A grand Verdi Re­quiem by PPO

AMID THE agony of Ja­pan, Verdi’s Re­quiem was a timely of­fer­ing by the Philip­pine Phil­har­monic Orches­tra.

Like it or not, the Verdi mas­ter­piece could help hu­mankind come to terms with death and de­struc­tion. It’s mu­sic that could bring about tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual re­newal.

The grand choir—com­posed of the UP Madri­gal Singers; the Ad­ven­tist Univer­sity of the Philip­pines Am­bas­sadors Cho­ral Arts So­ci­ety; and the Ate­neo Cham­ber Singers—pro­vided as­tound­ing mu­si­cal back­drop on which the au­di­ence could judge the soloists: so­prano He­len Lyons, mezzo so­prano Ni­cole Birk­land, bari­tone Andrew Fer­nando and tenor Gary del Rosario.

The con­cert opened with Verdi’s Over­ture to “Nabucco,” af­ter which the au­di­ence was treated to a pre­ma­ture 10minute in­ter­mis­sion. Then the Re­quiem was per­formed with­out break, which­was good de­ci­sion since it af­forded the au­di­ence the chance to ap­pre­ci­ate bet­ter the colos­sal mu­si­cal struc­ture of the piece.

With the “Nabucco” Over­ture, it was ob­vi­ous the PPO was in good shape. Con­duc­tor Olivier Ocha­nine made sure it would be a mem­o­rable evening.

Judge­ment Day

Some trum­peters were po­si­tioned in the the­ater’s lower box; the re­sult was that it looked like Judg­ment Day, es­pe­cially in the tuba mirum pas­sage. Mu­sic an­a­lysts call this the re­sult­ing com­bi­na­tion of brass and cho­ral quadru­ple-for­tis­simo mark­ings re­sult­ing in some of the loud­est un­am­pli­fied mu­sic ever writ­ten.

One must say the open­ing “In­troit” and “Kyrie” with soloists was a poignant call to prayer with a magnificen­t cho­rus un­leash­ing its mighty sound in “Dies Irae,” tuba mirum sec­tions. On this part, Fer­nando made a solemn, pow­er­ful en­trance matched by Birk­land’s re­veal­ing pres­ence in “Liber scrip­tus” sec­tion.

Fer­nando was again a for­mi­da­ble vo­cal force to reckon with in the “Confu­tatis” part.

In the “Ingemisco” part, Del Rosario was given the chance to show off the qual­ity of his tenor sound. It was on the whole a pierc­ing, solid pro­jec­tion, but with pal­pa­ble vol­ume that didn’t quite match the cho­rus and the other soloists.

Birk­land, Del Rosario and Fer­nando were soloists to be­hold in the “ Lux aeterna” part.

Lyons, though not an as­tound­ing Verdi soloist, man­aged to match the cho­rus and sing above it with fly­ing col­ors. It made “ Libera me” an apoc­a­lyp­tic and highly dra­matic fi­nale.

To this writer, it was the PPO at one of its best and Ocha­nine at his most-in­spired mo­ments. They de­served that rous­ing ova­tion.

Cul­tural con­nec­tion

Orig­i­nally a mu­si­cal set­ting for a Ro­man Catholic fu­neral Mass, Verdi’s Re­quiem was cho­sen as a fit­ting event to com­mem­o­rate the 150th an­niver­sary of Italy’s uni­fi­ca­tion.

Ital­ian Am­bas­sador Luca Fornari said Verdi was the most in­flu­en­tial Ital­ian com­poser of the 19th cen­tury. He said the mu­sic of Verdi’s “Nabucco” and Re­quiem was shared by Ital­ian pa­tri­ots dur­ing the re­uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment. Proof of this was that a fa­vorite among sup­port­ers of Ital­ian re­uni­fi­ca­tion was the “Cho­rus of the He­brew Slaves” from the opera “ Nabucco” (1842).

Nedy Tan­toco of Rus­tan’s, pres­i­dent of the Philip­pine-Ital­ian As­so­ci­a­tion, noted that the Ital­ian Na­tional Day co­in­cided with the 150th an­niver­sary of José Rizal’s birth­day.

To be sure, the Philip­pineI­tal­ian cul­tural con­nec­tion didn’t start with the found­ing of the Philip­pine-Ital­ian As­so­ci­a­tion

in 1962.

First op­er­atic di­vas

The coun­try’s first op­er­atic di­vas—Isang Ta­pales and Jovita Fuentes (the lat­ter de­clared a Na­tional Artist for Mu­sic)— their first in­ter­na­tional de­buts in Italy in 1924 as Cio Cio San in the Puc­cini opera “Madama But­ter­fly.”

In 1932, a Filipino bass bari­tone named José Moss­es­geld San­ti­ago-Font made his La Scala de­but as Spara­fu­cile in the Verdi opera “Rigo­letto.” He was the first Filipino to sing in that revered Mi­lan the­ater.

