Verdi – Messa da Requiem; Sir Mark Elder conductor; Natalyia Romaniw, soprano; Alice Coote, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Atkins, tenor; James Platt, bass; Hallé Choir and Orchestra
Yet another work I’ve known since I was a teenager but haven’t heard live since the 1970s. I can’t remember who performed it or exactly when I last went to a live performance – I have a feeling it might have been 1972 at the Proms with Jessye Norman in the soprano role. For some reason the lending library recording boxed set I got to know this work from as a teenager didn’t have the LP side with the Libera Me final section of the Requiem on it. This final movement always comes as something of a surprise to me when I listen to it!
I know this work very well (apart from the Libera me) and it has one of the most perfect moments in music I know of in the Sanctus – the brief Hosanna section with the chorus, But I do have a problem with this work – or at any rate how it is often performed (and as it was performed this evening). Verdi’s Requiem concerns the most fundamental questions you can ask yourself, whether from a secular or religious perspective – what have I made of my life? Am I with the sheep or the goats? What will be remembered of me? What lasting good have I done for other people? The only ways of setting these words to music are those which communicate the solemnity, the drama and the tragedy/triumph of those big questions. I always find myself querying those who grumble about the over- operatic stance of the work – since opera as a medium is ideally placed to capture the emotions relating to these issues. It can be serious, comic, tragic, triumphant, with the audience intimately caught up with the drama. The problem with many performances of the Requiem, I think, is that, while things are fine when the choir is singing, or the orchestra given free-rein – the opening of the Dies Irae always sounds to me to be akin to the storm which opens Otello. – issues come with the soloists. The style and the very large role they have to play would indicate that they should treat their roles with dramatic bite and intensity. Unfortunately, both the nature of the words – ancient, Latin, religious – and the context means that often the soloists sing in a rather unengaged generalised manner and this was true of three of the soloists at this performance. The one person who really gave us the sense of a human being asking the questions I’ve outlined, and facing the reality of judgement, was Alice Coote who gave a deeply committed and powerful account with very effective projection of many of the words. She really gave us the sense of a human being struggling with their fate – her snarled “Quem patronum rogaturus,
cum vix justus sit securus” was terrifying. The others were very good but didn’t project anything like the same intensity. James Platt was sonorous, Thomas Atkins (not a name I’ve come across before) had a very good ‘Italianate ‘ tenor voice. Natalyia Romaniw was more than very good – she floated beautiful high long-breathed notes, her silvery voice was a pleasure to listen to but she didn’t really make much of the text, and her head sometimes seemed buried in the score – she wasn’t treating the work as a dramatic event, whereas Alice Coote’s eyes were constantly and intensely on the audience.
The Bridgewater Hall was pretty full for this performance. The line-up of soloists, as I say, was impressive and the Halle Choir large and capable. The Halle Orchestra sounded splendid – I noted some beautiful bassoon playing and a sumptuous string sound. My only criticism was that the offstage trumpets sounded a bit too distant and ethereal. So, this for me had many aspects of a very good performance but not, I think, a great one.
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