 | The Cincinnati May Festival is a two-week annual choral festival, usually held in mid-to-late May in Cincinnati, Ohio. The festival's roots go back to the 1840s, when Saengerfests were held in that city, bringing singers from all over the United States and abroad to perform large scale classical works of the day. A hall was built specifically for the annual event. The growth of the choral tradition in the midwest is largely due to this festival, a representation of the effects of the German immigration to the United States during this period. |
| By the 1870s, the Saengerfest was the most important festival in the Midwest. The most popular orchestral conductor of that era was Theodore Thomas, who would later found the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He served as the first full music director of the May Music festival. The old Saengerfest hall was demolished and a new hall built in 1878, just in time for the 1878 May Festival. The Music Hall (Cincinnati) still stands today and is one of the oldest and largest concert halls in the US. The festival is responsible for keeping the rich choral tradition of the West alive both in Europe and North America. Some of the great choral works of the late 19th and 20th centuries received their American premieres at the festival. Some of the great singers of those centuries performed there as well. The 2008 Cincinnati May Festival, which opens May 16 with a full-length concert presentation of Verdi’s La forza del destino with soprano Angela Brown and tenor Salvatore Licitra in the starring roles. The 2008 Cincinnati May Festival will close on Saturday, May 24 with James Conlon leading a multimedia presentation of one of the most romantic, and tragic, stories in the English language—Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette—a work last heard in its entirety at the 1981 May Festival. Friday, May 23, May Festival Chorus director Robert Porco will step to the podium for this performance of three stunning and well-loved choral masterpieces. Fauré's Requiem, a sublime and intimate work that, according to its composer "...is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest,” opens the program, followed by Vivaldi's Gloria, which communicates its message of spiritual joy with awe-inspiring waves of musical notes, energy and rhythmic drive. Bach's Cantata No. 191, Gloria in excelsis Deo, a precursor to his great Magnificat and one of only a handful of works by the German master written in Latin, closes the concert. The world-renowned May Festival Chorus (see photo) has been the core of the Cincinnati May Festival for over 125 years. The all-volunteer Chorus was established as the Festival’s official local body of singers in 1880. Composed of 140 dedicated volunteer singers from the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana “Tri-state” region, the Chorus is a year-round ensemble that rehearses on a rigorous weekly schedule, and regularly performs and records with both the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops Orchestras. Event: Cincinnati May Festival Date: May 16 (Friday) - 24 (Saturday), 2008 Location: Music Hall Cincinnati, Ohio | |
| SOURCE: Cincinnati May Festival |
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