Tickets are now available for an Open Rehearsal of the Handel/Glee concert on Wed, May 17 at 8 pm

Handel Society of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth College Glee Club

Performance

Spring 2023

Handel Society & Glee Club

May 17 - 18, 2023

This event occurred as part of the 22/23 Hop Ensemble season. This is an archived view.

The choirs join forces with soloists, orchestra and organ to present Requiem masses by French composers Fauré and Duruflé.

22/23 Hop Ensemble

The Hop Presents

Dartmouth College Glee Club and Handel Society of Dartmouth College
Filippo Ciabatti, conductor
and
Erma Mellinger, assistant conductor and vocal coach

With soloists
Jennifer Bates, soprano
Sophie Michaux, mezzo-soprano
Harrison Hintzsche, baritone

Thursday, May 18, 8 pm
Rollins Chapel • Dartmouth College • 2023

Handel Society of Dartmouth College is generously supported by the Gordon Russell 1955 Fund and the Friends of the Handel Society.

Dartmouth College Glee Club is generously supported by the Glick Family Student Ensemble Fund, the Leo J. Malavasic 1942 Memorial Fund, the Isaacs Family Fund, the Bruce F. Bundy 1916 Memorial Fund, the Susan J. Marshall 1980 Memorial Fund, the David P. Smith 1935 Fund, the Student Ensembles Fund, the Paul R. Zeller Glee Club Fund and Friends of the Glee Club.

Dartmouth College Glee Club

Filippo Ciabatti, director

Soprano
Jennifer Bates GA
Breanna Boland ’23 *
Camila Parias
Eugenia Braasch
Mikaela Browning ’26
Kathleen Caldwell
Susan Cancio-Bello +
Katina Christensen ’25
Melissa Dillier
Mary Gerbi GA
Julianne Harden
Kendall Hoyt
Jackie Kalan T’23
Elizabeth Keeley
Sonia Meytin ’26
Dawna Neron
Donna Ron
Gerri Smith
Janet Stone GA

Alto
Carol Barr
Alice Bennett
Lynda Butler
Elizabeth Eschen Cacciola GA
Kate Chamberlin
Katharine Christie
Susannah Clark
Ora Cullen ’24
Shelby Dufton ’24
Anne Felde +
Linda Fowler
Anna Gado ’90
Gisella Hart
Melissa Herman
Mardy High
Alicia Hodges
Erika Ko
Patty Ko
Rebecca Maggi
Sophie Michaux GA
Cathleen Morrow
Rosemary Orgren
Jules Reed ’23
Jo Shute
Chelsea Tyler
Ulrike G. K. Wegst

Tenor
Jairo Cabrera-Najarro ’25
Brian Clancy +
Scot Drysdale
Stephen Dunn
Jon Felde
Edward Felstead
Thaddeus Goratowski ’23
Sam Halfpenny ’26
Marcus Huber GA
Gregert Johnson
Joel Lazar
Nicolas Macri ’24
Robert Maurer
Rick Read
Ashton Todd
Samuel Xiong ’24

Bass
Wynter Alford ’22 *
Victor Balbino ’24
Gregory Bazylewicz
Samuel Bonasso ’24
William Braasch
Jacob Cooper GA
James Demler GA
Matthew Dempsey ’23
Tyler Harwell
Paul Hecht
Harrison Hintzsche GA
Vincent Lohmann GR
David Rugger GA
Christopher Smith ’25
David Thron
Jack Van Hoff
Allan Wieman

* denotes Student Manager
+ denotes Section Leader
GR denotes Graduate Student
GA denotes Guest Artist

Handel Society of Dartmouth College

Filippo Ciabatti, conductor
Erma Mellinger, assistant conductor and vocal coach

Violin I
Megumi Stohs Lewis, concertmaster
Kathy Andrew
Marcia Cassidy F

Violin II
Emily Dahl Irons, principal
Leah Zelnick
Justin Ouellet

Viola
Caitlin Lynch, principal
Noriko Futagami
Emily Rideout
Leslie Sonder F

Cello
Tyler James, principal
Jing Li
Megan Koch
Velleda Miragias

Double bass
Nick Browne F, principal
Paul Horak TH ‘94

Horn
Barbara Hill, principal
Logan Fischer

Harp
Amanda Romano, principal

Organ
Manuel Piazza, principal

F = Dartmouth faculty
TH = Thayer School of Engineering

Program

Approximate duration: 100 minutes including intermission

Requiem, Op. 9 • Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986)

