Michael White praises a production of Fauré’s Requiem accompanied by sky burial, and a powerful opera about a nun visiting Death Row.
Gabriel Fauré may have been a composer of uncertain faith but he produced possibly the best-loved, most often performed Requiem of all time. And its attract-ions are clear enough, presenting an image of death we’d all vote for: comforting, consoling, holding back the terror Mozart, Verdi, Berlioz and Britten talk up in their settings.
But the tenderness of Fauré’s mus-ic, loving you into the afterlife, can sometimes feel too sweet. A good performance holds to sugar rations. I heard a seriously good performance last month at the new Seine Musicale in Paris: a concert hall like a floating bubble on an island in the river.
