Sacred text, humanistic messsage: Carmel Symphony Orchestra and singers present Verdi

The Palladium is a worthy site for a wealth of music, and Saturday night it seemed the ideal place for the

David Commanday, maestro likely to advance CSO.

Carmel Symphony Orchestra, a mass choir and four vocal soloists to present the highly charged religious drama of Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem."

With its lavish updating of Palladian architecture, the retrospective splendor of this pride of the Center for the Performing Arts accommodated every musical and visionary twist and turn of the masterpiece under the baton of the CSO's recently appointed music director, David Commanday. 

In the initial outburst of "Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath), the lighting on the rear stage wall turned red. The effect made a repeat appearance when that music returned in the last movement, "Libera me." The subsiding to blue for many of the moments of appeal was wholly in order, enhancing the emotional weight of the score, and the lighting effects fortunately weren't overdone.

But, speaking of illumination, it was disappointing that the house lights were not put up slightly throughout the performance. The text and translations included in the program booklet were next to impossible to read. Many venues, when they can't provide projected titles, often leave the audience in the dark, so such lack of light wasn't unique.  Especially in this case, however, the Latin being sung seems totally fused to the music. What Verdi wrote is fully appealing to the ear alone, but in this case not wholly intelligible.

The drama, of course, is in the music. The Mass for the Dead liturgy powerfully conveys what's going on in the perceived dialogue between salvation and damnation that Christians understood for centuries. But Verdi's perspective, as a man who had had his fill of the Catholic Church, is convincingly sympathetic to human woes and anxieties and our species' perpetual need of redemption and rescue: we acknowledge the threat of the prospective Day of Wrath, and we implore whatever universal force rules beyond us to deliver us ("Libera me"). The trigger of grief in Verdi's work on the score was the death of his era's most venerated author Alessandro Manzoni, author of the now little-read novel "The Betrothed," the only major piece of prose fiction included in the landmark Harvard "Five-Foot Shelf" of international literature.

In "The Complete Operas of Verdi" (and yes, there is a chapter on the Requiem), Charles Osborne justly says: "Suffering humanity moved Verdi more than the tremendous majesty of the tribal god." "Tribal god" may be a phrase that rankles believers in the universality of the Christian message, but Osborne's use of it lands Verdi's work firmly in the mystery of great art itself being universal and not tribal.

Verdi in 1870, several years before the Requiem 

That's what makes the difficulty of following the text  regrettable, especially in the vocal solos, duets, trios, and quartets, where the composer's operatic practice gave him particular insight. The Offertorio that opens the second half of Requiem finds the quartet in full cry, especially when the tenor breaks out with the most insistent follow-up to the previous movement, "Lacrimosa," after the tears. "We offer unto Thee, O Lord, sacrifice and prayers of praise," Jaemyeong Lee sang (in Latin, the Church's time-tested language). It's one of the most moving passages given to the tenor, and Lee sang it passionately in ringing tones. 

It presages Sanctus, the amazing fugue for double chorus. Here the choirs of Anderson University, directed by Rick Sowers, and supplemented by the men of Circle City Sound, sounded as well-trained as they did throughout the performance, but could have used more vocal muscle to firm up their negotiation of the intricate choral writing. I must quickly add that generally the mass of singers responded well across the dynamic spectrum, seconding the orchestra's sensitivity introducing the opening Requiem and Kyrie. Near the end, they also sang with clarity and unanimity, especially in the sotto voce unmeasured "Libera me" invocation that underlines the solo soprano's urgent request for deliverance. 

Soprano Seonyoung Park captured the cresting high C as that appeal reached its massive climax.  Elsewhere, too, she sang with clarity and a celestial glow in her well-supported phrasing. She inspired confidence from her opening solo on. 

Mezzo-soprano Cassie Glaeser also delivered a poised performance, though she was at least partly responsible for the slightly off-center performance of the trio she shared with Lee and bass-baritone Sunghoon Han, "Lux aeterna luceat eis," the work's penultimate appeal to God for mercy. In her early solo with chorus, "Liber scriptus proferetur," her vivid low register shone with the certainty of the words the program translates as "A written book will be brought forth, which contains everything for which the world shall be judged." Glaeser's quality lent force to the chilling reminder that divine judgment is sure. Even if one doesn't believe that, it gives one pause when sung this well.

Commanday, in his first extensive classical concert as the CSO music director, showed he was in charge at every point, His conducting wasn't overexplicit, but it paid enough attention to eliciting particular adjustments in tone or tempo to make it evident that everything was in sure hands. He has already brought the orchestra to a high level of professional polish, nicely balanced in this quite flattering setting. There were several fine moments for wind principals, in which I want to single out bassoonist Jackie Royce and flutist Tamara Thweatt.

George Bernard Shaw, as secular a music critic as there ever was and a champion of Verdi, made this comparison with a predecessor in the English-speaking world to whom is also ascribed genuine adherence to the faith: "It may be that, as with Handel," he wrote in 1901, "his operas will pass out of fashion and be forgotten whilst the Manzoni Requiem remains his imperishable monument." Even lovers of "La Traviata" and "Falstaff" may have to recognize the justice of that opinion after such performances as this one Saturday evening in Carmel.