The steady 'mission creep' of the Operascotland website has long included concert and music theatre works that stretch the definition of the term 'opera' beyond its original bounds. Other works that are certainly dramatic, and employ singers of classical training, have thus far been excluded, perhaps unreasonably. We have now acceded to requests to include, for example, some works appearing in the current season of the RSNO. These include Mahler's glorious Lied von der Erde and Verdi's uniquely dramatic Messa da Requiem. If we include those, and other choral or vocal masterworks by Brahms, Elgar and others, then how can we exclude Messiah? The number of performances that must have occurred in Scotland over the decades is a daunting prospect for research, and we will take our time!
What better way to blow away those New Year cobwebs than Handel's Messiah led by one of today's greatest Handel specialists, Nicholas McGegan. He last conducted Messiah in Glasgow at New Year 2009, when Diana Moore was again the alto soloist.
The other singers had also appeared in Scotland before, though not with the RSNO. Soprano and tenor were previously seen with the Dunedin Consort, while William Berger worked regularly with that excellent Edinburgh team Ludus Baroque.
McGegan is long renowned as a Handel interpreter, though his only previous appearances in Scotland conducting one of that composer's stage works also came in 2009, when he brought a memorable German staging of Admeto to the Edinburgh Festival, as well as Messiah.
As expected, he projected much of the joyful liveliness of the Christmas sequences. The chorus was fully attentive to all of his instructions, singing with a wonderful sense of energy. Of any sense of routine with such long-term knowledge there was not a trace.
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