Handel's MESSIAH

from Handel's Messiah

by Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Thursday, December 16, 2021 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, December 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm

Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, Cheryl Frazes Hill, director

Alisa Jordheim, soprano

Ginger Costa-Jackson, mezzo-soprano

David Portillo, tenor

Ethan Vincent, baritone

PROGRAM

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL / Messiah, HWV 56

PART I

1. Sinfonia

2. Arioso (Tenor): Comfort ye my people

3. Aria (Tenor): Ev’ry valley shall be exalted

4. Chorus: And the glory of the Lord

5. Recitative (Baritone): Thus saith the Lord

6. Aria (Mezzo): But who may abide the day of his coming?

7. Chorus: And he shall purify Recitative (Mezzo): Behold, a virgin shall conceive

8. Air and Chorus (Mezzo): O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion

9. Arioso (Baritone): For behold, darkness shall cover the earth

10. Air (Baritone): The people that walked in darkness

11. Chorus: For unto us a child is born

12. Pifa (Pastoral Symphony) Recitative (Soprano): There were shepherds abiding in the field

13. Arioso (Soprano): And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them Recitative (Soprano): And the angel said unto them

14. Arioso (Soprano): And suddenly there was with the angel

15. Chorus: Glory to God in the highest

16. Air (Soprano): Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion

18. Chorus: His yoke is easy, and his burthen is light

INTERMISSION

PART II

19. Chorus: Behold the Lamb of God

20. Air (Mezzo): He was despised and rejected of men

21. Chorus: Surely he hath borne our griefs

22. Chorus: And with his stripes we are healed

23. Chorus: All we like sheep have gone astray

24. Arioso (Tenor): All they that see him laugh him to scorn

25. Chorus: He trusted in God that he would deliver him

26. Recitative (Tenor): Thy rebuke hath broken his heart

27. Arioso (Tenor): Behold, and see if there be any sorrow

28. Recitative (Tenor): He was cut off out of the land of the living

29. Air (Tenor): But thou didst not leave his soul in hell

30. Chorus: Lift up your heads, O ye gates

33. Chorus: The Lord gave the word

34. Air (Soprano): How beautiful are the feet

35. Arioso and Chorus (Chorus): Their sound is gone out

36. Air (Baritone): Why do the nations so furiously rage together

37. Chorus: Let us break their bonds asunder Recitative (Tenor): He that dwelleth in heaven

38. Air (Tenor): Thou shalt break them

39. Chorus: Hallelujah

PART III

40. Air (Soprano): I know that my Redeemer liveth

41. Chorus: Since by man came death

42. Recitative (Baritone): Behold, I tell you a mystery

43. Air (Baritone): The trumpet shall sound

47. Chorus: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.

The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra can be heard on Telarc, Koss Classics, Pro Arte, AVIE, and Vox/Turnabout recordings. MSO Classics recordings (digital only) available on iTunes and at mso.org. MSO Binaural recordings (digital only) available at mso.org.

Guest Artist Biographies

ALISA JORDHEIM, soprano

Lauded by the San Francisco Chronicle as “vocally resplendent” and possessing “impeccable coloratura,” in the 2021.22 season, soprano Alisa Jordheim returns to the role of Gilda in Rigoletto with Central City Opera, sings her first performances of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with Virginia Opera, First Maid in Der Zwerg with the Enescu Festival, Despina in Cosi fan tutte with San Diego Opera, and returns in concert to the New Philharmonic. Recent credits include: 1st Knappe in Parsifal (Paris Opera); Clothilde in Pacini’s Maria, regina d’Inghilterra (Odyssey Opera); Hannah in The Merry Widow (New Philharmonic); Gilda in Rigoletto (San Diego Opera); Ninetta in Rossini’s La gazza ladra (Teatro Nuovo); Cunegonde in Candide (Palm Beach Opera); Venus in Venus and Adonis, Belinda in Dido and Aeneas, Lola in Aldridge’s Sister Carrie (Florentine Opera); Marzelline in Fidelio (Madison Opera); Satirino in La Calisto (Cincinnati Opera); and Constance in Dialogues des Carmélites (Caramoor Festival). Her recent concert credits include: Rossini’s Stabat Mater (Bach Collegium San Diego); a concert of Rachmaninoff and Gershwin (Bochumer Symphoniker); Mozart’s Exultate, jubilate (Milwaukee Symphony); Mozart’s Mass in C minor (Bel Canto Chorus); Torke’s Book of Proverbs (Grant Park Music Festival); Otto Bull’s Letters from Ruth (New York Opera Society); Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s Insanae et vanae curae (Ensemble Pygmalion); Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (Las Vegas Philharmonic); Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (Madison Symphony Orchestra); Handel’s Messiah and Bestienne in Bastien und Bestienne (Milwaukee Symphony); and Bach’s Cantata No. 29 (Dayton Philharmonic). Jordheim is the 2016 Rose Bampton Award winner by The William Matheus Sullivan Musical Foundation, and an American Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and US Student Fulbright Foundation recipient.

GINGER COSTA-JACKSON, mezzo-soprano

Ginger Costa-Jackson is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and a Samling Scholar. In recent years at the MET, she has debuted the role of Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Lola in Cavelleria rusticana and Smeton in Anna Bolena. Other notable recent debuts include Despina in Cosi fan tutte with L’Opera National de Paris conducted by Philippe Jordan (which she reprised in 2020), and the title role of Carmen with San Diego Opera, San Francisco Opera, and at the New National Theater in Tokyo. She performed Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte with Seattle Opera (alongside her sister Marina Costa Jackson as Fiordiligi), and Maddalena in Rigoletto with LA Opera. 2019.20 engagements included Dorabella and Cherubino in new production of the Mozart /Da Ponte operas for her debut with La Monnaie, Donna Elvira at La Coruna Festival, a return to Seattle Opera for Angelina in La Cenerentola, and as Musetta in La bohème, and a return to L’Opera de Paris for Despina. The 2020.21 season included her return to Liceu Opera Barcelona as Giulietta in Tales of Hoffmann. Engagements in future seasons include Dorabella/Cherubino with the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Musetta in La bohème with Seattle Opera, Donna Elvira at Teatro Petruzelli in Bari, and her debut with the prestigious Grange Park Opera.

