Music Niagara, based in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ground Zero of Loyalist fervour in Upper Canada, starts its 15th season six weeks early with a re-enactment of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday, June 2 — the 60th anniversary of the actual event.
St Mark’s Church, located a couple of blocks from the Shaw Festival’s main theatre, has nice acoustics, but it is a small-town parish church, not Westminster Abbey.
Even so, a 12-piece orchestra, choirs (Avanti Chamber Singers and St Mark’s resident choristers, making up 45 voices) and actors will do their best to recreate a semblance of the pomp, pageantry and grand music, starting at 4:30 p.m.
It may be best to think of the event as a semi-sacred Last Night of the Proms, with actors in fancier dress.
The music includes such favourites as George Frideric Handel’s Zadok the Priest, William Walton’s Crown Imperial March and Healey Willan’s O Lord our Governor, as well as some congregational singing that will include Jerusalem.
You can read more about Music Niagara, which officially gets underway on July 12, here.
The $50 tickets for Sunday’s event are not available online, but through the Music Niagara office at 905-468-5566 or by emailing: rsvp (at) musicniagara.org.
Here’s a well-watched newsreel video made during Coronation Day:
John Terauds