Cincinnati May Festival
The festival's roots go back to the 1840s, when Saengerfests were held in that city, bringing singers from all over the United States and abroad to perform large scale classical works of the day.
This mixed chorus approach to presenting oratorio with members drawn from a broad spectrum of Cincinnati's singers regardless of the nationality or society to which they pledged allegiance, must be regarded as an important precedent of the May Festival.
[4] He recounts: 'On my...visit in 1871 [sic—it was 1872] a young married lady, member of one of the leading families, laid before me a plan for a large Musical Festival.
'[4] He agreed to be conductor of the Festival if fifty thousand dollars could be raised for a guarantee fund and a committee could be formed to take care of the business aspects of the event.
[7] A circular describing the expectations of chorus members was printed in English and German and distributed to 121 music dealers, 60 post offices, and 144 singing societies.
The matinee concerts consisted largely of arias, art songs, and light orchestral works, including isolated movements of symphonies, Strauss waltzes, and overtures.
Thomas's evening concerts were more formal and consisted of major vocal and choral works, including Handel's Dettingen Te Deum, scenes from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, along with purely symphonic works and concert arias.
[10] A second May Festival took place at Saengerfest Hall in 1875, and presented the American premieres of Bach's Magnificat and Brahms's Triumphlied.
During this festival, Cincinnati's usual springtime thunderstorms pelted the leaky tin roof of the hall with rain and hail, as they had done to a lesser degree in 1873.
The situation was 'promptly remedied by a member of the executive committee who crashed out the glass from every window whose frame was wedged too tight in its place to be readily removed.'
(125) Tickets for the first festival held in Music Hall were, "$2 for a single reserved seat, $1 for standing room, and $10 dollars for the entire set of seven concert.
[14] After the death of Theodore Thomas in 1905, the 1906 May Festival featured British composer Sir Edward Elgar conducting his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius at the final concert.
[16] Enraging the chorus, Lawrence Maxwell Jr., vice-president of the May Festival Association stated that he was "against the giving of the memorial concert, saying that it had not the sanction of the board, that the program was a log of 'hash,' and that it would make Thomas turn in his grave to listen to it."
[17] The previous festivals had had open rehearsals and many other public opportunities for Cincinnatians to meet and mingle with the stars, but this would not be the case in 1906.
Choruses of school children continue to be welcome participants in such major works as Orff's Carmina Burana, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Mahler's Symphony No.
8, often called The Symphony of a Thousand, received a then-rare performance at the 1931 festival with a chorus of nine hundred, a massive orchestra, and eight soloists.
In 1944 a chorus of Women's Army Corps members from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, performed Frank Loesser's The WAC Hymn and many soldiers attended the festival.
The Folk Song Symphony by Roy Harris had 500 high school students singing as their costumes divided the chorus stand into three broad stripes of red, white and blue.
[3] Adolphus Hailstork also composed 'Earthrise,' a work for double chorus and orchestra commissioned by the May Festival in 2006 to promote healing following the 2000 riots.
Made up of youth from area high-schools, the MFYC is conducted by Jason Alexander Holmes and gives its members (who must audition competitively) the opportunity to perform challenging music well above the average high school level.
On 5 December 2017, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled conductor James Levine’s appearance in May 2018, after he was accused by four males of sexual abuse.
