redeeming the future
by
Douglas Messerli
Orlando
di Lasso Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St. Peter), performed by the
Los Angeles Master Chorale, directed by Peter Sellars / the performance I saw
was at the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts/Bram Goldsmith Theater
in Beverly Hills on October 20, 2018
The
very last of the 20 madrigal and motet sections of Orlando di Lasso’s masterful
Renaissance composition Lagrime di San
Pietro (Tears of St. Peter), “Negando
il mio Signor,” summarizes and transforms the saint’s tortuous sufferings for
having denied Christ three times before the resurrection. Jesus, himself, had
foretold the denials of the man who became the first leader of the Christian
church, who might never have imagined it would be uttered through his own tongue.
It is that tragedy, his love of Christ
and his own betrayal of that love and his faith, that tortures St. Peter and
constitutes his near-endless remorse as expressed in this beautiful work. That
last madrigal which—as Thomas May writes in a remarkably insightful essay
published in the theater program, straddles “the usual distinction between
vocal compositions for the sacred (motet)” and the secular, vernacular works
(often involving erotic and pastoral topics) of the madrigal, the opera form of
its day—bemoans the saint’s own life-long recognition that “By denying my Lord,
I have denied my life.” By betraying his beliefs, in short, he has betrayed the
individual behind them, his own existence. It is such a modern psychological perception
that it is almost breathtaking to hear it sung today.
More importantly, the fact that it is not
sung, as in opera, by a single individual, but by the chorus, the symbolic
representation of the entire community, and, in this case, representing the
early Christian community who themselves must carry the guilt and pain of their
first leader’s temporary cowardice, shifts this work into another dimension.
Lasso rather wonderfully, particularly through the more communal form of the
madrigal, makes this an issue that shakes the entire religious community rather
than simply one man facing his creator, which makes the final resolution of the
motet that follows, “See, O man!” something that has meaning for all of us, not
just the individual who has denied his own values.
The “life too guilty,” the desires for “life,
go away” is not simply Peter’s cries, but those of the whole of mankind who
will not be able to fully embrace their own values. Somehow this has even more
meaning at this moment in history than I ever might have imagined.
The fact that director of the Los Angeles
Master Chorale and director Peter Sellars determined that instead of a production
of this work the way it had usually been performed, with a stolid chorus standing
in position accompanied by a few instruments, to instead create a truly a cappella
work, conducted by Jenny Wong, and moving the chorus into vaguely conceived
choreographic positions, brings a completely new perspective to this
Renaissance piece.
A friend of mine, attending the work, was
not certain that the choreography entirely worked, particularly given the
problems of attending to the English text on a small screen placed at the back
of the stage, which was difficult to scan given the various “positions of suffering”
that chorus members, often facing off as two opposing groups, enacted on the
front of the stage.
And there is, I must admit, some credence
in her position. Yet, those terpsichorean movements also enlivened what, later
in the work—after the group retreated to chairs in order to sing the final
dramatic madrigals and the last motet—I felt the work had lost some of its energy.
If the dramatic bodily interchanges between chorale members might not have
always made total sense, they charged it with a kind of bitter anger for their pope’s
(and therefore their own) betrayals. This after all was a religion still in fight
with the rest of the world, and they desperately needed to justify all their
beliefs and actions, not only to the world at large but to themselves.
Lasso, fortunately, created a work so
tonally beautiful that you cannot doubt these early believers’ (or later spiritually-committed
singers’) purity of intent, and their dedication to the continuance of their
faith.
Grant Gershon has continued to lead the
Chorale in a remarkable direction of great singing and performance, and this is
one of the very best works I have heard them interpret.
The costumes by Danielle Domingue Sumi
(mostly dark blues and grays) reiterate the concerns of the work, while the lighting
by James F. Ingalls re-informs the passionate concerns of the chorus, literally
enlightening them with his intense flashes of white light.
May argues, in his program essay, that at
the time of this work’s composition, Lasso himself was an elderly man, having
undergone his own series of doubts and melancholy during his creation this
moving work. And, if that is true, Lagrime
di San Pietro might be described, in fact, as a work of old men, a
melancholic composer and an older scion looking back on his atoning sainthood (despite
all the younger performers and artists who this evening brought this piece to fruition).
And that fact, ultimately, makes this a very sad work, a long regret for having
lived a life involved with doubt and failure.
Still,
it is also a very forgiving work, a passionate plea for the younger generations
to forgive their elders for their failures with a desire, so marvelously
expressed in Lasso’s music, for what they have left behind. Would that all of
us old men and women could bequeath such a masterwork of redemption to our
children and younger friends.
Los Angeles,
October 23, 2018
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