Messa da Requiem

Giuseppe Verdi's artistic field of activity was almost exclusively opera. Only a few of his works leave the operatic stage, such as the Requiem, which is one of his most impressive compositions. The requiem mass was composed in 1874, a few years after ‘Aida’, as a requiem for the poet Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi greatly admired. The mass soon detached itself from Manzoni's name, just as the performance detached itself from the sacred setting. Significantly, the second performance of the Requiem took place at La Scala in Milan, where Verdi celebrated so many successes with his operas. The Requiem with its large choir and four vocal soloists thus joins the impressive series of Verdi operas and unfolds a theatre of affects and emotions that is in no way inferior to the stage works. On the contrary: the Requiem rises above Verdi's immense operatic oeuvre and reveals a drama in the ‘Dies irae’ that is incomparable to anything else in Verdi's oeuvre. One of the first German performances of Verdi's Requiem took place in Cologne in December 1875. A co-production of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne and Cologne Opera.