Got your sitz muscles on and your warm beer and cold pizza ready? Good, because today I have 2 and a half solid hours of Baroque Oratorio for you.
I told you to expect something completely different.
Most people associate Handel's Messiah with what I jocularly call ek'smas because I'm a stone cold atheist. My teacher was just a guy who had it all, rebeled against it, saw that that didn't quite cut it either, and spent the rest of his life under a tree teaching people how to get off the wheel until, at a ripe old age, he got off it himself.
No martyrdom. No expiation of your personal sins in the face of "divine justice". No resurrection.
Who craves that anyway? Isn't this life enough?
If not you'd better get off your ass and start living.
But I was raised a Methodist which in digest form is a very fundamentalist Christian Church that is considered mainstream, even liberal, because they did a lot of proselytizing among African-American slaves so they're incredibly active in social justice. There is also a large Latino component.
This strung me along for years in my urban church where I was active in the choir (and looking forward to duckpin bowling in advanced Sunday School which met in the alley in the basement) and annually played the most effeminate Herod you'd ever hope to see while I actively craved Pilate in our production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
I suppose natural first Tenors are not so easy to come by.
Here's a comparison-
Herod
Pilate
Perhaps they thought I couldn't handle the math.
If you can you might join me below the fold.
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