REVIEW: SFSO Verdi Requiem/Revival at Davies Hall October 2011

Oct 26, 2011 by admin

If as GBS told it, Brahms’ Requiem is the one that “made us all wish we were dead” then Verdi’s has to be the one that will shake the dead back awake again. It’s the ultimate “show off your stereo” and blast your brains and eardrums out while you’re doing it.

Last night in Davies Hall in San Francisco they were doing it. And how.

Y’all probably know about the conductor drama around this one. Luisi was going to conduct. Don’t really need to go much further on that. Last time they did it here a few years ago, Conlon did a bang-up job and who do you think just happened to have been scheduled to conduct the San Francisco Symphony in some Mussorgsky and Shostakovich the week before? The Rhine Maidens. Sorry, I mean James Conlon. Somehow they twisted his arm (or whatever else and whomever else they had to twice) and Jimmy saved the show and reprised his Verdi with mostly different (except for Frank Lopardo) but still high voltage soloists.

Bless their souls, they let rip. No understatement or backing off, just let ‘em have it gloriously loud and gutsy. No Requiem this. It’s a Revival. And, of course, as many have pointed out, it’s an Opera. More than once I’ve thought that if you really have the right solo quartet, all you’d need to do is add a baritone and you’d have your cast for “Aida.”

To that point, we had Sandra Radvanovsky, who does sing Aida when she feels like it, Dolora Zajick who has pretty much owned Amneris for at least two decades, Frank Lopardo who might be stretching it as Rhadames (but there have been other less qualified who’ve done it) and big, tall handsome sultry looking and strikingly resonant Estonian bass Ain Anger who’d do any company proud as Ramfis.

There were more than a few moments when Frank Lopardo was doing his musically correct devotional and sacred tenor without balls mezzo-voce thing only to be met by the other soloists clearly thinking “enough of this sh*t”, opening their mouths wide and honking gloriously.

The orchestra and chorus were in really top form: disciplined, together, beautifully balanced but thrilling. There are some choral moments led by the tenors and basses (“Te decet hymnus” and the onslaught of “Rex tremendae majestatis”) when you just want to be knocked in the gut by that sheer “man sound” and these guys delivered. Conlon whipped it up and was at least as full of fire as last time, if not more.

Radvanovsky is a strikingly beautiful and majestic creature. In a dark gown with her black hair pulled down, those high cheekbones made her look familiar in a way I couldn’t quite nail down but sure liked: a bit of Wendy Hiller, even a bit of Renata Tebaldi, more than a touch of Jamie Lee Curtis. Then she lets loose that crazy voice of hers. There’s no way she can just sort of slip into anything; this voice always has its high beams on. Live in the house, you don’t get the bothersome fluttery vibrato and “surface scratch” on the sound that broadcast mikes tend to home in on, but it’s still a sound that always seems like it’s just about to go completely wild but never does. At least not that I’ve heard. What she does do is to absolutely nail the big moments: that first high B in the “Kyrie” just made me smile and the high C’s in the “Salva me” and the end of the “Libera Me” soaring over the massed chorus and orchestra were sizzling. Once in a while it gets a little thin and wiry, but when she pulls off a perfectly controlled high B-flat pianissimo (also in the “Libera Me”) all is forgiven. And she’s a stage animal. Her face reacts to the grandeur and terror of what’s going on around and behind her – listening to the chorus with awe in the “Libera Me” much like her Trovatore Leonora does in the “Miserere.”

I’ve heard some mighty impressive things out of Dolora Zajick since I heard her demented young Azucena managing to hold her own against Ghena Dimitrova in a 1986 SF Trovatore (“she won’t have a voice by this time next year!”), but this might well be just about the best singing I’ve heard her do. It’s always big and powerful and eye-popping at the top and the bottom, but it was also remarkably beautiful and more steady than she sometimes is even in between. She scrunches her nose and lips and frowns, but those big sounds fired out of her mouth with such clarity and purity, clear steady and powerful on top and downright detonating on the bottom. She and Radvanovsky managed to stay on pitch during their “Agnus Dei” duet (Christine Brewer and Stephanie Blythe drooped nearly a tone when I saw them a few years ago). I wouldn’t say that their voices “blended” because neither one of them has a voice that would particularly blend with anybody, but I would say that they managed to “coordinate” well.

Lopardo was more concerned than the others with staying within the bounds of taste and a sacred portrayal and, beautifully as he sang, he therefore came off a bit underpowered and small-scale in this company. With a smaller voiced, more restrained group of colleagues, he’d have been killer.

Ain Anger is an impressive looking and sounding creature. He’s big, tall, well built with strong angular features, deep set eyes and a powerful, resonant voice that has elements of young Ghiaurov in it but with good, clear Italian-style Latin diction. I gather that most of his operatic work is in the German arena, doing Hundings and Landgrafs and the like. As I said, I think he’d make a dandy Ramfis. Maybe Mephistopheles (Gounod’s and/or Boito’s) too. It’s a big voice, but he can modulate dynamics reasonably and he can sing legato.

I liked it.

Max Paley