Italian Embassy presents an afternoon of Verdi at Areté.

We, from the older generation, are lucky that we know the combination to a safe, inside of which you will find these treasures, these jewels,” said Marco Clemente, the Italian Ambassador to the Philippines. Ambassador Clemente, referring to Giuseppe Verdi overtures and ballet pieces that comprise the Manila Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) set list in a recent concert at Areté in Ateneo. “But if we don’t pass this combination to other people (and when the time comes that we are not here anymore), this combination will be forgotten and the safe will be locked forever. And this we cannot allow to happen.”

Verdi was a master of melody, those mellifluous lines staying with an audience long after the violinists, the cellists, etc., have put away their instruments. The expressive power and dramatic intensity of his libretti are communicated with lyrical fire and thunder (love, hate, jealousy), which the viewers can grasp even if they do not know one word of Italian — well, love, hate, jealousy are universal maladies, after all. Verdi’s music has gone beyond the boundaries of concert halls and is heard in everything from Zack Snyder’s 300 to Doritos ads, from to Grand Theft Auto to The Mighty Ducks and Babe. Katy Perry even wore a bespoke La Traviata Valentino gown at the Grammys in 2017.

Musicians from the MSO perform overtures and ballet music by Giuseppe Verdi at the Hyundai Hall of Areté, Ateneo de Manila University. “This musical afternoon reminded us that before Francis Ford Coppola, Ferrari, and Gucci, there was Giuseppe Verdi,” writes Lisa Guerrero Nakpil. “At a time when opera composers were the 19th century rock stars, Verdi reigned. If only — as Ambassador Clemente noted — those days of classical pursuits were as everyday today as they were then.”

The MSO, under the baton of Marlon Chen, breathed life into compositions by Verdi: I Vespri Siciliani, Balletto Le Quattro Stagioni, La Forza del Destino, Giovanna d’Arco, Otello, Luisa Miller, Macbeth, and Nabucco. Some of the pieces were performed for the first time in the Philippines, as pointed out by Ambassador Clemente, probably even in Asia.

He explained how in 19th century Paris, when foreign composers were asked to write an opera for the Opera House, they were obligated to foresee in the libretto one or more dance episodes embedded in the plot, possibly in the third act, to give the aristocrats to enjoy their dinner and charmed by the physical beauty of the prima ballerina. “This is what Verdi actually did for three operas. One ballet turned into the best — the Siciliani — which was reimported to Italy. It contains some of the most complex ballet music Verdi ever wrote.” To hear that bit of history during a quiet afternoon at the Hyundai Hall of Areté was remarkable.

Boots Herrera, director and chief curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery, said, “I appreciate how Ambassador Clemente was very deliberate in sharing Verdi’s lesser known works and how these were composed specifically to abide by French rules of including a ballet piece in all operas performed in Paris. I would love to see these ballet symphonies performed with the visual elements of dance.”

Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) president Margie Moran recalled working with the ambassador when the CCP and Rustan’s, in cooperation with the Italian Embassy, staged Turandot. “(Ambassador Clemente) was at the forefront of negotiations with the Department of Education in bringing in 800 students to watch the dress rehearsals and another 600 to watch various operas in film. With his efforts in presenting opera to the youth, he hopes to create a new audience to sustain the art form. My parents exposed us at a young age to the opera, ballet and symphonic performances, and that is why I appreciate them to this day. We are grateful to the ambassador for encouraging us at the CCP to continue exposing the youth to the opera.”

The ambassador also encouraged the diplomatic corps to organize events promoting classical music and support artistic institutions like the MSO.

The Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) led by music director and principal conductor Marlon Chen.

“I really think all of us — patrons, sponsors, cultural institutions, my good friends and colleagues in the diplomatic corps — (should) put our forces together to organize events like this to make (artists and musicians) perform. Because only in performing classical music, can they gain more and more experience. They can improve their technique and, in other words, they can become better artists. Performing artists need to perform to a live audience. This is particularly important after three years of lockdown.”

With that, the Areté audience was treated to an afternoon of Italian overtures and ballets by a composer who continues to move people lifetimes away, prompting someone like Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs to write about hearing opera through a door, voices climbing and falling, battle trumpets calling.

Merchant sings on a track from “In My Tribe”: “The opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.”

She might have been singing about a German opera buff who lived next door in a hotel in Mallorca who played Aida over and over, or it might really be about how music — by Verdi and the other greats — transcends time and space.

Concerts must end, but — to quote a line from Verdi Cries — “all is memory taken home with me.”