What It’s Like to Sing “Lagrime di San Pietro”

Last March we spoke with director Peter Sellars who was at the helm of LA Master Chorale’s performance of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro. It is a profoundly moving work and those who had a chance to see it at Walt Disney Concert Hall experienced an amazing performance of a rarely heard work. But fret not those who didn’t get a chance to experience LAMC’s brilliant production. There are two performances this weekend at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. That venue’s relative intimacy, particularly when compared to WDCH, assures these will be two powerful performances.

I recently spoke with baritone Luc Kleiner (who ironically is singing a tenor part in Lagrime) about what it’s been like to perform this extraordinary difficult composition as he and the LA Master Chorale have launched a tour that has taken them to Australia, Mexico and back in LA for these two performances.

What is it about this piece that speaks to you personally?

There’s sort of this illusion of self in it and sort of this flipped script of looking at someone else realizing your own fault. You are blaming them and then you realize you are the one delivering the blows, the injury. This art slows down time and we’re experiencing these super painful emotions of remorse and regret and the pain of old age. What happens when you slow down anxiety and check it out – that makes the piece super important.

Have you found yourself relating to the story in ways that surprise you?

There are countless moments where I think about a friend I’ve lost or mentor or someone you dedicate the piece to. There are three people who I think of every time and I’ve written their names into my score. There’s a part where we lay down and die. We climb into our graves and kill the soul. Each time we do that, and then we come out of our graves, we take a moment and breathe and say a prayer or dedication. That’s when I honor my friends.

Peter Sellars described this work as “insanely hard.” How hard is it apart from the way it is being performed?

I think it is just technics and it’s kind of what we all have been trained to do. Which is sing these long phrases – elongate speech – and do that artistic goal of slowing down time. That translates technically into taking a huge breath and slowly expiring it through some vibrating vocal chords and making this beautiful Renaissance polyphony.

How much harder does it become because of the way you are performing it with choreographed movement?

What we’re doing with the piece is adding two more dimensions which are emotion and movement and that’s a super hard part. But the emotional layer, that is intrinsic to the text. It’s all there. Peter doesn’t make anything up. If you watch the movement and the text and even reflect back on it later, it’s definitely within the work. 

Given the emotional component of this story, what is it like for the singers after the performance?

Sometimes you need to weep for 30 minutes after a performance – which definitely happened on tour.  I think it could be this inter-penetration of your life into the performance of the work and the work into your memory and your life itself. There’s this sort of omni-directional truth or sort of synthesis of art and reality. 

Sellers also told me that “the longer you live with the music, the more you see and hear in it and understand it.” What do you understand now about Lagrime that you didn’t understand when you first performed it?

And in the future because there are so many upcoming performances. I definitely had moments of doubt and a lapse of my faith in the piece. They are these real emotional experiences you are going through in performing it. A fear of mine was that it might be more shallow as we continue to perform the piece. We might get a little lazy or something. One of my fellow singers restored my faith by saying “I think every performance is going to get deeper and we will find unimaginable depths as we perform it.” 

You are in the early stages of the tour having been to Australia and Mexico so far. Are you finding any common response to Lagrime and the way the LA Master Chorale is performing it?

Each is super unique, but also they are really enthusiastic, really charged up and I think super grateful and so are we. Which is the awesome part. When we come to the front of the stage [at the end of the performance] and just beam, we get an audience that beams back and we all accomplished something. The people who come are totally in it. They are the Greek chorus. They know the truth of it and so by the end it’s totally a commonality between performers and audience. We all suffered and we were all healed.