By Eileen Wingard
LA JOLLA, California — In the many performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass which I have experienced as a performer or a listener, I have never heard this masterpiece with 250 voices in the choir. That was the size of the choral forces for the March 17, 18 and 19 performances in Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD under the direction of Steven Schick.
From the hushed beginning, as the singers intoned the words, “Requiem aeternam,” until the final fugue of the Libera me, the combined choirs from the La Jolla Chorus under the direction of David Chase, the San Diego Master Chorale under the direction of Dr. John Russell and the Gay Men’s Choir under the direction of RC Haus were awesome in all of their entrances. They sang with unbelievable unity and blend, with wonderful textures and dynamic contrasts, as only well-trained, inspired musicians can do.
The orchestra was also equal to the task. There were memorable cello solos, the brass were strongly assertive in the Dies irae, as was the dramatic bass drummer, and the woodwind solos were well executed.
The four vocal soloists, soprano Ariana Strahl; mezzo-soprano, Victoria Vargas; tenor, Robert Breault; and bass-baritone, Colin Ramsey were nicely matched, as demonstrated in their first quartet, Kyrie eleison. Ramsey’s voice was particularly resonant as he sang “Oro supplex et acclinis.” Mezzo-soprano Vargas projected with security the opening Lacrymosa, and she and soprano Strahl were in beautiful octaves in the Agnus Dei.
Tenor Breault was impressive in Ingemisco tamquam reus. In the final section, soprano Strahl’s high leap, singing “Requiem,” was done with dramatic fervor, landing right on pitch, something I have heard elude some of the most seasoned sopranos.
Music has the power to evoke memories, and, as I listened to this remarkable performance of Verdi’s Requiem, many remembrances came to mind: the times I played this work as a member of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and as a member of the San Diego Opera Orchestra, accompanying the San Diego Master Chorale and the San Diego Opera Chorus, and the three times I heard Murry Sidlin’s concert-drama, The Defiant Requiem, in which he used multi-media devices, interspersed between movements, to portray the performance of the work in the Nazi show ghetto of Terezin.
In the late 80’s I read the book by Joza Karas, Music In Terezin 1941-1945, and was particularly struck by the story of the conductor, Raphael Schaechter, who, working from a single score, and needing to constantly recruit new singers because of deportations, managed to stage 16 performances of Verdi’s Requiem.
Once, when I performed the work with the San Diego Symphony, I wrote a piece for The San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, in which I described my thoughts, wondering as I played, what it was like for those performers in Terezin.
The next week, I received a phone call from Eve Gerstle. “I sang in the choir in Terezin under Schaechter,” she told me.
I made an appointment to meet Eve and learn about her life. Although Eve’s fine soprano voice delayed her being transported from Terezin to Auschwitz, it did not spare her. She rehearsed with the choir, but she was transported before she could sing in the first performance. Yet, those rehearsals, under Raphael Schaechter’s direction, influenced her life. She collected every recording she could of Verdi’s Requiem, and she never missed a performance of the Requiem in San Diego.
As with most who remained alive, her survival during those harrowing years was a confluence of courage and luck. On a death march, she managed to escape behind some bushes when the guard turned his back. About to be shot by a Russian firing squad that thought that she and her two companions were Germans posing as Jewish inmates, she was saved when one of her friends began reciting the “Shma” and a Russian Jewish doctor, hearing this, ordered the squad to halt.
For anyone who has seen Sidlin’s concert-drama, Verdi’s Requiem has taken on a new layer of meaning. And for us, living in today’s world, it continues to take on new meaning.
Steven Shick writes in “From the Conductor,” in the printed program, “I ask you to hear the voices of the doomed singers of Terezin, and I ask you to hear the desperate cries of refugees within sight of the Italian coastline, yet just out of the reach of rescue..and I ask us to hear the voices of immigrants in our very city—our neighbors and our friends, our brothers and sisters, who are now living in penumbra of uncertainty and fear…Making music today must be about nothing less than asserting moral force. It must be about how we—who have so much and who live so fully—can act responsibly in a world where so many have so little. It must be about the voices we cannot hear. “
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Wingard is a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony. As a freelance writer, she specializes in coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com
Inspired! I wish I had known about the concert to have been able to experience this. Thank you