This Saturday evening, the Dartmouth Handel Society will take to Spaulding Auditorium to tackle Giuseppe Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem,” welcoming four professional soloists to the stage. Described by members of the group as a “haunting,” “challenging” and “ornate,” “Requiem” has sold out with two days remaining before the performance.
Handel Society conductor Robert Duff, also a music professor, said that despite the difficult work, preparing for the performance has been “fun from the very beginning.” Composed of both students and community members, the Handel Society is the nation’s oldest town-gown choral society.
“Verdi himself was basically an opera composer,” Duff said. “So for him to be writing this work that includes four operatic voices, it takes the piece in a very different direction than the society has gone in during my time here.”
In part due to its complexity, “Requiem” requires not only a full choral group and a full orchestra but also four soloists. Else Drooff ’18, a soprano in the group, said that when rehearsals began in the winter, she was surprised by how much the piece brought to the table musically.
“The cool thing about this piece is that there is so much going on,” Droff said. “Looking at the music at first, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god,’ because I had never done anything that intense in high school.”
Visiting soprano soloist Othalie Graham, who has sung “Requiem” twice before, called the piece “one of the greatest works that’s ever been done.” Graham said that she especially appreciates Verdi’s decision to write his score for powerful voices.
“It is such a special work, and it is so full of challenges and just exhilarating moments,” she said. “Any soprano would cut off her arm to have a chance to sing it.”
Student members of the Handel Society interviewed expressed similar enthusiasm to Graham. Ben Weinstock ’17, for example — a tenor and the group’s student manager — described Verdi’s work as “fiery, intense and full of emotion.” Jimmy Ragan ’16, a bass, added that the work is “haunting but beautiful.”
According to Ragan, the piece’s short and focused nature required the group to work harder than usual to find the intent behind each note.
Lydia Freehafer ’18 described an exercise where members of the group stood in a circle around the room and, turning to their neighbor, looked into their eyes and sang them parts of the piece.
“I think that the reason [Duff] did it was so that no one could get away with not putting enough emotion into it,” she said. “After we did it we were like, ‘Wow,’ because we really had to think about the meaning behind what we were singing.”
Graham, who has not worked with the Dartmouth Handel Society before, called Duff “a singer’s conductor,” adding that all singers would “jump at the chance” to work with him. She said that she appreciates working with college groups since they have a real love for the music.
In addition to Graham, mezzo soprano Cynthia Hanna, tenor Brian Cheney and bass Kyle Albertson will also join the group for the performance. All three have received positive feedback for their performances, with the Washington Post hailing Hanna as “bright” and “luminous” and The New York Sun announcing that Cheney exhibits “expressiveness and pure vocal beauty.”
Duff, who stressed the importance of understanding Verdi’s relationship to the piece, said that he wants the audience to “think and be curious” during the performance. Verdi himself was an atheist, Duff said, but still worked with a text drawn from the liturgical mass for the dead.
“Whenever we approach a work there is something we can learn for ourselves from the composition of others,” Duff said. “My hope for the audience is that they would have a better appreciation for how [the piece] can potentially influence each of them to be better in touch with their own human condition.”
No tickets remain for Saturday’s performance, held in Spaulding Auditorium at 8 p.m. In light of interest in the performance, Duff has opened the group’s Friday, May 15 rehearsal — held in Spaulding Auditorium from 7 to 10 p.m. — to the public.