Introït
Kyrie
Domine Jesu Christe
Sanctus
Pie Jesu
Agnus Dei
Lux Aeterna
Libera me
In paradisum

Intermission

Requiem in D minor, Op. 48 • Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)

Introït et Kyrie
Offertoire
Sanctus
Pie Jesu
Agnus Dei
Libera me
In paradisum

Program Notes

Maurice Duruflé
Requiem, Op. 9

Maurice Duruflé was born in Louviers, France, on January 11, 1902, and died on June 16, 1986, in Louveciennes, near Paris. He composed his setting of the Latin Requiem between 1941 and 1947, initially commissioned by Pétain’s Vichy regime, which collapsed in the liberation of France three years before the Requiem’s completion. Duruflé orchestrated three versions for ensembles of varying size; in the 1961 version heard tonight, the score calls for solo mezzo-soprano and baritone, mixed chorus, organ, harp, and strings, omitting the optional trumpets and timpani.

From a young age, Maurice Duruflé was immersed in the ancient soundscape of Gregorian chant. Strangely enough, he was born at exactly the right moment for it. The gradual restoration of plainchant in French Catholic liturgy, kindled in the 1840s, had scored a momentous pair of institutional victories with the 1896 publication of the Liber Usualis (compiled by monks at Solesmes Abbey) and the 1903 papal motu proprio, in which Pope Pius X reaffirmed the liturgical primacy of chant. Duruflé spent his early years attending the choir school at Rouen Cathedral, whose florid Gothic interior was home to a rich chant tradition. Under his organ mentor Charles Tournemire, Duruflé learned the intricacies of modal harmony; guided by Louis Vierne at the Paris Conservatoire, he quickly became a first-rate concert organist. Though he was tapped as Vierne’s eventual successor for the coveted Notre-Dame organist post, in 1930, Duruflé tired of waiting and accepted the organ job at St. Etienne-du-Mont, where he remained until his death. As a performer he toured widely, but as a composer his character was reclusive. Introspective and self-critical to a fault, he revised obsessively and deemed only a small handful of works worthy of completion.

Though few in number, Duruflé’s compositions manifest a fully-developed, utterly singular style, spanning centuries in its inspiration. Deeply rooted in the ancient modes and flowing rhythms of Gregorian chant, and buttressed by the formal designs of Renaissance and Baroque cathedral polyphony, they sparkle with the vivid harmonies and kaleidoscopic orchestration of Debussy and Ravel. In the Requiem heard tonight, this impressionistic medievalism paints a vision of utmost hope. Like Fauré before him, whose Requiem provided an obvious model, Duruflé omits the texts that dwell too darkly on the terrors of hell and the Last Judgment. Accordingly, the music is predominantly gentle, ethereal, basking in the promised warmth of light eternal. And in every measure, the solemn contours of chant persist, sometimes stated verbatim at the forefront of the texture, sometimes woven subtly into the background in mystic glosses.

The gently-flowing Introït is pure chant at first, gradually blossoming into lush Impressionist harmonies; in the contrapuntal Kyrie which follows without pause, listen as the trumpets’ (here organ’s) cantus firmus melody glides through the middle of the texture in slow motion against the choir’s nimble Renaissance counterpoint. The Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe) gives us our only unobstructed vision of the dreaded inferno, as the setting of the daunting Dorian chant careens from ominous canons and apocalyptic chorales to ghostly drone-bound incantations. Yet the solo baritone’s petitions (“Hostias et preces,” “Fac eas, Domine”) maintain prayerful devotion in spite of the darkness.

After the brief, lilting Sanctus, the solo mezzo-soprano sings a languid Pie Jesu, accompanied only by organ and cello obbligato. Emulating Fauré, these few pleading lines are all Duruflé selects from the otherwise-apocalyptic Dies Irae sequence; the final measures, solemnly intoned on a single note, speak to a faith beyond doubt. In the Agnus Dei, the harp’s sparkle figures prominently, while the final lines of the Lux Aeterna chant recall the Pie Jesu’s serene drone.

Dire fanfares from the organ announce the outset of the Libera me. Here is the Judgment-Day summons of the Last Trumpet, while the baritone’s terrified solo (“Tremens factus”) vocalizes, with vivid word-painting, mortal anxiety. In the end, the whole chorus reprises the opening stanza in steadfast octaves, no longer trembling despite the fire. After a pause, the harp and organ build, one note at a time, a gossamer cluster-chord ladder to paradise, where the sopranos’ angelic chant is all innocence.

