Messa da requiem (1874)
Giuseppe Verdi was born in Roncole, Italy, on October 9 or 10, 1813, and died in Milan, Italy, on January 27, 1901. The first performance of the Messa da requiem took place at the Church of San Marco in Milan on May 22, 1874, with the composer conducting. The Messa da requiem is scored for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass solo, mixed chorus, three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets (and four offstage trumpets), three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, and strings. Approximate performance time is eighty-four minutes.
“Stay away from priests”
Composer Arrigo Boito, the librettist for Giuseppe Verdi’s final operatic masterworks, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), offered this description of the maestro’s religious beliefs:
This is the day, of all days of the year, that he loved best. Christmas eve reminded him of the holy marvels of childhood, the enchantments of a faith that is truly celestial only when it attains to belief in miracles. That belief, alas, he lost early, like all of us, but perhaps more than the rest of us he retained all his life a keen regret for it.
He provided an example of Christian faith by the moving beauty of his religious works, by observing rites (you must remember his beautiful head bowed in the chapel of [his home in] Sant’Agata), by his illustrious homage to (Alessandro) Manzoni (the Messa da requiem), by the directions for his funeral found in his will: “one priest, one candle, one cross.” He knew that faith was the sustenance of hearts.
...In the ideal and moral sense he was a great Christian, but one should take care not to present him as a Catholic in the political and strictly theological sense of the word: nothing could be further from the truth.
The “truth” was that Giuseppe Verdi harbored a lifelong distrust for organized religion. “Sta lontan dai pret” (“Stay away from priests”), he once cautioned a member of his family. And in such operas as Don Carlos and Aida, Verdi fearlessly portrays hypocrisy within the religious hierarchy.
Verdi’s negative feelings toward organized religion may have had their origins in his childhood. When Verdi was about seven years old, he served as an altar boy at the church of San Michele in his birthplace of Roncole. During Mass, the young Verdi failed to respond promptly to the priest’s request for water and wine. The priest shoved Verdi, and the child fell from the altar. The humiliated boy responded with the peasant curse: “Dio t’manda ‘na sajetta!” (“May God strike you with lightning!”). In a surreal turn of events, eight years later the priest was indeed struck by lightning and killed.
But Verdi was also capable of writing music that portrayed, with the utmost beauty, sincere religious fervor. One need only hear the supplications of Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, Leonora in La forza del destino, Aida, or Desdemona in Otello to understand that Verdi’s operatic characters could pray with as much devotion as anyone. And it should be noted that Italy’s foremost opera composer ended his career with a sacred work, the Quattro pezzi sacri (1898).
“I would have knelt before him”
The 1874 Requiem Mass represents Verdi’s greatest achievement in the realm of sacred music. The work had its origin in the November 13, 1868 passing of opera composer Gioachino Rossini. Verdi proposed that several Italian composers collaborate on a Requiem Mass to be presented on the first anniversary of Rossini’s death. Verdi contributed the concluding Libera me to the Messa per Rossini. Due to various political intrigues, the work was not performed until 1988. However the death of another immortal Italian artist five years after Rossini’s demise inspired Verdi to compose his Requiem Mass.
Throughout his life, Verdi revered the beloved Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), the author of the epic 1827 novel, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed). I promessi sposi tells the story of a young couple in early 17th-century Italy who are separated by political and social tyranny. This magnificent work resonated with those who, like Verdi, advocated the overthrow of foreign rulers, and the unification of Italy. Verdi himself called I promessi sposi “not just a book, but a consolation to all mankind.” After finally meeting the author in 1868, Verdi wrote: “What can I say of Manzoni? How to describe the extraordinary, indefinable sensation the presence of that saint...produced in me? I would have knelt down before him if we were allowed to worship men.”
Manzoni died on May 22, 1873. Verdi was so devastated by the loss that he could not bring himself to attend the funeral. But Verdi wrote to publisher Giulio Ricordi: “I shall come in a little while to visit his grave, alone and without being seen, and perhaps (after further reflection, and after I have weighed up my strength) to propose some way of honoring his memory.” Verdi decided his homage to Manzoni would be in the form of a Requiem Mass, to be offered on the first anniversary of the author’s death. In the Manzoni Requiem, Verdi incorporated his Libera me from the ill-fated Messa per Rossini.
“His latest opera in ecclesiastical garb”
The premiere of Verdi’s Requiem Mass took place in Milan at the Church of San Marco on May 22, 1874. Verdi himself conducted the orchestra, chorus, and distinguished vocal quartet of soprano Teresa Stolz, mezzo-soprano Maria Waldmann, tenor Giuseppe Capponi, and bass Ormondo Maini. Reactions of the audience and critics were generally favorable. However, on the day before the premiere, conductor, pianist, and Richard Wagner disciple Hans von Bülow, wrote the following for the Allgemeine Zeitung:
Tomorrow will see at the Church of St. Mark, Milan, decked out like a theatre for the event, a monster performance of Verdi’s Requiem, conducted, exceptionally by the composer himself...a work with which the all-powerful corrupter of Italian artistic taste presumably hopes to sweep away the remains of Rossini’s immortality, which is so troublesome to his ambition. His latest opera in ecclesiastical garb will then be exposed to public admiration at La Scala for three evenings in succession...
These words prompted Bülow’s friend Johannes Brahms to remark: “Bülow has made a fool of himself for all time; only a genius could write such a work.” Several years later, Bülow wrote to Verdi and confessed that a performance of the Requiem had moved him to tears. “Now I admire you, I love you!”, Bülow exclaimed. “Will you forgive me, will you use the sovereign’s right to grant pardon?...Long live VERDI, the Wagner of our dear allies!” Verdi replied: “There is no trace of sin in you. Besides, who knows? Perhaps you were right the first time!” Privately, however, Verdi told Ricordi that Bülow was “decidedly mad.”
“To the greater glory of God”
Bülow’s initial observations, as caustic as they are, do point to a criticism that has often been leveled against the Verdi Requiem—specifically, that the music is too operatic, too overtly dramatic for a liturgical text. It is true that in the composition of the Requiem, Verdi drew upon his thirty-five years of experience in the theater. Verdi was sixty at the time of the Requiem’s premiere, and had composed all but two of his twenty-eight operas. In Verdi’s defense, however, one might rhetorically inquire what text is more dramatic than that depicting man at the end of his days upon Earth, awaiting eternal judgment?
While some may question the appropriateness of Verdi’s setting of the Requiem, few would argue with the proposition that the work is the creation of a genius at the height of his powers. For Verdi’s part, he summarized his feelings about the Manzoni Requiem: “I have done nothing but write note after note, to the greater glory of God...Now the music is done, and I am happy to have written it.”
Notes on the Program by Ken Meltzer