“San Giovanni Battista”

Tonight I attended a concert by the Oregon Bach Collegium at the neighborhood Episcopal church; it was an encore performance of an oratorio by Alessandro Stradella that they’d put together for an early music conference here at the university. The various singers used facial expressions and gestures to act out their roles, so it was more like stationary opera than the usual vocal performance; Salome was particularly expressive. John the Baptist was played by a mezzo-soprano wearing white; Salome wore red; Herod wore black and a more muted red; everyone else wore black.

One especially nice feature was the subtitles on a screen to the left, which kept my brain well-engaged with trying to recognize some of the Italian words they were singing to match the English on the screen. At the intermission, most of us went outside and stood around in the oak forest that surrounds the church. I thought about saying hi to our mayor-elect, but she’s met so many people in the last few months that I don’t think she’d recognize me. In the second half, I got distracted for a bit, having noticed that the mezzo-soprano had the same uncommon last name as a boy I knew as a child, and I wondered if they could be related, but then I caught that my mind had wandered and brought it back. The oratorio ends in a wonderful duet, with Salome singing about how joyful she is, and Herod at the same time singing about his remorse, and they both end abruptly with, “Why?” That is, “Perché?”