By Robert Croan
An overture representing Chaos, as dissonant and murky as anything written by the 20th-century’s 12-tone composers, settling quietly into three C minor triads.
Then, after a few words from a bass soloist representing the archangel Raphael, “there was light,” and the orchestra bursts into a magnificent C major fortissimo statement. And The Creation is on its way.
This is how composer Franz Joseph Haydn, in 1799, depicted what we now called the big bang, in this glorious oratorio that goes through the biblical first seven days and ends with Adam and Eve still happy in the Garden before the fall. It was the Enlightenment era, and this was still meant to be the best of all possible worlds.
Symphony of the Americas, under its new music director Luke Frazier, splendidly re-created Haydn’s Creation in Broward Center’s Amaturo Theater [seen March 23] with a chorus of 18 chosen from university students from several states, and three vocal soloists of high staying power. It was an exhilarating experience that would have been even more so had SOTA provided full texts, either projected or included in the printed program.
As it was, Frazier opted for what he called “expressive lighting,” with each number identified in a projection as recitative, aria or chorus and a fragment of its opening line. Haydn wrote his music to a German libretto, but the first performance in London was in English. The present performance used an updated translation by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, the scenario unfolding in narration by three archangels.
This is mostly in recitatives, which are crucial to the listener’s understanding. There are six virtuoso arias (two for each soloist) and nine choral numbers, as well as two exquisite duets for Adam and Eve in the work’s third and final section. Haydn was borrowing from the opera tradition of his time, as much as from oratorio. Think of Mozart in the period of The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni, integrated with Handelian fugues and Halleluiahs. The tune of the trio, “In fairest raiment,” in fact, is derived from Don Giovanni’s “La cì darem.”
Even though the performance was in English and the generally excellent soloists worked diligently to project the words — as did the laudable 18-voice choir — a bare minimum of the words was intelligible even from the best seats in the house, not nearly enough to make the story clear to anyone who didn’t know the work in advance.
That said, the music making itself was pure joy. Frazier made clear how much he loves this piece, not only in introductory comments, but in his careful shaping of the orchestral lines and choral phrases.
The 38-piece orchestra played expertly, from the shadowy textures of the Overture to the bright and brassy sounds in big choral numbers to the sweet woodwind sounds at the start of Part 3, and unexpected small details, such as the cellos’s and basses’s eerie accompaniment to the bass singer’s “Be fruitful, all, and multiply” arioso in Part 2.
The bass has the most to sing among the vocal soloists, from Archangel Raphael’s proclamation, “In the beginning” to the stirring aria, “Rolling in foaming billows,” and his enactment of Adam later on. Peter Barber’s straightforward delivery worked well, and allowed him to show off some impressive inserted low notes (down to a solid sustained low D).
Soprano Maureen McKay was the most technically polished among the soloists, tossing off expert runs and roulades in Archangel Gabriel’s two very appealing arias — “With verdure clad” and “On mighty wings” — joining Barber alluringly as Eve in the Garden of Eden scene. Tenor Christopher Leimgruber, with a rougher technique and less mature sound, projected Archangel Uriel’s words most clearly of all. He gave meaning to every word and fashioned his central aria, “In native worth” (depicting the creation of man — and woman) into a striking highlight.