It’s going to be an interesting week for classical music in Dallas.
If you’re tired of yet another Carmina Burana or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, this week promises quite a variety of programming — including performances by two groups new to the scene.
Handel’s Alcina American Baroque Opera Company
Although best known as the composer of Messiah, George Frideric Handel is increasingly esteemed as one of the great masters of opera. He was passionately devoted to the medium, and his operas combine probing human drama with, of course, marvelous music for both voices and orchestra.
The 1735 opera Alcina seems to be « in the air » these days: It was done last summer by Santa Fe Opera and opera programs at both Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas scheduled it this season. It’s a fanciful story of an island seductress who lures men, then discards them by turning them into rocks, waves and wild animals. The plot is thickened with concealed identity and misdirected infatuations, but all ends well.
The new Richardson-based American Baroque Opera Company, led by the excellent baroque cellist and gambist Eric Smith, will present three professional performances of Alcina next weekend, March 2-4, with period costumes and period instruments. Appearing in an intimate venue new to the area’s classical music scene, a repurposed church in Oak Cliff, the company draws on singers and instrumentalists who’ve worked with, among others, the Dallas Bach Society and Orchestra of New Spain.
In normal baroque fashion, the main male roles are scored for high voices; in the absence of castrati (don’t ask), they will be sung here by women in male drag, or, in one case, a countertenor. The cast includes Anna Fredericka Popova (Alcina), Nicholas Garza (Ruggiero), Jendi Tarde (Morgana), Hannah Ceniseros (Bradamante) and Tony Hughes (Oronte).
7:30 p.m. Friday, March 2 and Saturday, March 3 and 2:30 p.m. March 4 at Arts Mission Oak Cliff, 410 S. Windomere Ave. $35 and $50.214-493-3226, baroqueopera.org .
Beowulf for voice and harp Nasher Soundings
The Anglo-Saxon epic known as Beowulf comes from a tradition of harp-accompanied recitations. Maintaining its standing as the area’s most adventurous concert series, the Nasher Sculpture Center’s « Soundings » presents a modern interpretation, with singer and medieval music specialist Benjamin Bagby accompanying himself on a reconstruction of a six-string medieval harp.
7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 1 at Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora. $25; discounts for students, seniors and Nasher members. 214-242-5100, nashersculpturecenter.org .
Luminosity Orpheus Chamber Singers
Can music evoke visual sensations? Of course it can, and composers have often been drawn to aural suggestions of light.
The Orpheus Chamber Singers explore choral evocations of light by mainly contemporary composers: John Rutter (born 1945), Gabriel Jackson (1962), James Whitbourn (1963), Eric Whitacre (1970), Eriks Esenvalds (1977), Cheryl Frances-Hoad (1980) and Daniel Elder (1986). Artistic director Donald Krehbiel leads Dallas’ polished professional chamber choir in the program, with a bit of context from selections by the 16th-century Thomas Tallis and the turn-of-the-20th-century Sir Edward Elgar.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3 at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 6306 Kenwood. $25 and $40; discounts for students, seniors. 214-530-0018, orpheuschambersingers.org .
Consolation of Apollo Verdigris Ensemble
Innovative programming is a prime focus for the Verdigris Ensemble, a new professional chamber choir led by Sam Brukhman. With 16 singers for its next program, Verdigris is certainly living up to its credo.
The centerpiece of the program, to be given four times over the next two months, will be Consolation of Apollo, by Philadelphia composer Kile Smith. Thirty-five minutes long, it mingles transcripts from the Apollo astronauts’ 1968 Christmas Eve broadcast with texts from the 6th century philosopher Boethius. Works by Meredith Monk and Urmas Sisask will set the scene, the latter employing a scale based on the resonance frequencies of planets in the solar system.
7:30 p.m. Friday, March 2 at St. Andrew United Methodist Church, 5801 W. Plano Pkwy., Plano; 7 p.m. March 4 at Royal Lane Baptist Church, 6707 Royal Lane.; 7 p.m. April 14 at the University of Texas at Arlington Planetarium, 700 Planetarium Place, Arlington; and 7 p.m. April 27 at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, 2201 N. Field St. $25; discounts for students, teachers, seniors. verdigrismusic.org .
Formerly classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell continues covering the beat as a freelance writer. Classical music coverage at The News is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The News makes all editorial decisions.
