AMERICAN FESTIVAL CHORUS & ORCHESTRA PRESENTS

BENJAMIN BRITTEN'S

"WAR REQUIEM"

NOVEMBER 12, 2011

Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.

Please be wary of fraudulent organizations & individuals re-selling performance tickets. To be certain you are buying real tickets at face value, always purchase directly from our ticket office or website.

DISCOUNT for Junior High, High School & College Students: balcony tickets $5

The Great War of 1914-18 changed the Western world forever. Millions of young men were killed in a war that did not, as was hoped, end all wars. In fact, World War I set in motion problems that led directly to World War II, in which many more millions of lives were lost.

In 1940, Hitler’s bombers destroyed Coventry Cathedral in Great Britain. Partly in response to the German attacks on England, several young British artists living in the United States left America and returned to Britain, among them a group of friends including W. H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century, the composer Benjamin Britten, and the tenor Peter Pears.

It was decided after the war not to rebuild the centuries-old cathedral. Instead, a new cathedral was built alongside the ruins of the original structure. Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write a piece for the dedication of the new cathedral. The result was Britten’s monumental War Requiem, considered by many to be one of the true masterpieces of the century.

For his requiem, Britten chose to combine the poetry of Wilfred Owen with the text of the Latin mass. Wilfred Owen was one of the talented snuffed out by the war. He was killed just before the armistice; his mother learned of his death while armistice bells were ringing in Britain. One of Britten’s goals was to express Owens’s feelings of the pity and horror and futility of war. The requiem interweaves the poetry with pleas from the mass to grant eternal light and eternal rest to those who have gone.

The soloists in the War Requiem represent two soldiers from opposite sides of the conflict, with the soprano commenting from above. The tenor soloist in the first performance was Britten’s long-time friend Peter Pears, joined by the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The production requires unusual resources. In addition to the soloists, it is scored for a chamber orchestra, a full choir and main orchestra, and a boys choir with organ. The soloists for our performances are of a caliber similar to those of the original dedication.

The American Festival Chorus and Orchestra performances (in Salt Lake’s Cathedral of the Madeleine and in the Eccles theater) of the War Requiem mark a number of significant anniversaries. 2013 is the hundredth anniversary of Britten’s birth, and May of 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the original performance at the dedication of Coventry Cathedral. Of even more significance to us is the involvement of our country in continuing wars and the date: 11/11/11 will not come again.

The American Festival Chorus

The American Festival Chorus was founded in the summer of 2008. Dr. Craig Jessop was appointed as Artistic Director and Conductor, with Dr. Cory Evans as Associate Director. The American Festival Chorus has brought together 270 talented singers from a 50-mile radius, including many students from the Music Department at Utah State University and several local high school choral conductors.

The professional American Festival Orchestra is composed of USU music faculty, outstanding musicians in the community and the Northern Utah region and top select senior USU students, Jessop said. Principal strings are the Fry String Quartet, hailed in the New York Times as “a triumph of ensemble playing.” The Chorus consists of 260 singers who live within a 50-mile radius of Logan.

American Festival Chorus & Orchestra