An oratorio is a complex musical arrangement intended to be performed as a concert: little-to-no theatrical staging is attempted. In contrast, an opera is intended to be performed as a theatrical production emphasizing staging, characters, and spectacle....
For heedless unbelievers (especially those like the scribes and Pharisees, who use external righteousness as a mask for unrighteous hearts), the elder brother is a reminder that neither a show of religion nor the pretense of respectability is a valid substitute for redemption. For all of us, ...
The music for this popular carol is thought to have been adapted by Lowell Mason, an American church musician, from some of the phrases used in parts of George Frederick Handel’s beloved oratorio. As of the late 20th century, “Joy to the World” was the most-published Christmas hymn in...
between imported performers and elaborate production, had become prohibitively costly to stage) the composer had pioneered the English language oratorio – a kind of concert-style opera requiring neither special costuming or scenery.
It is followed by a playful, brief scherzo-like movement followed by a lovely, sometimes mournful adagio and a truly fun last movement deriving inspiration from tango music but still firmly ensconced in classical traditions going back to the classical era of Mozart and Haydn. ...
Daniel Andreoli: It seems like an eternity, but when the theater curtain was drawn, I felt like the same boy as the first time that I stepped onto a stage.The last eight years, since I turned sixty, life has been giving me the reward of having kept my dreams intact, since I met th...
The Tree of Life representing triumph is in the center, and we observe this scene as we listen to the aria “Erbarme Dich” (Have Mercy) from Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthew’s Passion. Tarkovski deliberately wants us to stop and listen. Throughout the movie we will be enveloped in...
but those from a variety of cultural/musical backgrounds. Peter says of their approach "I like the think that we have a diverse and inclusive approach that is embedded, not just in our membership, but in the very musical practices – which allow for the chemistry of difference, as much as...
The World Imaginedisa 45-minute oratorio which the Festival brochure describes as ‘an ecstatic contemplation of creation and humankind’s small place in an infinite cosmos’. I asked Gabriel how he had come up with such an ambitious concept: is this a work ...