Building a Library
Michael Tanner relishes Verdi’s uniquely terrifying and theatrical take on the Requiem Mass as he chooses the finest recordings available
Michael Tanner hunts out the best recordings of Verdi’s Requiem; plus similar works to discover next
The work
When Rossini died in November 1868, Verdi took part in a plan to commemorate him by writing one section of a Requiem, with many of the other leading Italian composers of the day – all writers of opera, of course – contributing efforts of their own. Like so many communal schemes, this one took longer and was less satisfactory than its contributors hoped: Verdi’s Libera me is so embarrassingly superior to the rest that the whole work has hardly ever been performed (there is a recording under Helmut Rilling – see p69).
What affected Verdi far more deeply was the death of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni in 1873. Verdi revered Manzoni more than any of his contemporaries, and was spurred by his death to write a complete Requiem, though one which differs in several ways from the text of the Catholic Requiem Mass. He retained the Libera me from his first effort, though with considerable alterations, and finished the whole work in April 1874. Its first performance was in the inconspicuous church of San Marco in Milan. Verdi conducted, and then took the work on tour to various European cities, where he usually conducted it in concert halls – including the Albert Hall in London – rather than churches. It still remains primarily a work for the concert stage.
From the start, the Requiem has divided opinion, with Wagner’s right-hand man Hans von Bülow referring to it as ‘Verdi’s latest opera, though in ecclesiastical robes’, to which Brahms replied ‘Bülow has made a fool of himself. Only a genius could have written such a work’. Bülow soon handsomely repented. Verdi’s reputation has undergone many rises and falls since the 1870s, but the Requiem has never been out of favour, and continues to be one of the most popular of religious works.
That doesn’t stop the eternal debate about whether it is a theatrical rather than a religious work. Such a debate is futile because there is no reason why a theatrical work shouldn’t also be religious, or vice-versa: JS Bach’s Passions are religious works with a strong, even violent dramatic/theatrical element and force. One might say, in a hopeless attempt to bring the dispute about Verdi’s Requiem to a close, that it is the converse of Bach’s masterpieces: a theatrical work which is also religious.
Perhaps what really is behind unease about the Requiem’s status is its almost unrelieved tension and gloom. It begins,
understandably enough, with a plea for the dead to be granted eternal rest, but that plea returns, often with a strong sense that the dead may well not be granted any rest at all. The most powerful, and most stirring parts of the work concern, indeed portray, the Day of Judgment, when we shall all be arraigned for our wicked lives. Many have given up on that part of their faith, but it is probably what has been more than anything responsible for terrified people remaining Christian. And if there is going to be a Day of Judgment, what more theatrical event could God possibly contrive?
Verdi, it seems from the Requiem, saw Death itself, with or without an afterlife, as terrible. He would surely have agreed with his collaborator and librettist Arrigo Boito who, contemplating Verdi’s death in 1901, wrote ‘I have never experienced such a feeling of hatred against death, such loathing for its mysterious, blind, stupid, triumphant infamous power!’ Given that, it is not surprising that musical interpretations of the Requiem vary from the terrifying to the intermittently consoling. It is not possible to make the work a precursor of Fauré’s or Duruflé’s soothing Requiems or, for that matter, a successor to Brahms’s German Requiem, with its non-theological message of comfort, but some of the more ferocious stretches can be subdued a little while the extraordinarily moving supplicatory passages are emphasised. And even if you choose not to concentrate so much on the Latin words, the unfailingly marvellous music rarely fails to hold the attention.
There can be a risk in performance, and especially in recording, that the four soloists will be superstars and an element of competition, most inappropriate, will creep in, since in none of Verdi’s operas are so many phrases sung by one soloist after another, from the Kyrie onwards. Still, there is a plethora of valuable recordings, on CD and/or DVD, to choose from, and thus a certain arbitrariness is inevitable in making a choice of the best.
The most powerful and stirring parts of the Requiem concern the Day of Judgment
Claudio Abbado (conductor)
Angela Gheorghiu (soprano), Daniela Barcellona (mezzo), Roberto Alagna (tenor), Julian Konstantinov (bass); Swedish Radio Chorus,
Eric Ericson Chamber Choir/berlin Philharmonic EMI Classics 492 6949 (2001)
At the end of January 2001 there were performances of Verdi’s Requiem all over the world, to commemorate the centenary of the composer’s death. Several were recorded and, not surprisingly, they have an unusual intensity. Perhaps the most powerful of all were the two performances given in Berlin’s Philharmonie under conductor Claudio Abbado, with the sombre grandeur of the Berlin Philharmonic at his disposal, three crack choirs, and soloists who, though famous, were not so familiar with the work as to impose their own ideas on it.
Available on both Dvd/bluray and CD, it depends on whether you want to see it as well as listening to it. I prefer to see it for a reason that some may
Soprano Angela Gheorghiu murmurs the last words with appropriate terror
find questionable, but which seems to me under the circumstances entirely appropriate: Abbado had recently had an operation for cancer, and is clearly fragile, as he was to remain until his death. The sight of his gestures, both graceful and desperate, seems legitimately to add to the overwhelming effect of his deep understanding of and passion for this great work, and the soloists are on top form.
In no other performance that I have seen or heard has the comparison with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel seemed more appropriate, both in the quality and the quantity of fear and awe that it evokes. Soprano Angela Gheorghiu sings the extremely difficult Libera me exquisitely, and murmurs the last words of the Requiem with appropriate terror. The mezzo Daniela Barcellona, who has the lion’s share of the Dies irae, is on sumptuous form, with the Lacrymosa perfectly rounding off the complex emotions of the vast sequence. Tenor Roberto Alagna manages to find
the right, but different, tones for his two wonderful solos, ‘Ingemisco’ and ‘Hostias’, and bass Julian Konstantinov, sounds menacing but avoids melodrama. But it is the sight of Abbado, exhausted and shattered by the piece he has just so marvellously controlled, that makes the final, devastating impression. There is, appropriately, a huge silence, a hush, when the music ends, and then of course the usual bowings and smilings: turn it off before they begin.
The London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra perform Verdi’s Requiem, Prom 64