Handel esther seattle

Over the past several years, Puget Sound Sage has grown by leaps and bounds, and we see this transition as the perfect moment to take a moment to pause and make mindful decisions about who we are as an organization and how we want to move forward together. As an organization that is accountable to and serves the interests of Black, Brown, Indigenous, female, LGBTQ, low-income, and disabled communities across the Puget Sound region, it is critical that we take this time to do both the internal and external work necessary to meet our mission of growing joyful and just communities for generations to come.

The Interim role will steward us in running an organizational assessment to determine where we need to grow, help develop the recruitment process for the hire of permanent executive leadership, and set up the organization for a successful strategic planning process in At the City of Seattle, Esther worked closely with Puget Sound Sage and other community partners on campaigns to win Priority Hire, mandatory housing affordability programs, an equitable development framework, and raising the minimum wage.

Once or twice there was a danger of distraction, when someone was gesturing upstage while another of the principals was singing. For the most part, however, the conception worked beautifully — and musically, the performance was an unalloyed delight. Charles Robert Stephens was suitably formidable as the unsavory Haman in this regrettably still relevant tale of historical anti-Semitism, and Zachary Wilder, Matthew White, Catherine Webster and Thomas Thompson filled the roles of a variety of Israelites capably.

Thanks to Marty Ronish for bringing the American Handel Festival for the first time to Seattle — but what are we devotees to do with ourselves in the Handel-less weeks to come?

Further adding to the sense of occasion was the fact that this marked the premiere of the edition of "Esther" recently prepared by Berkeley-based Handel scholar John Roberts. Despite its later popularity among his contemporaries, "Acis" turned out to be a one-off experiment. Both works dramatize extremely simple, ancient plots which do double duty as contemporary allegories relevant to the milieu of Chandos.

In his insightful pre-concert presentation Roberts argued that "Esther" has been unjustly undervalued largely because of misunderstandings caused by the standard presentation. The warm, reverberant space of St. Those who had seen "Acis" were perhaps a bit spoiled by getting to see the repeats of the da capo arias staged and thus peppered with some theatrical variety. Still, in the unstaged "Esther. Charles Robert Stephens, though lacking bite in some earlier moments, was convincing in the scene of the humiliated Haman as he grovels vainly.

Stubbs paced the performance with a sure sense of flow and contrast, allowing the drama to happen within the music itself. Even more, Ronish ensured that the Festival, usually centered around a few days of scholarly conferences and workshops, included a wider variety of performances, with over two dozen organizations participating.