Over six seasons, Seraphic Fire has become as lauded for its versatility as for its polished, scrupulously prepared performances. Led by artistic director Patrick Dupre Quigley, the choir has tackled everything from Palestrina and Brahms to gospel, Caribbean music, Sephardic chant and contemporary works, with largely successful results.

Seraphic Fire is closing its season this weekend with ''Music for Kings,'' a refitted program of Handel and Mozart performed Friday evening at First United Methodist Church in Coral Gables. Originally slated to offer Mozart's Coronation Mass and Handel's Chandos Anthems, the lineup was revised to a mix of opera and oratorio arias and choruses, allowing Seraphic Fire members their chances to shine in the solo spotlight.

Quigley's thoughtful groupings found intriguing thematic links by freely mixing arias and choruses from both composers, as with the Priests' Chorus from Mozart's The Magic Flute and Handel's Zadok the Priest. Forgiveness was represented with Zerlina's Batti, batti from Mozart's Don Giovanni paired with the Kyrie from the Coronation Mass, and love reflected in Handel's My heart is inditing and the Papageno-Papagena duet from The Magic Flute.

NOT QUITE FLAWLESS

Backed by a small instrumental ensemble -- a foretaste of the Firebird Chamber Orchestra to debut this fall -- Quigley directed performances that offered smoothly blended tone, brisk tempos and informed period style from singers and instrumentalists, some passing errant string intonation apart.

While it provided a pleasant enough evening, the concert added up to something less than the sum of its intelligently arranged parts. There was a certain dry, piecemeal quality at times, with works like Handel's Israel in Egypt and Mozart's Coronation Mass not lending themselves very well to brief excerpts.

Accomplished as the choir members are as an ensemble, solo performances were mixed, with some voices better suited to early music than 18th-century opera, wanting in varied tonal colors and theatrical personality. And while Seraphic Fire prides itself as a collective, it seems bizarre to present singers in showy opera arias without identifying who is performing what.

THE STANDOUTS

Still, some singers acquitted themselves with distinction. Misty Bermudez's dusky mezzo floated a graceful Ombra mai fu and countertenor Reginald L. Mobley displayed crystalline diction and pinpoint agility in Their land brought forth frogs from Israel in Egypt.

Soprano Gabrielle Tinto sang with natural ease and refined feeling in the Agnus Dei from the Coronation Mass. Kathryn Mueller seemed the most at ease in the operatic material, delivering Batti, batti with lovely soprano tone and more characterfulexpression.

Yet it was the beautifully blended, sensitive encore of Mozart's Ave verum corpus that provided the finest performance of the evening, showing that, for all its far-ranging versatility, Seraphic Fire still shines brightest in sacred choral repertoire.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@