The swan's last flight

By David Blake

There was a lot of paradise around in this performance. Whether you were in religious mood or not it was impossible to resist an outfit of angels offering an inspirational evening of the benediction of the purest gem of very late Rossini -- this mass. It is neither so simple nor small as Rossini and history made out.

The uniquely gifted genius was born in the 90s of the 18th century and lived until the late 60s of the 19th. In 1829 he suddenly threw down the regime of composition which had made him, as Verdi was later to become, the richest, most talked about musician in Europe. He had, like Mozart, a positively profligate ease and fertility of writing. He wrote so many operas it is impossible to remember them all, almost every one a masterpiece. Some, like his first, Tancredi, made him the toast of the world. Not everyone at an early age earns a biography by Stendhal. Maometto II, Ermione, which tells of the Trojan War with hair-raising passion and speed, Le Conte Ory, surpassing even Mozart for a non-stop sound trip around the joys of music and his last, greatest work, William Tell (1829) to Schiller's play. Not bad, and rather nasty of Beethoven, who met him at the height of his fame and told him rather condescendingly to stick to opera buffa. His 20th century life as an operatic composer has given the lie to Beethoven's dictum.

The Petite Messe was written for the Countess Louise Pillet-Will to consecrate her private chapel in Paris in 1864. By this time Rossini was enormously famous, his fame resting firmly on work done in many media. As a person he became the centre not only of the music of Paris, but of all Europe. He glittered through the Second Empire in a huge bouquet of living personalities famous in literature, theatre and painting. His weekly parties had to be experienced or you had not "arrived". Through the social shipwreck of the demise of the Second Empire he remained as he always was, kind, witty, wise and generous, patiently waiting for the 20th century to rediscover him. He became known at this time as "the swan of Pesaro", his birthplace, a plump, witty, laconic swan, but the poetry of the name suited the output if not the man.

It was brave of Cairo Choral Society to mount this rare, exquisite thing. Some say the first half is pure opera. And so what? They said the same thing of the Verdi Requiem. Rossini, like Verdi, never pretended. Their message to their Maker is as pure and essential as themselves, with no pretension. There is a brief letter Rossini fixed to the score of the Petite Messe, one of the most sincere scraps of writing from a composer of greatness, which cuts gently through the usual fire and brimstone left by the big ones:

"Dear God, Here it is finished, this poor, little mass. Have I written sacred or profane music? I was born for opera buffa. You know it well -- a little science, some heart -- that's all. Be blessed then and grant me a place in paradise."

The man who wrote this was criticised for being cold and aloof. Yet in his greatest music the heart warms everything.

This is what happened with this performance. The heart radiated from the work and the players out into the chilly spaces of Ewart to give a spring, peach-coloured freshness to an unforgettable experience. They laboured and they loved, and how Rossini from a poor boy of 12 had laboured. Not a trace of this effort showed in the performance. Like the true swan of Pesaro, Rossini would die in song as the AUC spelled lovingly the awesome message of the mass.

The first half of the mass has come under criticism for being like the lyrical bits of The Barber of Seville or the sweetly romantic melodies from La Cenerentola. The mood certainly has that swing which belongs with true lyric opera, but that is the way with all Rossini's melodies. They really are spontaneously direct and their simplicity is their depth because he writes from the heart.

The members of the Cairo Choral Society had been well-grounded in how to handle these perfectly worked out economic lyrics. The music is simple; there is nothing awesome intended. It is not the Requiem of Verdi, or even the usual manner in which church religious music suggests blandly the words of the mass: Gloria, Gratias, Domine Deus, Quonium, cum Sancto Spiritus, Qui tollis peccata mundi. These short sections introduced trio, duo and solo by the principal singers. Each was perfect: soprano, pure, straight and brightly shining; mezzo, darkly dramatic and at the end of the work, tragic; tenor, very sweet and fully Italianate; baritone, very English and maybe a shade Gothic for this essentially Mediterranean music, but staunch and powerful.

There are none of the spacious shafts of light from the heights as in most masses. This is very intimate music, personal and meditative, an old person's feelings of tolerance and acceptance of life's turbulence. Wisdom rose up from the performers' visions of a farewell to life which Rossini suggests with such style and elegance.

After the break in this web of the mass was the Credo for choir. From here there is a new seriousness. The words are of faith, the manifestations of the Holy Ghost. Rossini cuts through the heavy web of religiousity with absolute ease to the truth of our position which is of a charity beyond words. The Crucifixus gave listeners a touching glimpse of the soprano's dramatic, sincere ability in dealing with the difficulties of Rossini's writing for the voice, but moving and perfectly true.

The Et Resurrexit is the heart of the work. It develops, going far outside any buffo effects, making nonsense of Beethoven's assertion about comic opera. Now Rossini has joined the angels. The piece has been a long, almost dream-like vision of immortality, but without the usual feelings in the Christian doctrine of guilt and insufficiency.

Rossini in this part of the mass becomes an elemental force, and here it was David Hales's turn to become angelic. He had opened the mass in the first half with three resounding chords in the Gloria. From thence he more or less conducted the mass from the piano.

Not since Cominati's visit here with the piano concerto of Saint-Saens has there been such resplendent reserves and deliriously beautiful piano tone. Hales was transfixed for this evening from the Et Resurrexit to the Sanctus. Rossini has written a long section for piano solo here of almost Chopinesque, elegant flowing beauty unlike anything he had written before. It is a piano summation of the whole vision of the mass and was truly a beneficence that transformed the evening.

From this point on to the end, the Agnus Dei, we move gradually to paradise. It says so much for David Hales, transformed at the piano as he was, leaving behind the world and the flesh and entering the portals of the Almighty, that some eyes were tearful with joy. It was a rapturous evening.

Rossini wrote this work for two pianos and harmonium. We seemed to have one piano, Hales, with Grieg Martin as harmonist. What these two players did was cajole the keyboard, which is percussive, into the ethereal heights of the strings of an orchestra. Later Rossini himself wrote the orchestral version, which he thought inferior to the piano. No matter what anyone thought the night was a beatification and unless there was something wrong with the Almighty's sense of values, the swan had earned his place in paradise.

Lucky were we to have been present.