On September 11, 2021, PBS transmitted the Requiem by Verdi with the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a very first performance in the hall since March 2020. A production that PBS suddenly interrupted a few minutes before the poignant finale: it seems that the allotted time was exceeded , which risked offending advertisers.
Never mind, this evening was memorable. A commemoration against the backdrop of the rebirth of the Taliban in Kabul; the reconstruction, pain and misery because of the pandemic, of a dislocated orchestra, of which 11 of the 96 full-time members have retired. For over a year, the Met’s musicians went unpaid. A maestro reviving an institution on the brink of collapse.
There were thousands of deaths on September 11, 2001, but also thousands of deaths from the wars that have taken place over the past twenty years. There are thousands of victims of COVID-19. There is an immense void to be filled with a certain spirituality and intelligence of the heart.
Slowly coming out of the health crisis, we see a faltering survival of once prestigious orchestral institutions and operas, having barely recovered following the economic crisis, which in 2011 forced the orchestra to Philadelphia to declare bankruptcy.
September 11, 2001, many remember the bright blue sky. Beware of the blue sky, the hurricane can arrive so abruptly with its devastating effects. Of Requiem by Verdi from the Met, powerful voices from the choir and soloists, musicians making against good fortune, good heart, I retain the midnight blue enveloping everything. This midnight blue that makes us languish between half-light and glow, between inconsolable sorrow and hope for resilience. Resistance through culture, music, lyrical art, culture that is reborn from its ashes, this collective effort on stage by Artists, with a capital letter, who fight any extinction of humanism. It is important to never stop believing and participating in it.
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