6. A Waterbird
Debra Rentz, soprano, is Chair of the Voice Division at Ohio University. She received her Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance and Music History from Illinois State University and a Master of Music in Voice Performance from the University of Illinois. Rentz has performed extensively in opera, operetta, oratorio, recital, and orchestral concerts. She has been featured as a soloist in numerous oratorios, including Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and Mass in Time of War, Bach’s B Minor Mass, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Operatic roles include Gilda in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviata, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Pamina and First Lady in Die Zauberflöte and Naiad in Ariadne auf Naxos. In addition, Debra has considerable experience performing Gilbert and Sullivan. Other operetta performances include the American stage premiere of Emmerich Kalman’s Duchess of Chicago with Chicago Light Opera and Josephine in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn were close friends in Austria in the late 18th century, often playing string quartets together and, as friends will do, exchanging ideas about music.
Two pieces of liturgical music, Mozart’s Mass in C Major from 1779, nicknamed the Coronation Mass, and Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, composed in 1798, will showcase the two composers in a performance by Key Chorale to be streamed in March. Soprano Suzanne Karpov will join baritone Jamal Sarikoki, tenor Matt Morgan and mezzo soprano Amy Connours for the performance, which was recorded at First Presbyterian Church in Sarasota.
The Haydn Mass was originally titled Mass In Troubled Times, as Napoleon’s army marched toward Vienna, and Key Chorale artistic director Joseph Caulkins thought it was an appropriate composition during the pandemic, dealing as it does with “a sense of anxiety, grave distress,” he said.