Messa da Requiem

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi completed his Requiem Mass as a tribute to his friend Alessandro Manzoni – a beloved Italian writer – and you’ll often hear his version called, “Manzoni” Requiem. It is a powerful statement to the esteem that Verdi, and indeed all of Italy, felt for Manzoni. Earlier in life, Verdi had experienced the tragic losses of two children and his first wife; he was no stranger to grief and mourning.

Prior to the 18th century, before it became popularized for secular concert performance, a Requiem, the Catholic mass for the dead, was a holy ritual accompanied by music. Verdi’s Requiem is filled with the drama you might expect from someone often referenced as the greatest Italian opera composer. Heart-pounding and heart-wrenching, elaborate, startling, and thrilling…all describe Verdi’s Requiem. It’s also appropriately somber and mournful at times, typical for any funeral mass, but it’s not all death and doom. Of Verdi’s Requiem, Johannes Brahms said, “Only a genius could have written such a work.”