I just don't see the appeal of a do-it-yourself Messiah concert. I seem to play more than my share of these this time of year, and while I'm grateful for the work, the performances themselves tend to be pretty awful. Do ordinary people really enjoy the challenge of trying to sing rapid mellismas? In four-part harmony?! Do they prefer just to listen to the orchestral accompaniment of the choruses, sans vocalists? Or are these concerts just an excuse for them to wear their finest holiday sweaters out on the town? It all seems a bit masochistic to me, yet these concerts have become time-honored traditions at many area churches, and people turn out in droves year after year.Don't get me wrong-- I like the idea of audience participation, especially during holiday concerts-- there's nothing like a rousing sing-a-long to get people in the Christmas spirit! But there's a big difference between a sing-a-long Messiah concert and the do-it-yourself numbers I usually wind up playing for.... namely, the budget. Sing-a-longs hire a choir or, at the very least, place professional ringers in the audience to help carry ticket holders through the lesser-known choruses. Many people bring their own scores to the performance, which suggests to me that they're at least familiar with the oratorio, while most do-it-yourself-ers take a score from a box on the back pew as they enter the church and hope for the best. I've participated in a sing-a-long Messiah before as an audience member, and it was great fun, but make no mistake--those choir parts are definitely not meant to be sung by the average church congregation. I think they're hard-- and I'm a musician! So, if you ever find yourself debating which of these concerts to attend, ALWAYS go for the sing-a-long-- it's worth the price of admission, people! And this is why....
The gig I played in the uppity North Shore today should, for all intensive purposes, have been fantastic. I was playing with some of the most prolific freelancers in the area, and the soloists were all professional opera singers. The school auditorium wasn't packed, but there were a respectable number of people in attendance. I found it odd that the program advertised the concert as a "rendering" of Handel's Messiah; I didn't know what that meant, and it never occured to me to ask. The only trepidation I had was that we were performing the entire oratorio, and not just the Christmas portion, which makes for a looooong afternoon.
The overture was lush and beautiful, and the tenor's opening recitative and aria were superb... then things slowly began to go downhill. Once "Ev'ry Valley" had been "Exalted", the ad-hoc chorus rose to sing "And the Glory of the Lord". The lights weren't up in the auditorium, and the audience wasn't seated according to voice type, so people were sight reading in the dark and without the safety of being surrounded by unison voices. While it wasn't terrible, it certainly wasn't good. The next chorus, "And He Shall Purify", has a very difficult bass part that continues through much of the piece. The audience was all but silent. It was so bad that the soloists began singing along, which they felt compelled to do throughout much of the next three hours.
"For Unto Us a Child is Born", the second most familiar chorus in the piece, offered the soloists a brief reprieve. As we trudged on toward Part the Second, I became increasingly distracted by a squeaking, creaking noise behind me. It sounded like the brass players were really fidgety (not that I blamed them-- they don't play much at all), and the risers upon which they were sitting were groaning in protest. I turned around during an aria in which I was tacet and, to my horror, saw an interpretive painter at the back of the stage. Dressed in a pair of white, paint-splattered overalls and standing on some rickety-looking scaffolding, this artist was theatrically offering his "rendering" of the afternoon's festivities. With a flourish, he scrawled "King of Kings" and "Prince of Peace" and the like onto a large canvas sheet, which served as a makeshift backdrop to the orchestra, using a large, pretentious calligraphy.
The audience (thankfully) managed not to giggle during "All We Like Sheep", and continued to dutifully muddle through the increasingly obscure choruses. I really think that the only reason they came back after intermission was because the "Hallelujah Chorus" had been moved to the end of the concert-- that's the only reason most people come to these things, anyway! By the time we reached Part the Third, the chorus was practically nonexistent.
Fifty-two numbers and nearly three hours later, we finally get to the "Hallelujah Chorus". The audience suddenly came back to life and, for the first time all day, I heard people singing en masse. Just as I was thinking that this would be a nice ending to an otherwise long and painful performance, the stage crew turned a spotlight toward the ceiling and activated the dusty disco ball that dangled down from the ceiling. It was, well, garish. I was so stunned that I stopped playing altogether, gaping instead at the little squares of light reflecting off the audience and the auditorium walls. It was unprecedented, and frankly, a little sacrilegious. I've never seen anything like it before, and never hope to again. We got a rousing (albeit obligatory) standing ovation, though (that's why the "Hallelujah Chorus" is usually performed last) and amazingly, people were still willing to mill around afterward and enjoy a reception held out in the lobby. I for one couldn't get out of there soon enough-- let's hope next week's Messiah concert goes better than this; I don't think it could be any worse!
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