Acoustician, conductor, and musician Zach Glick of the Chicago Jewish Alliance on Ester

Several weeks ago, Haymarket Opera Company’s general director Chase Hopkins approached the Chicago Jewish Alliance (CJA), of which I am the director of campus engagement and advocacy, with an exciting and unique proposal. He explained that the company was preparing to present the Chicago premiere of a rare oratorio by the little-known composer Alessandro Stradella, Ester, liberatrice del popolo ebreo. He asked if CJA would like to provide some contextual materials for the piece, reflections on the story of Esther and her significance to Jewish tradition, and we gratefully obliged. His timing was impeccable: the poignancy of programming a work on the Book of Esther merely two weeks after the Jewish festival of Purim was not lost on me. In addition to providing pre-concert reflections on the significance of Purim, my fellow CJA teammates and I were also invited to attend the performance. As a classical musician myself (conductor, clarinetist, classical guitarist), I usually feel right at home in the concert hall, though this experience was truly special.

Typically, I am somewhat acquainted with the plot of an opera or oratorio before I take my seat. I diligently do my homework or read the program notes, and my growing knowledge of Roman mythology and the New Testament are sufficient to supply adequate context to theatrical works by the Baroque masters. But the story of Esther is one I know really well. Having grown up in a Reform Jewish household, I have endless positive memories of attending Purim spiels (theatrical retellings of the Megillah, the Book of Esther, in synagogues and Jewish community centers) and engaging in the holiday traditions, like drowning out Haman’s name every time it is uttered with a grogger (noisemaker) or boisterous shouting. So, I was profoundly intrigued to encounter a potentially new telling of the Esther story. Haymarket lived up to its reputation; the performance was crisp, clean, and moving. Additionally, I departed from Gannon Concert Hall with a rather unexpected realization about the piece and a more thorough understanding of the Purim story.

Though the Italian title translates to Esther, liberator of the Hebrew people, the piece ultimately struck me as not being truly about Esther per se. It is true that her introspective and emotional arias in Part I belong to a figure deeply troubled by the impossible decision of whether to appear before her husband, King Ahasuerus, and expose Haman’s plot to annihilate the Jewish people. Ultimately, Stradella’s Esther is a static character, a vessel for stress and anxiety. Her emotional consistency transcends the temporal flow of the oratorio, and after her work is done and she condemns Haman, she altogether vanishes from the piece. Rather than a complex individual with agency, she is perhaps better understood as an allegory for the everpresent Jewish sensitivity to antisemitism–though maybe in an essay beyond the scope of this review. After all, in Stradella’s time, real Jews were confined to ghettos in cities like Venice and Rome and also lacked considerable agency. 

Haman, on the other hand, is remarkably dynamic. He is the only figure in the piece who develops, by virtue of both his words and his music. For this reason, Stradella’s oratorio is more realistically a story about him. It is a perspective on the Book of Esther that is new to me, a fresh lens through which to contemplate this story I previously thought I knew well, and my unexpected takeaway from the performance.

Haman’s character evolves from a proud and powerful man, drunk on his own wickedness, to a pathetic and helpless criminal. In Part I, he boasts of his lofty status and gleefully fantasizes about murdering Mordecai: “With your fierce grief and torment against the wretched man who has waged war on me, I long to end his life with a violent death.” His appeals to the supernatural —that he will summon lightning bolts to smite the Jewish people—are the delusions of grandeur that make him the “Mad Hatter” of the oratorio. And he gives himself over wholly to his hatred as he exclaims that “All hope for mercy is banished, and my thoughts and power will rule as tyrants.”

His music is likewise distinct from that of the other principals and successfully serves his text. As Louise K. Stein pointed out in her pre-concert lecture and program note, Haman’s arias are rife with dotted rhythms and indulgent melismas. The seductive nature of his music imbues his character with a deranged militarism that is simultaneously intriguing and unnerving and that confirms the tonality of his message as threatening and despicable.

Nevertheless, Haman’s bravura entirely deflates following the denouement. He becomes pathetically emotional, begging for forgiveness: “Weeping, unhappy, and miserable I humbly fall at your feet. I dare not embrace you but ask that you be lenient with me.” His audacity to ask for mercy from Esther after attempting to mobilize a genocide of her people is staggering. Not such a tough guy anymore, huh! Furthermore, his music loses all of its prior power. He can no longer muster an aria, instead devolving into recitative. Stradella effectively robs Haman of the musical source of his toxic self-confidence. And in the end, Haman plays the victim.

There is a one-two punch inherent in Haman’s character development. First, he is objectionable because he gleefully commits to an unwarranted campaign of death and destruction. He continues to be intolerable because he resorts to groveling in order to try to save his own head after his plan collapses. Instead of repenting, he takes zero responsibility for his actions and avoids accountability. He is not only a tyrant but a coward.

So what does this all mean? Aside from a puzzling challenge to the title of the oratorio, the fact that Haman is more central to the plot than Esther provides even greater depth to the Purim story. In Judaism, Esther's centrality (and the notable absence of the divine from the Megillah) is critical to a traditional understanding of her story in which the themes of Jewish self-preservation, bravery, nationhood, and resilience locate it on similar thematic grounds as the stories of Chanukah and Passover. (All three are holidays that recognize the unlikely victories of a small, embattled nation against forces of evil.) Likewise, more modern feminist readings of the Book of Esther assert her status as a heroic figure and advocate for more adequate recognition, alongside Judah Maccabee and Moses. For Stradella to place Haman centerstage in this piece is to sidestep the message I expected, given my background. Instead, Stradella’s focus on Haman serves to make the story’s antagonist even more despicable. 

In the end Stradella’s Ester proved to be a welcome addition to my experiences with the story of Esther and an opportunity to meditate on the nature of Haman’s wickedness. I am so grateful to Haymarket for inviting CJA to play a role in curating this performance and eagerly look forward to how future performances may enrich my relationships with other histories.

Learn more about Haymarket’s 2025 performance of Stradella’s Ester.

About the author

Zach Glick is an acoustician at Kirkegaard Acoustic Consultants, a conductor, musician, and the Director of Campus Engagement and Advocacy at the Chicago Jewish Alliance.

About The Haymarket Review: This new digital publication including thoughts about  the work produced by Haymarket is designed to deepen our connection to audiences, nurture and feed audience curiosity about historical performance, offer critical opinions and thoughtful reflections on our performances, and provide a forum for Haymarket and its audience to connect through sharing insights, opinions, learning, and expertise.