Pabón to conduct Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ with stars & students.

Puerto Rican tenor Rafael Dávila (rafael-davila.com)

By PEGGY ANN BLISS

Special to The STAR

For opera fans, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Messa da Requiem” is a pathway to heaven via the miracle of the human voice.

For the faithful, this 150-year-old masterpiece memorializing an Italian national hero is one of the greatest paeans ever created.

For the living? For every vision, from every seat, the presentation cannot fail to have an impact. The show will take place on Sunday at 4 p.m. in the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center.

Through a deft scheduling switcheroo, the orchestra of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music (PRCM) and some 250 choral voices conducted by Roselín Pabón will take its annual Family Concert to the big stage, with soloists from the big time.

Island tenor Rafael Dávila, a regular at the Metropolitan Opera House (The Met) in New York, will interpret the iconic “Ingemisco,” which was the cornerstone of the work, eventually culminating with the rousing “Dies Irae” (Days of Wrath) chorus.

Verdi originally wrote “Liberame” to mourn composer Giaochino Rossini’s death but chose not to complete the work, later using it in “Requiem” to honor instead novelist Alessandro Manzoni, credited with achieving the linguistic unification of Italy in the late 18th century (see related story this page).

Heaven-bound voices

The work has been called too operatic and indeed was immediately moved after its premiere in Milan at the San Marco church to La Scala opera house, as a way to project its message beyond religion. Bass-baritone Eliam Ramos, a Mozart interpreter who recently made his Carnegie Hall debut, will interpret the “Confutatis Maledictus,” which famously renders asunder the “Dies Irae.” This is also the part where soprano Carmenchu Domínguez shines in her tour de force, begging for deliverance. Domínguez, a PRCM product, is a Dominican Republic native and co-founder of the Caribbean Lyric Festival.

For mezzo-soprano/professor Celia Sotomayor, there is the famous “Liber Scriptus” (The Written Book), which Sotomayor performs frequently in Europe and Asia.

Pabón, emeritus conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO), will bring it all together on the podium, in what for Dávila is a reunion with those who have shaped his career.

And for Puerto Rico’s Tenor Numero Uno nothing can be too operatic.

“I regard ‘Requiem’ as equal in scope and intensity to any of (Verdi’s) operas,” the interpreter of some 60 major roles told

the STAR this week. “It requires as much depth and passion as any operatic role. Each movement unfolds as a deeply moving journey, from intimate, heartfelt supplications to moments of overwhelming power -- vividly illuminating the dramatic and spiritual force of the Latin Mass for the Dead.”

Dávila, who is well known for this iconic work, once sang it with three other Puerto Ricans, the late soprano Yali Marie Williams, mezzo soprano Gabriela García and bass Ricardo Lugo at the televised Music in the Mountains Festival in Durango, Colorado under the baton of islander Guillermo Figueroa, a former PRSO musical director.

Dávila, a Vega Alta native who has remained an island resident as he travels the world, has sung 16 Verdi roles in his career, with a 17th waiting in the wings for next season. This fall the 55-year-old will celebrate a decade at the Met with his first MacDuff in “Macbeth.”

Known for his dramatic roles, especially in the French and Italian bel canto repertoire, he is extremely fond of the “Requiem,” with its major tenor parts and introduction of the “Kyrie” and powerful “Ingemisco,” a demanding solo in which he asks for mercy.

Although Dávila has sung this work around the world, this time he feels doubly blessed to add the sentimental connection with his alma mater on Sunday.

The Conservatory Concert Choir, which will form part of the huge ensemble William Rivera prepared for Sunday’s magnum opus, will be enhanced by his (largely volunteer) community chorus known as the National Choir of Puerto Rico and the smaller Conservatory Alumni Chorus.