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‘Viva Verdi Part One’:  Jim Pritchard writes about two recent Verdi events in  London (JPr)

 Verdi, Requiem Mass: Barbara Frittoli (soprano), Ildiko Komlosi (mezzo-soprano), Massimo Giordano (tenor), Ferruccio Furlanetto (bass), London Philharmonic Choir, Philharmonia Chorus, Vladimir Jurowski (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London 26.4.2008

and

Aida:  Cinema showing of the 2006 Franco Zefferelli Teatro alla Scala production, Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro alla Scala,  conductor: Riccardo Chailly. Vue West End, London 27.4.2008 (JPr)


Verdi was a bit of a sceptic and not a churchgoer, though undoubtedly he was a man of great spirituality who managed to compose a deeply religious work. Hans von Bülow, the German conductor and disciple of Richard Wagner, saw the score before the Milan première and exclaimed it to be ‘Verdi's latest opera, though in ecclesiastical robes’ and then gave the concert a miss. Wagner heard the Requiem in Vienna in 1875 and Cosima, his wife, tactfully commented ‘It would be best to say nothing’. Yet when von Bülow finally heard it eighteen years later,  he was moved to tears and wrote to Verdi to apologise. Verdi unassumingly replied that, in fact, von Bülow might have been right the first time. By then von Bülow had switched his allegiance from Wagner to Brahms and the latter said of the Requiem, ‘Only a genius could have written such a work’.

The story of this Requiem Mass began in 1868 when Rossini died in Paris. Verdi wrote the final Libera me for a composite requiem involving movements by Italy's leading composers. The performance never took place. When Rossini died,  Verdi called him ‘one of the glories of Italy’ and he pondered ‘When the other one who still lives is no more, what will we have left?” The other one was Alessandro Manzoni, a celebrated poet and the author of the landmark nineteenth-century novel, I promessi sposi (The betrothed) which Verdi first read when he was 16 and which remained his favourite novel.

Meanwhile Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, had built a grand opera house at Cairo, and wanting to be patron of the arts commissioned Verdi to write an opera expressly for him, ‘if not of a national character, at least of a local nature, and to a certain extent of a patriotic colour.’ When Verdi asked for a subject,  he received a sketch prepared by Auguste Mariette, the great French Egyptologist, based on ‘historical and archaeological details of very powerful and very novel character’. Although offered only a sketch,  Verdi was impressed by the subject's inherent grandeur and he passed it on Camille du Locle and then Antonio Ghislanzoni, who fashioned the libretto for Aida as it now is, though declaring that Verdi himself had had a lot to do with it, particularly the idea of the denouément in the last Act, with its two stages one above the other.

Verdi had a great success with Aida in Cairo in December 1871 and now in his late fifties,  was contemplating retirement. However when Manzoni died on 22 May 1873, Verdi went back to his idea for a requiem mass,  despite having said just before the première of Aida,  ‘There are so many, many, many requiem masses; there's no point in adding one more.’ He had, of course, already part of a requiem mass written.

Verdi never went to Manzoni's funeral, just preferring to visit it ‘alone and unseen’. The same night he visited the grave, he wrote to Ricordi, his publisher, that he would compose a requiem mass to be performed on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death, offering to conduct it himself and assume the costs of copying the parts. Verdi chose his four soloists, including Teresa Stolz and Maria Waldmann, the original Aida and Amneris at La Scala in 1872. The prayer ‘Recordare’ in the Dies irae is the duet Verdi conceived with the voices of these favourite singers in Aida in mind, though here they do not sing as adversaries and for a moment, at the words ‘Just Judge of vengeance’ their voices join as one.

The Requiem that Verdi composed therefore honours two men for whom he had the greatest admiration,  and is a work of imposing scale, with a wide dynamic and emotional range. It employs a large orchestra, a vast choir and needs soloists with both the power to sing over the combined ensemble whilst also being able to project the quietest passages to all parts of the hall.

The Concert

The London Philharmonic Choir was joined on this occasion by members the Philharmonia Chorus and in full voice, they did stentorian justice to Verdi's fortissimo passages, such as the second movement’s Dies irae, yet reduced their sound  to sing as quiet as  possible for Libera Me, where Verdi marks his score ppppp. There was very good diction and attention to vocal detail which made the fugal passages in the Sanctus (a double fugue for split choirs) quite a highlight of the performance. It was a credit to their obvious thorough preparation under guest chorus master, Piero Monti.

Certainly,  the very beginning of the Requiem seems like a moment from a Verdi opera with a few wisps of melody setting the scene. But the movement blooms in ways not known in the opera house as the chorus makes a fugue of ‘Te decet hymnus’ and then the music soars heavenward as the soloists enter one by one. The Dies irae then explodes forth with the alarming ffff bangs on the big bass drum. Verdi then ups the drama by adding off-stage trumpets in the ‘Tuba mirum’.

Verdi's orchestral score is therefore a treat for extrovert percussion and brass players, who did not disappoint when depicting judgement day, while the strings and woodwind had to wait for quieter passages to make themselves heard. Where I was sitting,  the sound was mightily impressive throughout though the brass sometimes eclipsed the rest of the orchestra in some of the loudest sections most notably when Lee Tsarmaklis’s cimbasso bellowed out.

