Word: oratorio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Lowell House opera productions get better each year. This time it's the American premiere of Handel's Semele--not really an opera at all, but a dramatized oratorio. Dramatically, the presentation may not be very exciting, but from a purely musical standpoint, it well deserved the ovation it received...
Transforming a good oratorio into a good opera is no easy task; co-directors Irving Yoskowitz and Ian Caden-head met with only partial success. There is very little action in this presentation, and not all of it can be blamed on the work itself. In Act III, the stage chorus has two long numbers in which it stands stationary, when it could just as easily be in motion. Also, there are a few awkward moments in Act I, when the stage is completely bare and the audience isn't sure whether or not there's more to come...
Written by the Restoration dramatist William Congreve and set by Handel in 1743, the work has since been converted into a secular oratorio, and excerpts from it are often heard. But the Musical Society's presentation of the operatic version will be the first such performance in this country...
Dello Joio: Psalm of David (Crane Orchestra and Chorus of the Potsdam (N.Y.) Teachers College, Helen M. Hosmer conducting; Concert Hall Society, 2 sides LP). Talented, 39-year-old Norman Dello Joio (TIME, May 22, 1950) describes this first oratorio as "a 20th century treatment of early French and Italian music." His treatment is skillful, freshly contemporary without being harsh or clashing, altogether distinctly beautiful. Performance and recording: good...
Shostakovich: Song of the Forests (Combined Choirs and State Orchestra of the U.S.S.R., Eugene Mravinsky conducting; Vanguard, 2 sides LP). This oratorio, composed in 1949, won back for Shostakovich the Kremlin favor he lost in 1948. The reason is evident in this first recording to reach the U.S. Strictly old shapka, it sounds more like Glinka in an off-moment than the dissonantly powerful Shostakovich of Symphony No. 5. The performance is rousing, the recording fair...