Opinion: Everyone deserves a 'Hallelujah' moment

By Jackie Jauregui

The first few notes didn’t come from the pipe organ I heard so many times during my teenage years, but rather from the Choral Society’s orchestra. Those who knew Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” stood and we—several silver-haired Barbareños and I—sang with the choir. An invigorating joy surges when people sing together, and after I only wished there would’ve been more people like me there to share this feeling with.

On April 12 and 13, the Santa Barbara Choral Society performed a bilingual iteration of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” at Trinity Lutheran Church, the first time the original English-language oratorio had been combined with Mario Montenegro’s 2020 Spanish translation. But there wasn’t a very diverse audience, even though the Choral Society emphasized it in its advertising.

“The dual-language approach is a creative artistic choice that will bring fresh perspective to this beloved oratorio,” read the Choral Society’s press release. “[It] brings a contemporary and culturally inclusive dimension to this classical masterpiece.”

The Santa Barbara Choral Society and Orchestra recently performed a bilingual version of Handel's "Messiah" at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Variations of this advertisement were promoted on local news sites like the Santa Barbara Independent and the Montecito Journal, yet the crowd for whom the Spanish lyrics in the program were meant for wasn't really present. As a Spanish speaker myself, the language’s absence in the crowd after the performance was strange. It wasn’t a complete shock though, because classical music performances aren’t often accessible.

Conductor Sonia Marie De Leon De Vega, the founder of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Eagle Rock, Calif., has worked in music education and community outreach for over 30 years. De Leon De Vega didn’t just want the music hall to be filled exclusively with the expected older, white audience. Her conscious efforts over the years to invite children, who in turn want their parents to take them to a symphony performance, have amassed a crowd that is over 85 percent Latino. 

So, to bring the “Messiah” to an audience that could appreciate the translation and enjoy the performance the Choral Society worked so hard to to prepare in both English and Spanish, they should’ve extended the invitation beyond English-language news media. They should’ve sent fliers to the local school districts and potentially made it an event for the family. 

In fact, El Camino Elementary School in the Goleta Union School District has a English-Spanish dual language immersion program where students  —some who speak Spanish at home and others who do not—from kindergarten through sixth grade receive a bilingual education. Some of these families could’ve taken their kids’ education beyond the classroom.

Yes, it would be an invitation for public school students to attend a concert with an evident religious theme at a church which is questionable on its face, but the concert’s program notes even address that the composer Handel didn’t write the oratorio for it to be a religious performance: “Despite its subject, ‘Messiah’ should not be considered a sacred work.”

In the end, if the Santa Barbara Choral Society wanted to present a work with a “culturally inclusive dimension,” the audience should reflect that as well. There is a reason this piece, originally performed at a charity event in Dublin, Ireland for local institutions like hospitals, is performed 283 years later — it is for the people.

I can’t even imagine what that moment in front of the 22-piece orchestra and almost 60 singers in an open, reverberant space would’ve felt like had I found the “Hallelujah Chorus” before age 14. But, I know that everyone deserves the opportunity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful and familiar.