Donald Palumbo thrilled to be working again with Muti for Verdi’s Requiem

Between 1991 and 2007, Donald Palumbo held a top position on Chicago’s classical music scene. As Lyric Opera of Chicago’s chorus master, he prepared the company’s choristers for performances of dozens of operas, ranging from familiar works by composers such as Handel, Mozart, Donizetti and Verdi to modernist operas by Luciano Berio (Un Re in Ascolto) and world premieres by Anthony Davis (Amistad) and William Bolcom (A View from the Bridge). With Palumbo’s emphasis on both technical precision and emotional depth, Lyric’s chorus became known as one of the opera world’s finest. 

The Metropolitan Opera lured Palumbo from Chicago in 2007, and he served as the Met’s chorus master for 17 seasons, stepping down in June 2024. This spring, he will be back in Chicago, once again preparing a chorus. However, he will be working across the Loop from the Lyric Opera House, getting the Chicago Symphony Chorus ready for performances June 19-21 and 24 of Verdi’s Requiem, led by Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s Music Director Emeritus for Life. Joining the Chorus and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be a quartet of guest vocalists: soprano Elena Guseva, mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa, bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo and tenor John Osborn.

From 1999 to 2001, Palumbo was chorus director of the Salzburg Festival, where Muti is one of the summer event’s most high-profile conductors. But they didn’t work together until 2010, when Muti made his long-awaited Metropolitan Opera debut in one of Verdi’s early works, Attila. Preparing the chorus for that acclaimed production was a high point of Palumbo’s nearly 15-year career at the Met.

“Muti and I had met a couple of times, but we never had a chance to work together. Attila at the Met was my first and only time — up until now [in the CSO’s 2022 production of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera] — working with him,” said Palumbo. “For me, it was just a dream come true. I have such respect for him as a conductor, especially in Verdi. I’ve worked with a lot of conductors. And sometimes I like to say there are a few conductors that I feel can just pick up the phone and dial into certain composers; they have direct contact. Muti and Verdi represent that for me. Musically, this Attila at the Met was just spectacular. I’m really excited to work with the maestro again.”

Working with Riccardo Muti at the Met “was just a dream come true. I have such respect for him as a conductor, especially in Verdi.” — Donald Palumbo

Palumbo returned the following season to prepare the Chicago Symphony Chorus for Beethoven’s Missa solemnis under Muti. As always, the conductor has the final word about how the chorus sounds. “My role ends once the maestro shows up on the spot, ready for rehearsals,” Palumbo said. “I have done the preparation work; the chorus is now a malleable ensemble. It’s going to do whatever the maestro requires to execute his musical conception of the piece.

“That’s why I enjoy being a chorus master. When we prepare something, I have to make sure that I make every member of this large group understands the piece, understands the structure, understands what we’re going for dramatically. I know full well that the tiny details, or tempi or phrasing, are part of what the conductor will bring to the performance, based on his understanding of the score. In a way, I have to prepare the chorus for almost any approach to any given work. We don’t know what’s going to be asked of us until the conductor arrives.

“I actually enjoy the process of turning over my chorus to a conductor,” said Palumbo, recalling his early days at the Dallas Opera as an assistant to Roberto Benaglio, best known as the distinguished chorus master of La Scala in Milan. “The Dallas company’s music director, Nicola Rescigno, would arrive for rehearsals and ask Benaglio about the state of the chorus. I remember thinking, ‘Wow! What a responsibility to have to provide the conductor with a chorus that can be that malleable and ready to adapt.’

“I never wanted to be a conductor because I don’t know how to tell instrumentalists how to play better,” said Palumbo, who never took formal choral conducting lessons. He learned his craft from singing in choruses himself, attending hundreds of performances as a student in Vienna and doing miscellaneous musical jobs for opera companies from Providence, Rhode Island, to St. Louis. In addition to his Metropolitan Opera post, he was also a vocal coach and remains a vocal arts faculty member at the Juilliard School.

“I wanted to be a chorus director because after training and studying for as long as I did,” he said, “I think I know how to make a chorus sound better.”

A version of this article was previously published on Experience CSO.