Hallelujah! Handel’s oratorio still holiday highlight

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This article was published 12/12/2024 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Dec. 25 grows closer, so grows the urge to indulge in Christmas traditions.

And 283 years since it was written and first performed in 1741, not a holiday season has passed without a performance of Messiah by George Frideric Handel somewhere in the English-speaking world.

This year in Winnipeg is no different. After the success of the 2023 production, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra will present three performances of Handel’s Messiah at the Knox United Church tonight through Saturday.

According to guest conductor David Fallis, Handel’s famous oratorio has never gone out of the repertoire since the first performances in England, where the German-British composer wrote it in English.

There is a comfort for audiences to hear something they know in their own language since so many classical pieces, including many of Handel’s, are written in languages such as Italian, Fallis says.

“There’s nothing like coming back once a year to something familiar,” he says.

Based in Toronto, Fallis is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of operatic and choral-orchestral repertoire. Internationally, he has conducted at the Royal Opera House in Versailles, the Singapore Festival, the Glimmerglass Festival in New York and the Houston Grand Opera.

Fans of television series The Tudors and The Borgias will also recognize him as the historical music producer for both television series.

Fallis knows there will be audience members who will be experiencing Messiah, which he playfully refers to as “high-class Christmas carols” for the first time.

This production will include audience favourites such as the Hallelujah Chorus, but will not be the entire three-hours as written by Handel because today’s audiences just “don’t have the attention span,” Fallis says.

The work takes the audience on a journey through a range of feelings, said Fallis. There are the happy joyful ones, which he personally loves, as well as those that are comforting and tender.

And then there are the sections that evoke feelings of sorrow and shame, but the conclusion is bright and happy, which Fallis says we need more of these days.

“You look around the world and you think, ‘Oh, boy,’” he says.

Handel’s Messiah is is a cherished part of the holiday for so many of the WSO’s core audience, said Simeon Rusnak, now in his ninth week as director of classical programming.

Following a long-standing tradition of hiring local talent, baritone Matthew Pauls and mezzo soprano Ashley Schneberger are both based in Winnipeg. Soprano McKenzie Warriner and tenor Matt Chittick round out the soloists and are joined by the Canadian Mennonite University Festival Choir, directed by Dr. Janet Brenneman.

Although Handel wrote Messiah for the concert hall, Fallis says it is appropriate for the production to be held in Knox United Church, especially because of the “wonderful” acoustics in the sanctuary and the intimacy of the set up.

“It’s almost like a theatre, no one in the audience is that far away,” he says.

The piece may be timeless, but working with so many musicians still presents unique challenges, says Fallis.

“Sometimes they do things a little differently than what you might have expected,” he says. “The key is keeping your ear on things, listening to what they’re doing so you can keep everybody together.”

Fallis will indeed keep everyone together during the three sold out shows. And judging by its popularity, Winnipeg audiences should see Handel’s Messiah return next Christmas.

fparts@freepress.mb.ca