oratorio

The Pulitzer that Marsalis won in 1997 for his two-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio, “Blood on the Fields,” was historic: since the jury started honoring music in 1943, they’d never recognized jazz, only classical composers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026

Boyer’s multimedia oratorio, “A Hundred Years On,” was given its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra last month at the orchestra’s outdoor summer home, the Mann Center.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026

The second program doubled down with the premiere of David Lang’s “the wealth of nations,” a 75-minute oratorio for orchestra, chorus and two soloists, here the inimitable mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and bass-baritone Davóne Tines.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2026

Harry Bicket and the English Concert presented the composer’s highly theatrical but little-known 1745 oratorio in an uneven but frequently arresting performance.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026

Indeed, against the backdrop of scientific endeavour and machine-like precision there was a very human emotion that enriched every note of Handel’s solo arias in opera and oratorio: compassion.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

George Frideric Handel wrote some 42 operas across his career — his unstaged oratorios such as “Messiah” constitute a separate category — but Seattle Opera has presented only three of these to date.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 6, 2023

The texts that Wolfe uses in “unEarth” have a sense of literary adventure familiar from her earlier oratorios.

From New York Times ● May 31, 2023

Then again, Handel’s oratorios are today presented both staged and not; and Thursday was hopefully far from the last dramatic interpretation of “Her Story.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 16, 2022

But common to both tellings, as well as the dozens of operas, oratorios, plays and films since derived from the myth of Iphigenia, is that she’s not the one who gets to tell the story.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 2, 2021

A Child of Our Time intersperses quasi-operatic narrative passages with arrangements of African-American spirituals, as Bach had done with Lutheran hymn-chorales in his oratorios on the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall