by Dick Edelstein
Following the opening night performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Barcelona last month, I left the Gran Teatre del Liceu harboring the thought that this revolutionary setting was a slick riposte to the existential challenge of malevolent Trumpian ideology, a notion that could have motivated theatre director Romeo Castellucci’s approach to staging Mozart’s much beloved and final work in his Liceu debut. Castellucci is already well known to Barcelona theatre audiences, and he is planning to return to the Liceu in the near future with his own opera project.
This staged production of the Requiem premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Although it is a mass for the dead, the Requiem, like much of Mozart’s music, expresses an irrepressible joie de vivre and is more about celebrating the cycle of life than mourning a death. Here we enter into the labyrinth of ambiguities and controversies that surround this work. Mozart’s views on the Church, society, Masonic beliefs, and enlightenment values molded his attitude towards life and death. This tension of ideas is manifest in the interplay between the text, music, and dramatic symbolism in Castellucci’s highly kinetic, fully-staged setting that includes folk dancing, gestural movement, choreography, set decoration, and multimedia support.
The opening scene evokes a tragic mood as an elderly woman sits in a bare bedroom placidly staring at a small mid-century tv set until the scene changes to depict her death and burial. Throughout the work, the chorus performs movements, gestures and folk dances in scenes that represent community activity and folk rituals. Although the Requiem usually takes an hour to perform, the inclusion of five additional short devotional pieces by Mozart has resulted in a 90-minute running time that works well for musical theatre. Castellucci has previously staged innovative performances of devotional music, always managing to surprise his audience, and he seems to prefer these works to Italian melodrama. In this case, the Requiem provides a sound foundation for a theatrical setting, and the narrative that emerges is only partly rooted in 18th century customs and beliefs since it resonates with our own times as well.
The program notes make the extraordinary claim that Mozart’s immensely popular work “is not just the culmination of a late stage of Mozart’s oeuvre, but the pinnacle of musical history…” That’s a pretty bold claim, but let’s have a look at a snippet of this work that shows some of the qualities of the piece as a whole.
The brief Lacrimosa includes the passage that people most often recognize and associate with this work. At first, the restrained, plaintive choral timbre in a minor key hints at a sorrowful tone, but the music is joyous and exultant. Then a simple two-note motif on the strings repeats in transposition for a couple of bars before the choral voices enter again. Starting in D, they ascend the scale like a sleepwalker climbing a stairway, very slowly, one step at a time. As the voices reach the octave note—the landing at the top of the stairway—they seem ready to pause. But after a feigned hesitation, they continue the dramatic ascent for six more notes. As the choral voices strain upwards, the mood turns increasingly more exultant as they approach the climax. This passage makes me wonder whether the ever-competitive Mozart is playing with us, saying, “Look! I can create one of the most moving dramatic passages in the history of music using a few simple melodic elements that any novice could have composed.” Mozart’s precocious ingenuity made him the Stevie Wonder of 18th Century music, but here he momentarily lays aside his celebrated melodic gift to show off his portentous dramatic talent.
While some American and European Trumpian admirers would like to return to the Gay Nineties, before the suffragettes gained traction, they fear radical Islamists who reclaim the glory days of 12th Century al-Andalus, even though the regimes of that era were often more tolerant than today’s zealots. But Castellucci’s interpretation of Mozart’s Requiem contradicts the ideology of throwbacks to another era, celebrating life and relativizing death as it gives voice to Enlightenment values, such as individual freedom, laicism, and tolerance. But this is not so much a case of Castellucci adding new layers of meaning and symbolism to Mozart’s interpretation; the Italian director explicitly aimed to build his interpretation on symbols and notions inherent in Mozart’s version. In the process he gives us a prescient lesson on how today’s culture wars can be fought using cultural weapons.
Despite sections like the Kyrie, built on elements of Baroque music, in other parts of the work, such as the Lacrimosa, Mozart fully abandons the medieval Baroque style, helping to pave the way for Beethoven’s proto-Romanticism. And the rising scale figure used in the Lacrimosa sounds a lot like incipient Modernism, and could have influenced Verdi some eighty years later.
At the end of one performance, I heard scattered booing in the midst of a fervent ovation. And that’s what I love about the Liceu: voicing your judgement in this way is perfectly acceptable, so when artists get a warm ovation, they know it was well earned. But I was wrong to think the boos were for the soloists who had just turned in a solvent performance. A couple just behind me were shouting that the staging had desecrated Mozart’s masterpiece with its noisy production and distracting stage business. They had a point, but most of the audience disagreed, and the effusive ovation was sustained for several minutes. And that’s what makes the Liceu great: the sincere, highly-charged audience reactions, invariably led by zealous opera buffs, who occupy the cheaper seats in the upper balconies.
Opera’s future as a cultural staple has appeared to be threatened at times over the past two decades by budget cuts, decreasing patronage, lower pay for artists and performers and trimmed down opera seasons. A few decades ago, the nine-month Barcelona opera season was a matter of civic pride and a great amenity. Now the season still runs from October through June, but with fewer productions, lower budgets and gaps filled by musical celebrities like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan performing at luxury prices. Apart from giving the barbarians one in the eye, Castellucci’s fresh take on musical theatre could boost the current renewal of opera culture and other forms of musical theatre, based on supporting innovation and change while reaching out to the community to engage new sections of the public.
It would be unfair to conclude this piece without mentioning that audiences and critics professed their admiration for the work of the large number of artists and musicians whose truly choral performance made this production work. Since so many crafts and talents were needed to put together this complex piece of musical theatre, I’ll specifically mention only a few. However, I include below a link to the Liceu English language website for readers who want to know more about the soloists or the music and theatrical professionals responsible for the staging and performance of this production.
Although the four principal soloists received their share of audience acclaim and critical praise, boy soprano David González so pleased audiences with his moving performance that he repeatedly stole the show and received the greatest ovation. The Italian conductor Giovanni Antonini slipped effortlessly into his role of guest conductor of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra, helping them turn in a bravura performance to great audience acclaim, and chorus director Pablo Assante led the Liceu Chorus to a performance that charmed the sophisticated audience, already familiar with the many recording of Mozart’s well known masterpiece.
Link to English language webpage with details of cast and artistic direction, and video preview.