Faceless Defacement

Next: La Gioconda, June 4.

By one of those coincidences that defy explaining, another Verdi masterwork was in town that week, the Requiem, in a performance beautifully conceived and controlled in all but one respect under Mark Elder’s vibrant leadership, with the Master Chorale getting the words out with more than their usual proficiency and the Philharmonic -- its strings properly seated for once (fiddles down front) -- depicting the flames of Verdi‘s inferno burning high and bright. Three of the vocal soloists performed with zeal, brilliance of voice and intelligence of spirit: Metropolitan Opera mezzo Stephanie Blythe, tenor Marcello Giordani (the L.A. Opera’s splendid recent Faust) and Denis Sedov, new to these ears, an astounding 7-foot-or-so Russian bass.

The fourth, alas, was the soprano Alessandra Marc, beloved sacred monster to an addlepated few, enigma to the rest, who howled and screeched her glorious music, violated any sense of ensemble with the other singers and, near the end, belted out, fortissimo, squillace, the pianissimo, diminuendo high B-flat that should float like a final benediction over the 85 minutes of hair-raising drama that Verdi has unfurled into our welcoming ears. By what standard can such brainless performance values claim a place in the firmament of lyric art? (I‘m told Marc had not sung out at all during rehearsals, so that her antics must have shocked the conductor no less than the rest of us.) Did she entertain the barest conjecture of where she was that night, or what singing?

I rushed home and dug out my treasured GiuliniSchwarzkopf to reassure my offended ears. Eventually, sanity returned.