For the love of god

Sacred prayer or steamy love affair? Anniversary concert celebrates music inspired by kings & queens

Some scholars say that The Song of Songs of Solomon focuses on the historic, secular love story between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The book fills our minds with sumptuous, tender, loving and passionate words — the stuff that makes up a great romance novel.

Yet a sacred reading of these steamy texts of dedication may symbolize something completely different. Some say that the words describe one's connection with God — but I'll leave that up to the reader to decide which fairs a better interpretation.

During the Baroque era, there was a fascination with these poetic verses. Many composers set these allegorical passages to music, yielding variations as plentiful as the devotions they declare.

Ars Lyrica Houston closes its 2012-13 season with "Divine Recreation," a program that offers a tempting treat: Musical settings of the Song of Songs of Solomon and other divinely inspired tunes interpreted by Baroque's famed composers such as Dieterich Buxtehude, Claudio Monteverdi and George Frideric Handel.

Soprano Melissa Givens, who will be featured in the concert, explains that these excerpts celebrate the elements of a relationship, including the initial attraction, pursuit, sexual attraction and union.

"There are about five stories in the universe that we keep retelling. How love can take you to the highest places or make do things you thought you'd never do."

The performance will include an alluring duet from Monteverdi's opera The Coronation of Poppaea. The sultry love affair between Nero, Emperor of Rome, and a young girl, Poppea, isn't related to the text from Song of Songs, but connected to the theme of the evening.

Givens has a personal connection to The Coronation of Poppaea. As a young music student at Rice University, she recalls not being fond of the title role. Years later, however, as she revisits the ambitious score, it has become her most beloved piece to execute. She thinks that's because of a correlation she noticed later in her career and through her work as a teacher.

"There are about five stories in the universe that we keep retelling," Givens says. "How love can take you to the highest places or make do things you thought you'd never do. It's the basis of a lot of our greatest love stories — and you can trace that right back to the Song of Solomon."

In alignment with the theme of devotion, the performance also marks Given's 10-year anniversary collaborating with Ars Lyrica. She affectionately describes her tenure with the group as a family environment teeming with amazing colleagues.

"I've been blessed," she continues. "We're fortunate to be able to perform early music. We've gotten to the point where we get to experience the re-creation of art no matter the repertoire. We communicate this joy. Ars Lyrica was founded on our love for early music, so it's nice to have our next season focus on the subject of love."

Ars Lyrica's desire to bring early music to a community that years ago didn't have a lot of exposure to the genre continues to inspire while growing in popularity.

And just how breathtaking are the words between King Solomon and his Queen, or a Roman Emperor and his beloved when they're set to music? You're invited to find out.

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Ars Lyrica will perform "Divine Recreation" on Friday, 7:30 p.m., at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets start at $35, $22 for students, and can be purchased online or by calling 713-315-2525.

The repertoire includes Monteverdi's Pulchra es, amica mea from Vespro della beata Vergine; Frescobaldi's Bergamasca from Fiori Musicali; Monteverdi's Pur ti miro from L'Incoronazione di Poppea; Monteverdi's Nigra sum from Vespro della beata Vergine; Marini's La Foscarina. Sonata a 3 con il tremolo; Schütz's Paratum cor meum, Deus, SWV 257; Buxtehude's Liebster, meine Seele saget, BuxWV 70 and excerpts from Handel's Solomon.

Melissa Givens and the artists of Ars Lyrica Houston.

Photo by © Anthony Rathbun

Melissa Givens and the artists of Ars Lyrica Houston.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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