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The Michael O'Neal Singers in 'Elijah'
By Pierre Ruhe | Tuesday, March 15, 2005, 12:02 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW

The Michael O'Neal Singers. Monday at The Temple on Peachtree St., in Midtown.

Walt Whitman, as a part-time music critic in 1847, heard the first American performance of Mendelssohn's "Elijah" and pronounced it "too elaborately scientific for the public ear."

Tuesday evening at The Temple on Peachtree, the Michael O'Neal Singers and several fine vocal soloists delivered an "Elijah" that might have moved the old poet to mend his words.

Similar to Handel's "Messiah" in structure and form, Mendelssohn's Biblical oratorio depicts ten scenes from the life of the prophet Elijah, who defended the Israelites' one God against foreign gods.

And the O'Neal Singers brought it all to glorious life. As a choral trainer, O'Neal has a keen ear for balances and he's recruited his choir evenly across its sections. At their best, as in the choral number "Cast thy burden upon the Lord," they sang with a brushed velvety sound.

As a conductor, O'Neal led his 100 singers through a fluent, persuasive performance, of thundering climaxes in the desert sun and tender quiet passages, cool as the shade under an oasis palm. (For Tuesday's performance, organ and timpani served for the full orchestra. I'd like to hear how O'Neal handles a symphonic band.)

As the title character, bass-baritone John LaForge departed from Mendelssohn's own description of Elijah — "powerful, zealous, but also harsh and angry and saturine." LaForge sang a mellower, nicer prophet. He tried to convince us rather than scold, which is certainly more in tune with our culture of self-help spirituality books and Oprah.

The sanctuary's Sinai-dry humidity levels strained the singer's throats over the course of the evening. Despite this, the other soloists — tenor Benjamin Pruett sopranos Deborah Benardot and Debbie Rostad, alto Karen Sikorski — sang with a much-appreciated mixture of control and panache.

The evening came together in ideal, three-dimensional splendor from scene no. 6, "Elijah's desert sojourn," to the "Final Reflection" The sequence was crisply and movingly sung, a pleasure to hear.

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The Michael O'Neal Singers: P.O. Box 1008, Roswell, GA 30077
Office 770-594-7974, Fax 770-650-5933, e-mail: Staff@mosingers.com
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