ENO plans Messiah with twice as many soloists
mainEnglish National Opera is planning a BBC2 Messiah for Easter. Singers, chorus and orchestra will be socially distanced across the stage and auditorium, but there will be twice as many soloists as we’d expect:
ENO will return to the custom of performances in Handel’s lifetime, using a broader spectrum of solo voices than the usual four, featuring instead a bigger cast of eight outstanding soloists. Established, celebrated stars of the operatic world such as mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and countertenor Iestyn Davies, join the exciting new talents of current and former ENO Harewood Artists – sopranos Nadine Benjamin and Nardus Williams, tenors Anthony Gregory and John Findon, baritone Benson Wilson and bass William Thomas.
Who gets which aria?
pic: Messiah from Scratch, 2014
sounds like a bun fight at the ENO for the best tunes
If this is as powerful and moving as ENO’s performance of the Mozart Requiem, we are in for a treat this Easter
No one is commenting the fact that they are condensing all the music into one hour?
How large will the chorus and orchestra be? Please tell us it won’t be a cast of thousands production.
They staged this in December 2008 or 2009 and it was excellent. Having something at all to mark Holy Week and Easter on the BBC television these days makes a very big change. Usually it gets ignored or marked by some token gesture for many years at either 7am or 11pm, incase of being seen as a Christian broadcaster!