Verdi’s Requiem: In Memory of a Friend

In the final concert of our 2013-2014 season, the Evanston Symphony and the North Shore Choral Society present Verdi's Requiem Mass, one of the greatest choral works ever written, on June 15 at 2:30 pm at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. First performed in 1874, the piece was a tribute to Verdi's friend, author and statesman Alessandro Manzoni. In addition to writing I Promessi Sposi, one of the greatest novels of the Italian language, Manzoni, like Verdi, was a passionate advocate for Italian unification.

Like many Verdi masterpieces, the “Manzoni Requiem,” as it was originally known, met with a firestorm of criticism. Music critic Harold Schonberg wrote, in The Lives of the Great Composers, “Some attacked it for being too theatrical…tawdry, sensational, cheap, irreligious, melodramatic…” One can almost sympathize with contemporary critics and audiences trying to reconcile the stunning Dias irae, for example, with conventional piety.

But like his idol Beethoven, Verdi didn’t care what critics thought. The public loved his music, and that’s all that mattered to him.

Nevertheless, Verdi, then age 61, turned away from composing after the Requiem, spending his time traveling, mounting revisions of earlier operas and serving in the Italian parliament. He came out of retirement many years later to write his last two masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff.

Please note, this concert has no intermission; latecomer seating is about halfway through program.