Tuesday, November 1, 2016

London Symphony Orchestra Performs the Verdi Requiem

I've always considered Verdi the greatest of all Italian opera composers; in my estimation I place ahead of his Otello only Mozart's Da Ponte operas.  And just as the two composers created the greatest operas of all time, so they each also penned Requiems that are masterpieces of the genre.  Although over the years I've heard many broadcasts and recordings of the Verdi Requiem, Sunday afternoon's rendition at David Geffen Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda is the first live performance I can remember having attended.

The Requiem has a convoluted history that demonstrates how difficult it was for an opera composer, even one of such stature as Verdi, to work freely in nineteenth century Italy.  The piece began as part of a joint effort by a dozen composers in 1868 to create a Requiem in honor of the legendary Rossini who had only just passed away.  In the end, nothing came of the project and it was abandoned.  Whether this was entirely the fault of the proposed conductor Angelo Mariani, as Verdi claimed, or whether there were differences among the composers themselves, this is one of those all too common episodes in Italian musical history that reveal the disruptive personality conflicts that existed in that country's musical establishment.

Verdi never abandoned the Libera me that had been his contribution to the aborted Mariani project and five years later, in 1873, he saw his chance to finally put it to use upon the death of the writer Alessandro Manzoni whose work he had greatly respected.  This time Verdi, wary of any further collaborations, decided to write the entire Requiem himself.  And not only did he compose it on his own, but he even conducted the premiere in Milan in 1874.  Even then, though, Verdi was not free of problems.  He had vehemently insisted the premiere be given at the Church of San Marco, but the Catholic Church in Italy did not then allow women to sing at church services.  The only way around this prohibition was to perform the work, not as a traditional mass, but only as one stripped of the sacrament of Communion.  And even then Milan's Archbishop insisted that the female singers should not be allowed to appear in plain sight.

The Requiem differs from most other examples of the genre in that it is not so much a liturgical work as a concert piece that makes full use of operatic techniques.  As a result, it is heard more often in concert halls than in ecclesiastical settings.  That in no way, however, reduces the spiritual power of the work.  It is utterly profound and moving when heard in any venue and most especially so when performed by an ensemble of such high caliber as the London Symphony Orchestra.

Gianandrea Noseda has been having a banner year.  He was not only named one of the two principal guest conductors of the LSO, but was also appointed music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.  He did an excellent job leading Les pêcheurs de perles last season at the Met and I'm eager to hear him conduct Diana Damrau there this season in Romeo et Juliette.  His performance Sunday afternoon was exemplary.

The singers were uniformly excellent.  They included Erika Grimaldi, soprano; Daniela Barcellona, mezzo-soprano; Vitalij Kowaljow, bass; and Giorgio Berrugi, tenor, who replaced Francesco Meli on short notice.  And one could not ask for a finer chorus than the London Symphony's own, directed by Simon Halsey.

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