San Francisco Classical Voice

It may not be his "greatest opera," but Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass requires all the dramatic power and flair a chorus can muster. Sounding in tip-top form on Saturday night at the Masonic auditorium, the San Francisco Choral Society, strongly supported by the San Francisco Sinfonietta, gave a stirring account of this expansive and complex score.

Verdi conceived his piece partly as a public patriotic act, celebrating the young Italian republic by mourning the death of a leader in the struggle for unification, the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni. But the Requiem, in common with many other Romantic compositions featuring chorus, is also a hymn to art and its power to create community. The large chorus, cast in the central role, is both the symbol and the catalyst for this idea. Verdi expected his work to be an event, like the chorus festivals and oratorio performances in England and Germany at the time. Watching the chorus on Saturday night crowd expectantly onto the risers after intermission, it occurred to me that I had never witnessed a performance that more closely fulfilled that ideal.

In this case, communitarian music making was compatible with high musical standards. From the thunderous wailing of the Dies Irae to the spare beauty of the Agnus Dei to the sepulchral chanting of the Libera me, the choristers reveled in the textural and stylistic variety suggested by the score. Entrances were on time, with clear attacks and well-focused sound, and the diction was faultless. A particularly lovely moment occurred after the heavy, complaining opening of the Lacrymosa prayer, when the women came in to relieve the gloom with a melody that rises gracefully out of the depths ("Spare this one, O God"), a textural shift made all the more magical by the extreme pianissimo that they managed.

Other memorable moments included the Sanctus, performed with great delicacy, and the climactic sequence in the wild "Libera me" fugue, where the music's searching, upward reach is countered by a descending theme pounded out fortissimo by the full orchestra and chorus.

The quartet of soloists was a well-matched and generally capable group. They did some of their best singing in the ensemble passages, where their control of dynamics and their tonal blend shone to advantage. Individually, mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse had the best night. Showing power and firmness of tone throughout her range, she completely commanded the long declamatory surge of the "Liber scriptus proferetur" while offering shadings of color and volume, as in the first line of the section, which evaporates into a soft almost-question.

Soprano Hope Briggs has excellent vocal equipment. Still, it needs fine-tuning and greater expressive control. Nevertheless, she was a convincing and passionate leader of the huge "Libera me" movement. Tenor Christopher Corley's voice seemed thin and stretched throughout the evening, especially when challenged by the long lines of the massively difficult "Ingemisco," perhaps the requiem's best-known "aria." On the other hand, he sang the "Hostias" passage of the Offertorium with quiet intensity and lovely tone. Douglas Nagel, the bass, sang without much sense of style in his two main solo moments but was a supportive presence in the ensembles.

The San Francisco Sinfonietta provided generally strong support. They gave considerable heft and punch to the Dies Irae, and there were any number of well-played passages. To pick just one: the violins played the heavenly melody at the conclusion of the Offertorium with sure intonation and consolatory sweetness.

Robert Geary led the performance with a strong hand. Tempos were generally on the upper side of normal, with the exception of the Sanctus, where the relaxed pace allowed the chorus to shine in a difficult movement. At times he seemed a little too driven, as when he jumped into the trumpet calls that announce the "Tuba mirum" — a little space to let the dust settle from the fading Dies Irae would have been welcome. He also severely limited the use of rubato, that particularly bel canto trick of elasticizing tempo, which occasionally made the melodic lines sound unnaturally stiff.

Still, this performance was one to be extremely proud of for those who took part in it. And it was quite an event for the audience as well.

(Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph D in musicology from UC Berkeley, specializing in opera, and is a lecturer for the San Francisco Opera. )

©2000 Michael Zwiebach , all rights reserved