Word: oratorio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Handel's great oratorio, the "Messiah," is being given by the Handel and Haydn Society in Symphony Hall on Sunday evening, December 20. For those who will be around Boston at that time and have not heard this famous work, here is an excellent opportunity to hear a good performance...
...marked the 160th Lindsborg Messiah. Still singing fervently with the sopranos was Alma Swensson, 76, who with her late husband founded the Lindsborg festivals 54 years ago. Alma Swensson was 22 when she sent East for copies of Messiah, corralled a few eager pupils and taught them the great oratorio measure by measure. When her festivals were 27 years old the great Lillian Nordica was a soloist and in Lindsborg that occasion has become legendary. The enchanted choristers pulled her carriage through the streets, received in return roses from her bouquet. One youth planted his bloom and it managed...
...greatly respected as conductor of the Breslau Orchesterverein. As his friends and often as his guests the elder Damrosch had such great musicians as Liszt, Wagner, von Bulow, Joachim, Auer, Rubinstein. In Manhattan he quickly established himself as Wagner's most ardent champion. He founded the New York Oratorio Society, then the New York Symphony. In 1884 he gave the fashionable new Metropolitan its first taste of German opera. Death came before he could finish the season...
...Damrosch name grew strong and so did the clan. When Walter had his hands full with his orchestra. Brother Frank took over the Oratorio Society, relinquished it in 1912 to head the Institute of Musical Art, now a part of the Juilliard School of Music. Brother Walter kept his programs consistently fresh and enterprising (even to the extent of sponsoring the first serious efforts of the upstart George Gershwin). But he was besieged by financial worries until 1914 when his friend Harry Harkness Flagler took over the Symphony's deficits, bore them single-handed until the merger with...
Berlin was only mildly amused by the haremish antics, wondered why in his many operas Handel had been so content to write in the set Italian mold. Berlin pointed to the genius of the man who had been able to compose an oratorio like the Messiah. But Chicago was more intent upon Xerxes because of a newcomer to opera-Author Thornton Niven Wilder, who had been persuaded to transcribe the archaic translation and to direct the production. He not only did that but also put himself in the chorus to sing a few notes. Wilder's part came...