This weekend for the 156th consecutive year Boston's famed Handel and Haydn Society presented full performances of Handel's Messiah. The performances this year were conducted by the Society's new musical director (a figure well-known in the world of classical music) Harry Christophers.In his program note Christophers writes:

Messiah has become synonymous with Christmas and there is a danger that this tradition, some may say almost a ritual, can turn it into a warhorse, something you do by rote, the concert-going equivalent of attending midnight mass. The work deserves better than that.Messiah is not simply a collection of exquisite arias and brilliantly vivid choruses; my primary standpoint is one of drama, a drama that evolves from Advent through the passion of our Lord bursting into a jubilant finale of resurrection, ascension and the promise of final redemption.

There was nothing "rote" in Mr. Christophers' rendition, and the drama was palpable. But there was also something more -- perhaps signaled by his reference in the note to "our Lord." There was a mystagogic quality to this Messiah whose culmination was not the "Hallelujah Chorus," but the magnificent finale: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," followed by the transcendent "Amen." Here Handel almost attained the heights of Bach.

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a longtime Commonweal contributor.

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