Copyright 2001 by Edward Willett

One of the most dramatic choral works ever written will be performed in Regina next week when the Regina Philharmonic Chorus presents Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah.

Featuring bass Daniel Lichti as the prophet Elijah, along with soprano Joanne Kolomyjec, mezzo-soprano Michelle Sutton, tenor Michael Colvin, the Elizabethan Singers and Regina Symphony Orchestra, the April 28 performance at the Centre of the Arts is a much larger-scale concert than the chorus's typical spring offering--which is why ticket prices are a bit higher than usual, at $25 for adults and $15 for seniors and students. (Children 12 and under get in free.) Tickets are available at CBOs or from chorus members.

That's the basic information about the concert. But what really interests me in this performance (and yes, I'll be there) is the music. Just what is an oratorio? And what's so special about Elijah?

The forerunner of the oratorio was Emilio del Cavaliere's 1600 sacred opera La rappresentazione di anima e di corpo, which applied the techniques of opera (itself a new art form at the time) to the Italian mystery play, a dramatization of sacred stories. The work was performed in a building called an oratory, one of many built by St. Philip Neri.

By 1640 the term "oratorio" had become the name of a certain type of composition, rather than the place where it was performed. Oratorio evolved considerably in the centuries that followed. Great oratorio composers included Giacomo Carissimi and Alessandro Scarlatti of Italy, Henrich Schütz, J. S. Bach and Handel in Germany, and Haydn.

Although he was German, Handel inaugurated the English oratorio; his The Messiah is still the best-known, a perennial favorite at Christmas (under Victor Sawa, the Regina Symphony Orchestra has begun performing The Messiah annually at Christmas as part of its Baroque series, using various local choirs).

The oratorio became extremely popular in England in the Victorian era, when concert halls were being built all over the country to provide moral and social improvement for the middle and working classes. The oratorios were perfect for those halls: they were accompanied choral works that provided the dramatic excitement of opera without the messy, awkward business of moving people around on stage. Even better, they could be looked upon as a form of moral improvement, since they were almost exclusively based on religious texts.

Elijah was intended to be the second work of a trilogy of Biblical oratorios. The first, St. Paul, premiered in 1836. In 1837, Mendelssohn conducted a performance of it at the triennial Birmingham Music Festival. That work was so successful than the festival voted to commission a new oratorio from Mendelssohn for 1846.

Mendelssohn came from a Jewish family that converted to Christianity, and from both his Jewish and Christian backgrounds he would have been familiar with the story of Elijah, a prophet who was often at odds with the people of Israel and its King. That conflict is at the heart of the oratorio, and gives it its dramatic power.

The libretto was written in German by Julius Schubring, a German theologian and friend of Mendelssohn's. Mendelssohn set the German text, then had it translated into English by William Bartholomew. As a result, it's probably not surprising there's occasional awkwardness in the way text and music mesh.

Nevertheless, the premiere performance on August 26, 1846, was a huge success. Mendelssohn conducted a 271-voice choir and 125-piece orchestra in the Birmingham Town Hall, and according to the London Times, "Never was there a more complete triumph--never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art." Mendelssohn himself wrote to his brother, "never before has a piece of mine gone so splendidly at the first performance, and been received so enthusiastically by the musicians and the listeners."

In December, Mendelssohn revised the score, then in April of 1847 he returned to England to conduct six performances in London (where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attended), Manchester and Birmingham. But the strenuous trip took its toll on Mendelssohn. Just six months later he died at the age of 38, making Elijah his last major work he completed, and leaving us to wonder what he had in mind for Christus, which was to have completed his trio of oratorios.

Within a century, Mendelssohn's star seemed to have dimmed. English musicologist Gerald Abraham wrote in 1938 that Elijah sounded "uncommonly like opera gone wrong." But Abraham and other critics are long-gone, and Mendelssohn's music remains: in England, only The Messiah is more popular.

More than a century and a half after it brought the crowd to its feet in Birmingham, Elijah is coming to Regina. It should be a concert to remember.

Posted September 22, 2004