Giuseppi Verdi
Requiem
When the Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni died in May of 1873, Giuseppi Verdi wrote to his friend the Contessa Clara Maffei, “Now all is over! And with him ends the purest, the holiest, the greatest of our glories.” Manzoni was best known for his sprawling historical novel I promessi sposi, (The Betrothed, 1827). In its descriptions of peasants in seventeenth-century Lombardy oppressed by their Spanish overlords, the novel struck a chord in nineteenth-century Italy, then in conflict with Austria. Verdi revered Manzoni as a great Italian patriot and artist; after the Contessa introduced the two in 1868, Verdi wrote to her, “What can I say of Manzoni? How can I express the indefinable, new feeling of extreme sweetness that I got while I was in the presence of that Saint, as you call him? I would have knelt in front of him, if one could adore a man.”
Like Manzoni, Verdi was seen by his fellow Italians as both an artist and a patriot, in his case not only for championing the Italian operatic tradition after Rossini, but for bringing this art form to new heights of drama and expression. It seems only natural, then, that Verdi wished to write a Requiem mass in Manzoni’s honor, to be performed on the first anniversary of the poet’s death. Verdi’s publisher, Giulio Ricordi, convinced the mayor of Milan to foot the bill for the first performance, in return for which Verdi would conduct the performance and pay for the cost of publishing the music.
Verdi began work on the piece in the summer of 1873 while on holiday in Paris. He was not starting from scratch, however. After Rossini died in November of 1868, Verdi had proposed that a commemorative mass be written by leading Italian composers in Rossini’s honor, with the score to be performed once on the anniversary of Rossini’s death and then locked away as a solemn tribute. This elaborate scheme had succumbed to bickering over costs and personnel. By October of 1869 the newspapers were printing accusations between various backers, and Verdi told his planning commission to cancel the event. The only good to come from the fiasco was the Libera me Verdi had written for the collaborative piece. This score had been returned to him in April of 1873, and so became a starting point for the Manzoni Requiem. He also reworked a duet cut from his opera Don Carlos, using it as the basis of the “Lacrymosa” section of the Dies iræ. He completed the new Requiem by April of 1874.
The first performance of the Messa da Requiem was held on May 22, 1874, at the church of San Marco in Milan, with Verdi conducting a 100-piece orchestra, a choir of 120, and four soloists, including the soprano (Teresa Stolz) and mezzo-soprano (Maria Waldmann) who had sung Aida and Amneris in Aida (1871). The event was a success, and was quickly followed by performances at La Scala, after which Verdi took the work on a triumphal tour of Paris, London, and Vienna.
The critics were generally positive, though some complained that Verdi’s music veered too far from the sacred toward the popular — specifically, opera. German conductor and Wagnerian Hans von Bülow was in Milan at the time of the first performance and had a statement inserted in the next day’s newspaper declaring that “Hans von Bülow was not present at the spectacle;” he later described the piece as “Verdi’s latest opera, in ecclesiastical dress.” Hearing of this remark, composer Johannes Brahms reviewed a copy of the score and responded, “Bülow has blundered. This is a work of genius.”
That Verdi’s Requiem is dramatic is undeniable, but the text itself, with its terrifying descriptions of the end of the world and its urgent pleas for deliverance, is perhaps the most dramatic Verdi ever set to music. With the gift he demonstrated in his operas for portraying character and plot through the very nature of his music, it seems inevitable that Verdi would find a way to characterize the depth and passion of such words. Perhaps the best rebuttal to complaints about over-dramatization was made by Verdi’s wife Giuseppina:
“I say that a man like Verdi must write like Verdi, that is according to his own way of feeling and interpreting the text. And if the various religions have … modifications according to the time and the country, then the religious spirit and the way in which it finds expression must bear the imprint of its time and, surely, the personality of its author.”
Giuseppina also described her husband as “not much of a believer.” His Requiem is certainly not meant for a liturgical mass, since verses are repeated throughout the work, with the Dies iræ reappearing at ever more frightening moments. And though a Requiem is meant to honor the triumph of heaven over death, this Requiem is more concerned with the fate of the living who fear death and beg for deliverance.
The opening movement, Requiem and Kyrie, begins in a somber, hushed minor, but opens into A major and a stirring a cappella declaration by the chorus: “Te decet hymnus, Deus” (To thee, God, is due a hymn of praise). The “Kyrie” introduces the soloists, who join the chorus in a fervent ensemble, ending in a pianissimo hush.
The calm of this moment is destroyed by Verdi’s sonic depiction of God’s wrath and destruction in the opening of the Dies iræ, with bass drum and timpani providing a thundering accompaniment to the agitated strings and anguished cries of the chorus. This movement comprises nearly half of the Requiem, consisting of several sections tied by key relationships and repeated references to the tumultuous opening theme. Following this “day of wrath,” Verdi is equally literal in his “Tuba, mirum spargens sonum” (The trumpet scatters a wondrous sound): distant trumpets answer those in the orchestra, and the brass and chorus build to a powerful depiction of the last judgment. The bass soloist’s pianissimo entrance in “Mors stupebit” (Death shall be astounded) brings all to an appropriately astonished halt. Lyrical passages for the soloists in the “Quid sum miser” and “Recordare” alternate with the emphatic “Rex tremendæ,” pleading “Salva me,” or impassioned “Confutatis” in the chorus, with both hushed and agitated reiterations of the “Dies iræ” throughout. The sorrowful rising semitones of the “Lacrymosa” are balanced by the consoling “Pie Jesu” and the final G-major Amen, which, one critic writes, “falls on the ear like a blessing.”
The Offertory presents the soloists in quartet, contrasting the lovely “Domine Jesu” and the tender “Hostias” introduced by the tenor with the more energetic “Quam olim Abrahæ.” The movement ends with an ethereal restatement of the opening theme by a solo clarinet against tremolando strings. From this heavenly moment Verdi sounds a fanfare, bringing forth the angelic hosts in the Sanctus with its brilliant, animated fugue for double chorus. The Agnus Dei develops from an unaccompanied tune sung first in octaves by the soprano and mezzo-soprano, then passed between soloists and chorus in both major and minor. The orchestra joins in growing variations of accompaniment, including a flowing counterpoint by the flutes. The Lux æterna, a trio for the lower three soloists, juxtaposes the bright melody of the “Lux æterna” (eternal light) begun by the mezzo-soprano with the darker, heavier statement of the “Requiem æternam” (eternal rest) introduced by the bass. This movement is only lightly orchestrated, the trio often singing a cappella, with strings and solo flute providing a radiant close.
Though Verdi used portions of the music intended for the Rossini mass in the Libera me, the result belongs entirely to this Requiem, with the reappearance of several earlier themes. The music portrays a gamut of emotion, from the trembling recitative that opens the movement to the terrified restatement of the “Dies iræ” and the quiet solace of the “Requiem,” resting for a beautiful moment on the soprano’s tender, rising B-flat. But this repose is brief, as the soprano returns to her urgent “Libera me” and the chorus charges into a climactic fugue. From its thunderous cries to a plaintive close, this movement sums up the spirit of Verdi’s Requiem, which speaks not to the dead but to the living, and expresses both the anguish of death and an urgent prayer for salvation.
June, 2002