PROGRAM NOTES
CONLON CONDUCTS THE VERDI REQUIEM
even though I am far away . Now it is finished ! And with him dies the purest , holiest , and highest of our glories .” Posterity has agreed with Verdi about Manzoni ’ s importance as a cultural figure . To this day , students of Italian meet his groundbreaking novel I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) early in their studies , though few can begin to appreciate the effect this work had as a coded manual for Italians swept up in Risorgimento ideals , serving much the same political function that some of Verdi ’ s operas did .
Before long , Verdi resolved to compose a full Requiem Mass in memory of Manzoni — this time on his own . Verdi was not a religious man , but he appreciated that most of his countrymen were and , as an agnostic , he did not disdain religious beliefs that were meaningful to others . He threw himself wholeheartedly into the project . Of course he
ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE : TERESA STOLZ ’ S
By Paula Maust
T he final decade of Bohemian soprano Teresa Stolz ’ s ( 1834 – 1902 ) impressive career included numerous performances of Giuseppe Verdi ’ s late operas and Requiem . After training at the Prague Conservatory , Stolz made her 1857 operatic debut in Tbilisi and then toured across Europe for a decade before arriving in Milan . It was at La Scala that she sang the Italian premiere of the title role in Verdi ’ s Aida , a part written especially for her . Her other significant Milanese roles include Desdemona in Verdi ’ s Othello , Mathilde in Rossini ’ s Guillaume Tell , and the title roles in Donizetti ’ s Lucrezia Borgia and Bellini ’ s Norma . In 1874 , Stolz was the soloist for the premiere of Verdi ’ s Requiem , and she then performed the work in London and Vienna . Critics of the time described her stage presence as the perfect combination of power , passion , dignity , and discipline . Blanche Roosevelt reviewed Stolz ’ s 1875 already had a leg up with his completed , and as yet unperformed , “ Libera me ” for Rossini ; and since that section includes some text that also appears in two earlier sections — “ Requiem aeternam ” and “ Dies irae ”— it made perfect sense for him to “ extrapolate backwards ” when composing those parts , getting further ( and perfectly logical ) mileage out of the music he had already written .
He completed his Requiem in time for it to be performed on the first anniversary of Manzoni ’ s passing , Challenges loomed . He became fixated on the idea that the premiere had to take place in a church ; but there was a prohibition against women singing in church , and this Requiem absolutely was going to involve a lot of singing women — two of the four vocal soloists , as well as the sopranos and altos in the mixed choir . Probably nobody else would have had the clout ,
Parisian performance of the Requiem in the Chicago Times : “ Mme Stolz ’ s voice is a pure soprano , with an immense compass and of the most perfectly beautiful quality one ever listened to … Her phrasing is the most superb I ever heard and her intonation something faultless . She takes a tone and sustains it until it seems that her respiration is quite exhausted , and then she has only commenced to hold it . The tones are as fine and clearly cut as diamond , and sweet as a silver bell ; but the power she gives a high C is something amazing … She opens her mouth slightly when she takes a note , without any perceptible effort , and the tone swells out bigger and fuller , always retaining that exquisite purity of intonation , and the air seems actually heavy with great passionate waves of melody .” Stolz ’ s final public appearance was a performance of the Requiem at La Scala in 1879 . but even in a showdown with the Catholic Church , Verdi came out the winner . The church bent its rules for this occasion . The Requiem was presented in a liturgical context , at Milan ’ s Church of San Marco , as a so-called “ dry Mass ” ( i . e ., without communion ), with Verdi ’ s movements separated by passages of Ambrosian chant — the Ambrosian , as opposed to the Gregorian , rite being standard in Milan .
Then Verdi decided he absolutely wanted those female soloists to be the singers who had performed in the premiere of Aida — the soprano Teresa Stolz , who had sung the title role , and the mezzo-soprano Maria Waldmann , who had appeared as Amneris . The fact that Stolz was widely rumored to be Verdi ’ s mistress imbued an air of scandal into the proceedings , but the greater problem involved Waldmann . She was under contract to sing in Florence just then , and the impresario there was intractable about not releasing her to sing some Requiem up in Milan . He suggested that Verdi change the date of the Manzoni commemoration , which of course was out of the question . In the end , Verdi had to exert more of his considerable sway , and he got the Mayor of Milan to intervene with the Mayor of Florence to get the Florentine impresario to bend to Verdi ’ s will . The performance therefore went on as planned , before an audience of dignitaries both Italian and foreign .
Notwithstanding its ecclesiastical premiere , Verdi never considered this anything but a “ concert Requiem ,” and in the years since , its appearances as part of liturgical celebrations have been rare indeed . Its vocabulary is not essentially different from those of Verdi ’ s roughly coeval operas — Aida and Otello come most to mind — demonstrating something that might have been anticipated of an opera composer : that even without the friction of colliding characters his music packs an inherently dramatic punch .
Indeed , the Requiem hovered between the church , the concert hall , and the opera house from the beginning . Three days after its premiere at the Church of San Marco , the production moved lock , stock , and barrel to the La Scala opera house for three performances , after which it made the rounds of the major European capitals , always to immense acclaim . The Milanese newspaper Il sole reported on the first La Scala performance :
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