NY Premiere Of MasterVoices' Israel In Egypt Comes to Carnegie Hall

A major highlight of MasterVoices' 77th season will take place on Wednesday, November 28 at 8 pm in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium when the ensemble's Artistic Director Ted Sperling leads the New York premiere of a multi-media version of Israel in Egypt, Handel's timely oratorio of exile and displacement, reflecting the biblical account of the heroic flight of Israelites enslaved in Pharaonic Egypt and their crossing the Red Sea. In collaboration with The Juilliard School, MasterVoices will feature soloists who are current students or alumni from the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, including sopranos Mikaela Bennett and Jessica Niles, countertenor John Holiday, baritone Gregory Feldmann and bass-baritone Erik Van Heyningen, as well as rising star tenor Andrew Stenson.

The program will also feature the New York Baroque Incorporated period instrument ensemble and Syrian Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad. Mourad will create a combination of pre-composed film and in-the-moment paintings that bring a personal perspective to the work's universal theme of displacement and the entrenched human instinct to return home. Commented the artist, "This story is very familiar to me because of my Armenian background. My ancestors were forced to leave their homes 100 years ago and were welcomed by Syrians. And now this has happened to the Syrians: almost half the population has been forced to leave their homes. The story of the Exodus is mirrored in the refugee crisis in the country of my birth, Syria, and many other countries around the world, where people are forced out of their homes due to violence and economic hardship. History is repeating itself, and the idea of finding a new home, the right to safety, is something that resonates with me, the descendant of refugees."

Kevork Mourad, a member of the Silk Road Ensemble as a visual artist, is known for making fantastical paintings in spontaneous collaboration with performing artists. His process for Israel in Egypt involves a technique of live painting that will be projected onto the walls of the concert hall, combined with animated sequences. This production was commissioned by Los Angeles Master Chorale, which premiered it in February 2018 at Walt Disney Hall. Mourad was also commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a performance to accompany their Armenia! exhibit. That performance, featuring world-class musicians and the music of Vache Sharafyan, will be shown November 2nd, 2018.

A short video with sketches and animation created by the artist for Israel in Egypt can be viewed by clicking here.

Tickets: Priced from $30 to $130. Tickets may be purchased online at carnegiehall.org, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800, or in person at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th and Seventh Avenue.

In 1739, an advertisement in the London newspapers announced: "Mr. Handel will entertain the Town with several Oratorios . . . two Organs being fitting up at the Opera-House in the Hay-Market for that purpose." Handel had enjoyed success in London with his Italian operas but the oratorios he was now offering were a relative novelty in that they were to be performed in English, born out of his shrewdness as an impresario who was running his own opera company in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

By the 1730s, the English taste for Italian opera was waning. Another challenge came from the church: ecclesiastical authorities banned the performance of any staged work during the entire season of Lent. Handel's opera company began to experience financial difficulties, and in 1737, it went bankrupt. But he had a theater to fill. He turned to another vocal art form he had encountered in Italy, the oratorio, a kind of drama, usually on a sacred subject, that was presented as a dialogue, without staging, costumes, or acting. With individualized characters and a story told in music, the oratorio offered many of the pleasures of opera.

Handel's three-part Israel in Egypt was first performed on April 4, 1739 at London's King Theatre. The libretto is believed to be by Charles Jennens, who would compile the biblical texts for the Messiah some three years later. His first English oratorios were very well received but Israel in Egypt was a failure and played only three performances. In 1740, it was revived briefly, amplified by solo arias from Handel's other works. Except for that, the work lay dormant during Handel's lifetime. In 1754, it was revived for a festival commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Handel's birth. In the following years, singing in amateur choral societies became an exceedingly popular activity among the Victorians, and Israel in Egypt was a favorite of these groups. The work became one of Handel's most popular non-Messiah oratorios. It was presented with a chorus of 4,000 at the Handel Festival in London's Crystal Garden in 1888. A few moments of this massive undertaking were captured on a wax cylinder. This clip is one of the oldest known recordings of the human voice.