Opera
Verdi's Requiem (Coliseum)
Irresistible force
Michael Tanner
It still isn't uncommon to hear Verdi's Requiem being disapproved of for being too dramatic, or theatrical, the distinction between the two not being drawn as sharply as it should be by those making the criticism. Michelangelo's great painting in the Sistine Chapel of the Last Judgment is at least as dramatic, and indeed seems to have been a large part of Verdi's terrifying inspiration; but it isn't at all theatrical, in the sense that. Tintoretto, say, often is. On the other hand, I think it fair to say that while Michelangelo in that huge fresco manages to be overwhelming and not at all enjoyable — a Catholic will be terrified by it, a non-believer terrified at what some people believe — Verdi is both overwhelm- ing and perhaps a little too enjoyable: the Last Trump is such a thrilling noise, as Berlioz also found, that the temptation to indulge in a blaze of magnificent sound is hardly to be resisted. Later on in the Dies Irae, as he dwells on the pain that we have caused, and the far worse pain that we may be in for as a result, Verdi does become much graver, and the Lacrymosa in particu- lar is among his most anguished utterances. What, I suspect, the people who claim that he is too dramatic/theatrical mean is that he doesn't sufficiently lead us to serious thoughts of death and what might lie after, as Victoria or Schutz or Mozart certainly do. Where we should be moved and alarmed we tend to get excited and, such is the irresistible force of Verdi's music, exhilarated.
As someone who for some time didn't much like the Requiem, and now finds it the greatest of Verdi's works, I think it is very much a matter of the performance. Few works can be made to carry such dif- ferent import by their interpreters. ENO's idea of concluding its Italian season with it, in a series of staged performances, was pre- sumably to concentrate our minds on the universal aspects of the work, by disengag- ing it from one specific religion, and mak- ing it as ecumenical as possible. The programme book gives us a useful assort- ment of reactions by the world's religions and by articulate individuals to the facts of our mortality and the end of everything, and what happens on stage is just as inter- nationally interdenominational.
As we enter the auditorium, the chorus is sitting in dark clothes, looking impover- ished and bereft. It's unfortunate that this has become something of a generic ENO effect, for here it carries real power. As the work begins, in the deepest gloom and qui- etest tones, the effect of witnessing losers who are also lost, and of being among them, is potent and even worrying. Verdi himself is partly to blame for the dispelling of this, for when the tenor soloist vaults into his 'Kyrie eleison', followed in hot suc- cession by the three others, the spirit of competition is undeniable, as indeed it is through long stretches of this work.
Because the text is equally appropriate to everyone, there are many passages where the soloists have identical or closely similar, and difficult, passages to sing, and the `Anything you can do I can do better' ele- ment is bound to intrude. ENO's soloists, like most teams, are an unequal lot, with a superb contralto and bass, and an adequate tenor and promising soprano. Unfairly, some of them have more running around to do than others; the soprano not only has music closely resembling Leonora's in La Forza del Destino, but has to be almost as perpetually in flight.
For some way into the work the singers, soloists interspersed among the chorus, behave as a congregation, and then as a frightened mob, trying to shield themselves against the wrath of the Almighty with kitchen chairs. Later on the director Phyllida Lloyd's imagination expands, and we have people bearing their simple gifts during the Offertorio, the ENO's inevitable team of outreached children gambolling during the Sanctus, and towards the end the Ages of Person in the form of a series of increasingly old women moving into cen- tre stage. Finally everyone takes to the scaffolding, the house is plunged into com- plete darkness, and the soprano's fright- ened muttering, as directed by Verdi, is followed by her panic-strickenly failing to light a match, and sobbing.
If you don't want to look you needn't. The musical performance on the first night was intermittently ragged, but always vibrant and interesting, and the chorus especially, and above all during the final descent into the void, was stunning. Whether this Requiem needs anything added to it remains a question. I only hope that when the ENO has a German season, it will stage Brahms's Requiem, one work that could undeniably do with some imported action.
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