Verdi's "Requiem' by Vox Ama Deus

Valentin Radu is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Vox Ama Deus with a quartet of major choral works. Radu opened the season with Mozart's Requiem and followed it with the Messiah that he conducts every Christmas. Now he's concluding the series with two works normally reserved for major orchestras: Verdi's Requiem and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

When Radu essayed the Verdi for the first time, five years ago, he was venturing outside Vox's customary Baroque and pre-Romantic repertoire, and it showed. Verdi's Requiem is an operatic work, created for audiences that relished the passionate, show-stopping arias of late-19th-Century opera. It requires a more flamboyant style than the great Baroque settings of liturgical texts.

This time around I didn't feel that way. Radu was still working with the same modest, Baroque-sized forces that he used in 2007, but he managed to give the Requiem a satisfactory grand-opera treatment, complete with trumpets pealing from the balconies when the text turned to the details of the Last Judgment.

The Requiem's arias could have been composed for operas dealing with purely secular operatic subjects like love and violence. The four soloists all seized the opportunity to cut loose in the grand style.

Angel of vengeance

Verdi made the mezzo-soprano the star of the Requiem, and Jody Kidwell delivered a passionate, thoroughly operatic performance. When she prophesied the vengeance of the Lord upon sinners, she could have been a character in an Italian opera vowing revenge upon her tormentors. But she could also evoke softer emotions. In the Recordare ("Remember, merciful Jesus"), she and soprano Julie-Ann Green created a genuinely touching duet.

The mezzo may get most of the Requiem's best bits, but the soprano has her moments. Green took full advantage of her scene-stealing floating entrance in the Offertorio, which comes after she's spent several minutes listening to the other three soloists engage in a lengthy trio. The soprano also gets the last word, in the form of the final long aria for soprano and chorus— an assignment Green fulfilled with dignity and authority.

In the Ingemisco ("I groan as one guilty"), tenor Timothy Bentch produced a classic tenor aria, with all the soaring and shading that audiences have adored since the mid-19th Century. Bass Ed Bara delivered his arias with his customary combination of power and melody.

The chorus could have used a few more voices, but it blended well with the orchestra, and the combination of voices and instruments produced several powerful moments. Verdi used the winds with a particularly imaginative touch and the wind sections all deserved the applause they received at the end.

Small but powerful

The strings deserve a special mention, too. Their harmonies underpin the mood of some of Verdi's most important interludes, and the small number of string players on the stage had to produce effects that a major orchestra would create with twice as many musicians.

The cello section provided good examples of the power that Radu drew from a small orchestra. The entire section consisted of two musicians— principal Vivian Barton Dozor and her stand partner, Anthony Pirollo— but they opened the evening with all the dark somberness that the score requires. After the intermission, they took the lead spot again and launched the second half with the higher, more melodic opening bars of the Offertorio.

Verdi's Requiem seems to have acquired a corps of devotees who treasure classic recordings featuring world-class soloists. I've encountered members of the club after both Vox Amadeus performances.

Some disparagingly compare the Vox version to the perfections of their recordings. Others understand that you can't compare a recording to a live performance and appreciate the immediacy and commitment that first-class regional organizations bring to their work. The second group should have left the Perelman Theater feeling that Vox Ama Deus gave them a memorable evening.