Gabriel Fauré
Requiem in D minor, Op. 48

Gabriel Fauré was born on May 12, 1845, in Pamiers, France, and died on November 4, 1924, in Paris. He composed his setting of the Latin Requiem in pieces between 1877 and 1890, eventually completing an arrangement for full orchestra in 1900. Performed tonight is the second version, completed in 1893 and scored for a reduced orchestra. The score calls for solo soprano and baritone, mixed chorus, two horns, harp, organ, and an unusual string section: solo violin, first and second violas, first and second cellos, and double basses.

Three years before his death, Fauré recollected, “Everything I possessed in the way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem.” He wrote it not for any dignitary’s funeral, nor to the memory of any loved one, but simply “for the pleasure of it,” composing, revising, and re-orchestrating in fits and starts over a period of twenty-three years. All the while, Fauré’s time was quite taken up by his choirmaster post, playing daily Mass at L'église de la Madeleine in Paris. A reluctant but apparently gifted organist, he tired of the proper old-hat stuff expected of him at funeral services (“I know it all by heart,” he groused), while sporadic commissions left him deeply unsatisfied with his stunted composing career. The Requiem was Fauré’s passion project, providing him an escape from liturgical tedium and an outlet for free expression.

With a composition history spanning the entire middle period of Fauré’s stylistic development, the Requiem showcases all his signature moves. Extended chords, mode mixture, and notes freely borrowed from other keys test the bounds of tonality in pursuit of greater expression, though never so far as to destroy the sense of harmonic home. Nods to the medieval church modes infuse an ancient air, while surprising detours to remote keys, cutting back home just as suddenly, speak to his heterodox spirit. But always at the heart is the spellbinding pull of the long vocal line, gradually unfolding, despite constant unexpected turns, towards an end that feels inevitable. In the Requiem, these melodies inspirit the Latin funeral prayers with the composer’s understanding of death: not as a thing to be feared, but, in Fauré’s own words, “as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above.” Tenderness rather than terror is the overriding character here, and though there are moments of highly expressive drama, these all must submit in the end to an unshakable faith in eternal rest.

Unison knells from the horns, organ, and strings seize the opening measures of the Introït. Between these dire chimes, the chorus intones a hushed, solemn prayer, lingering long on every chord. Then, a rapid crescendo, a hopeful ascent, sublime transfiguration burning with otherworldly harmony—one would be hard-pressed to find choral writing as exquisite as this second line (“Et lux perpetua luceat eis”). In the Kyrie which follows without pause, angsty organ interjections sound a plea for mercy; the chorus’s prayerful responses, though fearful, never lose faith. Next comes a trilogy of solo features, across which the role of the choir gradually recedes. The Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe) surrounds a central baritone solo (“Hostias et preces”) with fugue-like imitative polyphony for all the parts. In the Sanctus the solo violin out-sings the subdued chant of the choir, which drops out entirely for the soprano’s innocent Pie Jesu aria, accompanied with reverence by organ and muted strings.

A graceful viola descant propels the tranquil opening and closing passages of the Agnus Dei, but the Lux Aeterna inserts some more solemn stuff in the middle with a verbatim restatement of the Introït’s music. Against a stern pizzicato heartbeat, the baritone returns in the Libera me for the darkest music of the whole work, its dire climax (“Dies illa, dies irae”) heralded by a stony horn tattoo. Faith prevails in the brief In Paradisum, its celestial texture led by the sopranos and violin. There’s something numerological about the organ’s steady three-note bass here, pure and heavenly in its simplicity.

About the Artists

A native of Florence, Italy, Filippo Ciabatti is the Music Director of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Dartmouth Opera Lab and the Interim Music Director of the Dartmouth’s Choral Ensembles. He is also the Artistic Director of the Upper Valley Baroque professional choral and instrumental ensembles. He is the recipient of the 2020 American Prize in Conducting (college/university division).

