Amazing pieces to fill ‘a special space' at Symphony Hall

Mar 19 2009 By Christopher Morley

Antonio Pappano tells Christopher Morley that he is excited about his first visit to Symphony Hall.

More than ten years since the Royal Opera last left its Covent Garden home to visit Symphony Hall, the company returns tomorrow and Saturday for back-to-back performances of the Verdi Requiem and Britten’s War Requiem.

Antonio Pappano, Royal Opera’s music director, has never conducted at Symphony Hall before and is “really looking forward to it, as I’ve only heard such glowing things about it, and especially for these two pieces, which need a special space.”

The brilliant idea of pairing these two amazingly dramatic works, with Britten inspired by the sheer emotional clout of the Verdi and adding to it by inserting his own mix of Wilfred Owen’s First World War poetry into the Latin liturgy, came from Pappano himself.

“We were searching for some repertoire to use the big forces of the house, including the chorus, and it seemed that these two pieces, which are so related one to the other, to pair them, although they’re quite different there are so many things that they have in common, that it just seemed a natural pairing,” he said.

Pappano conducted the Britten at his inaugural concert as music director of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, in 2005. How did the piece go down with the Italian audience?

“I think it was a big surprise! It’s not the kind of repertoire they hear every day and I think it made quite a big impact, actually.

“It was the first piece I performed there as part of my tenure as music director, so it was an important choice to have made. It was in a series of three concerts dedicated to war and peace and redemption.”

Did the audience pick up on the Verdi overtones in the Britten?

“With all the programme stuff and introductory articles about my coming, I guess they would have been prepared.

“But of course with things like the Dies Irae and the Lacrymosa especially, I think you can’t help but be moved at the similarity of mood, if you like. The Lacrymosa’s similarities include the same key.”

These pieces mean a great deal to Pappano personally.

He has previously conducted the War Requiem in Los Angeles and in Brussels, where he was music director of the Theatre de la Monnaie, as well as at the Royal Albert Hall last November. And the Verdi was his opening concert for the current season at Santa Cecilia.

We move on to discuss a famously hairy passage for exposed cellos rising up through the registers in unison at the beginning of the Offertorio in the Verdi. Do the players have their hearts in their mouths as they approach that?

“Yes, you know, kind of. I try to keep very much the image of what that actually is, and also for them. It’s the lifting of the chalice, the offertory in the ritual of the Catholic Mass, this long arpeggio rising from the bass.

“That’s what I was taught. I worked with Romano Gandolfi years ago, the legendary chorusmaster at La Scala, and he gave me many, many indicators.

“I played the piece for him in America when he came to conduct it – I was his pianist, translator, bodyguard and everything else – and so I learned a lot from him.”

So this comes down as part of a long La Scala tradition.

“If you like! The piece has sort of been ruminating for a long time inside me from that first experience, and then I’ve conducted the Verdi several times.

“It’s a piece that, because it doesn’t have specific characters, where there aren’t specific relationships except the one between the people and God, and the subject being the fear of the terrifying Judgment, I think it brings us closer actually to Mr Verdi himself, because it’s not him behind a father-daughter relationship, or him behind a political intrigue, any of that stuff. It’s his take – although he wasn’t a believer himself – on how he takes the words at face value and translates them into music, and how he characterises them. It’s very, very personal.

“And the music is on such a high level, and on every page. There’s no filler at all!

“And it’s hard to imagine, because in opera you have that bit that leads into that bit, and to the next highlight ... There are no highlights in the Verdi Requiem. It’s all highlight. And I think in a way, therefore, it’s one of his greatest achievements.”

Antonio Pappano always comes across as a really “nice” conductor, including on a fascinating television documentary from a few years ago. How does a “nice” conductor cope with all the intrigues and politics which are always going on in international opera-houses?

“The thing is, when it comes to the actual music – I love music, I love opera, I love the idea of theatre – and when that’s interfered with I can get very sad and disillusioned about our business.

“And it’s especially difficult in the Italian repertoire, because that’s where the singers are the most exposed, and they’re susceptible to greater neuroses, if you like! And therefore you get more problems.

“I balance out my life with a very varied repertoire, from contemporary to German to Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and the usual suspects, so I have a very different experience in each season.

“Different kinds of opera, and different ways of doing it, and that’s how I keep my sanity.”

* Antonio Pappano conducts the Royal Opera in Verdi’s Requiem tomorrow (7.30pm) and in Britten’s War Requiem on Saturday (7pm). Symphony Hall, 0121 780 3333.