It doesn’t take cinematography to catch an audience’s imagination. With the ready combination of a beefy score by Handel, the artistic finesse of a renowned Dallas conductor and strenuous performance by University of North Texas musicians and professors, an audience need only lend its ears.

The performance of George Frideric Handel’s Saul is both a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Lucille “Lupe” Murchison Performing Arts Center and a continuation of a joint venture of UNT faculty, students and Dallas Opera Music Director Graeme Jenkins.

The performance is at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Murchison.

Courtesy photo

Jeffrey Snider, a University of North Texas music professor, will perform the title role in Handel’s Saul on Thursday at the Murchison Performing Arts Center and Friday in Dallas.

View larger More photos Photo store

The College of Music recruited Jenkins to begin a series of major baroque oratorios by Handel. It began with Israel in Egypt in 2001 and then moved on to Handel’s Jeptha. Most recently, Jenkins drove students of the UNT early music program through Handel’s Samson. In each performance, faculty singers proved their worth on the national stage, attacking the composer’s baroque biblical operas with intensity, ferocity and, when the score calls for it, lightness. Except that Handel’s oratorios aren’t operas in the typical sense. Penned to be sung during Lent, the oratorios are performed with a sober choral intent. The spectacle is in the music.

Saul is a three-hour oratorio that joins Jenkins, the UNT Baroque Orchestra, Collegium Singers and A Cappella Choir. A full slate of UNT faculty members step in to sing solos, each animating larger-than-life biblical figures with Handel’s famous ornamentation. This work traces the relationship of David and Saul, after David has defeated Goliath.

Jenkins credited a Cambridge University academic for coining the right term for works like Saul.

“The real specialist here is someone called Dr. Ruth Smith,” Jenkins said. “She calls oratorio ‘opera for the mind.’ You don’t need sets. The music is so very powerful and so fantastically dramatic that you can let it take you through to the end, the music. It’s deeply dramatic stuff. I want to re-create that drama, but I want to bring it out as fresh as if it were premiered last week.”

Lyle Nordstrom, the director of the UNT early music program, explained that “opera of the mind” gives credit to the rising action of the music, not to mention the shadows, the light and the romance.

“What ‘opera of the mind’ means is that you have a very dramatic piece of music where the drama is not acted on stage,” he said. “But that very element of drama that you can’t miss is there in the music. You have the characters singing arias and talking to one another. You have the chorus commenting on what’s going on or becoming part of it as the Israelites. You see what’s going on in the music.”

Nordstrom pointed out that there are some bits of theater in the oratorio. Soloists enter and exit. They interact with one another. But there aren’t the trappings of opera such as huge sets or elaborate costumes.

The student ensembles started rehearsing Saul in the fall. In the last week, Jenkins has rehearsed the students, faculty and guest soloists.

“And let’s just talk about doing Saul,” Jenkins said. “Doing this piece is like doing two Mahler symphonies back to back. It’s three hours. It’s exhausting. This is important music. Handel is still a part of ceremonies even now. When a monarch dies, you hear Saul’s funeral march.”

Nordstrom said the students are learning some important things from Saul.

“What they’re picking up is the intensity that you have to have in a production like this. We never get a chance to do a three-hour production like this,” Nordstrom said. “The combination of working with Graeme, but working with our faculty as well, teaches them how to perform with the intensity you have to have when you’re doing this sort of music. It’s a rare opportunity for a university early music program. And the faculty as well, they’re saying that this is what you have to do as a professional. You have to work and work, you have to bring that intensity. They are showing the way, very directly, what you have to work if you’re a professional.

“I was at choir rehearsal [Thursday] night,” Nordstrom said. “There was a break and one of the singers was sitting there. I said, ‘You look tired,’ and he said, ‘Yes, I’m exhausted. You should be up here with us.’ That’s something Graeme is really bringing to the group.”

Jenkins said some of the labor is spent bringing the opera from the opening scene to the end without a loss of energy.

“There should be almost no rest between recitative and aria,” Jenkins said. “It should really move to an inexorable crescendo through to the end. Drama, just drama and movement. If you have heard sprawl in a performance of Saul, that’s the conductor’s  fault.”

Tickets for Saul are expected to sell briskly, and reservations are recommended.

A repeat performance of Saul is scheduled for Friday at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.

HANDEL’S SAUL

What: a celebration of the Murchison Performing Arts Center’s first 10 years

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: Winspear Performance Hall in the Murchison Performing Arts Center, located along the north side of Interstate 35E at North Texas Boulevard. A repeat performance will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, 9800 Preston Road in Dallas.

Details: Tickets are $20 for the public; $15 for seniors and UNT faculty and staff; and $10 for students. The Denton performance is free to UNT students with ID. Tickets are expected to sell quickly. For reservations, call 940-369-7802 or visit www.thempac.com.

SOLOISTS OF SAUL

Saul — baritone Jeffrey Snider, a UNT music professor

Jonathan — tenor Richard Croft, a UNT music professor 

Michal — soprano Lynn Eustis, a UNT music professor

Witch of Endor — mezzosoprano Jennifer Lane, a UNT music professor

David — guest countertenor Ryland Angel

Merab — guest soprano Sarah Abigail Griffiths