In the few weeks before Christmas you can get your “Messiah” fix in as many flavor variations as lattés at your favorite coffee house. You can select the low-fat, no-foam “Messiah” programs that offer a smattering of favorite highlights and send you home in an hour. Or you can go off the diet and get the 100-voice massed choir and full orchestra Victorian “Messiah,” which is the equivalent of the pumpkin-flavored latté with gobs of whipped cream and chocolate sparkles.

And you could find just about anything in between, including a gay chorus “Messiah” with dancing Santas and reindeer in bondage for the half-time show. Just when I was about to ask, ”Will the real George Frederick Handel ‘Messiah’ please stand?” British conductor Nicholas McGegan brought the most stylistically fresh and revealing “Messiah” to the Copley Hall stage, with the help, of course, of about half of the San Diego Master Chorale, some 35 members of the San Diego Symphony and four vocal soloists.

Although MeGegan was conducting modern instruments and a traditionally-trained chorus of some 60 voices, he artfully but vigorously commanded an interpretation that crackled with genuine Baroque flre and panache. As Music Director of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, McGegan has honed his sensibility to 18^th-century styles with a virtuoso group of period instrument performers, and he knows exactly what he wants.

A casual listener will immediately be surprised by his choice of unusually fast tempos for certain choruses and arias, but speed is not really McGegan’s defining approach. Rather, he finds the most characteristic musical motif that embodies the essence of the text, and allows that motif to bloom naturally in the composer’s musical setting.

To be certain, McGegan’s break-neck tempos of “And the Glory of the Lord Will Be Revealed” and “He Shall Purify the Sons of Levi” left the Master Chorale gasping in the dust, and his pedal-to-the-floor “Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion” made me wonder if soprano Dominique Labelle was going to need oxygen onstage by the end of her aria, although she sang bravely and accurately. But these tempos were completely logical given Handel’s vibrant musical concepts.

It is McGegan’s devotion to the text, however, that sets him apart even among other early music specialists. Two of his vocal soloists, tenor John McVeigh and contertenor Daniel Taylor, interpreted their recitatives and arias with the persuasive flexibility and dramatic flare that is essential to this style. Each soloist used ornamentation to bring out the emotional subtext of their words, and their occasional cadenzas were not moments of indulgent display, but emotion-charged exclamation points in the text.

When McVeigh sang “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted,” he exorcised all of the stentorian Victorian grandeur that has become attached to that aria and made it sound like the ecstatic announcement delivered by some ancient royal messenger who has run miles to deliver good news. Taylor’s aria “He Was Despised” delivered its pathos with apt, fatal resignation, yet his cadenza that punctuated the phrase “For he is like a refiner’s fire” (in an earlier aria) surged with dramatic alarm.

When these singers held the stage, they projected Handel the great composer of Italian opera, which was the entirety of his successful career in London for decades until opera fell out of fashion in the 1740s, and only then did he resort to writing oratorios such as “Messiah.” In recent years, major opera companies have even staged some of these oratorios—I think of San Franciso’s “Semele” a few seasons back—along with Handel’s exensive catalogue of actual operas. Sadly, too few contemporary directors think opera when they approach a Handel oratorio—most of them seem to conjure Sir Edward Elgar. And this is why MeGegan’s approach made this “Messiah” sound to some listeners like a work never heard before.

Baritone Philip Cutlip and soprano Labelle sang expressively, but they did not have a secure grip on MeGegan’s Baroque style. Their ornaments were tentative and declamation rather generic, although Cutlip’s “Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage?” rattled the rafters with color and fury. When it came to a slower, more legato aria such as “How Beautiful Are the Feet,” Labelle lacked support and exhibited a slightly breathy quality.

The Master Chorale grew stronger and more focused as the oratorio progressed, and its “Surely He Hath Born Our Griefs” was secure and well-balanced, as were the familiar concluding choruses. Executing the pivotal continuo duties of the oratorio, Robert Plimpton shifted from positive organ to harpsichord with aplomb, offering particularly stylish and rhythmically vital keyboard support. We heard most the “Messiah” score at this outing, although as usual, the third and final section of the oratorio was shortened significantly.

The San Diego Symphony strings responded to McGegan cleanly and with surprising sympathy to his light, short-phrased, short-bowed approach. Since he is based up the coast, would it not be profitable and nurturing to have him as a regular guest on the San Diego podium? His style would complement Music Director Jahja Ling’s more mainstream, 19^th-century orchestral orientation. Is there anything wrong with wanting the best of both worlds?

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