Handel's Saul: 'How Excellent' (reprise) and 'Hallelujah Chorus' – Glyndebourne

Recorded at Glyndebourne Festival 2015.

Creative team:

Conductor: Ivor Bolton
Director: Barrie Kosky
Designer: Katrin Lea Tag
Choreographer: Otto Pichler
Lighting Designer: Joachim Klein
Assistant to the Choreographer: Silvano Marraffa

Cast includes:

Saul: Christopher Purves
David: Iestyn Davies
Merab: Lucy Crowe
Michal: Sophie Bevan
Jonathan: Paul Appleby
High Priest: Benjamin Hulett
Witch of Endor: John Graham-Hall

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
The Glyndebourne Chorus

[EVZYL]

Reminds me of the opening 'ceremony' of the Paris 'olympics.' Equally tasteless.

[yabbadabbajr]

HANDS DOWN, Handel's greatest oratorio, and quite possibly his greatest work. It has EVERYTHING: A psychological depth and complexity worthy of Shakespeare, a drama worthy of Wagner. In fact, I have to say that I could easily see this drama, with the characters renamed and the setting altered, transfigured into the Ring. (yes, I'm an inveterate Wagnerian...with a view that both Handel and Gluck were Wagner's 18th century antecedents.)
For me, this Glyndebourne production captures the essence of Handel's power and complexity as a man of psychological drama and a man of the theatre, seeing full well how he paced his oratorios in operatic terms without available staging. I've loved this Saul from the first day I sent eyes on it, and it's one of my most cherished items in my music collection. I would've given my left *bleep* to have been in that audience...no, even BETTER: to have been in that chorus!
(P.S.: I get the biggest kick out of that head of Goliath -- it's a dead ringer for Valery Gergiev! LOL ...I wonder who he pissed off in the Glyndebourne front office!)

[bertmenninga]

This is so gloriously over the top!!! 🤩

[ChaimEliyahu]

Oh MY! I have loved this oratorio for decades now — in fact, today at work, I think I may have embarrassed myself singing along with this very number as I took a stroll outside on my break…

But never have I imagined it staged like this: WOW!

[timvdhorst]

Brilliant!!! Out of the Box and refreshing!

[nikolairimsky-korsakov]

Amazing! the sense of perpetual movement that characterized the Baroque is here, pursuing David Alden's production of Ariodante and Nicholas Hytner's Xerxes touch.

[decouvertesculturelles]

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do

[Linds]

maybe this is like heaven. Or ...? hell (depending on where one is "coming from!"

[abyz]

don't really see the point of it; Handel said that the oratorio form was to be performed without costumes or action, but with the stage tastefully arranged, similar to the presentation of divine service; can't see the point of all the "acrobatics" & stuff [ well, actually, I can, but there's no point in going into it all. ] .

[petergeorgedirector]

So disappointing musically. Tiringly raucous, artless chorus. The gaudy spectacle is no compensation.