DPO conductor Neal Gittleman shares the backstory of Verdi’s ‘Requiem’

When Italian composer Gioachino Rossini died in 1868, Verdi came up with the idea of a “Mass for Rossini,” a grand setting of the Requiem liturgy in memory of the famous composer. It was to be performed on the one-year anniversary of Rossini’s death. The catch — and there’s always a catch — was that Verdi wanted to draft all the top opera composers of the time and have each compose a movement. It was a great idea but was a messy project to pull off. He got 12 other composers to sign on and write movements. The piece got written, but got caught up in Italian opera politics and the performance never happened. The “Messa per Rossini” was discovered in the 1970’s and finally had its premiere in 1988. It’s a cool piece, with some wonderful stuff — and some ordinary stuff. But the highlight is Verdi’s movement, the “Libera me” finale. In 1873, when the great Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni died, Verdi reviewed the “write-a-requiem-forthe-first-anniversary” idea, but this time he determined not to involve anyone else. The result is the Verdi “Requiem” that we know and love. And the “Libera me” of the Manzoni Requiem is essentially a revised version of the movement he’d written for the Rossini Requiem five years earlier, complete with the famous “Dies irae” music with wailing chorus and pounding bass drum — probably the most iconic moment of the whole piece. So the “fiasco” of the Rossini Mass wasn’t a total fiasco!