The Power of the Verdi Requiem

Master Chorus Eastside has been rehearsing Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, off and on, since last fall in preparation for our upcoming April 22^nd collaboration in Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and I have been trying to pin down what it is, exactly, that makes this work so powerful.  I once heard a young conducting student say that singing this Requiem changed his life.  I still vividly remember rehearsing it in graduate school in the late 70s, and although I haven’t sung it since, many details are emblazoned on my mind.  It affected me so profoundly that I practically floated out of those rehearsals from sheer inspiration!

It is a remarkable work.  But what makes it so powerful?

No doubt the impetus for the work provides one clue to its impact.  Rossini, considered among the greatest of Italian opera composers—and opera was the only genre that really mattered in Italy!—died in 1868, and in 1869 Verdi proposed a Requiem Mass in his honor to be composed, piecemeal, by Italy’s premier composers.  Verdi himself submitted the first portion, the Libera me.  Although this combined project never came off, his Libera me became the nucleus of the Requiem Mass he decided to compose on his own.

The Requiem Mass itself also provides plenty of drama—more to come on Requiem Masses in a future blog so I won’t say too much yet.  But keep in mind that Requiems are Masses said and sung for the dead, and run the gamut of emotions, from deep sorrow to sheer terror to enormous hope.   There is a cornucopia of emotional intensity in the text of the Requiem Mass!

But most of all, this Requiem is, in reality, opera, and opera was Verdi’s heart and soul.  He had reigned supreme as Italy’s premier opera composer for more than twenty years, and he knew how to write melodies that could draw every ounce of drama and meaning out of a story.  Verdi treats the Requiem text as story, not as ritual, which fits fairly well with his own faith journey at this point in his life.  He was anticlerical, almost certainly an agnostic, and he wrote in the secular language that was second nature to him.  And to this day the debate still rages as to whether this is suitable music for a sacred text.  It can sound shockingly…operatic!  But it’s worth remembering that in Italy during Verdi’s day there was much conflict between Church and State, and Requiems were considered as much a public and political ritual as a church ritual.

So perhaps we should listen with nineteenth-century Italian ears!

And listen to it live, which we hope you will at our performance, with that wall of sound from voices and orchestra beating against your body, and those melodies soaring to the skies.  It is absolutely thrilling…out of this world!  Take the time to listen to the Libera me right here, with the translation on the screen!  You’ll see what I mean about its power!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside