Giuseppe Verdi. The composer's name is synonymous with operatic intensity and extravagance on a grand scale.
Nabucco, Aida, La Traviata, Otello, Rigoletto, the list of thrilling human dramas composed by Verdi is lengthy and reads like the greatest hits of opera.
So it comes as no surprise that when Verdi turned his hand in 1874 to writing a Requiem, or mass for the dead, the result would be one of the most gripping and powerful examples of the genre.
The Springfield Symphony Chorus, prepared by Nikki Stoia, augmented by the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Chorale prepared by Stephen A. Paparo, and the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Chamber Choir and the Illuminati Vocal Arts Ensemble, both prepared by Tony Thornton, join forces with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, all under the baton of Maestro Kevin Rhodes, to present this mammoth work on Saturday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Springfield Symphony Hall.
The last time Rhodes and his colleagues performed the Verdi Requiem was in 2006, and it involved coordinating ten different choral organizations, along with amplification in the cavernous MassMutual Center.
"For sure, managing that many people...was a huge task in every regard," Rhodes recalled about the 2006 performance, "but the actual performance of the piece wasn't as challenging as I had imagined."
"I probably won't be telling the trumpets to play louder because I can't hear them this time," he said. "More challenging this time, however, is that I've decided to put everyone (over 300 musicians) on the rather modestly sized Symphony Hall stage - it remains to be seen exactly how that is going to work!"
When Verdi conducted the first performance of his Requiem in Milan, the tenor soloist was to have also sung Radames in the premiere of Aida two years earlier, but did not do so due to illness. On Saturday, tenor Eric Ashcraft, who sang Radames in Springfield's semi-staged Aida under Rhodes' baton in 2013 will be the tenor soloist in the Requiem. Ashcraft was also the tenor soloist in the 2006 SSO performance.
"Eric and I go back 18 years now, and he remains one of my favorite singers in this type of repertoire," Rhodes said. "Eric has also recently come through a serious health issue stronger than ever, so I'm very very thrilled to be seeing and working with him again!"
Two of the other soloist are familiar faces and voices in Springfield, the husband-wife team of Stacey Rishoi (mezzo-soprano) and Gustav Andreassen (bass), who have joined Rhodes in opera galas and in a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Soprano Lisa Gwyn Daltirus made an auspicious, favorably reviewed Metropolitan Opera debut as the Fifth Maid in Strauss's Elektra this season, and Saturday will be her first appearance with Rhodes and the SSO.
The last time Rhodes conducted the piece, he said, "the questions that go through my mind about life, death, and the hereafter when conducting, listening to, or contemplating a Requiem are distilled in a very pure way in this form - all of these questions are present in any serious drama (and a good many comedies) but in Verdi's Requiem, they become more universal."
Now twelve years later, responding to a similar prompt, Rhodes said "I have a simple answer for that. I'm now well aware that any time I play a piece, it could be for the last time."
It is this palpable sense of mortality and the immensity of life and death that endears the Verdi Requiem to listeners and musicians alike. Verdi wrote it very quickly in memory of the dramatist, poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, incorporating some material from a setting of the Libera me text that he had intended for a memorial to Gioacchino Rossini years earlier. Verdi himself rarely attended church, though he drove his wife to services. Whether or not he was a believer is the subject of much discussion, but the thundering musical assault that sets the recurring Dies irae (or Day of Wrath) text would strike fear into the heart of the staunchest atheist.
The score is full of dynamic and textural extremes. Not content with a single p to indicate softness (piano in Italian), nor with the next gradation, pp (pianissimo), Verdi wrote pppp over the final utterance in the Libera me, imagining singing that was barely audible, and on top of that, morendo, or dying. The pppp indication also appears above the words "dum veneris, judicare saeculum per ignem" (Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire), and again as the soprano sings "tremens factus sum ego et timeo..." (I am seized with fear and trembling - when I reflect upon the judgment and the wrath to come).
A massive fugue takes up these words, trying the singers and orchestra in the court of counterpoint, as it were, and the entire chorus eventually demands, fortissimo, "Domine, libera me de morte aeterna" (Lord, deliver me from eternal death).
Verdi paints vivid pictures in music, illustrating the sound of the "last trumpet" with a fusillade of brass in the Tuba mirum, followed by the shouts of choral souls rising from the grave. A vast aggregation of angels sings a colossal fugal setting of the "Holy, Holy" as if surrounding the listener on every hand. Verdi writes glorious, evocative melodies, and paces the piece masterfully to give the listener a hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the emotions of terror, despair, and hope.
As an homage to Manzoni, a cultural hero to the composer, Verdi's Requiem is a document of the utmost humanity and spirituality. As an opera, it ranks with Verdi's finest. As a religious statement, it is a searing illustration of the questions that plague all who undertake a spiritual journey and wrestle with questions of faith and immortality. As a concert experience it is not to be missed!
Tickets priced from $22-$65 may be obtained on line at www.springfieldsymphony.org or by calling the box office at (413) 733-2291.