Blake Beckemeyer

Jacobs School’s ‘Giulio Cesare’ an achievement

02.04.2019 | Jacobs School of Music

by Peter Jacobi Feb. 4, 2019

“Giulio Cesare” is being staged at IU’s Musical Arts Center, with performances this Friday and Saturday.

The current Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Opera Theater production of George Frideric Handel’s opera “Giulio Cesare” is an achievement, not perfection, mind you, but effective, interesting to watch, and definitely worthwhile to listen to.

There are always issues when performing what we refer to as Early Music, that created from the Baroque period and back. Here are a few, generally speaking and/or pertaining to the local presentation. Please remember that an entire field of study (including at IU’s Historical Performance Institute) has grown around how musicians of today should read and use the scores from that period, which often tend to be less informative than those from later on that offer more instructive clues.

This production’s music director and conductor, Gary Thor Wedow, reminds us that Handel wrote four hours of music for “Giulio Cesare,” which the maestro wisely considered too much for most in a modern audience. He did some pruning, and folks this past weekend, save the scholars and the experts, are not likely to have missed the cuts. Plenty remains in a version that reaches the finish line just short of three hours from the start, with the insertion of one intermission.

There is the matter of the orchestra and its instrumentation. Does one use in a full-scale opera house like the MAC an ensemble of period instruments or of instruments usually heard from a pit orchestra? Maestro Wedow, a specialist in preparing Baroque works, chose not IU’s Baroque Orchestra but the Chamber Orchestra. Consequently, that probably pleased some in the audience, displeased others, and made no difference to still others. But a choice it was, with marked artistic results. The Chamber Orchestra and its maestro deserve plaudits for music firmly and affectionately played.

Choice of singers is a major concern. I don’t mean one soprano versus another, or one tenor versus another. For instance, in the past, I’ve heard male and female voices sing the role of Julius Caesar, even males with different high voices: a male soprano and a countertenor (and there are differences). Actually, the role, as were several others, was written for an alto castrato. Well, there aren’t any more of those or shouldn’t be.

Maestro Wedow and colleagues chose a basso for the opening night cast and a female mezzo-soprano for the Saturday. The result was dramatically different. In terms of vocal quality, both choices — bass Rivers Hawkins and mezzo-soprano Grace Skinner — brought strength to their portrayals, he a greater vocal power and authority, she the greater vocal flexibility. Bu the entire soundscape changed from one night to the next.

And just where does all this happen, the story, based somewhat on history, of Caesar visiting Egypt and meeting Cleopatra? Well, that meeting happened in ancient Egypt, 48-47 B.C. The IU production’s designer, Allen Moyer, gives us an Egyptian background, sometimes using two of the Great Pyramids, at others the Sphynx (from different angles to suggest the action has moved). There also are interiors cleverly created by roll-ons and walls and ceiling that shift up and down.

In terms of historic period, I’ve seen the story unfolding at Chicago’s Lyric Opera in modern colonial times early in the 20th century. The IU production chosen by set designer Moyer and stage director Robin Guarino selected the 18th century during Napoleon’s French campaign in Egypt and close to Handel’s lifetime. I was not bothered by the shift, in that the sets and Linda Pisano’s costuming and Julie Duro’s evocative lighting made the pictures one observed so striking.

Add to these matters, a physical issue for one of the cast members. As the printed program states: “Due to an injury, Gretchen Krupp will sing the role of Cornelia from off-stage during her designated performances while Yujia Chen performs the role on stage.” Mezzo-soprano Krupp on Friday did her sitting on the edge of the orchestra pit while fellow mezzo Chen acted and mimed the role; on Saturday, Chen took over her assigned role entirely. They both were excellent as the grieving widow of the would-be Egyptian ruler Pompey, murdered by Cleopatra’s evil brother Tolomeo, the usurping King of Egypt.

