Event

Il Nascimento di Mose

Seventeenth-century oratorio combined the tremendously popular music of the opera with stories chosen for the intellectual and spiritual enrichment of its listeners. The Academy of Sacred Drama continues this mission by uniting emotion, intellect, and community in presentations that incorporate great oratorios, contextual lectures, and community receptions.

Il Nascimento di Mose
Music by Vincenzo de Grandis (16311708)
Libretto by Giovanni Battista Giardini

In this oratorio, a tyrannical Pharaoh fears the growing power of the Hebrews. After subjecting them to hard labor and ordering that all their male children are strangled at birth, he revises his directive and orders that all male new-borns are to be thrown into the river Nile. Moses is born, and his distraught mother places him in a wicker basket in the river. Pharaoh's daughter finds him, and Pharaoh permits her to raise him as her own son at court.

Jeremy Rhizor, director and violin
Five voices and seven instrumentalists

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At the front, the violinist [Jeremy Rhizor] serves as conductor, marking tempo with knee bends and nods. The piece is lovely, ornate and contrapuntal. The scene is shadowed and intimate, another quiet moment of excellent New York music-making.

commonwealmagazine.org