Pandemic postpones a profound existential journey of the heart
For good reason. Look what’s happened to choirs around the world
They were going to end their season on a high note this Saturday.
More than 80 choristers, 45 orchestral musicians plus offstage trumpeters, and a quartet of soloists led by internationally acclaimed Canadian soprano Erin Wall, mezzo Kristine Dandavino, tenor Romulo Delgado, and bass-baritone Chad Louwerse, all under the baton of Southern Ontario Lyric Opera’s artistic director, Sabatino Vacca, in a 19th century masterpiece, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem.”
By now, you know all too well what happened to SOLO’s concert which was to have taken place in the Burlington Performing Arts Centre plus their concert slated in Milton earlier this month not to mention the dozen or so rehearsals they were to have had in April.
Yup, leave it to the coronavirus and physical distancing to totally wreck the “Req.”
“It’s so disappointing when you stop and think how long these (concerts) had been planned out and then so quickly wiped out,” Vacca told The Spectator. “This virus has hit so hard and so fast.”
But postponing those rehearsals and concerts until further notice was for the best. Better safe than sorry. After all, who’d have wanted a repeat of what happened just days after Het Amsterdams Gemengd Koor performed Bach’s “Johannes-Passion” in the Concertgebouw on March 8?
The Dutch daily, Trouw, reported that 102 of the mixed choir’s 130 members had fallen ill with some ending up in ICU, one chorister had died plus three partners of choristers. Or how about what happened to the Mount Vernon, Washington-based Skagit Valley Chorale after their March 10 rehearsal?
The Los Angeles Times reported that barely three weeks after that rehearsal, 45 choristers had been diagnosed with COVID-19 or were ill with the symptoms, three had been hospitalized and two had died. Or how about what happened to the Berliner Domkantorei in Germany after their March 9 rehearsal? As reported at evangelisch.de, 59 of 78 choir members had taken sick, 31 of them testing positive for the coronavirus. You get the picture by now.
Back in Burlington, though, the pandemic and its fallout took down the Verdi, that doesn’t mean Vacca or SOLO or the “Req” are down and out for the count.
“We are planning to reschedule and just taking things a day at a time to see when we might be able to slot it in,” said Vacca. “Details will be on our website (southernontariolyricopera.com) as soon as they become available.”
And perhaps a post-pandemic performance of the Verdi just might be what the doctor ordered.
“It’s rather tragically appropriate for these times,” said Vacca. “It’s such an intensely powerful experience right from the opening few notes. Verdi was apparently not a ‘religious’ man. But then it depends on what one means by ‘religious.’ You cannot listen to his ‘Requiem’ and come away but wondering he was in touch with something to create a work perfectly marrying this profound Catholic text with music from the pen of a great master.”
The heart of the matter, though, is the matter of the heart.
“Being a part of the Verdi ‘Requiem,’ whether as a performer or as an audience member, is such a profound experience,” Vacca said. “We are often confronted with coming to terms with our mortality, as with this current global health crisis. But infinitely more profound is then coming to terms with our immortality. The Verdi ‘Requiem’ is a profound existential journey of the heart.”
In the meantime, Vacca has used this pandemic pause to refocus his professional activities, diving headlong into learning some new scores and some music software programs, arranging pieces, planning out concerts, and the like.
“Any apparent ‘down time’ such as this, though it’s been very busy in other ways, is always a time to reflect and take stock of things,” said Vacca. “There is so much to discover in life. Not sure if this is always a good realization for it seems the more you realize how much there is to discover, the more it makes you realize how short life is. It’s a two-edged sword.”
Ain’t it the truth, brother, ain’t it the truth.