The sec­ond Filipino singer to make it to La Scala was tenor Arthur Espiritu from Tanay, Rizal, who sang Fer­rando in theMozart opera “Cosi Fan Tutte” in 2007.

Ta­pales’ in­ter­na­tional ca­reer started in Italy, in Mi­lan and Florence.

Ta­pales had sung 1,047 per­for­mances of “Madama But­ter­fly” (as Cio Cio San), over 200 “Bo­hemes” (as Mimi) and “Pagli­acci” (as Nedda) and over 100 “Iris,” the com­poser of which, Pi­etro Mascagni, also com­posed “Caval­le­ria Rus­ti­cana.”

Ta­pales was the first Filipino so­prano to sing with such world-fa­mous Ital­ian tenors as Gi­a­como Lauri-Volpi and Be­ni­amino Gigli, who in­her­ited the crown of En­rico Caruso.

Ta­pales was also the first Filip­ina to sing in Pavarotti’s home­town in Mo­dena, where she sang Mascagni’s “Iris” with Pavarotti’s opera idol, Gigli.

Ta­pales met Gigli in the Royal Opera House of Cairo in Egypt, where the lat­ter sang Kioto (in the opera “Iris”). They met again at the Opera Comique in Paris, where she sang But­ter­fly with the Ital­ian tenor as her Pinker­ton (he was the first tenor to sing the lead role in Gior­dano’s “An­drea Che­nier” on March 7, 1920). When Gigli died in 1957, Ta­pales said she “died a lit­tle.”

Italy’s op­er­atic star of the 1920s and ’30s, so­prano Amelita Gulli-Curci, also sang at the Manila Metropoli­tan The­ater and ap­peared in sev­eral op­er­atic pro­duc­tions in Mi­lan with the Philip­pines’ fore­most bass bari­tone, José Moss­es­geld San­ti­ago-Font.

Mi­lan of the Ori­ent

Re­nata Te­baldi, sup­pos­edly Maria Cal­las’ fierce ri­val, sang in Manila in the ’70s with Franco Corelli, an­other idol of Pavarotti.

The god­dess of opera that she was, Te­baldi proved she was hu­man, too, when she cracked in a “Manon Lescaut” aria at Phil­am­life The­ater. Af­ter that un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent, she mas­saged her throat with her hands, gen­u­flected and bowed to ask for apol­ogy. She was greeted with a grand ap­plause.

Manila was also re­ferred to as the “Mi­lan of the Ori­ent” be­cause of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of opera pro­duc­tions and the emer­gence of world-class Filipino op­er­atic tal­ents.

Re­called bari­tone Nomer Son, who had wit­nessed the Golden Age of opera in the Philip­pines : The ex­change rate in the ‘ 50s was P2 to $1. That waswhy when Iwas study­ing in the United States in the late ‘50s I could buy a box ticket to watch Zinka [Mi­lanov], [Re­nata] Te­baldi, Rise Steven, Jan Peerce, Mario del Monaco and many oth­ers at the old Metropoli­tan Opera House in New York for P15 [$7.50]. How­ever, it cost only P5 to watch at 10 a.m. af­ter my Sun­day ROTC at UST to walk over to Mo­rayta to see all of Ar­rigo Pola’s per­for­mances, at FEU the­ater. There, on an­other Sun­day, I also saw the only opera starred in and pro­duced by José Moss­es­geld San­ti­ago Font’s Faust—also for 5 bucks. At about the same time, a thir­drun movie house along Ech­ague re­peat­edly showed the movie ‘Faust’ star­ring Fer­ru­cio Tagli­avini with Italo Tajo as Mephistoph­e­les. I saw all the re­runs, which at P.50 was a steal. Italo was in RP in 1979 as the sacristan in ‘Tosca’ at the CCP.”

In­deed, the Filipino-Ital­ian mu­si­cal ties go back a long way, even be­fore the ad­vent of Ar­mani suits and Prada bags.

PA­TRICK Jac­into, Nedy Tan­toco, pres­i­dent of Rus­tan’s Group of Com­pa­nies and Philip­pine Ital­ian As­so­ci­a­tion; First Sec­re­tary of Ital­ian Em­bassy Dr. Al­fonso Tagli­a­ferri, his brother Lorenzo, and par­ents Ste­fa­nia Speca and Giuseppe PHO­TOS BY RODEL ROTONI

DUTCH Am­bas­sador Robert Brinks (right) with two guests

PING Va­len­cia, Mari Bo­rao and Anna Tirol

AM­BAS­SADOR Robert Brinks of Nether­lands and Am­bas­sador Luca Fornari of Italy

BAL En­driga, for­mer chair of the CCP, and Tessie En­driga

SIL­VANA Fornari and Betty Chalk­ley