The production’s two sopranos selected to portray Cleopatra, Ahyoung Jeong on opening night and Virginia Mims the next, were outstanding in handling music of utmost difficulty, often fiendishly rapid and jumpy and reaching for the stratosphere. They also theatrically attuned themselves to the character and what happens to her: an assured flirt as co-ruler (with her brother Tolomeo) in act 1, as a despairing woman with seeming lost power given two gorgeously sad arias by the composer in act 2, and as a triumphant woman of power in the final act, a ruler finally granted the power of a queen by a magnanimous and admiring Caesar, power with no more possible interference from her nasty brother.

The nasty brother received his due just before opera’s end by knife thrust. But before the knife cut to the quick, the role had been villainously portrayed by male soprano Elijah McCormack on Friday and countertenor Hunter Patrick Shaner on Saturday. In a movie house, we might have hissed the pair of them.

The important role of Sesto, son of the slain Pompey, was given to a pair of impressive mezzos, Gabriela Fagen and Emily Warren. And the remaining cast members added their energies to the enterprise, making the whole a success, very difficult to achieve but definitely accomplished.

Review: Danielpour, choirs, orchestra find faultless balance in ‘Yeshua’

By Terry McQuilkin For The Register-Guard

Posted Jul 11, 2018 at 5:49 PM

The commissioned work had its world premiere Sunday at the Oregon Bach Festival

One of the Oregon Bach Festival’s great legacies is the passel of new works it has commissioned over the years, and on Sunday. July 8, listeners at the Hult Center had the opportunity hear the world premiere of a powerful new oratorio, “The Passion of Yeshua,” by American composer Richard Danielpour.

This new work, like J. S. Bach’s “St. Matthew” and “St. John” passions, tells the story of Jesus Christ’s final days and crucifixion. In an effort to transport the listener to a different time and place — specifically, first-century Judea — the composer employed not one language but two: Hebrew (words taken from Jewish scripture) and English (texts drawn from the Gospels).

The musical rhetoric is direct and accessible. Melodic lines — typically built on stepwise motion but with the occasional upward leap (of an octave and a half step, say) — have a chant-like quality. Largely consonant harmonies populate a constantly shifting modal soundscape, although the composer deploys harsh dissonances to set mournful or frenzied passages of text. Simple rhythms predominate, but at times Danielpour uses lively, syncopated rhythms, punctuated by brass and percussion, to convey a sense of fury.

JoAnn Falletta, conducting with precision and authority, led the combined forces of the Festival Chorus, University of Oregon Chamber Choir, Festival Orchestra and soloists. The more than 100 singers enunciated words perfectly; balances proved faultless. “Yeshua” demands a chorus with the heft to convey the most ferocious lines with nerve-rattling power and the sensitivity to sing meditative lines with restraint. Kudos to the choristers, and to Kathy Saltzman Romey and Sharon Paul, who prepared the singers.

Baritone Matthew Worth sang the critical role of Narrator. His voice was rich and vibrant, his diction clear and his delivery earnest, but the quasi-recitative melodic lines somewhat limited his range for dramatic expression.

Mezzo soprano J’nai Bridges, representing Miryam (Mary, mother of Jesus) sang with a full-bodied, velvety sound and brought poignant intensity to her arias. Soprano Sarah Shafer (Miryam Magdala, or Mary Magdalene) produced a pure, crystalline sound and proved equally expressive. Two duets contrasted nicely Bridges’ rich, dark tone with Shafer’s cherubic voice.

Bass-baritone Kenneth Overton sang the role of Yeshua (Jesus) with stentorian authority. Tenor Timothy Fallon brought fervor to the two roles of Kefa (Peter) and Pilate, though I sometimes found his sound a bit thin. Edmund Milly, a chorister in the bass section, sang the brief role of Kayafa (High Priest) with confidence.

The orchestra contributed handsomely to this premiere’s success. Eliciting somber moods, the composer gave significant melodic responsibility to the lower-range instruments, and we heard a great deal of expressive playing from the cellos, bassoons and English horn player Joseph Peters. Notable, too, were some short violin solos from concertmaster Sarah Kwak.

