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Hello early music lovers
Four reasons to attend the premiere
Myrna Herzog gives you 4 reasons to come to the Israeli premiere of Alessandro Stradella'soratorio La Susanna, to be performed solely on Saturday 23.3.24 at 12:00 at Duc in Altum spiritual center at Magdala, by the Kinneret, as part of the celebrations of the International Women’s Month!
Click on the picture to hear her ( in Hebrew). 
And do not miss Hagai Hitron's wonderful preview of our concert at HaAretz!
The English translation of it is below.
Click on the link to get your DISCOUNT TICKET: https://ticks.co.il/event.php?i=GOhavr60BF1
 Map - Waze directions
Singers:
Monica Schwartz
Liron Givoni
Yonathan Suissa
Daniel Portnoy
Yoav Ayalon
Ensemble PHOENIX on period instruments:
Rachel Ringelstein, Tali Goldberg (baroque violins),
Alma Mayer (cornetto, recorder, baroque bassoon, trombone),
Marina Minkin (harpsichord),
Myrna Herzog (baroque cello),
Evgeny Karasik (percussion).
Musical director: Myrna Herzog
"An act of two horny judges
The oratorio "La Susana" by Stradella is a wonderful baroque dressing for a short and crushing plot. This week in an Israeli premiere, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee by Hagai Hitron It is easy to imagine mocking reactions to what is written here below. Something like "You just discovered America? Shame on you." Right. I have to admit that I only recently discovered the oratorio "La Susana" by the Italian composer Alessandro Stradella, who lived in the middle of the 17th century. The right to bring this work to the Israeli public in a live performance is reserved to the musician (baroque string player and researcher) Myrna Herzog. She deserves thanks for that. Under the initiative and management of Herzog, as conductor, and with her participation in playing (baroque cello), this week "La Susana" will be performed on Saturday morning in the hall of the spiritual center at the "Magdala" hotel on the Sea of Galilee. Young singers (countertenor Yonathan Suissa, tenor Daniel Portnoy, bass Yoav Ayalon and soprano Monica Schwartz and Liron Givoni will be heard in the main roles) rise to the challenge and are accompanied by a group of excellent musicians. Caught up in their passion Quite complicated is the story about the history of the story "La Susana", an oratorio born in 1681, a year before Stradella's death at the age of 42 (he was murdered in the street, following one of his love affairs). The text used by the composer was written by an Italian poet named Giovanni Battista Giardini, who was the secretary of the Duke of Modena, the nobleman who commissioned the piece from Stradella. The complication is clearly related to the origin of the text. "La Susana" is an act in the Jews. Its origin is "The Shoshana Act", a short and tense story in a book entitled "Additions to the Book of Daniel", that is, to one of the external books. It is not known for sure whether the story was originally written in Hebrew or Greek. According to the story, which takes place in Babylon during the Babylonian exile, i.e. more than 500 years before it was compiled, Shoshana daughter of Halkiah was married to Jehoiakim, a well-to-do and respected man of the community. Among Jehoiakim's frequent guests were two elders who served as judges in the community. They are also Jews. Jehoiakim's house had a private orchard attached to it (in a translation from the beginning of the 19th century, "a greedy vineyard at his house"), Shoshana ("Jephthate and God-fearing") used to go swimming in the vineyard and bathe there. The two old men secretly followed her and coveted her ("the arrows of desire landed in both of their hearts"). At first no one knew about each other's lust. One day the two tried to realize their desire, appeared before Shoshana unexpectedly, in the vineyard, offered her to give herself to them and threatened: "If Man Tamani, the witness will come to you because we saw a man of your people in the vineyard", they will say that they saw her lying with an unknown man, in the open air. By the way: this scene - the woman and the horny old men - was painted by quite a few artists, including Rembrandt. Shoshana was caught in a dilemma: "If I do what they want I will die selfishly and if I fail - who will save me from them" and decided not to surrender. The elders carried out their threat, framed Shoshana and led to her conviction. She is sentenced to death. But a savior appeared and he was Daniel (referred to in other texts as "Daniel the Man of Hamudot"), who demanded a retrial and slammed the dignitaries of the congregation, "You failed to convict the daughter of Israel before you investigated." Daniel interrogated the two slanderous judges, asked them both - each separately - under which tree they saw Shoshana making love to the unknown man. One judge said "under the Ella tree", the other judge said "oak." In presenting the contradiction between the two false testimonies that the judges handled about Shoshana, Daniel proved that the two were lying. Shoshana was saved, the wicked were executed. Oh heaven! An impressive story in its simplicity and vigorous brevity in which it was written about 2,000 years ago. Seemingly perfect. Stradella and the writer of the libretto still managed to improve it or at least illuminate the possibilities that lie in it. The text that Stradella composed - Myrna Herzog drew my attention to this - is not superficial, not routine talk about wickedness and villainy versus integrity and honesty. Words that Giardini put in the mouths of the two judges present them as weak human beings who are dominated by emotions, not as symbols of evil.
The first judge (according to a bass singer) sounds embarrassed by the forbidden emotions that flood him. His first aria opens with Freddo Gelo ("Ice freezes") and immediately in the same sentence he reports on fire: "My soul endures fear and hope, burned within me, live heaven!" The fire inside him, he knows and says, stems from a corrupt source, but it is a fervor whose concealment is torture, it is revealed in the blush that reveals it and as if heralds the judge's fate, his death. And the music: the tune that this judge sings, Herzog comments, is partly a painful love song, but the music suddenly changes when the shag realizes that his lust will lead him to the end. Then there is no more (musical) freedom and the movement of the bass, in the instruments, either doubles the movement of the singer's mouth or he conducts a rhythmic dialogue with the singer that expresses his determined destiny. The second judge, she continues—portrayed by a tenor who initially sings an aria titled "Me too"— (ancor io) am also caught in the web of love”. His inability to control his emotions is expressed in repeated bass movements (ostinato), but although the singer sings about hope, the minor scale reveals that there is actually no hope. This aria is especially catchy. "Shoshana Act", about 2,000 years old, is impressive in its brevity, high tension, seemingly perfect. In the oratorio "La Susanna" Stradella managed to upgrade the story as always, reading descriptions of musical means that a composer uses may enrich the listening experience, but the mere use of certain means does not at all guarantee that the work has value, as to the value, each and every listener will judge. Asher L.H.M.: The piece (available online in various performances) immediately captured my ears and my heart. General structure: the singers who perform the oratorio play the characters in the plot, of course, and in addition a countertenor singer is cast in the role of narrator, most of his role is recitative. One of the prominent lions is Susanna's, after being imprisoned, her first words are "For whose help can I hope, O Heaven!". There is an indication that this lion probably found special favor with Stradella himself. A useful step that Herzog took: she gave up two arias and some recitatives, the text that she will beat lasts an hour and ten minutes instead of an hour and a half. It should also be noted in this context that there is no reason to worry: most of the arias in "La Susana" are not long and are not experienced as long. They are short and to the point, and charming, as are the chorus episodes." 
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