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Handout
In a normal year, Canadians flock to churches and concert halls for their annual fix of the holiday staple Handel’s
Messiah. Yet in 2020,
Messiahs are hard to come by, because of the pandemic and its shuttering of the performing arts as we know it. Up there with office holiday parties, an indoor space filled with people joyfully hollering the Hallelujah Chorus is decidedly a risky activity.
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Our favourite TV shows, albums, films and arts performances that got us through 2020, our least favourite year
The Globe and Mail Arts team picks the high, low and mostly in-house culture that stood out this year Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
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Perry Mason, The Weeknd, Dolly Parton, Measha Brueggergosman, John Wilson, Tehran, Grounded, Mrs. America, Ted Lasso, Schitt’s Creek, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ridge, Fiona Apple, Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, I May Destroy You, After Life and Zachary D. Carter’s The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes gave us some of this year’s best content.
Soloist Julie Lumsden on location in Banff filming for Messiah/Complex (Daniel Thomson/Supplied)
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An ambitious new reimagining of the beloved Handel oratorio, A Messiah/Complex, is hoping to spark conversations about inclusion, equity and diversity for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour.
Powerful choruses, inspiring arias and messages of hope, excitement and shared humanity Handel’s Messiah has become a fixture of the holiday season.
In a year unlike any other, a new production of the enduring classic presented by Toronto’s Against the Grain Theatre (AgT) truly brings the country together in a dramatic cross-Canada reimagining titled: Messiah/Complex.
Messiah
Paul Wells: Ten camera crews across the country, a dozen soloists performing in a half dozen languages and one remarkable version of Handel s Messiah. Paul Wells, Maclean s Updated
December 11, 2020
Near the end of Part I of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio
Messiah, a singer urges listeners to spread the good news of Christ’s birth. “Oh Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion,” she sings, “Get up into the high mountains.”
In any production, much depends on accidents of timing and place. In the extraordinary version of the
Messiah that Toronto’s Against The Grain Theatre will reveal this weekend in a free webcast, the soloist for Oh Thou That Tellest is Diyet van Lieshout, a member of Kluane First Nation in southwest Yukon. She was filmed at the edge of the Kluane Icefield, the world’s largest non-polar ice field, a shelf of ice thousands of square kilometres in size. The high mountains are present, too, in the form of the Saint Elia
Paul Wells: Ten camera crews across the country, a dozen diverse soloists performing in a half dozen languages and one remarkable version of Handel's Messiah