In October 2004, The Orpheus Choir of Wellington appointed Michael Fulcher as its new Musical Director. Read about Michael here.
Orpheus is the story of Wellington's Orpheus Choir, from its modest beginnings in 1952 to its fiftieth anniversary in 2002. Author Simon Tipping has spent sixteen months looking into the choir's records and talking to many people connected with the choir's history, and has produced a lively and readable account of its development. He has also gathered information from similar symphonic choirs in New Zealand and overseas, to put the Orpheus Choir's achievements into a wider context.
The facts are all there - concerts, programmes, conductors, dates; but the stories behind these facts are what gives the book its colour and character. There's the story of the soprano who wept during the War Requiem, until a hand came out of the audience offering her a handkerchief; the story of the donkeys' contribution to a rehearsal at choir camp; the work which was described by a critic as “this sound for the Titanic to sink by”; the performance about which Peter Godfrey said “I hadn't done anything like that for at least 30 years”; what Sir David Willcocks had to do to get some members of the choir to watch him; the famous bloodstained Brahms Requiem performance…
The great works are there, such as the Verdi Requiem, the Beethoven 9th, Missa Solemnis, Mass in B Minor, St Matthew Passion, Messiah, the Mahler 8th ; the great challenges such as Bartok's Cantata Profana, Honegger's Joan of Arc, Holst's Hymn of Jesus, Stravinsky's Les Noces; the away visits – to Auckland, Hawkes Bay, Masterton; the assorted train trips, and flights which didn't come back to where they had started; the choir characters…
These and many more, with opinions and reminiscences from choir members, soloists and conductors, and comparisons with similar choirs in New Zealand and overseas, are woven together to produce the colourful skein which is the fifty-year history of the Orpheus Choir.