Join Waterbury Symphony Orchestra Cultural Ambassador Dr. Vincent de Luise for a fascinating talk on the vocal and orchestral masterpiece that is Handel’s Messiah. The talk will include images of Handel and his world, as well as video excerpts from the Messiah.
Handel’s glorious and majestic Messiah is one of the most well-known pieces of music in the western Canon. At once an oratorio and a sacred opera, Messiah was premiered in 1742 and is still going strong today, over 275 years later, with dozens of performances around the world every year. Dr. de Luise will talk about Handel’s favorite composition of the hundreds that he wrote.
You'll learn the backstory of the Messiah, the purpose that Handel composed this piece and even why audiences stand for the Hallelujah Chorus in the middle of the work! One of the many other interesting aspects of the Messiah is that Handel foresaw that it would be very popular. He purposely crafted a spare orchestral part, correctly thinking that future composers would tinker with the orchestration.
Dr Vincent de Luise M.D. is an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Yale University School of Medicine and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine. He is also the Cultural Ambassador and a program annotator of the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, and is also on the advisory board of the Weill Cornell Medical College Orchestra. Dr de Luise is a founder and president of the Woodbury-based Connecticut Summer Opera Foundation (CSOF), which is a founding arts organization of the Arts Alliance of Woodbury. He is also active as a clarinetist, performing with professional pianists and string quartets in chamber music recitals in the area. Dr. de Luise has also written articles on the lives and medical histories of Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel and Mozart and Beethoven.
His article, “The Eyes of Handel and Bach,” can be found here: https://hekint.org/2017/01/30/a-musical-vision-the-eyes-of-bach-and-handel/
Date:
Tuesday Dec 6, 2022
Time:
6:30 PM
Location:
Library Gallery Space
There are 8 spaces available.
Original source can be found here.
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