Interview

 

What’s your favourite Opera?

 

My favourite opera is a toss up between Charles Gounod’s Faust and Guiseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. The first is very good metaphysics dealing in primary concerns such as personal integrity and eternal destiny.  I'd like to arrange a performance of the final trio with my former under-graduate classmates Chad Louwerse and Paul Oulette, but Canadian baritone Chad Louwerse now lives in Ontario, so I’d have to fly him over!

 

The second is a tour de force of grand opera in five acts. One of Verdi's last operas, Don Carlo  depicts a painful love story based on conflicts in the life of Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545–1568). Though he was betrothed to Elisabeth of Valois, part of the peace treaty ending the Italian War of 1551–59 demanded that she be married instead to his father, Philip II of Spain. The role of Elisabeth of Valois, torn between duty to King Philip and her love for his son, is a significant one, picturing the struggle between moving forward or clinging to the past. 

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Do you have any favourite songs in your new album Wings of Rejoicing?

 

No favourite - each song chosen on the CD is amazing in its own right. Each shines another facet of beauty. However, some stand out more than others, but in different ways:  Rejoice from Handel’s Messiah is the commanding title song;  Haydn’s On Mighty Wings is the creation of the eagle and other birds that fly, coo and sing. Angels Ever Bright and Fair, and  O that I On Wings Could Rise are the laments of Theodora in a Roman prison as she is sent to die for refusing to give up her Christian faith.  O Had I Jubal’s Lyre is a song of exultation at the end of Handel’s Joshua for winning the battle of Jericho. Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate is ebullient and full of style and verve.  Written in his early period, this motet was composed in Milan for a castrati (male soprano) who sang it in the church of the Theatines, a male religious order of the Catholic Church.  Now it is sung by female sopranos.

 

Talk about your love for Oratorio and the power it can have on post-modern listeners?

 

Oratorio is a large-scale musical composition on a sacred or semi-sacred subject, for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. An oratorio’s text is usually based on Scripture, and the narration necessary to move from scene to scene is supplied by recitatives sung by various voices to prepare the way for airs and choruses. A basically dramatic method is used in all successful oratorios, though they may or may not be produced with theatrical action. The oratorio is not intended for liturgical use, and it may be performed in both churches and concert halls. The principal schools of oratorios are the Italian, essentially a form of religious opera; the German, developed from treatment of the Passion story; and the English, synthesized by the composer George Frideric Handel from several forms.  The German Passions of J.S. Bach are well-known and loved, providing Western music with the pinnacle of its achievement in the St. Matthew Passion.  The term oratorio derives from the oratory of the Roman church in which, in the mid-16th century, St. Philip Neri instituted moral musical entertainments.  These were divided by a sermon, providing the two-act form common in early Italian oratorio.

 

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/431021/oratorio

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