Video-on-Demand: Verdi: Messa da Requiem

Verdi's masterpiece is in a league of its own. On the deaths of his fellow composer Rossini and the writer Alessandro Mazzoni, Giuseppe Verdi set about creating a musical memorial that would become one of his most cherished works.

Verdi’s musical commemoration came in the form of a highly charged setting of the Latin ‘Mass for the Dead’ that was so forthright and hard-hitting in its expression of grief, faith and judgment that many though it too dramatic for performance in church. But time has proved that Verdi Requiem is an intensely spiritual and reassuring work too. It is also a piece of tremendous beauty that appears to look to the heavens from its delicate, hushed opening.

Recorded live in Grieghallen, Bergen, Norway, 23 March 2018.