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On December 2 the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast was devoted to the company’s 53rd iteration of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The Requiem was first performed at the Met in 1901 on the occasion of the composer’s death; he had died earlier that year. Among those similarly honored in memoriam have been John Kennedy in 1964 and Luciano Pavarotti in 2008. This season’s edition was dedicated to the recently deceased baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
On December 2 the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast was devoted to the company’s 53rd iteration of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The Requiem was first performed at the Met in 1901 on the occasion of the composer’s death; he had died earlier that year. Among those similarly honored in memoriam have been John Kennedy in 1964 and Luciano Pavarotti in 2008. This season’s edition was dedicated to the recently deceased baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
Verdi’s masterwork
has a complex genesis. It was born when Verdi proposed that a requiem mass
be forged in tribute to Gioacchino Rossini who died in 1868. Each section,
according to the plan he presented to his editor, Ricordi, would be assigned to
a contemporary Italian composer of opera or sacred music, thirteen in all, and
all now largely forgotten with the exception of Verdi himself. The Rossini
requiem was scheduled for premiere in 1869, then cancelled and not performed
until 1988 in Stuttgart; it has been recorded and can be accessed on Youtube. Just
a few years later, with the 1873 death of Alessandro Manzoni, author of the
epic nineteenth-century novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed),
Verdi determined to compose a requiem on his own. He conducted his
opus in 1874 on the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death in the church of San
Marco in Milan. The second performance took place soon thereafter at La
Scala. Verdi toured his Requiem to theatres and auditoriums in
Paris, London, and Venice.
In fact, the Requiem,
scored as for grand opera, replete with a large orchestra and chorus and four
soloists, had not been meant for a liturgical setting. As Verdi
contemporary, conductor Hans Von Bülow, quipped, here was an “Opera in
ecclesiastical dress.”
Towards the end of second section, the “Dies irae,” is
the tenor aria “Ingemisco” which carries with it the indelible imprint of
Verdi’s late manner. The despair of the sinner, mitigated by his hope for redemption,
is powerfully expressed through the repetition of first-person pronouns.
Ingemisco tamquam reus, I
groan, as one who is accused,
culpa rubet vultus meus, guilt
reddens my check;
supplicanti parce, Deus. spare
Thy supplicant, O God.
Qui Mariam absolvisti, Thou
who absolved Mary,
et latronem exaudisti, and
harkened to the thief,
mihi quoque spem dedisti. Has
given hope to me.
Preces meae non sunt dignae, My prayers
are worthless,
sed tu bonus fac benigne, but
Thou, who art good and kind,
ne perenni cremer igne. Rescue
me from everlasting fire.
Inter oves locum praesta, With
Thy sheep give me a place,
et ab hoedis me sequestra, and
from the goats keep me separate,
statuens in parte dextra. Placing
me at Thy right hand.
We have chosen the “Ingemisco” from a 1970 performance
of the Requiem conducted by Leonard
Bernstein. The singer is Placido Domingo early in his long career, his voice
fresh, clarion, and alert to the drama.
Immediately following “Ingemisco” is “Lacrymosa,”
scored for the four soloists and chorus. The text of the prayer is drawn not
from scripture but from a poem by a 13th-century Franciscan monk,
Thomas of Celano, and the infinite sadness of the music is intoned not by a
single voice but by the weaving of multiple voices conventional in liturgical
music.
Lacrymosa dies illa, Tearful
that day shall be
qua resurget ex favilla, when
from the ashes shall arise
judicandus homo reus. Guilty
man to be judged.
Huic ergo parce, Deus, Spare
him the, O God,
pie Jesu Domine, gentle
Lord Jesus,
dona eis requiem. Amen. Grant
him eternal rest. Amen
This “Lacrymosa,” recorded in 1967, is
sung by a quartet of singers at their peak, Leontyne Price, Fiorenza Cossotto,
Luciano Pavarotti, and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Herbert von Karajan conducts the
chorus and orchestra of La Scala.
Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, Deliver me, O Lord, from
eternal death
in die illa tremenda, on
that dreadful day,
quando coeli movendi sunt et terra, when the heavens and
earth shall be moved,
dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. when Thou shall come to judge the
world by fire.
Tremens factus sum ego et timeo, I am full of fear
and I tremble,
dum discussio venerit atque ventura ira. awaiting the day of account
and wrath to come.
Dies irae, dies illa, Day
of wrath, day of mourning,
calamitatis et miseriae, day
of calamity and misery,
dies magna et amara valde. that day
great and most bitter.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Eternal rest grant unto
them, O Lord,
et lux perpetua luceat eis. and
let perpetual light shine upon them.
Verdi is at his most operatic in this, the last
section of the Requiem. The composer awards
the highly emotional aria to the soprano. He demands a two-octave range
deployed in extreme contrasts of high and low, loud and soft. The “Verdi
soprano” descends to her low C again and again; she caps the piece with a high
C unfurled above the thundering chorus; she floats the middle section in an
ethereal pianissimo, ending with an octave vault to a perilous high B-flat. In a
concert from the 1982 Ediburgh Festival, superlatively conducted by Claudio
Abbado, we hear Welsh soprano Margaret Price. When at her best, as Price is
here, there was no one better. She invests her famously pure timbre with a
dramatic urgency that conveys the full measure of fearsome awe at the final
judgement.