He has appeared as a guest conductor with opera companies and orchestras including Opera North (New Hampshire), Lyric Theatre at Illinois, Aurora Festival Orchestra (Stockholm, Sweden), Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Toscana dei Conservatori (Italy), ICM Orchestra and the Universidad Central Orchestra (Bogota, Colombia). He served as assistant conductor for the Portland Symphony Orchestra (Maine) and as chorus master and vocal coach for the Middlebury Opera (Vermont). In 2020, he also conducted a project with the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Artists with whom he has collaborated include the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra David Kim, American opera star Nathan Gunn, pianist Sally Pinkas, flutist Luciano Tristaino, mandolinist Carlo Aonzo and cellist Gabriel Cabezas. A passionate advocate for contemporary music and collaborations between musical genres, he has premiered a secular oratorio composed by the renowned jazz composer Taylor Ho Bynum and commissioned a cello concerto by the composer Noah Luna, aired during the NPR show From The Top. In 2018, he led the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra in an Italian tour in collaboration with the Orchestra Toscana dei Conservatori in prominent venues and festivals, including the Puccini Days in Lucca.

During the summer of 2018, he was invited to be a Conducting Fellow at the Aurora Music Festival in Stockholm, under the direction of Jukka-Pekka Saraste. During the festival, he conducted Hannah Kendall’s 2017 composition, The Spark Catchers, in a concert that also featured legendary cellist Mischa Maisky in the Konserthuset Stockholm.

As a pianist and vocal coach, Mr. Ciabatti is on the faculty of Camerata de’ Bardi, the Young Artists Program of Teatro Grattacielo in New York City, and of the summer opera programs “Opera Viva!” in Verona (Italy) and “Scuola Italia per Giovani Cantanti Lirici” in Sant’Angelo in Vado (Italy). He has played for masterclasses of Renée Fleming, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard, William Matteuzzi, and Donald George. In Italy, he worked as vocal coach for the Cherubini Conservatory, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Florence Opera Academy.

Mr. Ciabatti holds degrees in piano, choral conducting and orchestral conducting from Italy and the United States.

Mezzo-soprano Erma Gattie Mellinger has been a principal artist with many opera companies across the United States including the Cleveland Opera, the Florida Grand Opera (Miami), the Dallas Opera, the Pittsburgh Opera Theater, the Fresno International Grand Opera, Opera Maine and the Chautauqua Opera. Her roles, in over 30 operas, include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Dorabella in Così Fan Tutte, Cherubino in Le Nozze Di Figaro, Ottavia in L'incoronazione Di Poppea, and Preziosilla in La Forza Del Destino. She has performed with Sherrill Milnes, James Morris, Diana Soviero and David Daniels and has sung masterclasses with Frederica Von Stade and Mignon Dunn. Conductors with whom she has worked include Harry Bicket, Stephen Lord, John DeMain and Willie Waters.

Hailed for her "rich, vibrant, creamy voice," Ms. Mellinger is also at home on the concert stage appearing as soloist with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Monterey Symphony and the Florida Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Mellinger appeared as soloist with the Handel Society of Dartmouth College in tours of England, France, Germany and Italy, performing in venues including Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Ms. Mellinger has been a member of the Dartmouth College faculty since 1996. In addition to her duties as Voice Instructor, she serves as the Assistant Director and Vocal Coach of the Handel Society and the Glee Club and Co-Director of the Dartmouth Opera Lab. Ms. Mellinger presents solo recitals and chamber music concerts on campus through the ChamberWorks series. Ms. Mellinger is a former Director of Cantabile, a Women's chorus based in Vermont and New Hampshire. In addition, Ms. Mellinger has directed church choirs and has served as both Stage Director and Music Director for numerous community theater productions. She is a sought-after clinician in the field of vocal production, having most recently worked with the University Chorus and the Chamber Singers of Brandeis University.

Ms. Mellinger earned her Bachelor of Music Degree with Highest Distinction (First in Class) from Northwestern University. She received the Performer's Certificate and the Opera Certificate as well as a Teaching Excellence Award while at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester where she earned her Master of Music Degree and began her Doctor of Music Arts Degree before embarking on her singing career.

Maine native Jennifer Bates, soprano, enjoys a multifaceted career in the opera, concert and recital worlds. Her repertoire spans the gamut, ranging from Bach, Monteverdi and Couperin to the more avant-garde works of Schönberg, Eisler and Berg.

Jennifer’s recent engagements include the role of Pepik in the New York Philharmonic production of The Cunning Little Vixen, multiple appearances with New York City Opera, and Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg with the American Symphony Orchestra. She was the featured soloist at the Bach Vespers Cantata Series, just steps from Lincoln Center, for ten years. Her extensive European engagements have included Elgar’s The Kingdom with Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia in the prestigious Three Choirs Festival; Haydn’s Creation with Robert Tear at the Dartington International Summer Festival; Fauré’s Requiem with Sir David Willcocks at Royal Albert Hall; and Verdi’s Requiem at Windsor Castle. She has also appeared with the Masterworks Chorale in Boston, the Orchestra of London and the London Pro Arte Orchestra. As a recitalist, she has performed in multiple venues in the US and abroad, including a tour of Great Britain performing Benjamin Britten’s Holy Sonnets of John Donne, and a recital at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Jennifer is also a strong advocate of late 20th- and 21st-century music, having premiered numerous works and revamped classics of the contemporary repertoire, including Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot. She appeared regularly on New York City Opera’s VOX series and has sung with ALEA III in Boston.

Ms. Bates was a Chamber Music Fellow at the Aspen Festival and a Scholar at the Steans Institute for Singers at the Ravinia Festival. She will join the faculty of Colby College this fall.

“Sonorous” (Opera News) and “Suave” (parterre box), baritone Harrison Hintzsche is a recitalist, concert singer and ensemble musician. He has been praised for his warm lyric tone, musical subtlety and dedication to text. His interpretation of Schubert at London’s Wigmore Hall with pianist Graham Johnson was noted by Opera Today for a “strong sense of narrative” and “gentle poignancy.” Hintzsche won first prize at the 2021 Colorado Bach Ensemble Young Artist Competition and the 2018 Edvard Grieg Society of Minnesota Voice Competition, and was the 2020 recipient of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Margot Fassler Prize in the Performance of Sacred Music.

Recent performance highlights include performances of Bach’s St. John Passion with Nicholas McGegan and Cantata Collective (bass arias, Pilatus), Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Colorado Bach Ensemble (bass arias), Handel’s Messiah with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, a semi-staged version of John Blow’s opera Venus & Adonis (Adonis) with Early Music Access Project, a tour of South Korea with the American Soloists Ensemble and conductor Euijoong Yoon, and Finzi’s In Terra Pax and Vaughn Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols with the Choral Society of the Hamptons.

Hintzsche sings regularly with the nation’s leading choral ensembles, including the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus, Yale Choral Artists, True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Servire and Ensemble Altera, among others. Hintzsche holds degrees in music from Yale University and St. Olaf College. He currently resides in New Haven, Connecticut, and is a native of DeKalb, Illinois. www.harrisonhintzsche.com

Praised for her “warm, colorful mezzo” by Opera News, Sophie Michaux has become one of New England’s most versatile and compelling vocalists. Born in London and raised in the French Alps, Sophie’s unique background informs her artistic identity, making her feel at home in an eclectic span of repertoire ranging from grand opera to French cabaret songs.

Recent solo engagements include the role of Alcina in Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (Haymarket Opera), Olofernes in Scarlatti’s La Giuditta (Haymarket Opera), and the alto solos in Handel’s Dixit Dominus (Upper Valley Baroque) and de Falla’s El Amor Brujo (Lowell Chamber Orchestra). She is thrilled to collaborate with Roomful of Teeth, Bach Collegium San Diego, Upper Valley Baroque, Blue Heron, Lorelei Ensemble, Lowell Chamber Orchestra, In Stile Moderno and Palaver Strings. Other collaborators include Cappella Mediterranea, A Far Cry, Christmas Revels, Ensemble Elyma and Boston Lyric Opera. This season, she is also part of Lorelei Ensemble’s US tour, premiering Her Story by Julia Wolfe with the Boston, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco and National Symphony Orchestras.

A consummate singing actor, Sophie appeared as Ceres in Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Lalande’s Les Fontaines de Versailles, garnering acclaim from the Boston Musical Intelligencer for her “astonishing range and flexibility.” She has sung the title roles in La Cenerentola (NEMPAC), The Rape of Lucretia (Opera Brittenica), and Rinaldo (Boston Opera Collaborative), for which she was nominated as Best Female Performer in an Opera for the 2015 Arts Impulse Theatre Awards. Sophie is the winner of the William Grogan Award in the 2022 Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition, 2nd place in the 2021 Handel Aria Competition in Madison, Wisconsin, and a finalist in Opera Columbus’ Cooper-Bing Competition in 2022.

Texts & Translations

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