Giuseppe Verdi - Messa da Requiem

Although Requiem was a religious work, it was presented more in concert halls than in churches. Giuseppe Verdi wrote the famous Requiem in honour of his close friend, Alessandro Manzoni, the great Italian poet, writer, and humanist, who died in 1873. It is a powerful fusion of intense drama and passion, with moments of reverent simplicity. Verdi conducted the first performance at St. Mark's Church in Milan on May 22, 1874, the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. Revolutionary composition Verdi's Requiem has been revolutionary in two respects: First, because while the traditional requiem is a prayer of the living for the dead, Verdi's work was a function as much for the living as for the dead. As Verdi would expect, it's a dramatic, theatrical play. Written for four solo voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass) with full choir and orchestra, it follows the typical Roman Catholic Latin mass for the dead. The "libretto" certainly comes from the dram

Tchaikovsky - introduction


The music of the Russian romantic composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, oversensitive, evokes the immediate emotion of the listener since they are often reflected in it - with rare immediacy and upretentious honesty - "episodes" of his turbulent life. Afailed marriage burdened him with guilt, from which he never managed to break free.

But as it happens usually at that case, the pain proved to be a cause for stimulation of the composer's creative ideas. The tender melancholy and the restrained pessimism that redeem many of the pages of his music, are due not only to his Slavec chromosomes, but also to the frustrations he received during his life.

He certainly did not turn his pain into joy. But he turned the pain into force, thanks to which he managed to resist the imperatives of his times, who wanted every expression of art to be subject to the rules of the Russian School. Tchaikovsky was indeed less Russian and more Western. And if his music was doubted while he was alive, today it is recognized as the most important on Russian land.


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