“Yeshua,” co-commissioned by OBF, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Soli Deo Gloria Music Foundation, will receive another performance in December at UCLA, where Danielpour is on faculty, and Falletta’s own orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, will perform and record it in April 2019. We hope there will be more performances after that.

Terry McQuilkin, an instructor of music composition at the University of Oregon, reviews classical music for The Register-Guard.

Lean in the forces at work, 'Messiah' at Second Presbyterian has just the right girth and a nice array of soloists

By Jay Harvey. 9 December 2019.

Michelle Louer showed "Messiah" mastery in sophomore outing with the IBO.

Last year's initial collaboration on Handel's "Messiah" between the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and the Beecher Singers of Second Presbyterian Church was so satisfying I just had to return for the deuxieme Sunday afternoon.It was well worth it. Buoyed by Second Presbyterian's fine acoustics, the 15-voice choir and the 18-piece orchestra (for the most part no larger than the body of singers, since timpani and two trumpets are sparingly used) worked seamlessly together, as they did in 2018.Director Michelle Louer's selection of soloists from the choir seemed even more inspired than it did last year. And there was plenty of mostly secure ornamentation in the solos, often with an apt flourish at slowed final cadences, starting with tenor Blake Beckemeyer's picturesque "rough places" in the oratorio's first aria.The performance enjoyed the contributions of a fine male alto, Michael Walker. He was robust in all registers, especially in his initial appearance, "But who may abide." He displayed a particularly luminous tone, weighted with just enough pathos, in the work's alto showpiece, "He was despised."Nearly three hours after his first appearance, Walker sounded a little too gentle in "If God be for us," the work's last aria, which heralds the formidable choral package of "Worthy is the Lamb" and "Amen." The choir was evidently not tired, as the assertive "Blessing and honour, glory and power" section had all the might anyone has any right to expect, and the complex "Amen" was sturdy and well-balanced from first note to last, the orchestra following suit.The only soloist returning from last year, bass Samuel Spade, was again forthright and impassioned in "The trumpet shall sound" and the recitative that introduces it. This time I didn't hesitate to notice that he poured as much conviction into the aria's middle section, with the solo trumpet's radiant obbligato suspended, as he had in the main material, where his dotted-rhythm treatment of the tune upon its return shook with portent.The other soloist in his voice class, Jesse Warren, gave more than adequate warning of the miracle to come in the early recitative "Thus saith the Lord." He doubled down on that hint of ferocity in "Why do the nations so furiously rage together" in Part Two.In the brief, dramatic Nativity portion of "Messiah," the sequence for soprano was brightly managed by PaulinaTitle page of the 1902 score (as reprinted in 1942) that I inherited from my father, a version beloved in the early 20th century, since superseded, including elimination of the inauthentic definite article in the title.Francisco, climaxed by the brilliant chorus-orchestra partnership of "Glory to God," with the crowning splendor of the IBO's pair of "natural," valveless trumpets.A well-matched duo of Amanda Russo Stante and Erin Twenty Benedict made the linked arias "He shall feed his flock" and "Come unto Him" fully complementary. Reverent fervor suffused Caitlin Seranek Stewart's performance of the beloved aria "I know that my Redeemer liveth," with a few off-pitch notes of little account.A virtuoso sequence of pain and glory, from "All they that see him laugh him to scorn" to "But Thou didst not leave his soul in Hell," was spectacularly brought off by tenor soloist Gregorio Taniguchi. Beckemeyer returned shortly thereafter to display the advantage of presenting soloists of different expressive capabilities as he sang the tenor recitative and aria that immediately precede the Hallelujah Chorus.I've concentrated on soloists here because their variety and fitness for an array of tasks in this performance worthily reflected Handel's own practice of deploying more than the four individual soloists stipulated by the score. The ensemble opportunities came off creditably as well, but to admire how tastefully ornamented solos needn't get in the way of the direct, declamatory style proper to oratorio singing deserves extra consideration.And nine adept soloists drawn from a choir of 15 — amazing: another "Messiah" miracle!

Source: http://jayharveyupstage.blogspot.com/2019/12/lean-in-forces-at-work-messiah-at.html