Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ @ Dallas Symphony Orchestra
—Review by Wayne Lee Gay
In his monumental Requiem for chorus and orchestra, Giuseppe Verdi asks for copious blasts of hellfire and supplication, relieved with a few rays of light and distant glory. This weekend, music director Fabio Luisi conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with a superb quartet of soloists, to deliver that complex and riveting masterpiece in full grandeur at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
More than one great composer who devoted a lifetime to instrumental music or opera has turned, toward the end of a long career, to the transcendent possibilities of large-scale choral-orchestral works—e.g. Beethoven with the Missa solemnis and Ninth Symphony and Haydn with his expansive final oratorios. Verdi, after producing a steady stream of twenty-five operas (and very little else) turned from the limitations of time and place imposed by opera to tackle the massive subjects of mortality, death, judgment, and redemption—in particular as contained in the text of the Latin mass for the dead, the Requiem.
Here, Verdi created a matchless and relentlessly fascinating tour-de-force for chorus, orchestra, and soloists, into which he poured all of his genius for orchestration, dramatic effect, vocal writing, and vocal-instrumental synthesis.
All of which comes together beautifully in this production. The 153-voice Dallas Symphony Chorus, for this performance trained by guest chorus conductor Ferdinando Sulla, handles every nuance, from the whispered but stunningly precise and heart-stopping initial entry to the thundering proclamation of the last judgment and the ecstasy of the Sanctus. This concert offers the Dallas audience yet another chance to hear one of America's great choral ensembles in one of the best rooms acoustically anywhere for choral-orchestral music.
The international quartet of soloists, stationed in the choral terrace just in front of the chorus, are equally impressive as they enter in the fugal Kyrie: Italian tenor Piero Pretti leads the way with a clarion-like declaration; he is answered, one-by-one, by Australian-American bass Joshua Bloom's cavernous timbre, Guatemalan soprano Adriana González's substantial but sweet upper registers, and American mezzo-soprano Tamar Mumford's darkly textured tones. If one had to choose one high point among the solo performances, that honor goes to soprano González's radiant high A's in the Agnus Dei.
Verdi calls for a relatively standard orchestra here—the northern European fixation on expansive orchestras had not reached Italy in the 1870s—with the exception of the brass section, which features a conventional entourage of four trumpets joined by the tuba onstage, and with four additional trumpets. Decades of creating subtleties in the pit orchestras of opera houses made Verdi an expert in efficient but effective instrumental writing. But, when the Tuba miram ("Marvelous trumpet") brings in the four offstage trumpets, stationed throughout the auditorium, the effect—anything but subtle—is particularly breathtaking.
With flawless timing and pacing, conductor Luisi reminds that Verdi's Requiem is much more than a fine showpiece for chorus and orchestra. It is also a revelation of human frailty, fear, and awe in the face of death and eternity. Verdi gave the world, a dark, almost frightening Dies irae ("Day of Wrath"), the dominant and most memorable section of the work; he counterbalanced with radiant moments of celestial light. Ultimately, however, the culturally Catholic but philosophically agnostic Verdi emphasized the pleading, questioning elements of the text, and leaves us not reassured, but uneasily resigned.
The individual listener might experience Verdi's musical interpretation as a matter of faith, as a metaphor, or as a bold statement of the frightening reality of death. But whatever response one chooses, this performance by conductor Luisi and these gathered musical forces provides an outstanding opportunity to witness and experience this overpowering monument of musical romanticism.
When: Repeated on November 12 & 13
Where: Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
