Beckemeyer joins IUOT as a professional chorister for MASS with the chorus direction by famed former Atlanta Opera chorus master Walter Huff.

“Prepare to leave the theater exhilarated—and thinking—as a crisis in faith blazes in this brilliant theatrical tour de force.”

Constantine Kitsopoulos, conductor
Candace Evans, director
Mark F. Smith, set designer

From the IUOT website:

With a cast of close to 200 (choirs, rock bands, jazz and blues singers, dancers, and more), Bernstein’s Mass was controversial from the get-go. Some clergy called it blasphemous, but Pope John Paul II presented it at the Vatican. Some critics called it too populist, but audiences loved it; and The Washington Post proclaimed it “the greatest music Bernstein has ever written.”

Religious doctrine and text are pitted against the individual’s personal relationship with the Almighty—relationships filled with everything from anger and doubt to an overwhelming yearning for acceptance and love.

Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy to open the Kennedy Center and honor her late husband, Bernstein’s Mass is electrifying, sometimes irreverent, and always soul stirring.

In English with English supertitles.

New production.