The Sacred Voices Choir of the Cardinal Bartolucci Foundation has added an extra concert to its New York tour: Fresh from its standing-room-only performance at Sacred Heart-Our Lady of Pompeii in Dobbs Ferry Wednesday, Aug. 6, the choir will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, at the Church of St. Joseph in Bronxville.
Founded in 2004 to advance the polyphonic (many musical lines) tradition of the Roman School, the choir consists of 40 professional singers from the cream of Rome’s and Vatican City’s musical institutions. The quality of the individual voices was evident Wednesday in tenor Francescantonio Bille’s emotional rendition of Georges Bizet’s “Agnus Dei,” which underscored the composer’s operatic approach to the liturgical tradition. (As with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other opera composers, Bizet remained a man of the theater even in a church setting.) Bille received a standing ovation, as did soprano Maria Tomassi for her performance of Ilia II of Georgia’s “Ave Maria.” Sopranist Gianluca Alonzi also shone on Domenic Bartolucci’s “Quo abiit.”
However, just because you have singers of this caliber, that doesn’t make them a choir anymore than a great singles player is automatically a great doubles player. In sacred music, as in sports, it takes teamwork. Leading the “team” is Adriano Caroletti, director of Sacred Voices, who made his reputation first as a choirboy and then a soloist in the Sistine Chapel Choir. Working with only a small tuning fork and quietly sounding the first notes of each piece in his tenor voice, Caroletti blended the voices in extraordinary a cappella harmonies that featured a tremendous use of dynamics to shade and shape each phrase.
The famed “Tu es Petrus” (“You Are Peter”) by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose 500th birth anniversary is being celebrated this year in song and in a specially issued stamp, soared as did the final selection, Licinio Refice’s “Exulta ed lauda,” accompanied by Josep Solé Coll, the Spanish-born first organist of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter and organist for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.
He soloed on the Toccata from Charles-Marie Vidor’s Symphony for Organ No. 5, a piece and performance that left no listener in doubt of Soll’s virtuosity.
For tickets to some truly heavenly singing at the Church of St. Joseph, 15 Cedar St., Bronxville at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, visit reclaimingchristendom.com.