On paper, the soloists seemed well chosen for their extensive operatic experience as well as their concert work. Yet they seemed slow to relax vocally and it was only when they got to the lament ‘Lacrimosa’ (based on off cuts from Don Carlo) that chorus and soloists all gelled in the magnificent conclusion to the Dies irae which had begun with such fire and fury. For me, the best singer was the Hungarian mezzo, Ildiko Komlosi, who we would see the next day as Amneris. She had the richness of tone and the wide range of both pitch and dynamics that are required. Yet all four soloists seemed to be striving too hard for dramatic effect at times. Ms Komlosi had three Italian colleagues who all seemed over-parted at times. I wanted more refinement from Massimo Giordano (tenor) in the ‘Ingemisco’ and elsewhere he was rather strained. Ferruccio Furlanetto (bass) was exceeding baleful and monotonous and Barbara Frittoli (soprano) was either having an off-night or else is really a high mezzo: her attempts at floated pianissimo high notes did not always hit the mark. She  looked bored with her arms folded most of the evening: either that  or her occasional facial grimaces hinted at some other discomfort.

Strangely for me this year,  the always reliable London Philharmonic Orchestra seems to have performed even better without their principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski than with him. Perhaps he is someone better suited to the opera house than the concert platform. Here,  where he could merge those two disciplines,  the music seemed to suit him more, yet despite maintaining an impeccable ensemble of the huge forces in front of him, there still seemed a strange detachment and broadness to his reading. Undoubtedly there was plenty of verismo passion in it but overall there was too much opera and definitely too little spirituality.

The Aida film

The following lunchtime I was at the Vue West End cinema off Leicester Square for a showing of the Teatro alla Scala DVD of their  ill-fated 2006 production of Aida with sets and costumes by Franco Zefferelli and costumes by Maurizio Millionth. This DVD has already been issued but was shown as one of a series of pre-recorded operas from La Scala, Teatro La Fenice, Venice and Teatro del Maggio Musicale, Florence. As the blurb has it … ‘filmed in high definition’ and ‘projected in … the highest quality standard in cinemas today, together with 5.1 surround sound’. It was filmed on the first night of this new staging in December 2006 in which Roberto Alagna, performing as Radamès, walked off and never returned after singing ‘Celeste Aida’ on the second night because of boos and catcalls directed at him .

Unlike the live broadcasts from the New York Metropolitan shown in selected cinemas throughout the country,  these ‘replays’ are on different dates and seem not to be known about sufficiently yet to attract more than a meagre handful to this sole outing in the West End.

As for me,  I gloried in such old-fashioned opera of a type that is impossible to expect in the UK. There was probably more money thrown at the La Scala stage for the sets and costumes than Covent Garden probably spends on half-a-dozen new productions. My wife, who accompanied me, had been bemoaning the fact that it was from the opera house and not filmed on the banks of the Nile in the ruins. She said no more about this when the curtains opened to reveal Egyptian statues, reliefs, cartouches and costumes as ‘authentic’ as they could possibly be. Much gold was on also on show and there was some non-PC browning-up of characters including Radamès, as well as  Aida and the other Ethiopians, the Egyptian guards were body-painted in lapis-lazuli blue and four winged figures came floating down on wires at the ends of Acts II and IV.

This is possibly what Zandra Rhodes at the English National Opera was striving for in her recent production there but only had the money for MDF cut-outs whereas here everything was  spectacularly solid. It was a production like this in Vienna twenty-five and more years ago that drew me into the world of opera,  and it is the reason why opera remains such a popular middle-brow art form throughout Europe whilst it is looked on with distain in the UK. Admittedly, a lack of serious music education in British schools also plays its part in that of  course..

The filmed version by Patrizia Carmine was equally ‘old-fashioned’,  but with a moving camera and close-ups   the audience was sufficiently involved in any intimate drama. She also had the confidence to stand back and let the moments of great spectacle unfold without any directorial trickery. Only the repeated use of fluttering fabric as a dissolve during and between scenes became a bit tiresome in the end. A little wearying too,  was the rather prosaic choreography of Vladimir Vassiliev which ran the gamut from cute scene-stealing kids in Act II, to tribally masked dancers and two strangely coffee-coloured near-naked principals during the triumphal march.

The sound on any of the cinema opera I have heard so far has been uniformally too loud and fails to replicate the opera house experience where what one hears is restricted by acoustics and distance. Here it seems too clean, too pure - simply too digital - and never do you get the impression that there is someone human bowing or blowing. Riccardo Chailly and his orchestra give a polish account of the score as best I can judge and there are some changes of gear that suggest he is always sensitive to the demands on his singers,  but he blazes incandescently when the orchestra interjects in Acts III and IV. The voices always sound more genuine though,  and here Chailly has some wonderful Verdians at his disposal.  Violeta Urmana had no problem with her floated high notes in ‘Ritorna vincitor’ and throughout was a plangent Aida; Ildiko Komlosi was vocally a wonderfully conspiratorial, jealous, and ultimately heart-broken Amneris and physically she was transfixing especially when she spat out ‘Radamès vive’ with wonderfully crazy eyes. These two were the best singing actors and the rest  seem to have been told little more than where to stand and sing. Marco Spotti (The King) and Carlo Guelfi (Amonasro) both had the essential Verdian style for their roles but were woefully under-directed.

At worst they were two-dimensional caricatures,  but Alagna’s Radamès was actually entirely one-dimensional so focused was he on his singing it seemed. Feet were placed well and left-hand outstretched and that was about it,  until in his Act IV confrontation with Amneris when he kissed her hand, the first bit of passion he had shown in the whole performance. Chailly later uncharitably praised the sound engineers for apparently getting a performance from Alagna for the DVD but on the evidence presented here,  his was a very creditable delivery of a thankless role and it is possible that he might have gained more vocal ease and elegance had he managed to survive for a few more performances. I look forward to hearing his ‘Viva Verdi’ opera recital evening at the Barbican at the beginning of May. The La Scala et al presentations will continue at selected Vue ( and other independent)  cinemas throughout the UK (website www.artsalliancemedia.com/opera) in coming months.

Jim Pritchard

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