Arts & Events

Every year for the past 22 years American Bach Soloists has performed Handel’s MESSIAH in Grace Cathedral during the early weeks of December. Last year, I found their performance brilliant, and moreover I had something of a revelation regarding how much the MESSIAH libretto by Charles Jennens suggests Christianity’s debt to earlier pagan religions. So this year I returned to Grace Cathedral hoping for another brilliant performance and maybe even a deepened understanding of the libretto. Well, the latter did ensue, but, unfortunately, this year’s performance lacked the vocal brilliance of last year’s superb cast. 

This year’s ABS MESSIAH offered a whole new cast. Soprano Héiène Brunet replaced the incomparable Mary Wilson. Brunet sang very well, employing her clear, bright soprano to fine effect. However, I missed the creamy luster of Mary Wilson’s voice. Tenor Steven Brennfleck replaced Aaron Sheehan, and I found Brennfleck’s voice a bit reedy, almost verging on tinny at times. Mezzo-soprano Rebecca Powers replaced countertenor Eric Jurenas. For Rebecca Powers, this was her debut with American Bach Soloists, and I found her performance disappointing. She never projected the words sufficiently, with the result that the text was lost whenever she sang. Moreover, her dark, dusky mezzo-soprano was in sharp contrast to the bright countertenor voice of last year’s Eric Jurenas. Finally, baritone Hadleigh Adams replaced last year’s Jesse Blumberg, and Adams was excellent. I might add that this year, unlike in other years, I found conductor Jeffrey Thomas’ pacing very sluggish, especially in Part One, though things later picked up a bit. 

Where the MESSIAH libretto’s debt to earlier religious beliefs and rituals is concerned, I did manage to probe a bit deeper. The tenor aria “Ev’ry Valley shall be exalted,” I discovered last year, made sense if it suggested the coming of Spring and the sudden bursting into bloom of all fruits of the earth. Moreover, the lines that follow -- “Ev’ry Mountain and Hill made low, the Crooked straight, and the rough Places plain” – I now suggest allude to the Neolithic revolution in food production. When people began to grow crops instead of merely gathering wild plants, and also domesticated animals instead of merely hunting them, they did indeed render mountains and hills suitable for planting and for grazing; they did indeed make the crooked plots of land straight by plowing them; and they did indeed clear the rough places of rocks, stones, and underbrush to ready the land for cultivation. The overall suggestion in these lines is that the coming of the Messiah will bring about a revolution as great as that of the Neolithic change in food production. 

Further, I again note that the soprano aria that opens Part Three – “I know that my redeemer liveth” – ends with the words “For now is Christ risen from the Dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.” What is this if not an allusion to the ancient Greek myth of Persephone being returned from the Underworld at Springtime to be reunited with her mother Demeter, who in her joy, made dormant seeds beneath the earth suddenly bloom forth the fruits of the earth. This myth, I remind readers, was the basis of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries that promised life after death by suggesting that the dead buried beneath the earth would arise like the dormant seeds suddenly bursting forth in abundant life every Spring.  

Finally, I should note that this year’s performance of the MESSIAH featured John Thiessen on valveless trumpet for the baritone aria “The trumpet shall sound.”  

Thiessen’s trumpet performance coupled beautifully with the excitement generated by baritone Hadleigh Adams in this aria. In fact, I found this aria one of the few genuinely exciting moments in this year’s MESSIAH. Oh well. We are grateful to have such a wonderful tradition of American Bach Soloists performing Handel’s MESSIAH every year in Grace cathedral as Christmas approaches.