by Daniel Hathaway
When Apollo’s Fire presents its four area performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion later this week under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell, the burden of storytelling will fall to tenor Nicholas Phan.
Although Bach assigned individual parts to singers who will take the roles of Jesus, Pilate, and other individual characters, Phan will narrate the Passion of Jesus Christ from the Gospel According to John. Bach’s two extant Passion settings are the closest the composer came to writing opera, and Apollo’s Fire promises to offer an especially dramatic version of the St. John.
Apollo’s Fire gave the first program of its Christmas Vespers ten years ago, a program that has continued to draw crowds through several reiterations. And no wonder: skillfully selected from the extensive publications of the early seventeenth-century Lutheran composer Michael Praetorius, these vespers have all the Christmas spirit one could wish for, with never a hint of Franz Gruber or White Christmas. 
Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra, opened a two-night revival of their Christmas show Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic Christmas on Saturday, December 12, at the First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. It was an unseasonably warm December evening, with every window in the church open to cool the capacity audience. 
Start with the second track of this excellent survey of George Frideric Handel’s expertise in writing for the soprano voice and its realization through the supple vocal chords of Amanda Forsythe. “Geloso tormento,” from Almira, the 19-year-old composer’s first opera, shows how ravishingly Handel and Forsythe can depict both rage and lament in the course of a single aria. (The soprano stunned audiences with such vocal prowess in the role of Edilia in the same opera during the 2013 Boston Early Music Festival.)
Venice, always on the verge of sinking into the Adriatic, rose well above sea level on Friday evening at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights as Apollo’s Fire began its 24th season with “Splendor of Venice: An Orchestral Extravaganza.” Following a parade by the musicians up the center aisle heralded by natural horns on either side of the stage, founder and conductor Jeannette Sorrell announced in her opening remarks that she would play the role of Rick Steves that night, taking the audience on a musical tour of 18th-century Venice.
Following a series of sold-out concerts at Tanglewood and in England (London and Aldeburgh) and Italy, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire is busy putting the finishing touches on the eight programs they are planning around the area this season. We reached founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell to chat about last summer’s experiences and her plans for the season to come.