The Delaware Chorale Society’s latest concert – this weekend at the Schwartz Center for the Arts – A Night at the Opera.
The group was founded in 1957, and its Artistic Director Rocky Tejada says the group has withstood the test of time.
And the group, open to high school students and older, still performs Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ every 5 years to celebrate its origins.
“Last December we finished our concert, the 65th anniversary, and we did Handel’s Messiah, which is actually what they actually started off as," Tejada says. "Just a bunch of church choirs getting together to sing Handel’s Messiah, and so it became a tradition, they do it every five years.”
Tejada says choral music is defined as music designed for vocal performers, encompassing a vast variety of secular and sacred music that goes back centuries.
“The voice is the first instrument, it’s the first music instrument," he says. "And we’ve been using our voices as such since the beginning of time.”
Tejada says they were really enthusiastic to come back after the pandemic.
“The chorale society bounced back really well, almost as if nothing had happened, because of the passion that the board of directors has and they worked really hard to ensure that there would be a director in place and that singers are made aware of what’s happening," Tejada says.
The group’s ‘A Night at the Opera’ concert Sunday at Dover’s Schwartz Center for the Arts starts at 4 p.m. Tejada says it features opera choruses, designed to give the audience a show of songs they’ve heard before, but put into context.
