Jeffrey Thomas to Conduct Rarely Performed Handel Serenata
Handel’s rarely performed serenata, Parnasso in festa, is set on the slopes of Mount Parnassus where Apollo and the nine muses oversee the marriage of the mortal Peleus and the divine Thetis, parents of the legendary hero Achilles. Visiting familiar themes from Greek mythology—Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Daphne, Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld, and Peleus’s taming of the shape-shifting goddess—Handel realizes the characters and their dramatic situations with vivid specificity. Admired in Handel’s day for its musical variety, the work fell from the repertory after the composer’s death.
Parnasso in festa has been presented occasionally in England and Germany, but the performances under the baton of Jeffrey Thomas, Barbara K. Jackson Professor of Music, will be the first outside of Europe, joining the list of significant American Bach Soloists Festival premieres, such as Biber’s Missa Salisburgensis in 2013 and Marin Marais’s opera Sémélé in 2015. The work, performed in Italian, will feature instrumental and vocal soloists from the ABS Academy.
Thursday & Friday August 11 & 12, 2016 at 8:00 pm
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
The American Bach Soloists are leading performers in the field of Baroque music, dedicated to historically informed performances of Bach and his contemporaries. ABS provides meaningful, memorable, and valuable musical experiences for our audiences through inspiring performances and recordings, and it supports the preservation of early music through educational programs for students and emerging professionals.
The American Bach Soloists (“ABS”) were founded in 1989 with
the mission of introducing contemporary audiences to the cantatas
of Johann Sebastian Bach through historically informed
performances. Under the leadership of co-founder and Music
Director Jeffrey Thomas, the ensemble has achieved its vision of
assembling the world’s finest vocalists and period-instrument
performers to bring this brilliant music to life.
