Benjamin Britten’s WAR REQUIEM performed at the 2024 BBC Proms with soloists Natalya Romaniw, Allan Clayton, and Will Liverman and the London Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Chorus and Tiffin’ Boy’s Choir, under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano (photo above).
Watch and listen here.
Erin Wall, a native of Calgary, Canada, was a finalist at the 2003 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. She had made her international debut the previous year singing Britten’s War Requiem in London. She spent three seasons building repertoire at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and made her Met debut in 2009 as Donna Anna. In 2014, I had the pleasure of hearing her as Strauss’s Arabella at The Met.
Erin Wall’s repertoire includes Freia, the 3rd Norn, Strauss’s Daphne, Marguerite in Faust, Ellen Orford, Chrysothemis, Helena in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Thais, and Mozart’s Contessa Almaviva. She does a lot of concert work, most notably the Mahler symphonies 2, 4, and 8, and Strauss’s Vier Letze Lieder.
Erin Wall – Vier letzte Lieder ~ Frühling
Counter-tenor Matthias Rexroth was born in Nuremberg and made his debut in Purcell’s King Arthur at Stuttgart in 1999. Having won major voice competitions at Barcelona and Vienna, Mr. Rexroth was soon performing Bach and Baroque works all over Europe, and he represented Germany at the 2003 Cardiff Competition. He sang often with conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and also with Riccardo Muti and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. His operatic repertory covers numerous Handel roles and ranges from Monteverdi to Britten.
Watch Mr. Rexroth singing at the the 37th Concurso Francisco Viñas in Barcelona here.
Since 2014, Mr. Rexroth has been professor of voice at the Opera Academy of Warsaw; he also gives masterclasses internationally.
Parts of Ms. Wall’s and Mr. Rexroth’s 2003 Cardiff performances are heard here:
Cardiff 2003 – Matthias Rexroth – Erin Wall
Bucharest-born Ruxandra Donose came to prominence following an impressive showing at a voice competition at Munich in 1990. She soon joined the opera company at Basel, and – thereafter – the Vienna State Opera. Her international career has since continued apace, and lately she has taken on roles like Kundry and Sieglinde.
Above: Ruxandra Donose as Nicklausse in Contes d’Hoffmann; a Marty Sohl/Met Opera photo
I met Ruxandra in 2004 while I was working at Tower Records; she was singing Nicklausse at The Met and she stopped by at the opera room. We had a lovely chat.
Here’s Ruxandra at the 1993 Cardiff competition:
Ruxandra Donose – Allerseelen – Cardiff 1993
And Roger Vignoles is the pianist for Ruxandra’s lovely singing of Dalila’s seduction aria from a 2014 London recital here.
~ Oberon
Monday April 22nd, 2013 – The Oratorio Society of New York presented a performance of Benjamin Britten’s WAR REQUIEM at Carnegie Hall this evening.
One of the greatest and most meaningful choral works ever created, the WAR REQUIEM was commissioned for the re-dedication of Coventry Cathedral in 1962; the church had been almost totally destroyed by German bombs in 1940. Britten, a life-long pacifist, drew on the poetry of Wilfred Owen
– who had been killed in 1918 (one week before the Armistice ended the war) at the age of 25 while fighting in France
– as well as the texts of the Latin mass for the dead in setting his
masterpiece. Though deeply spiritual in atmosphere, Britten intended the
WAR REQUIEM to be a secular work.
The Oratorio Society, one of New York City’s oldest cultural treasures, traces its history back to 1873. Founded by Leopold Damrosch, the Society presented their first concert on December 3,
1873. One year later, on Christmas night, the Society began what has become an unbroken
tradition of annual performances of Handel’s Messiah. In 1891, the Oratorio Society participated in the opening concert of what is now Carnegie Hall.
The chorus and musicians of the Society under Kent Tritle’s baton tonight unfurled the sonic tapestry of Britten’s creation in a performance which greatly satisfied both the ear and the soul. In the composer’s structuring of the REQUIEM, the large chorus and orchestra – supporting a soprano soloist – sing the Latin texts of the mass while a chamber orchestra (led by David Rosenmeyer) accompanies the tenor and baritone soloists whose words come from the poetry of Wilfred Owen. From high up in a side balcony, the voices of children from the choir of Saint John The Divine (directed by Malcolm Merriweather) provide an angelic sound, accompanied by a small organ.
Britten’s score, richly textured, amazes in its rhythmic and instrumental variety. Marked by off-kilter harmonies and shifting tonalities, the music is grand and theatrical one moment and poignantly stark and personal the next. The juxtaposition of public mourning and private grief – and of the liturgical and poetic texts – give the REQUIEM its unique resonance.
Of the three vocal soloists, soprano Emalie Savoy (currently a Met Young Artist) revealed a sizeable lyric instrument with a blooming high register and a capacity to dominate the massed choral and orchestral forces. Tenor John Matthew Myers sang with a plaintive, clear and warm timbre while baritone Jesse Blumberg gave a wonderfully expressive rendering of the texts, his voice hauntingly coloured in his long final solo.
At the close of the piece, all the participants were warmly lauded by the audience.
“My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn.” ~ Wilfred Owen
Now, nearly a century after the poet’s warning, mankind continues to use war as a means of settling religious and ideological differences. This evening’s concert fell on Earth Day, reminding us of the fragility of the planet on which we all live. Only by turning away from gods and politics – those great dividing forces – can we hope to find a path into a safe and meaningful future. Like the poet’s two soldiers from opposing armies who find themselves dying side by side in a ditch far from their homes as the REQUIEM draws to a close, we must learn to embrace our common humanity before it’s too late.
The evening’s participating artists will were:
Kent Tritle, conductor
David Rosenmeyer, chamber orchestra conductor
Emalie Savoy, soprano
John Matthew Myers, tenor
Jesse Blumberg, baritone
Choristers of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,
Malcolm Merriweather, conductor
Chorus and Orchestra of the Society
Oberon's Glade 