Seraphic Fire sings Handel’s Messiah

December 4, 8:42 PMMiami Travel ExaminerGeorge Leposky

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Seraphic Fire
© Seraphic Fire

 Seraphic Fire , Miami’s professional chamber choir, presents its second annual performance of George Frederic Handel’s oratorio Messiah at 8 PM Friday, December 19, in the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

This will be a different Messiah than many in attendance may have heard before. Modern audiences are accustomed to performances and recordings of the work that sound like they were scored by Ludwig van Beethoven or even Gustav Mahler, with a huge choir and orchestra. 

Seraphic Fire will perform Messiah with just 17 voices, accompanied by an equal number of instruments from the Firebird Chamber Orchestra – relatively modest resources more typical of the Baroque era in which Handel worked. He lived from 1695 to 1759, and composed Messiah in the summer of 1741. It received its premiere on April 13, 1742, in Dublin, Ireland. 

Seraphic Fire’s version of Messiah also will be somewhat abridged.  The entire work runs about two hours and can be an audience endurance test, with some dark, moody passages that verge on tedium. Patrick Dupré Quigley, Seraphic Fire’s founder and artistic director, has omitted more than a quarter of the score.

Artistic Director Patrick
Dupré Quigley conducting
Seraphic Fire © Seraphic Fire 

“He wants the music to be accessible and enjoyable – fleet and swift, with upbeat tempi. He likes to intersperse well-known pieces with some that are less well-known.  It’s a ‘Messiah Lite’ with interesting tidbits thrown in,” says soprano Gabrielle Tinto, a choir member and the ensemble’s managing director.

Sellout Expected

Last year, when Seraphic Fire first performed Messiah in the Knight Concert Hall’s cavernous vastness, Quigley came out on stage to introduce the performance, gazed in awe at the sold-out crowd of more than 2,000, and exclaimed, “Wow!”

He’s likely to have a similar reaction this year. Another Messiah sellout is expected – quite an achievement for a group that began in 2002 as a humble church choir.

Seraphic Fire in performance
© Seraphic Fire

Quigley deserves much of the credit for Seraphic Fire’s growth and success. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in musicology from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Musicology degree in conducting from Yale University. In 2004, at age 26, he became the youngest person ever to receive a Robert Shaw Conducting Fellowship.

Seraphic Fire’s programs reflect Quigley’s eclectic tastes, which encompass both religious and secular music, and range across time from medieval to contemporary. A New Orleans native immersed as a child in jazz, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues, he is as much at home in these genres as in the classical realm.

The group performs throughout South Florida in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, and has built a loyal and devoted following. In 2007, the Knight Foundation awarded Quigley and Seraphic Fire a $250,000 grant to create the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, a Miami-based professional chamber orchestra.