G. Verdi: Requiem

The composition of the Messa da requiem by GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813–1901) underwent a long process of ripening.When GioacchinoRossini died on the 13^th of November 1868, Verdi initiated the ambitious project of a collaborative work of music – a requiem mass for the great opera composer to whch selected Italian composers would be assigned different parts. The idea was for the mass to be performed on the first anniversary of Rossini's death in the Church of San Petronio in Bologna. While all the composers sent in their commissoned parts, the project ultimately foundered (the Messa per Rossini was finally premiered on the 11^th of September 1988 in Stuttgart by the Gächinger Kantorei ensemble directed by Helmuth Rilling). Verdi was left with just the part that he had composed, his setting of the „Libera me“. A second impetus was the death of the poet and writer Alberto Manzoni on the 22^nd of May 1873. Manzoni had been a leading figure of the movement for the unification of Italy, the Risorgimento, which Verdi strongly supported. For Verdi, Manzoni like Rossini was another typical representative of the Italian spirit. In this work, as in other non-stage music,  Verdi did not repress his nature as a great operatic dramatist. What is usually mentioned as the most striking example of this dramatism in the Requiem is the „Dies irae“; the aggressive beats of the base drum in fast tempo have lost none of their power after almost a century and a half, just like the fanfares in the „Tuba mirum“. Verdi exploits the spatial affect with four trumpets behind the scenes and the colour shades of the combination of wind instruments. Part of the „Libera me“ is taken over from the Messa per Rossini almost unchanged. Verdi merely left out thirty bars containing reminiscenes of the „Dies irae“, which had not been set at the time, and replaced them with a soprana solo, after the premiere also adding a mezzo soprano solo to the originally choral section, „Liber scriptus“.

The premiere took place on the 22^nd of May 1874 in the Church of San Marco in Milan under Verdi's baton, while the reprises on the 27^th and 29^th of May at La Scala in Milan were conducted by Franco Faccio. The first soloists were the tenor Giuseppe Capponi, the bass Ormondo Maini, the mezzo soprano Maria Waldmann, and taking the soprano part Verdi's intimate friend, Tereza Stolz, who was born in Kostelec nad Labem in Bohemia. The composer also conducted the Requiem in Paris, where it was performed sevent times, and again the next zear in the Albert Hall and in Vienna, where it was performed four times. The last occasion on which Verdi himself conducted the work was a a charity concert in Milan to aid the victims of flooding on the river Po. It was also Tereza Stolz's last public performance.

The Prague public had their first chance to hear Verdi's Messa da requiem on the 17^th of January 1876 at a concert organised by the German Land Theatre in the Estates Theatre (which then belonged to it). Reviewed in superlatives, the Prague performance was conducted by the capellmeister of the German Land Theatre Ludwig Slansky; the orchestra was strengthened by students from the Prague Conservatory and the German Choral Society by a choir of a hundred and twenty pupils from František Pivoda's singing school, with Jan Nepomuk Škroup responsible for the rehearsal of the choral sections. The only complaints were  that the theatre was too small and that the scheduling of the concert for Shrovetide was unfortunate since despite its „secular“ character it deserved a more solemn setting.  The soprano role was sung by the then star of the Prague German company Marie von Moser, and the mezzo soprano role by the Prague-born. The other soloists were Siegmund Hájos de Dömsöd and Vojtěch Šebesta, the first Mícha in Smetana's Bartered Bride at its premiere in 1866 and from 1870 a member of the Prague German company. On the 17^th of February 1876 Verdi's Requiem was presented for the third time in its first Prague production. The work was received by the public in truly „operatic“ style –  it was reported that there was applause after each section and in one report on the third performance we find the comment that „this time the repetition of the Sanctus was not permitted“.

Vlasta Reittererová

Translation Anna Bryson