. Handel keenly sensed the mass appeal of staging familiar Biblical tales. He crafted Messiah! for operatic forces—choir, orchestra and soloists—but dispensed with the costlier elements of theatrical productions, such as sets and costumes. Its form is a dramatic oratorio, combining elements of Italian opera with the German Passions.

Handel spent just one month composing Messiah! which was first performed on April 13, 1742 at a charity concert near Dublin’s Temple Bar district. Though it was first received negatively in England, it later captured the hearts of the British after it was used for charitable fundraising in 1750. Over the next nine years, Handel gave over 30 benefit performances of the work.

It is an especially enduring masterpiece because of its universal appeal. The chorus plays a pivotal role in telling the story, whose text was compiled from the King James Version of the Old and New Testaments. The librettist, Charles Jennens, had contributed to a few of Handel's earlier operas and was a devoted admirer of the latter’s music. -- www.tucsonsymphony.org