Opera Atelier presents ‘The Resurrection’ — ‘Messiah’ composer Handel’s other beautiful, biblical oratorio

Canada’s internationally renowned Opera Atelier is set to present a major new live-stage production of a masterwork by one of Western music’s best loved composers. But first, a little quiz.

The composer is George Frideric Handel. It’s an oratorio, a large-scale sung work with a biblical theme. Being Handel it’s full of achingly beautiful arias of emotional profundity and dramatic force. It was first performed on an Easter Sunday.

“Messiah,” you say? Well, it’s a forgivable mistake because that famous oratorio was first performed close to Easter, but we’re talking 1708, not 1742.

The German-born Handel had only recently turned 23 and was yet to settle in a new homeland, Britain, where he blossomed into the musical genius we remember today. The location was a sumptuous palace in Rome with Pope Clement XI in attendance, not the far less glamorous Neale’s Musick Hall where “Messiah” was first performed, on Fishamble Street, the former site of a stinky open-air market in Dublin.

What that 1708 audience in Rome experienced was Handel’s “La resurrezione” (“The Resurrection”), a compact oratorio of operatic potential that recounted with dramatic vividness the events that occurred in the three days following Christ’s crucifixion. None other than the influential composer/violinist Arcangelo Corelli led the sizable orchestra, and the libretto came from the quill of Carlo Sigismondo Capece, court poet to Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, exiled in Rome.

“The Resurrection” operates on two levels, one supernatural, the other earthly and real.

On one plane, appropriately elevated in longtime Opera Atelier designer Gerard Gauci’s double-staircase set, an angel refutes the post-crucifixion claim of Lucifer — a.k.a. Satan — to have won the battle of evil versus good. On an earthly plane, Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas lament the loss of their lord but are encouraged by John the Evangelist to trust Jesus’s word that he will return.

Meghan Lindsay, the Canadian soprano singing Magdalene, is struck by the immediacy of the drama. “It’s very direct in its delivery and concise storytelling. These are real humans in this story and it’s told as if it’s happening in real time.”

David Fallis, Opera Atelier’s longtime resident music director and conductor for “The Resurrection,” is unreserved in his admiration for Handel’s youthful masterpiece.

“The music is everywhere magnificently dramatic, whether capturing Lucifer’s boastful blustering, the angel’s glittering confidence, Mary Magdalene’s tender resistance to falling asleep or Saint John’s gentle but sure faith. It remains one of his most arresting scores — beautiful writing for the voice, extraordinary sonorities for the orchestra, all set in a dramatic context — Handel at his very best.”

“The Resurrection” was a breakthrough work in terms of Handel’s evolution as a composer yet, oddly, for all its virtuosic merits, it never established itself in the way “Messiah” did and is seldom performed.

Enter Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, co-founders of Toronto’s Opera Atelier, a company that, to quote its vision statement, specializes in “the rediscovery and revitalization of period opera and ballet, particularly works from the Baroque era.”

The husband-and-wife team — their marriage parallels Opera Atelier’s 38-year history — first became acquainted with Handel’s early masterwork in 1996 when French conductor Marc Minkowski asked them to direct and choreograph a semi-staged production at the Halle Festival, Halle being Handel’s 1685 birthplace. It lit the flame of a burning ambition, to present Canada’s first fully staged production.

As a director, Pynkoski recognized the way Handel had worked around what in 1708 Rome was a papal operatic ban to fashion his oratorio as an opera in disguise.

Zingg, whose choreography is a consistent hallmark of Opera Atelier’s productions, like her husband originally trained in dance. She has specialized in the research and practice of Baroque dance that characteristically was incorporated into operas of the period. Zingg explained that everything about the music and structure of the oratorio lends itself to the use of choreography as a storytelling medium, helping amplify the drama in a visually appealing and sensuous way.

In 1999, Opera Atelier presented a semi-staged production at St. Lawrence Centre’s Jane Mallett Theatre. Canadian tenor Colin Ainsworth, in his professional debut, was cast as John the Evangelist, a role he now reprises at Koerner Hall.

“It’s a gem of a piece,” said Ainsworth. “It’s just melody after melody.”

But for the pandemic, he might not have had the chance to revisit the role. By the time Opera Atelier was casting what was to have been an April 2020 premiere, Ainsworth was already booked elsewhere.

In March 2020, rehearsals were moving ahead smoothly. Meghan Lindsay who, like Ainsworth, made her professional debut with Opera Atelier — as Donna Anna in 2011’s “Don Giovanni” — remembers it well for very personal reasons. The first day of rehearsal Lindsay discovered she was pregnant. It might have caused her to withdraw from the show. Instead, the hiatus from live performance meant Lindsay could focus on being a first-time mom when her daughter was born that October.

Meanwhile, Pynkoski and Zingg were determined not to let “The Resurrection” slip from their grasp.

Noting how Toronto’s film and television industries had found ways to keep working while still conforming with public health mandates, they decided to film the production and hired experts to guide them through the jungle of government safety regulations. It meant recording the carefully spaced orchestra and singers — now with Ainsworth in the cast — in Koerner Hall and filming the physical production, incorporating Gauci’s designs and combining lip-synching singers with the dancers, in the suitably ornate setting of St. Lawrence Hall.

In the film, as now, the challenging coloratura Angel role is sung by Carla Huhtanen, Cleophas by mezzo soprano Allyson McHardy and the bombastic Lucifer by bass-baritone Douglas Williams.

The film was released for streaming in May 2021 with the firm intention to mount it live as soon as possible. Even as lockdowns eased and tentative bookings for live performance began to emerge, it was not until now that Opera Atelier could secure their desired venue of Koerner Hall. As Zingg pointed out, it was a felicitous coincidence that the available dates included Easter Sunday 2023 — 315 years after the work’s premiere on an Easter Sunday in Rome.

The foundation of Opera Atelier’s very distinct esthetic is the shared understanding that has developed among a group of artistic collaborators, including Tafelmusik players, who have worked together over many years.

“We function like a troupe, a real ensemble; not just singers but musicians and dancers too,” said Lindsay. “We’ve come to know each other so well. It’s a rare phenomenon, certainly in North America. It makes for a wonderful experience.”

“We all agree that the story takes precedence,” Pynkoski said. “Opera is complex. It’s frequently confusing and often sung in a language the audience doesn’t understand. We want to tell the story as clearly and succinctly as possible. We want to encourage people to come to the opera. They should not feel they have to be initiates or feel embarrassed because they don’t know what’s going on.”

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