06.22.08
Conspirare Sings Their Guts Out
Last night Scott and I went to see Kat and Steve perform Verdi’s Requiem with Conspirare. My god it was good.
I’m not sure what it is about a good Requiem mass that sends me, but when they sang Dies Irae and the drum pounded, I was in a transport. And then the soloists would come in and I’d try translating the Latin in the program until the orchestra and choir took over again. Unless it was the bass. His voice was seriously yummy. Everybody was totally gawking over the soprano, and I feel horrible (since obviously I’m in the minority here), but she did very little for me (unless she was singing higher than the choir, at which point her soaring vocals added a haunting descant). She was one of those gut-buster singers who strikes that constipated Brunhilda pose the entire time and warbles vibrato until I’m not sure what note she’s on. Sometimes well trained people can’t do passionate right to my ears; the combination of the technical precision required in operatic vocals combined with the raw chaos of emotion sings like a wounded hippo. Maybe I just don’t watch enough of the “good” stuff, but given a choice, I’ll take Tom Waits’ passionate crackle over almost anybody. Hmm… Tom Waits does a requiem… now THAT has some serious merit…. But anyway, I could’ve listened to the choir and the orchestra sing on into the night, and that’s saying something as I have a wretched time sitting still in audience seating.
Giuseppe Verdi (or Joe Green, as Steve the choir director calls him) created a Requiem of wailing power and drama, which, according to Kat, may be the only Requiem to date to end on “Libera me” instead of the usual “Requiem Aeternum”. Creepy cool that he eschews peaceful rest in favor of “please….” at the end. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll be saying on “dies illa solvet saeclum in savilla”, so maybe that makes this a good rip for me.
Craig Hella Johnson, the director of Conspirare, is an amazing talent and has done an incredible job with an enormous and powerful choir and orchestra, and I’m thrilled that I got to see it.