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Handel's 'Messiah' debuts at UGA on Saturday

The Athens Master Chorale will close out its 20th performance season Saturday with one of the most demanding and captivating works in all of choral music - Handel's "Messiah."

Founded in 1989 and directed ever since by Joseph Napoli, the 55-voice choir will present the debut performance of Handel's greatest accomplishment in Hodgson Hall at the University of Georgia Performing Arts Center.

"I asked the people at Hodgson Hall to do the research to see if 'Messiah' had ever been performed there," Napoli says. "And they said as far as they knew, our performance would be the debut, which is great. And Hodgson Hall is a great room to have it in. We'll have wonderful forces with our four soloists, the 55-member chorale and a 17-piece orchestra."

The chorale has been rehearsing the two-hour piece - which premiered in 1742 and was slightly different in each of the 36 times Handel himself presented the piece, says Napoli - since mid-September and previously shared "Messiah" with the community in 2002 at the Classic Center.

"We're adding four pieces we did not do at the Classic Center," Napoli says. "A lot of people do what they call the Christmas section, which is the first movement and the Hallelujah Chorus, but we're doing all of it, which makes it a little different."

Although folks generally think of the "Messiah" as being a Christmas work, Napoli is quick to point out that Handel's intention was that it be an Easter presentation.

"Having 'Messiah' as a Christmas work is sort of a modern-day phenomenon," he says. "Handel did all the performances in his lifetime during Easter and did all of them in theaters, like a concert. From the time he wrote it until the time he died, he did it 36 times and changed it almost every time, depending on the forces at hand."

Napoli will in



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