The thundering Dies irae of Verdi's Requiem has been used incongruously in Dublin as the soundtrack for a video touting a haunted-house bus tour of the city. This misappropriation can perhaps be forgiven following the staging of not one but two performances of Verdi's transformative work in Dublin within two months. I missed the first occasion in April, but the performance by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Italian maestro Michele Mariotti at the National Concert Hall was a splendid affair. Not only were the orchestra and chorus in peak form, but it was apparent that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to assemble a sterling foursome of soloists. American soprano Angela Meade was joined by mezzo-soprano Enkelejda Shkosa, a regular on European opera stages. Italian tenor Antonio Poli and Russian bass Evgeny Stavinsky made up the male ranks.
It is well known that the final Libera me section of the Requiem began life as part of a failed collective effort by Italian composers to honour Rossini. Verdi resurrected it for his later Requiem, written to commemorate the death of Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi and the Italian public revered as the nation's greatest writer. But Verdi was not content to compose another mass for the dead. From the wild fury of the last judgment depicted in the Dies irae, with its blaring brass and body-shaking bass drums, to the plaintive entries by the solo voices that would be at home in Verdi's operas, the piece is better suited to the concert hall than the church. It broke new ground and it surely eased the way for Bernstein's Mass and a host of other such works.
The RTÉ orchestra and chorus seemed super-energised and anyone who attended hoping to be blown away by the sheer volume of the Dies irae would not have been disappointed. But it was in the delicate quartet and solo work by the four main singers that the performance really shone.
Poli and Stavinsky both made marvellous work of their respective Ingemisco and Confutatis solos. Stavinsky, who studied at the Moscow-based Academy of Choral Art, has one of those distinctively Russian voices that makes you think of Boris Godunov, which is no bad thing in this most operatic of requiems. Poli's tenor may have needed a bit more oomph, but there was nothing to complain about his pitch or phrasing. The Lacrymosa quartet, with choral accompaniment, was heavenly, leading to the famous Amen, set unexpectedly to a chord of G major, after which the orchestra ends the piece in B flat major. It is an effect that Donald Tovey calls "one of the subtlest and most impressive strokes of genius in all Verdi's work"... and Mariotti nailed it.