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Good Friday 2023 Festival Choir: G.F. Handel’s “Brockes Passion”
April 7, 2023 @ 19:30 - 22:00
Available online on-demand until June 7, 2023. Including a pre-concert talk with Jonathan Oldengarm, and organ prelude (Bach’s Sei gegrüßet, BWV 768).
The Metropolitan Festival Choir and Baroque Orchestra (Jonathan Oldengarm, direction and continuo) present Handel’s rarely-heard Brockes Passion on Good Friday, April 7, 2023. Soloists include Michael Colvin, Evangelist; Geoffrey Sirett, Jesus; Jacqueline Woodley, Tochter Zion; Robert Kinar, Petrus; and soliloquents Jane Fingler, Gisele Kulak, Veronika Anissimova, Michelle Simmons (Judas), Charles Davidson, Nicholas Higgs, and John Pepper. The Met Festival Choir will be joined this year by a period instrument ensemble (Cristina Zacharias, Concertmaster, and members of Tafelmusik). In good historical-performance style, Wayne C. Vance Organ Scholar Joshua Duncan Lee will play continuo on the church organ; Jonathan Oldengarm conducts and plays recit and aria continuo.
Composed sometime between 1715 and 1719 while Handel was living in London, this work is a setting of vivid Passion libretto penned by Handel’s law school classmate Barthold Heinrich Brockes. It is distinct from e.g. the Bach Passions in that it is a purely poetic telling of the story, rather than a faithful recitation of the scriptural text. As such, it was banned from liturgical use at the time, and could only be presented in concert. Georg Philipp Telemann (who, along with Reinhold Keiser and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, also set the text), performed all four settings in four-night marathons for several years, beginning in 1719 in Hamburg.
A vivid, passionate account of the most dramatic week in the Christian liturgical year that is often cited, yet rarely sung. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience another Handel masterwork, written in a style that forms a marked contrast with Messiah.
A few pictures:
