©2026 Chris Lee
Although many operas by Giuseppe Verdi remain at the top of my list of all-time favorites, I’ve long had mixed feelings about his Messa da Requiem, which was recently performed at Carnegie Hall by the Cleveland Orchestra under its Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. Unlike more comforting requiems by Mozart or Fauré, Verdi’s usually proves a bit too awesome and ferocious for me. By the end of a Requiem performance, I’m moved while feeling I don’t want to hear this exhausting work again any time soon.
Verdi isn’t a composer one associates with Welser-Möst. Of the twenty-six operas he’s conducted at the Wiener Staatsoper, only one has been by Verdi: Don Carlo, a new production during his brief tenure there as General Music Director. After his cooly scrupulous Requiem, the fourth in a series of six which concluded with a pair in Miami, I found myself less emotionally affected than usual. I admired, however, his impeccable orchestra and chorus and unusually intense quartet of soloists: Asmik Grigorian, Deniz Uzun, Joshua Guerrero, and Tareq Nazmi, none (as of yet) regular visitors to New York.
©2026 Chris Lee
Uzun, an arresting Turkish-German mezzo, began weakly with a hesitant “Liber scriptus” that lacked legato, but soon she was pouring out richly honed sound, secure from top to bottom. A graduate of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the rising mezzo has been embracing an eclectic repertoire that has included Fricka and Waltraute in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2024 complete Ring, as well as a recent tour as Tamiri in Vivaldi’s Farnace and Rubina in Boito’s Nerone at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari. In April, she debuts as Falstaff’s Mistress Quickly at Warsaw’s Teatr Wiekli.
Uzun blended wonderfully well with Grigorian in their urgent “Recordare” and “Agnus Dei” duets. Currently one of opera’s most compelling artists and a particular favorite of Welser-Möst’s, the Lithuanian soprano was returning to Carnegie after her striking participation in last month’s “Christmas Night Opera Gala.”
Her ravishing soft singing was one of the evening’s highlights. Her gripping “Libera me,” however, found her occasionally overmatched by Linda Wong’s vibrant 125-voice Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, a group capable of both the softest pianos and earth-shaking fortes.
Prior to her Tatyana at the Met this spring, Grigorian will again pair with Guerrero in Barcelona in Manon Lescaut. They have also sung Giorgetta and Luigi in Il Tabarro, unsurprising as Guerrero’s muscular, occasionally sobby approach to the “Ingemisco” might seem better suited to Puccini. Although he sometimes remembered to sing softly, more often he sounded brawnily out of step with his fellow soloists. Nazmi, who had been so impressive as Marke last year in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert of Tristan und Isolde, displayed a gravely earnest bass, particularly impressive in his arresting “Mors stupebit.”
©2026 Chris Lee
I was shocked to recall that the last time I heard the Verdi Requiem at Carnegie Hall was thirty-four years ago when Riccardo Muti arrived with La Scala’s impressive forces featuring soprano Maria Dragoni in probably her only New York appearance. Since then, I’ve caught several at the New York Philharmonic with whom in 1989 Helmut Rilling led the omnibus Messa per Rossini in which Verdi’s “Libera me” (thrillingly sung on that occasion by Gabriela Benacková) first appeared
But my most recent have been pair at the Metropolitan Opera. In the wake of its cancelation of Calixto Bieito’s production of La Forza del Destino, the company offered four performances of the Requiem. The final one, a Saturday matinee broadcast, turned out to be James Levine’s last-ever Met performance, as the next day, the New York Post published the results of its explosive investigation into Levine’s decades-long predatory behavior.
Four years later, the Met marked the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks with Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading a fine performance that was particularly noteworthy for Ailyn Pérez’s glowing singing. Her Met performances since have sometimes been uneven; however, she was just extraordinary last week as Cio-Cio San. She’ll return to Madama Butterfly in March, performances I can heartily recommend.
