Whom among you has had the immense joy and pleasure of actually singing great choral works in performance?
I've been lucky to have a decent semi-pro baritone voice and I've sung opera and in choirs and choral groups. So I'm wondering about others here, and how they felt onstage.
Having sung in choirs and choral groups for, oh, 30 years or so, I've been blessed to have participated in all the great works, Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Handel's Messiah, plenty of Bach, Verdi, Gounod and others, also Carmina Burana (not a religious work, of course, but having much of that same numinous energy.)
Fugues seem to be the best. You get sucked up into the music and your entire body is rattling with the force and direction of the fugue, such works as Mozart's Requiem Kyrie, Handel's "For unto us a child is born", and others. And Carmina Burana left my tux soaked with sweat from the energy of that music.
The only singing experience I've had that was better was to sing in Marriage of Figaro as Antonio the drunken gardener, and in that stunning "Mozart Moment" finale, be one of the 11 characters (no chorus in that finale), singing Perdono, Perdono...
But anyway, tell a bit of your own experiences if you've sung some of the great choral works.
I've been lucky to have a decent semi-pro baritone voice and I've sung opera and in choirs and choral groups. So I'm wondering about others here, and how they felt onstage.
Having sung in choirs and choral groups for, oh, 30 years or so, I've been blessed to have participated in all the great works, Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Handel's Messiah, plenty of Bach, Verdi, Gounod and others, also Carmina Burana (not a religious work, of course, but having much of that same numinous energy.)
Fugues seem to be the best. You get sucked up into the music and your entire body is rattling with the force and direction of the fugue, such works as Mozart's Requiem Kyrie, Handel's "For unto us a child is born", and others. And Carmina Burana left my tux soaked with sweat from the energy of that music.
The only singing experience I've had that was better was to sing in Marriage of Figaro as Antonio the drunken gardener, and in that stunning "Mozart Moment" finale, be one of the 11 characters (no chorus in that finale), singing Perdono, Perdono...
But anyway, tell a bit of your own experiences if you've sung some of the great choral works.