St. Clair’s Swan Song:
Pacific Symphony’s Volcanic Verdi’s Requiem
Last night, the walls of the Segerstrom Concert Hall didn’t merely vibrate. They braced. Verdi’s Requiem opened not with reverence but with rupture. What followed wasn’t a farewell so much as a reckoning. Carl St. Clair’s final appearance as Pacific Symphony’s Music Director arrived wrapped in voltage and defiance, not sentimentality. He had no interest in sending himself off gently. He chose Verdi, and in doing so, summoned confrontation in the place of comfort. What followed made clear how little interest he had in soothing farewells.
This requiem, which plays through June 7, does not behave like church music. Composed to honor writer and patriot Alessandro Manzoni, it treats grief not as a private ache but as a public disturbance. Verdi, nearly spent after decades of personal and artistic loss, found in Manzoni’s death a reason to write again. What emerged was not a eulogy. It was an eruption. He took the Catholic Mass for the Dead and stripped it of consoling illusions, converting it into something theatrical, volatile, even dangerous. The movements remain—on paper. But their spirit is subverted, repurposed.
The traditional structure of the mass remains: Introit and Kyrie (Entrance and “Lord, have mercy”) to open in hushed invocation; the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) sequence, thunderous and unrelenting, dwelling on judgment and fear; the Offertory (a prayer for deliverance), seeking divine mercy; the Sanctus (Holiness), lifting voices in complex praise; the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), plain and spare, asking for peace; the Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light), a soft entreaty for illumination and rest; and the Libera me (Deliver me), a final cry for release. But Verdi doesn’t follow this arc in spirit. He uses its bones and fills them with something more combustible. Instead of offering the comfort of order, he gives us instability, grief without platitude, ritual with the lid torn off. St. Clair shaped it that way from the first downbeat.
The orchestra coiled and struck without ornament. The Pacific Chorale shifted fluidly between dread, awe, and near-hysteria. The pacing was unrelenting. Even the soft entrances betrayed a tension beneath, the sort that creeps under the skin before the storm. Then came the Dies Irae, not with buildup but with shock. This wasn’t a musical movement. It was a breach. Verdi pushed terror through operatic tools.
His above-the-stage brass didn’t illuminate the divine. They warned of it. The Tuba Mirum didn’t announce glory. It pressed against the walls like some invisible tribunal closing in. Trumpets answered each other from two wings above the stage. The illusion wasn’t of grandeur but of being surrounded. Within that surround, the soloists didn’t enter. They surfaced.
Mezzo Daryl Freedman took the Liber Scriptus and carved it open with voice like tempered steel. She didn’t grieve. She indicted. Soprano Raquel González sang not to be heard but to survive. Her Libera me at the end was neither aria nor prayer. It dissolved even as it was sung. Tenor Won Whi Choi brought warmth where there was none to be found, his Ingemisco (“I Lament”) reaching upward without promise of being met. Bass Zaikuan Song served as anchor, the one voice immune to panic. Even more disturbing were the passages where volume receded and dread lingered unaccompanied.
The Requiem’s most unnerving moments came not with volume but in the silences Verdi stretched until they buckled. Agnus Dei placed the two women’s voices in unison, stripped of harmony, colorless and cold as bone. Lux Aeterna followed without glow. Just a dim glimmer barely enough to see by. When González returned for the final plea, there was no catharsis. The music disintegrated around her. That disintegration wasn’t an ending. It was a stance.
Verdi doesn’t permit release. His Requiem is not a surrender. It is a refusal. Each reference to his operas, whether through contour or harmonic shadow, drags human feeling into a space where divinity offers no reply. Echoes of (La Traviata’s) Violetta’s last breath, of vengeance from Il Trovatore, of lost seductions from Rigoletto, flicker and vanish. The ghosts arrive, but they do not stay. That restraint extended to St. Clair’s casting.
He chose not to surround himself with star power. The young soloists were committed, not showy. The performance wasn’t built to dazzle. It was built to say something. And what it said was unmistakable. This was a conductor leaving not a memory but a mark. Over 35 years, he took the Pacific Symphony from regional upstart to national force, with commissions, tours, and acclaim along the way. Yet here, at the end, he stepped aside and let the music speak with terrifying honesty. There was trust in that decision—trust in the players, the audience, and the silence that followed.
At a time when orchestras often resort to novelty or compromise, this felt like an act of trust. In the audience. In the players. In the material itself. No crossover concepts. No branding. Just Verdi’s most personal composition, performed without filter. The applause was not immediate. For several long seconds, there was only stillness. Not because it was demanded, but because sound itself felt unwelcome. And maybe that stillness said more than any programmed finale could have.
The performance did not seek closure. And the silence afterward didn’t offer it. That’s what made it linger. This wasn’t ceremony. It was consequence. And it refused to pretend otherwise.
photos by Doug Gifford
Verdi’s Requiem
Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall
ends on June 7, 2025
for tickets, call 714.858.0945 or visit Pacific Symphony
