Arts & Events

Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) was a prolific and renowned composer in the international style of Renaissance polyphony. So international was this style that Orlando di Lasso himself was known by several versions of his name: He was called Roland de Lassus in French, Orlando di Lasso in Italian, and Orlando Lassus in Latin. Born in what is now Belgium, he seems to have traveled to Italy early in life; and in his early twenties he worked for Ferrante Gonzaga of Mantua, traveling with his patron to Sicily and Milan. He also worked in Naples and Rome, serving as maestro di capella in Rome’s St. John Lateran Church in 1555-6. Then he went to Munich, where he resided at the court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, whose family he served as a singer-composer for over thirty years.  

Musically, Orlando di Lasso follows in the tradition of composers such as Nicholas Gombert, Adrian Willaert, and Jacob Clement, who themselves were exponents of the polyphonic style created by such great Franco-Flemish composers as Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, and Josquin des Pres. Orlando di Lasso wrote vocal music in various forms: madrigals, motets, liturgical works, and even songs in German. Interestingly, his known works include no instrumental music. His oratorio Lagrime di San Pietro/Tears of St. Peter came at the very end of the composer’s life.  

For his Lagrime di San Pietro he chose a text by Luigi Tasillo (1510-1568), from which the composer set 20 stanzas for his madrigal cycle or choral oratorio. Sung in Italian, the text recounts the harrowing guilt and shame experienced by Christ’s disciple Peter, who, as foretold by Christ, betrayed his Lord three times ”before the cock crows.” For the rest of his long life, Peter could never forget the look in Christ’s eyes as he gazed upon the beloved disciple who, to save himself, thrice denied even knowing Christ much less being among his disciples.  

In preparing Lagrime di San Pietro for performance, stage director Peter Sellars worked closely with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and its Artistic Director Grant Gershon. As conceived by Peter Sellars, Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro is more than a period piece by the last of the great composers of polyphonic vocal music. It is also a psychologically probing and intense meditation, a universal one, on finding oneself, after a long life, despairing of the false and ephemeral successes of life and feeling in old age only pain and torment as one awaits a welcome death. The figure of St. Peter, of course, who carries his immense burden of guilt and shame, represents a particularly harrowing examplar of this despair as one nears death.  

As the twenty-one member Los Angeles Master Chorale took the stage at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Friday, May 17, the stage itself was bare, with only chairs arranged in a vast semi-circle. The members of the Chorale were dressed in nondescript clothes of various shades of grey. Grant Gershon, who conducted the Chorale, came onstage in grey pants and grey shirt, with bare feet. As the a capella singing began, Chorale members gave physical expression to each stanza’s tale of Peter’s betrayal of Christ. They reached out, they clasped hands over their heart, they staggered and fell to the ground. They covered and uncovered their eyes to emphasize the power of the look that Peter experienced when Christ transfixed him with his gaze. At one point the text boldly affirms that humans can speak with their eyes, as in a lover’s gaze upon the beloved. This too was acted out by the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  

Occasionally, the acting out became all too literal, as when the text sings of a snowflake falling in a deserted valley in winter, then receiving the warmth of the sun’s rays in spring, which melts the ice and causes it to dissolve into water. Fluttering hands represented the falling snowflake. The rays of the sun were likened to the rays of light from the eyes. The text then sang of the ice in Peter’s heart melting into tears. Here pathos nearly descended into bathos.  

The most psychologically penetrating moments came in the latter stanzas of Lagrime di San Pietro when Peter, now old, wants only to die. He curses life as vicious and cruel. He says that outer pain is unbearable, but inner pain is worse. He blames himself, like so many others, for in younger days seeking pleasure and thereby denying true life for false life. “Life, go away!” he cries. “You linger on even though I don’t want you. I have experienced such ingratitude from you.” For the final madrigal, Orlando di Lasso went outside the text of Luigi Tasillo and chose a 13^th century Latin motet by French poet Philippe de Greve representing the final word from Jesus himself (“Vide Homo, quae pro te patior”/”See, O man, how I suffer for you.” 

The lighting by James F. Ingalls emphasized the contrast between light and darkness. The uniformly grey costumes were designed by Danielle Domingue. As conductor of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon moved restlessly around the stage, now facing the singers from one side, now from another. This, too, emphasized the multi-faceted aspects of this music, as conceived by Gershon and Sellars.