DAVID PORTILLO, tenor

Praised by Opera News for “singing with a luxuriant warm glow that seduced the ear,” American tenor David Portillo has established himself as a leading classical singer of his generation. In the 2021.2022 season, Portillo performs Lurcanio in Handel’s Ariodante with the Palau des les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Opéra de Lille, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte with Pittsburgh Opera, and Henry Morosus in Strauss’ Die schweigsame Frau with Bard SummerScape. He also gives solo recitals at both Vocal Arts, D.C. and the Collaborative Arts Instititute of Chicago with pianist Craig Terry. Career operatic highlights include performances at the Metropolitan Opera as Steuermann in Der fliegende Holländer, the Chevalier de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, and Eduardo in Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, among others; at Lyric Opera of Chicago as Arbace in Idomeneo and David in Die Meistersinger; and at Houston Grand Opera as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte and Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia. In concert, Portillo has performed Mozart’s Requiem with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, under the baton of Maestro Gustavo Dudamel; Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the Phoenix Symphony; and as Tebaldo in concert performances of I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Washington Concert Opera. An alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera in Vienna, Virginia, Portillo grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

ETHAN VINCENT, baritone

This season, American baritone Ethan Vincent has a calendar filled with role and house debuts including Riolobo in Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas at Lyric Opera of Chicago conducted by Jordan de Souza; singing Don Fernando in Fidelio with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel with direction by Alberto Arvelo and Joaquín Solano; and portraying Schaunard in La bohème with Cincinnati Opera to close the season. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, he has recently been seen singing the role of Captain and covering the title role of Eugene Onegin in his house debut at the Santa Fe Opera conducted by Nicholas Carter and directed by Alessandro Talevi; singing Juano in West Side Story with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; making his company debut as Marcello in La bohème at the National Performing Arts Center, Taiwan; and premiering the first performances of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking in Chicago as Joseph De Rocher. Other career highlights are Belcore/L’elisir d’amore at Indianapolis Opera; Behike/Hatuey: A Memory of Fire (North American premiere); and covering the title role in Rigoletto at Tulsa Opera. As a Resident Artist at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Vincent portrayed title roles in Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Rubenstein’s The Demon, and Gianni Schicchi, as well as Count di Luna/Il trovatore, Albert/Werther, and Guglielmo/Così fan tutte. He made his film debut alongside Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe in the featured role of César in Bel Canto, based on the novel by Ann Patchett and directed by Paul Weitz. Vincent holds both a B.A. and M.A. in voice performance from Northwestern University.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

George Frideric Handel

Born 23 February 1685; Halle, Germany

Died 14 April 1759; London, England

Messiah, HWV 56

First performance: 13 April 1742; Dublin, Ireland

Last MSO performance: December 2019; Douglas Boyd, conductor; Mireille Asselin, soprano; Sofia Selowsky, mezzo soprano; James Way, tenor; Christòpheren Nomura, baritone

Instrumentation: 2 oboes; bassoon; 2 trumpets; timpani; harpsichord; organ; strings

Approximate duration: 2 hours, 5 minutes

In a manic white heat, the 56-year-old Handel composed his beloved, best-known work in just over three weeks: Messiah was written between 22 August and 14 September 1741. Despite the appropriation and adaptation of music written earlier – most notably, several Italian love duets from July 1741 – the feat remains a miracle in the history of Western music. The master himself led the Dublin premiere the following spring. The proceeds went to several worthy causes, including the Charitable Musical Society for the Relief of Imprisoned Debtors. To this very day, Messiah continues to impact the social and cultural fabric of society.

When he penned Messiah, Handel had been a part of London musical life for some 30 years, mainly as a composer of Italian opera. With the growth of the middle class, that genre started to fall into disfavor, a clear sign of opposition to the nobility, its principal patrons. Handel – a German in England creating stage works in Italian – then began also to write oratorios in English. Success came, though not immediately, with Messiah.

Among Handel’s oratorios, Messiah is an anomaly: 1) There are no characters such as one finds in, say, Sampson or Saul or Solomon; 2) There is no plot in the ordinary sense; in other words, Messiah is not a sequence of scenes from the life of Jesus linked together to form a dramatic whole; 3) The words are taken entirely from the Bible, a characteristic shared only with Israel in Egypt (1739).

The Scripture selections, compiled by art collector and music patron Charles Jennens (17001773), are divided into three parts. • Part I: The coming of the Messiah is foretold by the prophets and brought to fruition in the birth of Jesus. • Part II: Humanity is redeemed by Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. • Part III: The power of death is destroyed by Christ’s mighty resurrection.

In Messiah, Handel uniquely fuses several musical traditions: Italian opera, the English anthem, and the German passion. He gleans the fruits of a lifetime’s musical experience, writing masterfully for the soloists and orchestra. But arguably it is the astonishing power and variety of the choruses that raise the work to a higher level altogether. A man of the theatre, Handel knew how to lay hold on the dramatic potential of a given text, cogently pointing up its significance.

Nearly 280 years after its first performance, Messiah remains one of the greatest oratorios of all time, an icon in the history of European music. Its ability to speak to millions of people – regardless of culture or creed – remains forever undiminished.