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“No, I’m just boring--and I’m just lucky I’ve been able to sing it as much as I have.”

Debbie Goldberg may have carved a whole new definition for the term “modest,” as she referred to her experience singing Handel’s “Messiah,” as part of the Independence Messiah Choir of Independence, Mo. Goldberg, a cotton management analyst in the Farm Service Agency’s Kansas City Administrative Office in Kansas City, Mo., has sung the “Messiah” for 25 out of the 84 years that the Independence Messiah Choir has been in existence.

She said that those live performances, which take place each Saturday before Thanksgiving, have then been rebroadcast on Christmas Day over public radio, worldwide, for all 25 years of her participation, as well as rebroadcast over cable TV worldwide for the last 12 years.

Ironically, Goldberg’s pre-Thanksgiving performance this past year was the first time that she had lost her voice on the day of the concert, due to a touch of flu. “So I had to mouth the words,” she acknowledged. “But the 300-person choir is big enough that I was able to fake it okay.”

On three previous occasions she had gotten laryngitis just prior to the performance, but she said her voice came back for her “just in time.”

So, how about coughing or sneezing: how do you avoid that?

“Well, a few times I’ve gotten that urge,” Goldberg recalled. “But when that happens--and if the pocketfuls of throat lozenges our choir director distributes to us aren’t doing the trick--then you can either leave discretely via the back stairs to the choir loft, or you can muffle it--and I’ve been able to muffle it satisfactorily, so far.”

Have you ever felt like fainting while having to stand during the three-hour concert?

“Not if you stand with your knees bent,” she explained. “You actually lean into the music, and that’s really a reaction to the music itself.” She added that the choir members do get to sit down during the estimated 15 solos that are part of Handel’s “Messiah.”

“Actually,” Goldberg pointed out, “the hardest part is holding the 3/4-inch thick, hard-cover book that contains three hours worth of music.” According to Sue Carpenter, a management analyst in FSA’s Kansas City Administrative Office, here is Goldberg’s technique for coping: she holds the book with her right hand, palm up, braces her right elbow into her hip, and turns the 250 pages with her left hand. “After 25 years,” she said, “I’ve memorized it all by now--but I still display the book for the sake of appearance.”

“Oh,” she then quickly added, “don’t let me forget the bright-hot lights that are used during the taping of our performances--which don’t tend to go well with my long-sleeved velvet robe, or with the tuxes the men are wearing.”

“I hope I’ll be forgiven,” she quipped, “if I admitted that, once those lights have been shining on us for about two hours, I’m thinking of the beach and a ‘tall, cool one’...”

During 25 years of performing the “Messiah,” has your voice changed?

“It’s gotten lower,” she noted. “Although I’m still a soprano, who, these days, can’t really hit high ‘E’ anymore, I guess my voice is moving closer to smokey and husky.”

Finally, during the celebrated pause just before the end of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” have you ever accidentally kept singing during that silence?

Goldberg explained that it’s only a small pause, or “hold,” written into the musical score. But for dramatic effect, conductors have broadened the pause over the years.

“And no, I’ve never kept singing during that pause,” she emphasized. But she said that, during her earlier years with the Independence Messiah Choir, she “came in early” on some phrases. “Our conductor,” she quipped, “taught us that, if that happens to you, just turn and glare at the person next to you.”

And have you ever had to glare at anyone in that situation?

“Oh no,” Goldberg laughed. “But I’ve noticed a few times that they’ve been glaring at me!”