Monday, November 28, 2011

Staging Messiah?

Apparently the Pittsburgh Symphony will do just about anything to get a crowd into Heinz Hall: now they're turning Handel's Messiah into an opera.  The most revealing note in the descriptive article about the event?  Conductor Manfred Honeck, while admittedly has led "enhanced" versions of the Requiem masses of both Mozart and Verdi, has never conducted Messiah!

I'm still trying to get a handle (no pun intended) on such a cursory knowledge of the repertoire.  How does one rise to the podium of one of America's great orchestras without conducting a work I first led in an ad hoc performance in my early 20s?

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