The Messiah - for the children

March 30, 2008

Posted in: Family, Music

Tags: adult, America, bonus, brother, choral, conductor, etiquette, Hallelujah, Handel, Language, Loralee, matinée, Messiah, neighbor, opportunity, piece, production, Saturday, spanish, teacher, translation

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to watch The Messiah. Yep, Handel’s Messiah. I had never been to a production of it and really had no idea what it was about.

Was I in for a treat!

Let me give a slight bit of background and context. This was a matinée, it was suppose to be shorter. It turned out that there was a lot of younger visitors. So because of that, one of the conductor’s sons sang the base part - he also happens to be my oldest son’s art teacher (the other brother is in our church). Also, the conductor dressed up as Handel (no one seemed to know he was going to do that). We also were treated to a spanish translation along with, and I think this was the best part, a performance for the hearing impaired.

The entire production lasted about 2 hours, and my oldest (he was the only one old enough to come) wasn’t happy. He thought it was going to be a play, and sadly he missed what I thought was the best piece - I’ll explain in a bit.

My mom was in the chorus, and I only got to see her because during the Hallelujah chrous where we were taught by the conductor that it was custom to do so. She was all the way on the back row.

It was pretty nice, even as an adult to learn about The Messiah, and they broke each part by teaching the audience some background and even some etiquette about a choral production.

Another bonus was watching a neighbor of mine. Loralee aka loraleeslooneytunes sang the alto portion (I think it was split between her and another person). For some reason, I never put it together that an alto is not a soprano. So when she started singing I was a bit thrown at how deep she started. But she did a great job. In fact they all did a great job.

Now on to my most favorite thing about the whole production. The hearing impaired performance. The whole reason for the volunteers to put this production on was for a hearing charity, but nonetheless it was AWESOME! They conveyed the emotion of the music in their translation to America Sign Language. English, may not be the most lovely language out there, but man you convert it over to sign language and add facial expressions and all the sudden it’s all there. You could totally feel the power behind the music with how they performed each part.

It was truly a great performance! Even a non-cultured galoot like me found enjoyment and even managed to learn a few things (don’t clap until the conductor steps down from his podium).

Posted in Family, Music